PANJAB RIYASTI PRAJA MANDAL (riydsti=of the princely states; praja= subjects, people; mandat=society, party), an organization of the people of the Punjab princely states established in 1928 to work for securing to them civil liberties and political rights. In what was then known as British India, the Indian National Congress had

KHALSA BARADARI, a social organization of Sikhs belonging to backward classes, founded in 1914. The moving spirit behind it was BhaT Mahitab Sirigli Bir, whose father, Maulawi Karim Bakhsh had, along with his children, embraced Sikhism in June 1903 and become famous as Sant Lakhmir Singh. BhaT Mahitab Singh convened

AHMADlYAH MOVEMENT, started in the late nineteenth century as a reforming and rejuvenating current in Islam, originated in Qadian in Gurdaspur district of the Punjab. In the 1880`s, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, son of the chief landowning family of Qadian, after he had received revelations and preached a renewal of Islamic

DHUAN, Punjabi for smoke, is a term which is particularly used for seats of certain monkish orders where a fire is perennially kept alive. In the Sikh context it is employed for the four branches of Udasi Sikhs established by Baba Gurditta (1613-38), on whom the headship of the sect

CHETRAMIAS, a cult of saint worship incorporating elements from Christianity, Vaisnavism and Sufism founded by one Chet Ram (1835-94), an Arora Hindu of the village of Sharakpur in present day Sheikhupura district of Pakistan. Almost illiterate, Chet Ram was neither a saint nor a Sufi. He was a camp follower

ALL-PARTIES CONFERENCES (more aptly, ALL-PARTY CONFERENCES), a series of conventions which took place in 1928 bringing together representatives of various political parties and communities in India with a view to working out a mutually agreed formula for the country\'s constitutional advance in response to the invitation of the British government.

PANTHIC PRATINIDHI BOARD was a panel set up by Sikhs at a representative convention presided by Mohan Singh Nagoke, Jathedar Akal Takht, held at Teja Singh Samundri Hall, Amritsar, on 910 June 1946 to protest against the constitutional proposals announced by the British Cabinet Mission. The Labour Government which

KHALSA DIWAN MALAYA, a religious organization of Sikhs in Malaysia, was established on 27 December 1903 at Taiping (4"51`N, 100"44`E) at a divan at the gurdwara of the Malaya State Guides celebrating the birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh. The Khalsa Diwan was assigned to promoting Sikh religion, managing

DAUDHAR DERA, a school for training Sikh musicians popularly known as Vadda Dera, was established in 1859 by Sant Suddh Singh (d. 1882) at Daudhar, village 22 km southeast of Moga (30° 48`N, 75° 10`E), in Faridkot district of the Punjab. Suddh Singh was a disciple of Thakur Didar Singh,

CENTRAL MAJHA KHALSA DiWAN, also known as the Shiromani Panth Milauni Jatha, was one of the several regional organizations that came into being on the eve of the Gurdwara reform movement of the 1920\'s. A Khalsa Diwan in the Majha area had in fact been established as early as

BABAR AKALI MOVEMENT, a radical outgrowth of the Akali movement for the reform of Sikh places of worship during the early 1920\'s. The latter, aiming to have the shrines released from the control of priests who had become lax and effete over the generations, was peaceful in its character