Some of Ajit Singh’s relatives say he heard Jawaharlal Nehru’s iconic “Tryst with Destiny” midnight speech before breathing his last at about 3.30 am on August 15, 1947. His last words, by many accounts, were “Jai Hind”.
For Punjab, August 15, 1947, marked both freedom and devastation. The country became Independent, but Punjab was divided, forcing millions to leave homes, lands and lives built over generations.
Since 2021, the central government has observed August 14 as Vibhajan Vibhishika Smriti Diwas or Partition Horrors Remembrance Day. Few families in Punjab are untouched by that pain and trauma, passed down from one generation to another.
Yet the generation that came to India following their displacement after Partition did not have only the burden of loss. It also carried a deep nostalgia for the “Baar”, the canal-colony settlements of western Punjab that they had been forced to abandon.
Sitting in his Amritsar home, Prof Darbari Lal, former Deputy Speaker of the Punjab Assembly and education minister, while remembering his village in the Baar, once said: “The Chenab flowed right across it. Sohni must have been swept this way when she was separated from Mahiwal.”
For centuries, large parts of western Punjab had remained uncultivated due to lack of irrigation. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the British built an extensive canal network in the region. But water alone was not enough; farmers were needed. Many from what is now Indian Punjab, including retired soldiers, moved to larger settlements there and were allotted land called murabbas, each measuring 25 acres.
New settlements were given administrative numbers: Chak 8, Chak 20, Chak 503 and many more. Often, they carried the names of the migrants’ original villages, such as Chak 503 Narangwal. The land was arid and took years to turn fertile. But, when the Partition took place, those who had transformed such lands were forced to leave, often with little warning. They became refugees.
Many of them lived in camps or with relatives across Indian Punjab. My father, then a child, remembers a maasi who sheltered his family for months while his father, away in Bombay on business during the upheaval, searched for them. My grandmother spoke of their painfully slow caravan, guarded by village youths on horseback, and of an army officer from their village who came to their rescue midway, ferrying women and children to Amritsar in a military vehicle so packed they could barely breathe. Then there is a favourite anecdote of the family: a cow that was reunited with them after a neighbour found it in a refugee camp.
Some stories were darker. The much-loved uncle, a serving police officer, was killed by a mob inside his own station in western Punjab. In uniform.
It would have been easier for that generation to embrace victimhood. Instead, they rebuilt their lives. Many joined the armed forces, others started businesses, most returned to farming.
The state, too, played a role. Dr M S Randhawa, as Director-General of Rehabilitation in Punjab, oversaw the formidable task of land allocation to the refugee families. While ensuring parity was virtually impossible, he made all efforts to give families land proportionate to what they had lost. Wherever possible, people from the same villages were resettled together.
That spirit of resistance and rebuilding is central to Punjab’s political memory and has long been ingrained in its farmers. Even today, protests in the state draw on the legacy of earlier agrarian struggles.
This is why the Pagdi Sambhal Jatta pitch echoed during the farmers’ agitation during 2020-21 against the now-repealed central farm laws.
Ajit Singh had led the original Pagdi Sambhal Jatta movement in 1907 alongside Lala Lajpat Rai, opposing three British laws that threatened farmers’ rights and increased water charges or abiana. A gifted orator, he addressed 19 of the 33 meetings recorded by the British intelligence. In March 1907, Lala Banke Dayal’s poem titled “Pagdi Sambhal Jatta” was recited at a rally in Lyallpur, giving the movement its name and anthem.
The British eventually withdrew the farm laws, but Ajit Singh and Lajpat Rai were imprisoned in Mandalay, Burma. On their return, Bal Gangadhar Tilak hailed Ajit Singh as the “king of Punjab peasantry”.
But hounded by the British, Ajit Singh was forced into exile for nearly four decades abroad, where he engaged with Indian revolutionaries and nationalists, including Lala Har Dayal and Subhas Chandra Bose. After the Second World War, he was imprisoned in Germany before Nehru secured his release in early 1947. His autobiography, “Buried Alive”, recalls his journey during those years.
The slogan Pagdi Sambhal Jatta, which continues to resonate in Punjab, also raises a question: What should that spirit of resistance confront today?
Independence Day offers a moment for reflection in this regard. The challenge today is not colonial rule. It is the depletion of a key resource that made Punjab’s agrarian success possible: water.
Experts have warned of impending desertification in Punjab for years. Economists such as Prof S S Johl during the previous Captain Amarinder Singh-led Congress government’s tenure, have outlined solutions. The current AAP government, too, has prepared plans on the issue. But their implementation remains negligible. Meanwhile, the acreage under the water-intensive paddy cultivation touched a record high this year.
State governments cutting across party lines have continued to provide free water for political reasons, even as the water table plummets.
While farmer unions have been up in arms against various free trade agreements, they seem to have overlooked this looming calamity.
Ex-soldier Joginder Singh Ugrahan, president of the Bhartiya Kisan Union (Ugrahan), arguably Punjab’s largest farmer union, told this reporter: “We are fighting the corporates.”
Some individual farmers have adopted alternatives. But most remain caught in an unsustainable farming model.
The way forward is obvious: reduce dependence on water-intensive paddy, ensure markets for diversified crops, invest in micro-irrigation and food processing, and align agricultural policy with ecology rather than electoral compulsions.
The tradition of resistance set by Ajit Singh needs a new focus – not on an external enemy, but on a system quietly destroying Punjab’s future. The next revolution Punjab needs is in its fields, not in the streets.
For Punjab, August 15, 1947, marked both freedom and devastation 
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