Does Article 25 of the Indian Constitution treat Sikhs as Hindus?

The claim: Two answers push back against the Panthic reading. First, that the text does not call Sikhs Hindus. Kulveer Singh Samra, writing on SikhNet in 2016, calls that belief "a common fallacy": the article "extends the provisions regarding Hindu religious institutions to Sikh religious institutions", the Article names the Sikh religion twice, and the Constitution defines no religion. He cites a 1950 letter from the Prime Minister's office telling Jains they are "a distinct religious community", and argues the same holds for Sikhs. Second, the Sangh's: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said in 2019 that "Bharat is Hindustan, a Hindu Rashtra" and that "all Bharatiyas are Hindus" (The Caravan).

The sourced facts:

• Article 25(2)(b) allows laws "providing for social welfare and reform or the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus". Explanation II says that in that sub-clause "the reference to Hindus shall be construed as including a reference to persons professing the Sikh, Jaina or Buddhist religion". Explanation I says "The wearing and carrying of kirpans shall be deemed to be included in the profession of the Sikh religion" (Lawrato; Indian Kanoon).
• Section 2 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 applies to Hindus in clause (a) and, in clause (b), to "any person who is a Buddhist, Jaina or Sikh by religion". The Anand Marriage Act, 1909 validates the Sikh Anand ceremony; the registration section added by the 2012 amendment works "without prejudice to anything contained in the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955" (Bill text; Sabrang India).
• Hukam Singh said in his last Constituent Assembly speech, on the neglect of minorities: "My community cannot subscribe its assent to this historic document." He and Bhupinder Singh Mann did not sign (Asia Samachar; Encyclopaedia of Sikhism).
• In July 2000 Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal discussed the memorandum for the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution, arguing, Gurmukh Singh writes, that Article 25 clubs Sikhs with Hindus, Jains and Buddhists. The Commission, reporting on 31 March 2002, said "the purpose of the representations would be served if Explanation II to article 25 is omitted", "without going into the larger issue" (quoted by Gurmukh Singh).
• Gurmukh Singh quotes the Supreme Court's judgment of 8 August 2005: "Sikhs and Jains, in fact, have throughout been treated as part of the wider Hindu community". Syed Shahabuddin calls it obiter dicta (Communalism Combat). We could not open the judgment.

The Panthic answer: Sikh institutions and Akali leaders object to the clause. The Anandpur Sahib Resolution of 1973 does not name Article 25 but says a "brute majority" imposed in 1950 an arrangement leading to Sikh "submergence and dissolution into the saltish sea waters of incoherent Hinduism", and that the Sikh representatives "refused to affix their signatures" (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism). Akali MP Prem Singh Chandumajra told the Lok Sabha in November 2015: "Article 25 of the Constitution subsumed us as Hindus and tinkered with our identity" (The Tribune). Badal said in 2002 that he once burnt a copy of Article 25 in Delhi under pressure from Longowal (The Tribune). Giani Harpreet Singh, then Jathedar of Sri Akal Takht Sahib, answered Bhagwat that the remarks "are not in the interest of the nation", and Sri Akal Takht Sahib named the RSS-linked Rashtriya Sikh Sangat "anti-Panth" in 2004 (The Caravan).

Bhai Ajmer Singh begins from who made the law. He puts the Constituent Assembly at roughly 90 percent upper caste, mostly Brahmin. When Hukam Singh and Bhupinder Singh Mann asked for special rights and a separate legal safeguard for Sikhs, he says, they were refused flatly, in words to the effect that the Constitution would not be disfigured by such things; he attributes the words to Patel or another member and cannot be sure which. In Vihveen Sadi Di Sikh Rajneeti he writes that the Panth has stood apart from Hindu society since Guru Nanak, that after 1849 the British tried to fold the Sikhs into the Hindu community, and that Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha's Ham Hindu Nahin (1898) was the decisive statement of the Tat Khalsa position. These accounts do not take up Explanation II by name.