Sikh Advisory Board (Singapore)

The Sikh Advisory Board was set up in 1915 to advise the British colonial government in Singapore on "matters regarding the Sikh religion and customs", according to Singapore's National Library Board. Its Infopedia article lists the Board among the agencies the government helped establish to look after the welfare of the Sikh community, alongside the Sikh Welfare Council, founded in 1995 to cater to the needy.

What else the sources say: Wikipedia, citing Brill's Encyclopedia of Sikhism, says the Board was formed as a government body to inform the government and later became a statutory body under the Ministry of Community Development. The sources found do not say who sat on the Board, how its members were chosen or what it advised on.

The setting: Sikh policemen began arriving in Singapore in 1881, and they set up the first Sikh temple at the Pearl's Hill barracks in the 1880s. The Central Sikh Temple followed in 1912. Community bodies ran on their own: the Singapore Sikhs Cricket Club began in 1927 and was registered as the Singapore Khalsa Association in May 1931, and the Sikh Missionary Society was formed in 1940 to spread the Sikh faith, becoming inactive by the 1960s after the death of its founder Bhag Singh. Unlike these community bodies, the Advisory Board was set up by the government.