Gaining Authority and Legitimacy: Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee and the Golden Temple c. 1920-2000

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), the democratically elected religious body amongst the Sikh community since its formation in 1920 to the end of the twentieth century. The study begins by examining the ways in which the SGPC created its dominant practices and structured its organization based on Singh Sabha (religious reformist body 1885-1919) legacy but goes on to show how this “democratically” elected management body had to work hard to influence Sikhs within and beyond the Punjab over the twentieth century despite its lineage to the Singh Sabha. Scholars have viewed the SGPC as wielding influence and being a centralized body with a lot of power over the Sikh community globally, yet this dissertation shows that the SGPC has never had unanimous support and has layered authority which is decentralized and fragemented. By layered authority, this dissertation alludes to the multiples layers of authority associated with Sikh religion, which resides in living Gurus and babas (condemned by the Khalsa Sikhs and the SGPC), different scriptural exegises of the Adi Granth and caste groups as well as regional groups amongst the Sikhs. The SGPC counts on these different sources of authority to weild its influence on the community. For instance, the SGPC organizes kar sevas (a specific type of voluntary community work) and invites sants and their deras (centres of influence including their followers) to lead these activities, usually including the building and rebuilding of gurdwaras. These sants and their deras are not new organizations but have been in existence since the pre-colonial period, hence highlighting the continuing traditions and legacies of pre-colonial practices as opposed to the SGPC’s claims of reformed and uniform Khalsa Sikh practices. There consistent involvement in the kar sevas highlights the layered nature of the SGPC, which needs to be supported by pre-colonial traditions to influence the larger Sikh community. The SGPC initially forbade deras but eventually incorporated them into its own structure. This incorporation was a ploy to gain legitimacy amongst wider Sikh followers but also impacted SGPC’s practices, which watered down the initial drives to sanitize and institutionalize Sikh religion. The efforts of the SGPC, moreover, never went uncontested. In other words, a diversity of Sikh traditions and practices continues, even after the formation and the subsequent ascendance of the SGPC.