Capital and Trust |
For many Punjabis, the issue of Chandigarh is far more than an administrative detail. It is a wound of history, a symbol of loss and deferred justice ~ and unless recognised as such, the unresolved status will continue to fester. Losing Lahore in 1947 left Punjab bereft of its capital. Chandigarh was meant to be a new beginning for a state rebuilding itself after Partition. But the 1966 decision to carve out Haryana and convert Chandigarh into a Union Territory, shared between two states, denied Punjab the exclusive control it expected. That grievance has shaped the region’s emotional politics ever since.
This is why territorial arrangements promising Chandigarh solely to Punjab, such as those agreed in 1985, carried weight. They offered the possibility of closure. But the commitment was never honoured. For many who lived through the unrest of the 1980s, the failure to follow through remains a reminder of how broken promises fuelled........