AJIT SINGH, SAHIBZADA (1687-1705), the eldest son of Guru Gobind Singh, was born to Mata Sundari at Paonta on 26 January 1687. The following year, Guru Gobind Singh returned with the family to Anandpur where Ajit Singh was brought up in the approved Sikh style. He was taught the

AKAL, BHAI, a carpenter resident of Vadda Ghar in present day Fandkot district of the Punjab and, according to Gurbilas Chhevin Patshahi, maternal grandfather of the celebrated Bhai Rup Chand, became a devotee of Guru Ram Das. He also served Guru Arjan and Guru Hargobind. He was a man

AKALI, a term now appropriated by members of the dominant Sikh political party, the Shiromani Akali Dal, founded in 1920, and groups splitting from it from time to time, was earlier used for Nihangs (q.v.), an order of armed religious zealots among the baptized Sikhs. The word Nihang is

AKAL USTATI (In Praise of the Timeless Being) is a poetical composition by Guru Gobind Singh in the Dasam Granth. This is the only major composition in the Tenth Master\'s Book which is without a title. The title by which it is known is made up of its first

AKALI MOVEMENT, variously known as Gurdwara Reform Movement or Gurdwara Agitation is how Sikh\'s long drawn campaign in the early twenties of the twentieth century for the liberation of their gurdwaras or holy shrines is described. The campaign which elicited enthusiastic support, especially, from the rural masses, took the

AKALPURAKH stands in Sikh religious literature for the Divine Being, i.e. God. Like Akal, Murati, it is composed of two units, viz. akal (non temporal) and purakh (person). The latter figures in Mul Mantra, the preamble to Guru Nanak`s Japu, in conjunction with Xarta (Creator), the whole expression implying

AKAL MURATI, a composite term comprising akal (non temporal) and murati (image or form), occurring in the Mul Mantra, the root formula or fundamental creed of the Sikh faith as recorded at the beginning of the Japu, composition with which the Guru Granth Sahib opens, literally means `timeless image`. Elsewhere,

AKALI SAHAYAK BUREAU, lit. a bureau to help (sahayak, from Skt. sahaya, one who lends one company or support) the Akalis, then engaged in a bitter struggle for the reformation of the management of their places of worship, was a small office set up at Amritsar in 1923 by the

AKALI DAL, SHIROMANI (shiromani= exalted, foremost in rank; dal = corps, of akali volunteers who had shed fear of death), the premier political party of the modern period of Sikhism seeking to protect the political rights of the Sikhs, to represent them in the public bodies and legislative councils being

AKALI DAL KHARA SAUDA BAR, an organization of Akali reformers working for the liberation of Sikh shrines from the control of conservative Udasi priests or mahants. The organization was originally called Khalsa Diwan Khara Sauda Bar set up in 1912 and comprised volunteers mostly from a cluster of villages

AKALI DAL, CENTRAL, a political organization of the Sikhs set up in March 1934 as a parallel body to the Shiromani Akali Dal. The latter was formed on 14 December 1920 to assist the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee in its campaign for the reformation of the management of the

AKALI, THE, a Punjabi daily newspaper which became the central organ of the Shiromani Akali Dal, then engaged in a fierce struggle for the reformation of the management of the Sikh gurdwaras and a vehicle for the expression of nationalist political opinion in the Punjab in the wake of the