Sri Guru Singh Sabha

### = British annexation = The British East India Company annexed the Sikh Empire in 1849 after the Second Anglo-Sikh War, ending the central Sikh government founded by Ranjit Singh in 1799 and replacing the existing ruling class. Thereafter, Christian missionaries increased proselytising activities in central Punjab. In 1853, Maharajah Dalip Singh, the last Sikh ruler, was controversially converted to Christianity. The British colonial rulers, after annexing the Sikh empire in mid-19th-century, continued to patronise and gift land grants to these mahants, thereby increasing their strength and helped sustain the idolatry in Sikh shrines. The annexation of the Punjab to the British Empire in the mid-19th century saw severe deterioration of gurdwara management. Recognising the centrality of religion among the Sikhs, the British particularly took care to control central Sikh institutions, notably those at Amritsar and Tarn Taran, where British officers headed management committees, appointed key officials, and provided grants and facilities. They sought to cosset and control the Sikhs through the management of the Golden Temple and its functionaries, even ignoring its own dictates of statutory law which required the separation of political and religious matters, neutrality in the treatment of religious communities. and the withdrawal from involvement in religious institutions. The need to control the Golden Temple was held to be more paramount, and along with control of Sikh institutions, measures included the legal ban of carrying weapons, meant to disarm the Khalsa who had fought against them in the two Anglo-Sikh Wars. In this way the Khalsa army was disbanded and the Punjab demilitarised, and Sikh armies were required to publicly surrender their arms and return to agriculture or other pursuits. Certain groups, however, like those who held revenue-free lands (jagirdars) were allowed to decline, particularly if they were seen as “rebels”. The British were wary of giving the Sikhs unmitigated control of their own gurdwaras, and drew from Sikh factions seen as loyal to the British, like the Sikh aristocracy and Sikhs with noted family lineages, who were given patronage and pensions, and Udasis, who had gained control of historical gurdwaras in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, were allowed to retain proprietary control over lands and buildings. The British administration went to considerable lengths to insert such loyalists into the Golden Temple in order to exert as much control over the Sikh body-politic as possible. One reason for this was the growth of Sikh revivalist groups, like the Nirankaris and the Namdharis, shortly after annexation; this revivalism was spurred by a growing disaffection within the ranks of ordinary Sikhs about the perceived decline of proper Sikh practices.

## = Amritsar Singh Sabha = This first Singh Sabha, the Sri Guru Singh Sabha Amritsar, led by Khem Singh Bedi, convened a founding meeting in Guru Bagh, Amritsar, on 30 July 1873, with its first formal meeting, or jor-mel, taking place in front of the Akal Takht on 1 October 1873. Sardar Thakur Singh Sandhawalia was appointed its chairman, Giani Gian Singh as secretary, Sardar Amar Singh as assistant secretary, and Bhai Dharam Singh of Bunga Majithia as treasurer. The initial membership numbered 95, with most of its members being elites, making it one of the richest Singh Sabhas. Though largely concerned with defending Sikhism against Hindu and Christian criticism, it saw Sikhism as part of a "broadly defined" Hinduism, and was set up and backed by a faction of Khatri Sikhs, Gianis, and granthis, many of whom where direct descendants of the early Sikh Gurus. They had rejected the Khalsa initiation practices like the Khande di Pahul ceremony on the grounds that it threatened their caste and polluted their ritual boundaries which they considered as primary. They had gained social prominence in the pre-British 18th- and colonial-era 19th-century Punjab by taking over gurdwaras and Sikh institutions, while Khalsa warriors confronted the Mughal state and Afghan forces for the survival of the Sikh community. While the Amritsar faction resented the democratic tendency within the Khalsa groups, they continued to co-exist within the broader Sikh panth, even as they remained aloof from the mainstream Khalsa practices. They considered Guru Nanak to be an avatar, or incarnation, of the Hindu deity Vishnu, and saw Sikhism as a tradition aligned with Vaishnavism; and these included the Nirmala, Udasi, and Giani schools of Brahminical thought. As such, they aligned Sikh tradition with the Brahminical social structure and caste ideology; their predominant concern was to protect the social framework in which they held status. For these groups the principle of authority of Sikh tradition was invested in living gurus (as Khem Singh Bedi, leader of the Amritsar faction, liked to be regarded) rather than the principle of shabad-guru, or the Guru Granth Sahib as the Guru, which was upheld by the dominant Khalsa tradition. In addition to himself, Khem Singh claimed special reverence for all members of clans to which the Gurus had belonged. ## = Lahore Singh Sabha = Professor Gurmukh Singh, a teacher of Punjabi and mathematics at the Punjab University College and graduate of Oriental College, where Harsha Singh, a Darbar Sahib granthi from Tarn Taran, had been the first teacher of Punjabi, would interest prominent Sikh citizens of Lahore, such as Diwan Buta Singh and Sardar Mehar Singh Chawla, along with Harsha Singh, in Singh Sabha goals. Gurmukh Singh believed Sikhism to be a sovereign religion having equality of all believers without distinction of caste or status as its basic social creed. The Sri Guru Singh Sabha Lahore was founded on 2 November 1879, holding weekly meetings with Diwan Buta Singh as president, Gurmukh Singh as secretary and Harsha Singh, Ram Singh and Karam Singh as members formed its working committee. Shortly thereafter, Nihang Sikhs began influencing the movement, followed by a sustained campaign by the Tat Khalsa. The Amritsar faction was opposed by these predominant groups of the Sikhs, particularly those who held Khalsa beliefs, who through access to education and employment, had reached a position to challenge them, forming the Tat Khalsa faction, or "true Khalsa," in 1879, headed by Gurmukh Singh, Harsha Singh Arora, Diwan Buta Singh, Mehar Singh Chawla, Ram Singh and Karam Singh, later joined by Jawahir Singh and Giani Ditt Singh, and the Lahore Singh Sabha. The Tat Khalsa's monotheism, iconoclastic sentiments, egalitarian social values and notion of a standardised Sikh identity did not blend well with the polytheism, idol worship, caste distinctions, and diversity of rites espoused by the Amritsar faction. The Tat Khalsa met with immediately successful organisational and ideological challenging of the Amritsar faction as early as the early 1880s, emerging successful, representing the Tat Khalsa faction. Ditt Singh, as a Mazhabi Sikh, was critical of Khem Singh Bedi's views on pollution, ritual, and lack of distinct identity. Between the 1870s and 1890s, the efforts of Tat Khalsa reformers had focused on reinforcing the distinct Sikh identity separate from Muslim and Hindu practices, the primacy of the Khalsa initiation and codes of conduct, and setting up schools and colleges in town and villages, initiatives that continued through the following CKD period. Through print media newspapers and publications, like the Khalsa Akhbar (in Gurmukhi Punjabi, the first Punjabi newspaper) and The Khalsa (in English), the Singh Sabha solidified a general consensus of the nature of Sikh identity, and that the source of authentic Sikhi was the early Sikh tradition, specifically the period of the Sikh Gurus and immediately after. The Adi Granth was held to be the authoritative Sikh literature, along with compositions by Guru Gobind Singh, the works of Bhai Gurdas, the janamsakhis, and Gurbilas literature and the Rahitnamas, later codified by the SGPC as the Sikh Rehat Maryada. Non-Sikh practices accumulated during the period of institutional neglect by the British and mahant control, including idol worship, the primacy of non-Sikh Brahmins, caste discrimination, superstitious cults of folk heroes and Hindu deities, and Vedic rites officiated by Brahmins during the mahant period, were banished, and Sikh rites and symbols including the Khalsa initiation, the names “Singh and “Kaur,” the 5 Ks, Sikh birth, death, and marriage rites, and the compulsory learning of Gurmukhi and Punjabi in Khalsa schools, an institution found in modern gurdwaras worldwide, were formalised. ## = Other Singh Sabhas = After the Lahore Singh Sabha, many other Singh Sabhas modeled after it were formed in every town and many villages throughout Punjab, exceeding over 100 in number by the end of the 19th century with many affiliated to the Lahore Sabha, or remaining unaligned. Each chapter, while similar in composition, differed greatly in stability and constitution, with memberships ranging from five to hundreds. As the movement gained momentum, Singh Sabhas not only throughout Punjab, but in several other parts of India and abroad, from London, England to Shanghai, China. The Karachi Singh Sabha had a fifteen-member executive committee, with six positions reserved for sahajdhari Sikhs. The Karachi Singh Sabha consisted of both keshdhari and sehajdhari Sikhs. The Ferozpur and Tarn Taran Sabhas had female members playing an active role alongside the men, with the Tarn Taran Sabha having a special female branch, the Istri Sat Sang Sabha. Bhai Takht Singh (1860–1937) of the Singh Sabha Ferozepur also advocated for women's education. A Ferozepur Sikh Kanya Mahavidyala (boarding school for girls) was established by Takht Singh in the 1890s. The Gurmat Granth Pracharak Sabha in Amritsar, established on 8 April 1885, researched and published books on ideological and historical topics. The Shuddhi Sabha, for conversions and reconversions into Sikhism, was founded in April 1893 by Dr. Jai Singh. The Sri Guru Hitkarni Singh Sabha, which would break with the Lahore Sabha in 1886 over its advocacy of the restoration of Duleep Singh to the throne, hence entailing involvement in politics, would reconcile with the Singh Sabha in 1895. The Sri Guru Upkar Pracharni Sabha, in addition to propagating Sikhism, would counterattack on Sikhism from the Arya Samaj's Arya Kumar Sabha. The Singh Sabha Tarn Taran and the Khalsa Diwan Majha pushed for reform in Sikh shrines in Tarn Taran and Amritsar. Among the local Singh Sabhas, the Singh Sabha Bhasaur, later the Panch Khalsa Diwan Bhasaur, established in 1893 under Teja Singh (1867–1933) was the most active. Particularly strict, egalitarian, and unwavering on Khalsa ethos, identity, and practice, it drew heavily from the middle and lower strata of society. Its fundamentalism would draw it away from the Singh Sabha mainstream. The Bhasaur Singh Sabha was marked by militancy. It distributed leaflets condemning prevailing Sikh practices and promoted Sikhs to undergo the pahul and become baptised Khalsa. Sikh princes allied themselves with various political and social factions within the Singh Sabha. The first to be involved prominently was Raja Bikrama Singh of Faridkot, with the Amritsar Singh Sabha and various Sikh educational projects. Meanwhile, Maharaja Hira Singh Nabha and Maharaja Rajinder Singh of Patiala sustained Sikh newspapers of the Lahore Singh Sabha, with the Khalsa Tract Society created by Vir Singh in 1894. Kahn Singh Nabha would also serve the movement in various capacities under Hira Singh's patronage, as would Pandit Varyam Singh, whose services would also be sought and sponsored by other aristocratic families including the Sodhis of Kartarpur. All the Sikh princes donated heavily to the establishment of Khalsa College, Amritsar, receiving seats on the college board. Its 1892 establishment had been spurred by the 1886 founding of the D.A.V. College Lahore. ## = Akali movement = In the early decades of the 20th century, the Tat Khalsa, through the Akali movement, also contributed to two major legal victories, the 1909 Anand Marriage Act, and the Sikh gurdwaras Act, 1925, which re-established direct Khalsa control of the major historical gurdwaras, previously run by British-supported mahants and pujaris, or Hindu priests, and their rites. The reestablishment of Sikh control of gurdwaras, after the non-violent Akali Movement, also known as the gurdwara Reform Movement, was touched off in 1920 following General Reginald Dyer’s invited visit to the Golden Temple failed to pacify the Sikhs. The Akali Movement, lasting from 1920 to 1925, culminated in the transfer of gurdwara control to the Shiro