Khalsa Diwan Society Vancouver

The Khalsa Diwan Society was founded on July 22, 1906, and was registered on March 13, 1909. Their first site and gurdwara was built in 1908 at 1866 West 2nd Avenue, inaugurated on January 19. The financial situation of the Society depended on the number of Sikhs living in British Columbia, and donations rose considerably as more Sikhs came to the province. The population of Sikhs rose in the period of 1904–1908 to 5,185, but fell to 2,342 in 1911. The Sikh population dwindled even more, to 1,099, as the year 1918 approached. Verne A. Dusenbery, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Global Studies Program at Hamline University in Minnesota, wrote that the gurdwara served as "truly a religious, social, political, cultural, and social service center for the entire South-Asian immigrant population of the lower mainland" during its early history. In the 1940s, the KDS served in a leadership role as Indo-Canadians demanded for voting rights, and it did so in a secular capacity. The gurdwara had a homeless shelter and a langar or kitchen. The KDS had a secular social role as a community centre and also served Hindus and Muslims among the Indo-Canadian community. Raj Hans Kumar stated that in political affairs the KDS represented all "Hindus", which at the time meant all people of East-Indian origin. In the early 1950s, a serious split occurred in the Canadian Sikh community, when the Khalsa Diwan Society elected a clean-shaven Sikh to serve on its management committee. Although most of the early Sikh immigrants to Canada were non-Khalsa, and a majority of the members of the society were clean-shaven non-Khalsa Sikhs, a faction objected to the election of a non-Khalsa to the management committee. The factions in Vancouver and Victoria broke away from the Khalsa Diwan Society, and established their own gurdwara society called the Akali Singh Society, which opened in 1952.