Khalsa Dal 1954

The Khalsa Dal of 1954 was the front through which Congress Sikhs fought the elections to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) against Master Tara Singh's Akali Dal. The historian J.S. Grewal says the Congress Party entered the 1954 SGPC elections "in the garb of the Khalsa Dal Front", and the Communists as the Desh Bhagat Board. The SGPC's own history of the Punjabi Suba morcha, by Karam Singh Zakhmi and Harjinder Singh Dilgeer, says the Congress Sikhs drew money from Congress and Arya Samaji businessmen and used the government's machinery freely, and that the Khalsa Dal's committee under S. Ishar Singh Majhail was then in charge of the gurdwaras.

The election and its result: Zakhmi and Dilgeer date the results to December 1954. They say the Congress Sikhs won not one of the 132 elected seats, while every Akali candidate won, along with ten to fifteen Desh Bhagat Board candidates whom the Akalis had helped. Grewal and Sangat Singh count differently: both say the Khalsa Dal contested 132 seats and won only three. They also differ on the Akali total: Grewal says the Akalis won all 110 seats they contested, Sangat Singh all 112, with 20 more going to the Desh Bhagat Board. Sangat Singh places the election early in 1955. The sources do not agree, so the counts are given side by side.

January 1955: The SGPC's history says the Government used the outgoing committee against the new one, as these steps show.

• 4 January: the new committee met for the first time and chose Master Tara Singh as chairman. The history says that the Home Secretary of Punjab then stopped the nomination of members that evening, that a written agreement fixed the next meeting for 6 January and was not kept, and that Chandigarh then announced 27 January.
• 7 January: the chairman of the Gurdwara Judicial Commission, Sardar Buta Singh, was dismissed by telegram from Chandigarh and replaced by Sardul Singh, an advocate of the Khalsa Dal.
• 10 and 11 January: before the new committee could meet, the outgoing committee under Ishar Singh Majhail nominated many Khalsa Dal men to the new local gurdwara committees, a right the history says belonged to the new SGPC.

The history calls this official partiality and says the Sikhs saw it as an insult to the voters who had chosen the new committee. Grewal says Ishar Singh Majhail became SGPC president on 18 January 1954, before these elections, and was replaced by Master Tara Singh in February 1955, after them.

Where it stands: The history places these steps in its account of the months before the slogan ban of April 1955 and the Punjabi Suba morcha. The sources found do not say what became of the Khalsa Dal after 1955.