Political Parties of the Punjabi Republic, 1895
Born in the fires of revolution, in the anger at the Great Indian Famine and the state failure to respond to it, the Punjabi Revolution, the overthrow of the imperial monarchy of Punjab by its army and the declaration of a republic by General Prem Nath Kaul sparked a revolutionary period in which the subsidiary monarchies were overthrown in a death tussle. By 1895, with the feudal rebellions crushed and the revolutionary state finally settled down, order and liberty may finally be achieved....
Prem Nath Kaul: If the Punjabi Revolution, the Punjabi Republic, was the work of one man, it was Sardar Prem Nath Kaul. He is a man of great ambiguity. A Kashmiri Pandit, yet an avowed Punjabi nationalist. A devout Hindu, yet the grave foe of the clergy. As a young man, he absorbed the irresistible ideals of liberty from the West and viewed republicanism as the panacea of all of Punjab's problems, yet he made his name as a soldier fighting in the name of the Maharajas of Punjab. He was sworn to the serve the Maharajas, yet he personally overthrew two Maharajas, tore off their turbans, and forced them into exile, declaring a republic. He declared upholding Punjabi greatness to be his lifelong mission - yet, when he tore off the Koh-i-Nur, that symbol of Punjabi greatness from the head of the last Punjabi Maharaja, he pawned it off and spent the money on famine relief. When Punjab's British neighbours, concerned about the example this gave to subjects of the British Raj, asked him to establish a monarchy, he refused and condemned monarchy as a great crime - yet he is greeted like a king, and to criticize him is to criticize the state. He upheld democracy as the greatest virtue - yet, he overthrew an inefficient government of civilians and became head of state himself. His decrees, passed swiftly through a legislature, are the law of the land, and Punjab's great modernization is ultimately the work of him. Ultimately, he is Punjab, and Punjab is him.
Legal parties
Jamhuriyat Sabha: The ruling party of Punjab. Before the 1890 coup d'etat, Punjabi politics were badly fractured between a dozen parties, with many deputies in the payrolls of foreign interests and various aristocrats, and disarray in the halls of the Majlis-i-Qanun was a constant. But when General Prem Nath Kaul marched into the Majlis, and forced it to accept centralizing reforms, he assembled his supporters into a single party , one meant to represent the whole of the republic. It is, as such, highly heterogeneous, consisting of everything from Francophilic intellectuals who greet one another with Punjabi corruptions of "bonjour", to former peasants who speak nothing but rustic Punjabi. But if there is one unifying factor, it is allegiance to the republic, to the modernization and centralization of the state and people.
Insaaf Sabha: Established in 1892 by Prem Nath Kaul's good friend Baljit Singh Ahluwalia, this was intended to enshrine multi-party rule as a custom of the republic. It quickly issued a manifesto, declaring its allegiance to all the same values of the Jamhuriyat Sabha except for one - where the Jamhuriyat Sabha advocates a highly statist model of modernization in which the state directly constructs and funds factories and creates conglomerates of companies to serve the interests of the state, the Insaaf Sabha advocates a decentralized system of privatized modernization, in which the ingenuity of the nation is left to take ahold of the resources of the nation and modernize the state itself. Yet, its members regularly dine with government officials, and its electioneering is tame and docile in much of the nation. It regularly purges proscribed citizens from its membership rolls, to prevent its takeover by malicious interests. It is nothing if not loyal.
Kamchari Ate Kisan Sabha: The rapid industrialization process begun even in the Imperial period led to the rise of workers' and peasants' movements. In line with the workers and peasants movements emerging in the British Raj, it began to organize itself, and in Punjab itself it quickly became revolutionary. The overthrow of the imperial monarchy quickly saw workers' and peasants' riots, and later representation in the Majlis-i-Qanun. It proved a factor for instability in the hearts of the state, and following the 1890 coup d'etat, these movements were suppressed. Yet, they continued to exist, and in 1892 Prem Nath Kaul requested the formation of an official party to represent and organize for the interests of workers and peasants. This new approved party agrees with the Jamhuriyat Sabha in all ways except for one - it seeks for common workers' and peasants' ownership of all state lands and resources. What policies best bring this out are much debated, but nevertheless overall it agrees with Prem Nath Kaul's modernization efforts. Its deputies hold regular spats and vicious debates with members of the Insaaf Sabha which often need to be brought under control, while their respective journals are harsh enemies of one another. Indeed, it almost resembles free and fair debate.
Proscribed parties
Akali Singh Sabha: The former Punjabi Empire was one which recognized Sikhism as the official religion of the land. The clergy of the Akal Takht, the highest order of the nation, held great authority, famously even punishing the founder of the Punjabi Empire, Ranjit Singh, for marrying a Muslim nautch-girl. But the Punjabi Revolution changed all of that. Sikhism was stripped of all recognition as official, and while it continued (and continues) to have a cultural dominance despite it only being Punjab's third-largest religion, the Punjabi Republic quickly sought to take over its assets and turn it into an organ strictly subsidiary to the state. This irked many Sikhs, who viewed this as an attack of their religion. This was further worsened when, as part of the revolutionary desire for linguistic uniformity, the Guru Granth Sahib was transliterated from Sikh liturgical script into a new, modified Perso-Arabic script, as well as the enforcement of certain standardized turbans as the only official headwear. This quickly sparked rebellion and political organization, and the formation of the Akali Singh Sabha in the name of protecting the faith and restoring its dominance. The Akal Takht acted as if it was being besieged by enemies of the Sikh faith. Following the 1890 coup d'etat, Prem Nath Kaul quickly established a compromise in which Sikh liturgical script would be allowed strictly for liturgy, as well as a recognition of the Akal Takht. It was in a sense, a resignation of the clear might of the republic and an abandonment of the desires to restore Sikhism's status; yet, it maintained a firm Sikh presence. Immediately afterwards, the Akali Singh Sabha was dissolved, and its members told to either leave politics or join official parties.
Hindu Rakshak Sabha: The Punjabi Empire was a state in which Hinduism had a semi-official status as a second religion, and in the subsidiary hill states, it was official. But the Punjabi Revolution changed that. For all of Prem Nath Kaul's immense Hindu piety, he was a Kashmiri Hindu, and as a result he was highly divergent from standard Punjabi Hindu practice. His ways seemed foreign. And, above all, he was an enemy of caste-based discrimination, which he regarded as a distortion of Hindu doctrine, and he sought to end this through measures as extreme as forcing surnames associated with Dalits onto Brahmins. This quickly resulted in the creation of Hindu organizations, which only became more frantic as the Punjabi Army crushed the largely Hindu subsidiary hill states and integrated them into the nation. The Hindu Rakshak Sabha, flush from cash from feudal lords not just in Punjab, but also the British Raj, quickly emerged, even if it failed to become truly popular. But when the Punjabi Republic attempted to enforce translation of all Hindu texts into Punjabi and the abandonment of the Hindu liturgical script in favour of the standard Perso-Arabic, this inflamed opinion and resulted in frantic defences of Sanskrit and Sanskritized Hindustani in liturgy. However, following the 1890 coup d'etat, this extreme aim was dropped, and Hindu liturgical script was allowed for exclusively liturgical purposes, to the joy of many, and assuaged Hindu opinion. But at the same time, the Hindu Rakshak Sabha was harshly and punitively repressed, in an effort which proved successful.
Majlis-i-Muslimeen: Despite making up a plurality of Punjabis, under the Punjabi Empire Muslims were often excluded from power, with the exception of within Muslim subsidiary states. Though some Muslims were appointed to administration, it was disproportionately low. Muslim reformist currents coming from Turkey, from the Malay Archipelago inevitably affected thought, and caused both currents towards and against orthodoxy. The Punjabi Revolution brought this political atmosphere to the forefront, and Islamic reformist currents quickly received a considerable ear. Islamic associations quickly grew across the nation, especially after the Nawab of Bahawalpur was dethroned after a failed attempt to turn his state into a British puppet state. And they clashed, and emerged onto the political stage, establishing educational institutions. However, as part of linguistic uniformity projects, the Quran was translated into Punjabi, and the muezzin was forced to call in Punjabi, while the Perso-Arabic script was altered to allow for easier printing. Islamic education institutions were nationalized, and brought inline with state education. This quickly inspired a backlash, as both reformist and anti-reformist Muslims created the Majlis-i-Muslimeen to project the Islamic faith. However, following the 1890 coup d'etat, the state accepted that the Quran would be read in Arabic, as would be said the muezzin call. The Majlis-i-Muslimeen quickly fell apart, and reformists joined up with the Jamhuriyat Sabha.
Rajshahi Sabha: The first act of the Punjabi Revolution occurred in 1882; it saw Prem Nath Kaul overthrow Maharaja Jawahar Singh overthrown and replaced by his brother Dalip Singh as "Maharaja of the Punjabi". However, Dalip Singh quickly wanted more power than the newly-assembled constituent assembly wanted to concede to him and all but dictated what he sought the new constitution to be; when he requested Prem Nath Kaul dissolve the assembly, Kaul instead arrested Dalip Singh; carrying him on his back from the imperial palace in Lahore, he tore off Dalip Singh's turban, including the Koh-i-Nur, and pushed him onto a train that would take him to Karachi, and from there to Europe. But Dalip Singh's dreams did not die; he assembled a political party which aimed at making him Maharaja again. It achieved only middling success, even if it entered into vote-sharing deals on occasion. Following the 1890 coup d'etat, it was characteristically dissolved.
Hindustan Azad Samaj: The Punjabi Revolution quickly had reverberations in the neighbouring British Raj. The neverending publications of new materials in this revolutionary situation inevitably led to them spreading across to the British Raj, and with Punjabi being similar enough to Hindustani to be about understandable, this quickly resulted in a political impact. While most subjects of the Raj who sympathized with the Punjabi Revolution contented themselves with purchasing a picture of Prem Nath Kaul, there were some who wanted to go further, to move to Punjab to be directly involved. And so, here they were directly involved in the revolution; they joined its armies and became deputies where they formed an informal party consisting of Hindustanis with a continued affectation towards their homeland. But, in the late 1880s, Punjabi nationalism quickly became increasingly linguistic. The Hindustani language was too similar to Punjabi to be tolerated as anything other than a foreign language. And as Punjabi was codified, it also grew more distant from Hindustani; even in informal speech, the French-derived "merzi" displaced native words for "thank you" that were common between Hindustani and Punjabi. Hindustani deputies, in this period, were also radicalized. They wanted the Punjabi Republic to go further, to go to war to liberate the inhabitants of the British Raj. They strongly supported the 1890 coup d'etat for this exact reason, believing Prem Nath Kaul would crush the British Raj and all its feudalism just as he crushed the hill states. But ultimately he had no desire to export the revolution; he viewed maintaining Punjab's independence and unity as a difficult enough task, and he clearly saw that the reformist movements in the British Raj were O'Connellite in nature, averse to violence. And so, he had the Hindustan Azad Samaj dissolved; a small price to pay for better relations with his British neighbours.