Akali Dal advises its legislators to join the Congress

Who: The Working Committee of the Shiromani Akali Dal; the Panthic (Akali) members of the legislatures at the Centre and in East Punjab; Master Tara Singh, who had reservations; and Hukam Singh, who stayed in opposition.

What: On 17 March 1948 the Working Committee met at Baldev Singh's residence in Delhi. It noted that the Congress had been committed since its 1929 resolution to give the Sikhs full satisfaction, and that a high-power committee including Rajendra Prasad, Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel was looking at Sikh safeguards. It advised the Akali members to join the Congress legislature parties at once: the resolution, as Gurmit Singh quotes it, says the Panthic Akali members at the Centre and in East Punjab "are advised to join the Congress Assembly Parties forthwith". The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism's Hukam Singh entry words it more strongly, as a direction to all Akali legislators to join the Congress legislature party en bloc. Gurmit Singh writes in his History of Sikh Struggles that they joined that March, weeks after Gandhi's murder, on the understanding that they would leave if the Congress did not accept a Punjabi-speaking state within six months.

The resolution was advice to legislators, not a merger of the party. At a Sikh Students' Federation conference at Ludhiana on 24 and 25 April, Master Tara Singh insisted that the Akali Dal should keep its own political identity. On 30 May a delegate session at Amritsar rejected merging the party into the Congress and elected him president of the revived Akali Dal. On 2 August he demanded a Punjabi-speaking state at a press conference in Delhi.

Where: Delhi, where the Working Committee met; Amritsar, where the delegates met at Teja Singh Samundri Hall; and the East Punjab Assembly.

Why it mattered: It split Akali politics in the first years of independence. Members in the Assembly sat as Congress legislators, while the party outside, under Master Tara Singh, tried to hold on to a Panthic voice. The six-month understanding did not hold, and a struggle followed between the Shiromani Akali Dal and the Akali members who had stayed with the Congress. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism recalls that in 1948 all the senior Akali leaders had joined the Congress and Master Tara Singh was left alone. On 20 June 1950 the Akali Dal directed its members to resign from the Congress party, but only one is recorded as having done so.