Sikh Gurdwaras Act

Who: The Punjab Legislative Council; Sardar Tara Singh of Moga, who moved the bill, and Bhai Jodh Singh, who piloted it; and the Akali leaders, some of them then imprisoned in Lahore Fort, with whom the government opened negotiations.

What: The Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925 (Punjab Act VIII of 1925), put the historic gurdwaras under Sikh management after five years of Akali agitation. The dates, in order:

• 7 May 1925: the bill was moved in the Punjab Legislative Council.
• 20 June 1925: the select committee reported.
• 7 July 1925: the Council passed the bill.
• 7 August 1925: the Act was published in the Punjab Government Gazette.
• 1 November 1925: the Act came into force.

The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says almost all historical shrines, 241 of them in Schedule I, were declared Sikh gurdwaras and placed under a Central Board, later renamed the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (the name was accepted by a notification of 17 January 1927). The Encyclopaedia adds that 65 of the 241 remained in Pakistan and that the Amending Act of 1959 added 173 more gurdwaras in the Patiala and East Punjab States Union; the Act's text numbers these 242 to 415. Under section 4 of the Act as it now stands, a Schedule I gurdwara for which no list of its property was filed within ninety days was to be notified as excluded from the Schedule, so 241 is the number the Schedule listed, not a count of those finally managed; no source opened gives the number struck off. Section 7 set out how other gurdwaras could be brought under the Board. The Committee has 140 members, including 15 from the Scheduled Castes, elected by Sikhs aged 21 or older; the head granthi of Sri Darbar Sahib and the Jathedars of the Takhts sit on it ex-officio, and the elected members co-opt 15 more. A three-member Sikh Gurdwaras Tribunal, headed by a sitting or retired High Court judge, decides claims, with appeals to a two-judge bench of the High Court. A sweeping amendment came in 1944, and in 1987 gurdwaras with an annual income over Rs 25,000 came under direct SGPC administration.

Where: Passed in Lahore, then the seat of the Punjab Legislative Council; applied across the Punjab.

Why it mattered: "With the passage of this Act, the Akali agitation ceased", the Encyclopaedia says. The Act ended the hereditary custody of the mahants over the main shrines, which had been the issue at Nankana Sahib in 1921, Guru ka Bagh in 1922 and Jaito in 1923 and 1924. It remains the legal base of the SGPC, whose elections and decisions are still governed by it.