Delhi Sikh Gurdwaras Act follows an Akali agitation

Who: Sant Fateh Singh and the Akali Dal; the Government of India and Parliament; and the five-member Gurdwara Board that held Delhi's gurdwaras in 1971.

What: The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says the SGPC took charge of Delhi's historic gurdwaras in 1923 and formed an 11-member Delhi Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, that its authority was challenged after 1947, and that in 1971 the Government of India handed management to a five-member Gurdwara Board by ordinance.

After Parkash Singh Badal advised dissolution of the Assembly in June 1971, Gurmit Singh writes, Sant Fateh Singh announced an agitation to get a Management Board elected for the Delhi gurdwaras, on the pattern of the Sikh Gurdwaras Act. He left Amritsar for Delhi on 22 July with 109 followers and was arrested at Narela on 14 August. Akali volunteers kept courting arrest, and on 15 November about 1,500 demonstrating outside Parliament were lathi-charged and tear-gassed. About 20,000 Akalis had courted arrest when the war with Pakistan began. On 6 December the Minister of State for Home Affairs told the Rajya Sabha that the arrested Akalis would be released as a goodwill gesture, and the Akalis suspended the agitation on 8 December. The Act received the President's assent on 30 December 1971.

The Delhi Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1971 (Act 82 of 1971) set up the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee and vested in it the control and superintendence of all gurdwaras and gurdwara property in Delhi. The Committee has 55 members: 46 elected from single-member wards and 9 co-opted, among them four head priests of the Takhts, one nominee of the SGPC and two presidents of Singh Sabhas. Members serve four years. The Act defines a Sikh as someone who keeps unshorn hair, and voters who trim or shave the beard or hair, smoke or drink cannot be registered. It came into force on 7 April 1972 and repealed the Delhi Sikh Gurdwaras (Management) Act, 1971, which had set up the Board. The first elections were held on 30 March 1974, and the Sant Akali Dal won 31 of the 46 seats, Gurmit Singh writes.

Where: Delhi: Narela, where the Sant was arrested, the area outside Parliament, and the historic gurdwaras of the capital.

Why it mattered: The Act put Delhi's historic gurdwaras under a committee elected by the city's Sikh voters, the elected management the Sant had demanded. The Sant's agitation also showed the Akali Dal still able to fill the jails after its defeat in the March 1971 Lok Sabha elections, though the war ended it before the Act was passed.