Akal Takht edict against the RSS and Rashtriya Sikh Sangat

Who: The Panj Singh Sahiban (the five Sikh high priests, as the press calls them) at Sri Akal Takht Sahib, under Jathedar Giani Joginder Singh Vedanti. The edict was aimed at the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat, a body that, according to the Caravan, the RSS floated in 1985, at the height of the crisis in Punjab, to promote a shared Sikh and Hindu heritage.

What: The Tribune calls it a hukamnama and dates it to 23 July 2004; the Caravan, citing Dhirendra Jha, calls it a directive and gives no day. It described the activities of the RSS as a deep-rooted conspiracy against the Sikhs and told the community to shun them. The Caravan reports that it called the Sangat an anti-Panth organisation trying to mislead Sikhs and asked Sikh bodies not to back its Sikh wing. The Tribune links it to complaints about RSS involvement in the 2004 celebrations of 400 years of the Guru Granth Sahib; the Caravan says it came as the Sangat planned a nationwide march for that anniversary. Vedanti had already compared the RSS to Aurangzeb, and RSS chief K S Sudarshan's remark that Sikhs were Hindus had angered many Sikhs. The edict was not widely announced at first. In September 2004 the Indian Ex-Services League welcomed it, saying it had been kept under wraps.

After it, the Caravan says, the Sangat scaled back its work. The Quint reports that the RSS pressed the BJP to break its alliance with the Akali Dal unless the edict was withdrawn, though it does not say the BJP acted on this. No report says it was withdrawn, and the Quint wrote in 2021 that it remains in place.

Where: Sri Akal Takht Sahib, Amritsar.

Why it mattered: The Tribune calls it a hukamnama, which binds the Panth, and the Caravan a directive; either way it set down in writing the Akal Takht's answer to the idea that Sikhs are part of a larger Hindu fold. It was tested again in October 2017. Before a Sangat event in Delhi on 25 October for the 350th birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh, Jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh said the 2004 edict stood, directed Sikhs to follow it, and the Akal Takht boycotted the event. SGPC president Kirpal Singh Badungar said the SGPC stood by it too. In October 2019, after RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said India was a Hindu Rashtra, Jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh called for a ban on the RSS, and reports at the time recalled the 2004 edict.