Early Phase Of Shiromani Akali Dal

Akali Dal owes its birth as a political organisation to the Sikh movement for control over its religious institutions during the British colonial rule in India. Before the British annexation of Punjab in 1849 and the eventual merger of Punjab with the rest of colonially occupied India, Punjab existed as a sovereign state for 50 years under the rule of a Sikh emperor Ranjit Singh. During the pre-Ranjit    Singh era, the eight-eenth century witnessed a long and bloody period of armed conflict between the Mughals rulers and the Sikh rebels. 

The control of many important religious shrines of the Sikh community, the most important being the birth place of Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh faith, had during this period passed on into the hands of a pacifist sect amongst the Sikh community. This pacifist sect’s control of Gurdwaras, the Sikh religious places, suited both the Mughal rulers as well as the Sikh guerrilla bands. The Mughals rulers by accepting or even supporting the pacifist Sikh pacifist Sikhs control of the Gurdwaras wanted to discourage the rebellious tendency amongst the Sikhs while the guerrilla Sikh fighters knew that they could not logistically manage to run the gurdwaras while involved in armed combat against the rulers and tacitly agreed to let the pacifist sect keep managing the gurdwaras. The Sikh community was also respectful to the sect since its founder Sri Chand was one of the sons of Guru Nanak. Therefore, the control of gurudwaras by the sect was allowed to continue even duringthe Ranjit Singh era.

The agreement of the mainstream Sikh community to the sect’s manage-ment of gurdwaras came to an end when it became widely known in the early twentieth century that the management indulged in financial and religious malpractices.A movement to replace that management by demo-cratically elected representatives of the Sikh community achieved success and the volunteers who participated in the movement were called Akali. Bringing together all the Akali volunteers under one umbrella organisation resulted in the founding of Shiromani Akali Dal in December 1920.

 The major achievement of the Akali move-ment was the creation of a central management committee (SGPC i.e.Shiromani Gurdwara Prabhandhak Committee) to look after the gurudwara. The election to this committee was to involve the entire Sikh community leading to this committee being called the mini-parliament of the Sikhs. This historical association of Akali Dal with the founding of this com-mittee has had a long-term impact on the public image and perception of Akali Dal as an organisation primarily concerned with politics of religious issues concerning the Sikhs. This perception is certainly historically grounded but it also acts as a barrier in building views of Akali politics that transcend this religious focus. 

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