Singh Sabha Movement

[10] This new Jatt Sikh nobility would begin to imitate Rajput kings, the customary embodiment of royal prestige of the region, following them in the process of Sanskritization, and taking on their customs and religious beliefs, including astrology, Brahmin patronage, cow veneration, and sati, alongside their own.

[10] In response to these developments arose several Sikh movements: Nirankari (analogized as "puritanism"), Namdhari ("militant Protestantism"), the Singh Sabha ("revivalism and renaissance") and the Panch Khalsa Diwan ("aggressive fundamentalism").

[31] Gurdwara Peshawarian in Rawalpindi, Dyal Das' headquarters, which had been granted a jagīr by Ranjit Singh, would come to be occupied by the British as they looked upon his movement with suspicion.

[34][32] The Namdharis had more of a social impact due to the fact that they emphasized Khalsa identity and the authority of the Guru Granth Sahib,[35] particularly from the middle of nineteenth century onward.

[7][55] They had rejected the Khalsa initiation practices like the Khande di Pahul ceremony on the grounds that it threatened their caste and polluted their ritual boundaries which they considered as primary.

[7] They considered Guru Nanak to be an avatar, or incarnation, of the Hindu deity Vishnu, and saw Sikhism as a tradition aligned with Vaishnavism; and these included the Nirmala, Udasi, and Giani schools of Brahminical thought.

[59][60] The Tat Khalsa's monotheism, iconoclastic sentiments, egalitarian social values and notion of a standardized Sikh identity did not blend well with the polytheism, idol worship, caste distinctions, and diversity of rites espoused by the Amritsar faction.

[77] The Singh Sabha chapters could not agree on its constitution or its leadership structure, ultimately leading to a split into two Khalsa Diwans, which would differ greatly in nature and composition.

[65] The Khalsa Diwan Amritsar, remaining with about 7 chapters, re-organized itself as a bicameral body consisting of the Mahan Khand (the aristocracy) and Saman Khand (the priestly class and body of believers), while the breakaway Khalsa Diwan Lahore, with about 30 chapters, set up on 10-11 April 1886, with Sardar Attar Singh Bhadaur as President and Professor Gurmukh Singh as secretary, retained a much more equal footing between members, in line with its principles.

[50] It rejected contemporary Hindu practices like polytheism, idol and avatar worship, temple offerings, pilgrimages, the widow remarriage prohibition, child marriage, and sati as degenerate accretions, as well as the priestcraft of Brahmins, considered to have misled the masses through introducing such deviations.

Orthodox Brahminism did not permit admission of outcastes or readmission of lapsed adherents, and not until the rise of the Arya Samaj that such reconversion was encouraged,[84] which elicited continued "Sanatanist" opposition.

[87] Though at first there was no standard procedure for the new practice, and more conservative Samaji leaders were reluctant to sponsor them,[88] shuddhi for caste readmission was originally the full orthodox prāyaścitta, involving bathing in the Ganges, feeding Brahmins, and the consumption of the panchagavya, or cow products: milk, butter, curd, urine and dung; it would be simplified by 1893 to tonsure, hom, janeu, and the recitation of the Gayatri Mantra,[89][88] showing a new confidence in the practice by then.

[88] In addition to Dayanand's new Western-influenced ideas about a "highly specific scriptural canon," along with a long list of traditional Hindu writings to be condemned and repudiated,[79] another religious innovation of the Arya Samaj was the nationalistic idea of a nationwide Hinduism, as opposed to a myriad of different dharmas previously always qualified by subregion or type,[51] which was besieged by, and opposed to, both foreign interference and "unreformed Brahmanical hierarchies.

[87] Hindu-Sikh relations first began to decline with the publication of Saraswati's polemical and ideological[53] Satyarth Prakash,[93] published in 1875, the year of the sect's first establishment in Bombay,[94] which portrayed the Sikh gurus as "misguided and ill-educated simpletons" who had diverted people from the Vedas.

Lahore judge Lala Amolak Ram Munsif, who in an 1887 public letter deemed Dayanand's word as neither infallible or binding upon its members, and his opinion as "wrong," decried the "jealous effort" of "instigating our respected and glorious Sikh brethren against the Arya dharma."

[53] Guru Datt would accrue a worshipful following (including Munshi Ram), who treated him as a spiritual guide, and he would attack Sikh leaders and ideology.

The intellectual forces brought into play by the spread of English education are slowly and imperceptibly infusing a spirit of liberalism into the Hindu mind, but it is our individual opinion, and we think we have good grounds to come to such a conclusion, that the Sikh is as much a bigoted and narrow-minded being now as he was thirty years back...," thus backsliding into superstition and ignorance, having been left backwards by their loss of political dominance.

[86] This would in turn invite a response from Ganda Singh of the Gurū Upkār Prachārnī Sabhā, Prescription for the Insanity of Dayananda's Followers, answering Arya Samaj insults towards Sikhism, portraying Swami Dayanand as an "uncouth braggart" who spent his time dividing Indians with "daggers of bad words," and defending Sikhism's sovereignty and Punjabi as a viable language not only suited for "rustics and uneducated men.

[108] The Mahatmas, being strict vegetarians unlike the Tat Khalsa and the College Party Arya Samajis, also opposed the use of the controversial "pork test" for converts from Islam.

This incensed the Mahatma faction, who would again attack Guru Nanak and Sikhism to defend Dayanand's sanctity, while College Party moderates would remain with their Shuddhi Sabha allies.

The issue of Sikh identity took a legal turn with the death of Dyal Singh Majithia in 1898, when his will was contested in the Punjab High Court as not falling under the Hindu code of inheritance,[110] and the verdict of which elicited disagreement from the Tat Khalsa.

"[121] The term 'Hindu', ultimately a foreign (Persian) exonym derived for populations adjoining the Indus River, had itself been repurposed around 1830 as 'Hinduism' to refer to the culture and religion of Brahmins, then adopted by other Indians as an anti-colonial national identity.

[122] Largely a colonial construct of 19th-century Western hermaneutics, and not historically attached to any doctrine or community, even by the late 19th century this homogenized identity was far from universally claimed or recognized as a religion, with identification rather by sect or caste still common in the 1881 census.

It was not until a Lahore meeting in 1897 that the Sanatanist Hindu faction passed a resolution proclaiming Sikhs as Hindus, a matter that then acquired legal significance with Sardar Dyal Singh Majithia's death in 1898.

[127] Following the founding and spread of its educational movement in Punjab and beyond in 1883, Arya Samaj publications also assailed other faiths, including Christianity, Islam, Jainism, and Buddhism, exacerbating entrenched communal faultlines[51] with its odium theologicum.

According to Ganga Prasad Upadhyaya in 1939, "Forty years ago the Arya Samaj was looked upon as a great defiler of the Hindu religion by bringing in an alloy from outside.

[89][133] In contrast, in Sikh scripture (tīsar panth),[120][134] 16th-century exegesis (Bhai Gurdas)[135] and pre-colonial 19th century commentaries (the tisra mazhab[136] of Kavi Santokh Singh, whose Nirmala incorporation of some Vedantic themes would, however, help give rise to sanatan interpretations later that century[137]), older janamsakhis (B-40),[138][139][140] Qazi Nur Muhammad's 18th-century Afghan jangnama,[141][142] and 17th-century Persian sources (Dabestan-e Mazaheb),[135] there is clear evidence of an established sense of identity among the Sikh community, from both within and without, distinct from the "Hindu" and "Turk" (Islam) panths,[143][144] well before colonial times.

It developed an elaborate structure with the Chief Khalsa Diwan having three types of advisors and various committees, all paid a monthly salary from dues collected from the affiliates and members.

"[154][155] according to W. H. McLeod, Oberoi's mentor, there is scriptural support from the writing of both Guru Arjan and Bhai Gurdas that a strong sense of identity had already come to exist by the sixteenth century, matching a "reasonable expectation that the intellectual elite within the Panth moved more rapidly towards a sense of distinct identity than did the body of believers,"[156] and that "[t]he 'boundaries' might be indistinct but not the 'centre'," with a lag of various degrees between the panth's elites and its masses during the preceding century.

While it retains its creedal unity and its adherence to its original metaphysics and symbolism, it has found enough resilience in the framework it has inherited to adapt itself to the modern course of progress without compromising on the fundamentals.