ਸਿੰਘ ਸਭਾਸਿੰਘ ਸਭਾ

The Singh Sabha movement was the Sikh reform and renaissance movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It began at Amritsar in 1873, when a group of leading Sikhs formed a society to defend and renew their faith, and it grew into a network of schools, newspapers and institutions that reshaped Sikh identity. Over the next half century it restored the Gurus' teachings to the centre of Sikh life, gave Punjabi in Gurmukhi a modern print culture, and founded Khalsa College at Amritsar.

Punjab in 1873: a faith losing its people

By 1873, the Sikhs had lived a generation without a state of their own. The British East India Company had annexed the Sikh Empire in 1849, ending Ranjit Singh's kingdom, and in 1853 Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last Sikh ruler, converted to Christianity under British tutelage.

The gurdwaras themselves were in the hands of mahants, hereditary custodians who held shrine lands as their own property. Idols stood in gurdwara precincts, Brahmin priests officiated at Sikh births and weddings, and caste ran through congregations the Gurus had formed to abolish it. A government report of 1851-52 noted Sikhs deserting their faith in thousands.

Into this gap came the missionaries. Christian missions had worked in Punjab since before annexation, and Amritsar became a major seat of their enterprise, with branches at Tarn Taran, Ajnala and Jandiala. Hindu reform movements, the Brahmo Samaj and the Arya Samaj, and among Muslims the Aligarh movement and the Ahmadiyah of Qadian, also competed for converts. The earlier Nirankari and Namdhari reform movements had each become a separate sect.

The first Singh Sabha at Amritsar

Two incidents in early 1873 shook the Sikhs out of their slumber. In February, four Sikh pupils of the Amritsar Mission School, Aya Singh, Atar Singh, Sadhu Singh and Santokh Singh, announced that they intended to renounce their faith and become Christians. Soon after, Pandit Shardha Ram of Phillaur lectured in Guru Bagh and spoke disrespectfully of the Sikh Gurus. Young Sikhs challenged him, and he quietly left Amritsar.

Four leading Sikhs acted. Sardar Thakur Singh Sandhawalia, ਬਾਬਾ ਖੇਮ ਸਿੰਘ ਬੇਦੀ, Kanwar Bikram Singh of Kapurthala and Giani Gian Singh of Amritsar met in Guru Bagh on 30 July 1873 and decided to form an association to defend the Sikh faith. The body was named Sri Guru Singh Sabha, and its first formal meeting took place in front of the Akal Takht on 1 October 1873. Thakur Singh Sandhawalia was appointed chairman, Giani Gian Singh secretary, Sardar Amar Singh assistant secretary and Bhai Dharam Singh of Bunga Majithia treasurer.

The Sabha set itself five objects: to propagate the true Sikh religion and restore Sikhism to its pristine glory; to publish historical and religious books; to spread knowledge in Punjabi and start Punjabi magazines and newspapers; to bring back into the Sikh fold those who had left it; and to interest high-placed Englishmen in the education programme. Its policy was to avoid criticism of other religions and political matters.

Amritsar and Lahore: two answers to one question

The movement soon spread, and its second centre was very different from the first. On 2 November 1879, a Singh Sabha was set up at Lahore, led by the new professional class: schoolmasters, clerks, printers and lawyers. Its leading figure was Professor Gurmukh Singh of the Oriental College, with Diwan Buta Singh as president.

At first the two sabhas tried to work together. A coordinating body, the Singh Sabha General, soon renamed the Khalsa Diwan, was set up at Amritsar on 11 April 1880, with Baba Khem Singh Bedi as president and Professor Gurmukh Singh as chief secretary. But the two sides soon disagreed over the most basic question of all: were Sikhs Hindus?

The Amritsar leaders, later called Sanatan, held that Sikhism sat within a broadly defined Hindu tradition. Baba Khem Singh Bedi, a direct descendant of Guru Nanak, claimed special reverence as Guru Nanak's descendant. The Lahore leaders, who took the name Tat Khalsa, the true or pure Khalsa, argued the opposite: Sikhism was a religion in its own right, grounded in the Guru Granth Sahib and the discipline of the Khalsa, with equality of all believers regardless of caste or status.

The split became formal in April 1886, when the Lahore group set up a separate Khalsa Diwan under Sardar Attar Singh Bhadur, with Professor Gurmukh Singh as secretary. By 1888, about thirty Singh Sabhas were attached to the Lahore party, and only six or seven to Amritsar. The Tat Khalsa had already won the argument in the field.

The argument was settled in print. Giani Ditt Singh, editor of the Lahore Diwan's weekly Khalsa Akhbar, made the paper a forceful voice for the reformers. The most reasoned tract was ਭਾਈ ਕਾਨ੍ਹ ਸਿੰਘ ਨਾਭਾ's Ham Hindu Nahin, We Are Not Hindus, first published in 1898. Written as a dialogue, it argued from scripture and history that Sikhs form a distinct religion. Its title became the movement's battle cry.

Schools, print and the Khalsa College

The movement's most lasting work was educational. As early as 1877, Punjabi had been introduced as a subject at the Oriental College in Lahore, where Bhai Harsa Singh was the first teacher and Professor Gurmukh Singh among the first students. Khalsa schools then spread across Punjab, teaching a modern curriculum alongside Sikh instruction, with Gurmukhi and the scriptures compulsory. One of the best known was the Sikh Kanya Maha Vidyalaya at Ferozepur, a school for girls founded by Bhai Takht Singh.

Print carried the message further. The Lahore Diwan's Punjabi weekly, the Khalsa Akhbar, was the earliest venture in Punjabi journalism, and in 1899 the Khalsa Samachar was founded, soon the community's leading theological journal under ਭਾਈ ਵੀਰ ਸਿੰਘ. He also founded the Khalsa Tract Society in 1894, which pushed out cheap pamphlets by the tens of thousands, and went on to write the first Punjabi novels, including Sundari, effectively founding modern Punjabi literature. Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha's Mahan Kosh, the great encyclopaedia of Sikh literature, followed in 1930.

The great project of the movement was Khalsa College at Amritsar. An establishment committee was set up in 1890 under Colonel W. R. M. Holroyd, Director of Public Instruction in Punjab, and Amritsar won the day as the site. The foundation stone was laid by the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir James Broadwood Lyall, on 5 March 1892, and the first classes began in 1893. Sikhs paid for it by public subscription. Bhai Ram Singh of the Mayo School of Arts, Lahore, designed its grand Indo-Saracenic main building, completed in 1911-12.

The Chief Khalsa Diwan and the Anand Marriage Act

By the turn of the century, the two rival diwans were quarrelling in public and even in court, and many Sikhs wanted one central body. At Amritsar on 12 April 1900, Sikhs voted unanimously for a new Khalsa Diwan. The Chief Khalsa Diwan was formally established at Amritsar on 30 October 1902, with Bhai Arjan Singh of Bagrian as its first president and Sardar Sundar Singh Majithia as secretary. Membership was open to amritdhari Sikhs who could read and write Gurmukhi, and members gave dasvandh, a tenth of their annual income.

The new body carried the movement's programme forward. It removed the idols from the compound of the Darbar Sahib at Amritsar in 1905, started the Sikh Educational Conference in 1908 and prepared a common code of conduct in 1916. Its most concrete victory came in 1909, when the Anand Marriage Act passed the Imperial Legislative Council on 22 October. Until then, the Sikh wedding rite, the anand karaj, had no legal standing, and Sikh marriages were judged under Hindu personal law.

Why does the Singh Sabha still matter?

From 1914 onwards, the Chief Khalsa Diwan began to lose its hold on Sikh opinion. Its loyalist policy looked increasingly suspect after the peasant unrest of 1906-07, the Rikabganj agitation of 1914 and the First World War. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 13 April 1919 changed the scene entirely. The SGPC was formed in 1920, and the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925 put the historic gurdwaras under an elected body and wrote a definition of a Sikh into law.

Yet the Gurdwara Reform movement was built on ground the Singh Sabha had prepared. The reformers had established that Sikh institutions should be run on Sikh terms, that Sikhism was a distinct religion with its own scripture, discipline and rites, and that Punjabi in Gurmukhi was the settled medium of Sikh life. Between 1901 and 1941, the Sikh population nearly doubled.

Historians still argue about what the movement did. Some, such as Harjot Oberoi, say it constructed a sharp boundary between Sikh and Hindu that had once been fluid. Others reply that the reformers were recovering a discipline the Gurus had plainly instituted. Both sides agree on the mechanism: a few schoolteachers and printers, with no state behind them, argued and published their way to a definition of Sikhism that millions of Sikhs now take for granted.