AKAL TAKHT is the primary seat of Sikh religious authority and central altar for Sikh political assembly. Through hukamnamas, edicts or writes, it may issue decretals providing guidance or clarification on any point of Sikh doctrine or practice referred to it, may lay under penance personages charged with violation of

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

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

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

RIYASTI AKALI DAL, representing Sikhs living in the princely states of Patiala, Nabha, Jind, Faridkot and Malerkotla, was set up in 1939 as a political forum parallel to the Riyasti Praja Mandal which had been in existence since 1928 and which had till then represented the people living mainly in

BELA, pronounced bella, means, in Punjabi usage, a jungle of tall grasses, reeds and assorted shrubbery along the banks of rivers and streams. The word also received a different connotation when an Udasi saint and preacher, Banakhandi, established in AD 1818 a preaching centre on an Island in the River

SHIROMANI KHALSA DlWAN, NORTHWEST FRONTIER PROVINCE, a sociopolitical organization of the Sikhs of the frontier province (now in Pakistan), was founded in the 1920`s by Sardar Jagat Singh Narag of Peshawar, a businessman, later a member of the provincial legislative assembly. The Sikh population of the North-West Frontier Province was

BHASAUR SINGH SABHA, or to give its full name Sri Guru Singh Sabha, Bhasaur, was established in 1893 twenty years after the first Singh Sabha came into existence in Amritsar at the village of Bhasaur in the then princely state of Patiala. The Singh Sabha, a powerful

CENTRAL SIKH LEAGUE, political organization of the Sikhs which guided their affairs until the Shiromani Akali Dal emerged as a mass force. The inaugural session of the Central Sikh League was held at Amritsar on 29 December 1919, coinciding with the annual sessions of the Indian National Congress and the