Singh Sabha, Jallianwala Bagh and the Gurdwara Reform Movement
Sikh reformers redefine Sikh identity, the Amritsar massacre of 1919 turns Punjab against British rule, and a mass non-violent campaign wins Sikh control of the gurdwaras.
- The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition — Harjot Oberoi, University of Chicago Press (1994)
- The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press (1998)
- Jallianwala Bagh Massacre — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- A History of the Sikhs (2 vols, 2nd edition) — Khushwant Singh, Oxford University Press (2004)
- Sikhism — W. H. McLeod, Penguin (1997)
In the decades after annexation, Christian missions and the Hindu reform movement Arya Samaj were active in Punjab, and many Sikhs felt their tradition was dissolving back into Hinduism. The Singh Sabha movement, founded in Amritsar in 1873, answered with schools, newspapers and literature, and with a confident argument, summed up in Kahn Singh Nabha’s 1898 tract Ham Hindu Nahin, “We are not Hindus”. It promoted Khalsa practice and Sikh rites, leading to the Anand Marriage Act of 1909.
- The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition — Harjot Oberoi, University of Chicago Press (1994)
- The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press (1998)
- Sikhism — W. H. McLeod, Penguin (1997)
On Vaisakhi, 13 April 1919, British troops under Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer fired without warning on a crowd of thousands in the walled garden of Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, a few minutes from the Golden Temple. Many were villagers in town for the festival. The official British figure was 379 dead; Indian estimates were much higher, around 1,000. The massacre turned Punjabis of every faith against British rule.
- Jallianwala Bagh Massacre — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press (1998)
Sikh shrines were then run by hereditary custodians, mahants, some of whom treated them as private property and allowed Hindu idols. From 1920 Akali volunteers began taking them over by peaceful protest. At Nankana Sahib in February 1921 a mahant’s men massacred well over a hundred Akali Sikhs; at Guru ka Bagh in 1922 unresisting volunteers were beaten by police in front of the press. The Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925 handed control to the elected SGPC.
- The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press (1998)
- A History of the Sikhs (2 vols, 2nd edition) — Khushwant Singh, Oxford University Press (2004)
- The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies — Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds.), Oxford University Press (2014)
Why it matters today
This era shaped modern Sikhism: the clear line many Sikhs draw between Sikh and Hindu, the Anand Karaj wedding, and the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), the elected body that still manages the Golden Temple and hundreds of gurdwaras, and the Akali Dal party that grew from it. The memory of Jallianwala Bagh, beside the Golden Temple, is still raw.