The high­est tem­po­ral seat of the Sikhs -Akal Takht Sahib, op­po­site the Dar­bar Sahib, Am­rit­sar is at the heart of the Sikh re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal di­a­logue and its unique sta­tus in Sikh the­ol­ogy brings it into the fo­cus of Indo-Sikh re­la­tions, es­pe­cially in the first week of June every year when the Sikhs ob­serve the solemn mar­tyr­dom days from 1-6 June.  Bhupin­der Singh, in this ar­ti­cle, traces the ori­gin of Akal Takht Sahib and pro­poses the use of In­ter­net tech­nolo­gies to adapt the sov­er­eign and de­mo­c­ra­tic Sar­batt Khalsa pat­tern in cre­at­ing a vir­tual mech­a­nism to keep pace with the times, to be fair to the Sikh Di­as­pora and to meet the chal­lenges of deal­ing with mod­ern state­craft.

AKAL TAKHT IS A 5-storey build­ing in front of Sri Har­mandir Sahib or Dar­bar Sahib, in Am­rit­sar. The build­ing, orig­i­nally called ‘Akal Bun­ga’ was built by the Sixth Mas­ter -Guru Har­gob­ind Sahib. The word Akal means time­less and Takht is a com­pound word con­sist­ing of Ta + kht, mean­ing base and line re­spec­tively. The word Takht means throne in Per­sian. Har­mandir Sahib be­came the seat of the spir­i­tual power of the Sikh faith and the Akal Bunga be­came the cen­tral site of its tem­po­ral au­thor­ity. Sig­nif­i­cantly, the height of the Akal Takht Sahib was de­lib­er­ately kept less than that of Dar­bar Sahib. 

In­cep­tion

Guru Har­gob­ind Sahib laid the foun­da­tion of Akal Bunga in 1606, at the open space across the cause­way to the Har­mandir and com­pleted it in 1609. 

A plat­form of nearly 10 feet, raised on the em­bank­ment be­came the throne for Guru Sahib.   The two flags at the Akal Takht Sahib rep­re­sented the tem­po­ral and the spir­i­tual as de­signed by the Sixth Mas­ter.  The Piri Nishaan  Sahib is hoisted higher, as a re­minder of its spir­i­tual em­i­nence. 

In the af­ter­noon, he would meet with fol­low­ers at the Akal Bunga.  It grad­u­ally de­vel­oped into a cen­tre for the res­o­lu­tion of sec­u­lar af­fairs and was looked up to as an at­trac­tive al­ter­na­tive to the courts of Delhi and La­hore. Guru Ji’s res­o­lu­tion of dis­putes was fair, fast, and im­par­tial. In the evening, he would go for prayers and singing of hymns, to Har­mandir Sahib.  At night he and his fol­low­ers would re­turn to the Akal Bunga, to lis­ten to mar­tial songs of heroic deeds known as “Dhaddi Waran” for which he had ap­pointed bards -Ab­dula and Natha to nar­rate songs of val­our to in­spire and mo­ti­vate the Sikh San­gat.   

His­tor­i­cal Cap­sule

The first Hukam­namma is­sued from here by the Guru, asked the Sikhs to bring horses and arms in­stead of money. 

In 1721, five years af­ter the tor­tur­ous killing of Sikh Gen­er­alis­simo Banda Singh Ba­hadur, this Throne of the Im­mor­tal, re-emerged as the epi­cen­tre. Af­ter Banda Singh Ba­hadur’s ex­e­cu­tion, the con­trol of Akal Takht was with the Tat Khalsa. A dis­pute arose be­tween Bandai Khalsa, the fol­low­ers of Banda Singh Ba­hadur and Tat Khalsa over the con­trol of Akal Takht. Mata Sun­dri Ji -wife of Guru Gob­ind Singh ap­pointed Bhai Mani Singh, as the cus­to­dian of Akal Takht and gave him the re­spon­si­bil­ity of re­solv­ing the is­sues be­tween the two war­ring fac­tions. Bhai Mani Singh, af­ter de­lib­er­a­tions with both the fac­tions, passed the Gur­matta to re­solve the is­sue. Thus the tra­di­tion of unan­i­mous Gur­matta was adopted. 

Dur­ing the Sar­batt Khalsa in 1733, af­ter the of­fer of as­sum­ing Nawab­ship was spurned by promi­nent lead­ers, it was fi­nally of­fered to Ka­pur Singh in ap­pre­ci­a­tion of his stu­pen­dous spirit of ser­vice. It was a chal­leng­ing time and the sur­vival of the Sikhs was at stake. Af­ter de­lib­er­a­tions, a con­sen­sus emerged un­der the guid­ance of a Hukam­namma from Guru Granth Sahib and Nawab Ka­pur Singh was im­pressed upon to ac­cept the em­i­nent po­si­tion. This was a turn­ing point for Sikhs from their ex­is­ten­tial cri­sis to be­com­ing mas­ters of their land and des­tiny. Guided by Gur­bani -the Word of the Guru, draw­ing lessons from his­tory and work­ing through con­sen­sus and never func­tion­ing uni­lat­er­ally, he ini­ti­ated baby steps to the cre­ation of the Com­mon­wealth of the Khalsa.

In 1756 Ahmed Shah Dur­rani at­tacked In­dia. While re­turn­ing back from Delhi in 1757, his loot was plun­dered by Sikhs. Frus­trated, he de­mol­ished Akal Takht and Dar­bar Sahib and filled the Sarovar with mud and filth. Fol­low­ing the tra­di­tion of build­ing con­sen­sus, in No­vem­ber 1760,  Sikhs again as­sem­bled at a Sar­batt Khalsa be­fore the Akal Takht and de­clared theirs as the Sikh theo-po­lit­i­cal voice of the cen­tral­ized con­scious will of the peo­ple and a res­o­lu­tion to take pos­ses­sion of La­hore -the seat of Pun­jab Gov­ern­ment.

Later, even dur­ing the rule of Ma­haraja Ran­jit Singh, the au­ton­omy of the Sikh na­tion over the Dar­bar Sahib Com­plex in­clud­ing Akal Takht pre­vailed.  He too was ar­raigned be­fore Akal Takht Sahib for his mis­de­meanour. 

This arrange­ment con­tin­ued from the British Raj in 1850 but was se­verely marred dur­ing the Jal­lian­wala Bagh mas­sacre in 1919, as the British au­thor­i­ties had in­fil­trated and over­taken SGPC and Akal Takht man­age­ment with their cronies who ma­nip­u­lated the de­vel­op­ments to suit the British.

 

Not to be un­done, the Sikhs rose against that move by start­ing the Akali move­ment and the British even­tu­ally handed over the pos­ses­sion back to the de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cally elected body -Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee (SGPC). The for­ma­tion of SGPC gave a new twist to what con­sti­tuted Sar­batt Khalsa as the elected body was pro­jected as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive body of the en­tire Sikh Broth­er­hood. This new arrange­ment changed the way the com­mu­nity de­ci­sions were made and the way Jathedars -the provosts of the Akal Takht, were se­lected. 

Changes in Twen­ti­eth Cen­tury

The wide-rang­ing events tech­no­log­i­cal and po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments world­wide and within Sikhdom dur­ing the twen­ti­eth cen­tury have had a ma­jor im­pact on the func­tion­ing of re­li­gious and po­lit­i­cal af­fairs of com­mu­ni­ties and Sikhs too have been greatly in­flu­enced. 

To wit, the two World Wars, newer modes of trans­porta­tion -au­to­mo­biles, rail­ways, air­ways, the par­ti­tion of Pun­jab at the time of In­de­pen­dence of In­dia in 1947, re­li­gious killings and mi­gra­tion of Sikh pop­u­la­tion from West Pun­jab to East Pun­jab and then to the rest of In­dia, the strug­gle for recog­ni­tion of Pun­jab as a lin­guis­tic state re­sult­ing in the for­ma­tion of Pun­jabi Suba and di­vi­sion of East Pun­jab into 3 states, In­dira Gand­hi’s Emer­gency in In­dia in 1975, the killings of Sikhs in Am­rit­sar and Kan­pur fol­low­ing the re­but­tal of Sikhs of the pseudo-Sikh move­ment of neo-Ni­rankaris, the at­tack on Akal Takht Sahib, Dar­bar Sahib and 43 other his­tor­i­cal Gu­rud­waras in June 1984 in what was called Op­er­a­tion Blues­tar, the egre­gious hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions in Pun­jab and in In­dia against the Sikhs dur­ing Op­er­a­tion Woodrose, the geno­ci­dal killings of Sikhs in No­vem­ber 1984 in Delhi and a 100-plus cities across In­dia and the mi­gra­tion of Sikh pop­u­la­tion to the west­ern coun­tries for sur­vival and search for a good life, are just a small sam­ple of the blud­geon­ing of the Sikh peo­ples.

The view that SGPC is the only rep­re­sen­ta­tive body of the Sikhs does not now hold true in the fullest sense as it is man­dated to man­age his­tor­i­cal shrines in Pun­jab in­clud­ing Chandi­garh, Haryana and Hi­machal Pradesh.

As a re­sult of all these events, there has been a sig­nif­i­cant re­align­ment in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the Sikh pop­u­la­tion around the world. The view that SGPC is the only rep­re­sen­ta­tive body of the Sikhs does not now hold true in the fullest sense as it is man­dated to man­age his­tor­i­cal shrines in Pun­jab in­clud­ing Chandi­garh, Haryana and Hi­machal Pradesh. It has not been able to that task too in a proper man­ner and is ma­noeu­vred by po­lit­i­cal bod­ies and in its turn ma­noeu­vres the func­tion­ing of the Akal Takht is an­other story.

Emerg­ing Chal­lenges

The ground re­al­ity of an emerg­ing In­ter­net and other tech­nolo­gies, in­clud­ing so­cial me­dia, bring­ing the world tech­no­log­i­cally closer than ever be­fore and the trans­mis­sion of in­for­ma­tion, mes­sages and ideas at the click of a but­ton, a whole new slew of the ground re­al­ity of emerg­ing chal­lenges is brew­ing. 

While the In­ter­net trans­formed the way we com­mu­ni­cate, the Covid19 pan­demic rat­tled re­li­gious and po­lit­i­cal lead­ers with lock­downs of com­mer­cial and re­li­gious places of wor­ship and cat­a­clysmic re­stric­tions of travel.

Fu­ture Pos­si­bil­i­ties and Rel­e­vance

The mod­ern chal­lenge to re­li­gion in gen­eral and to the Sikhs as a com­mu­nity can be checked and met by align­ing the com­mu­nity with a vir­tu­ally vig­or­ous Akal Takht Sahib. The chal­lenges in­clude stay­ing fo­cused on the is­sues re­lated to the wider in­ter­ests of the com­mu­nity at large, and to the cause of free­dom that the throne orig­i­nally es­poused. 

Vir­tual meet­ings and de­lib­er­a­tions is a new re­al­ity and left with no choice, the world is adopt­ing this at su­per­sonic speed, as it is an un­miss­able part of our lives. 

Against this back­drop or vir­tual meet­ings and de­lib­er­a­tions, Akal Takht, by adopt­ing a new mech­a­nism has the po­ten­tial to rope the world Sikh com­mu­nity into col­lec­tive Pan­thic de­ci­sion-mak­ing. 

Against this back­drop, Sikhs are slowly but steadily re­ori­ent­ing their can­vas of dis­cus­sion and de­bate. We need to take these nascent ef­forts and cas­cade them to a much higher scale to make it a uni­fied voice of the faith­ful. The clear writ­ing on how things are un­fold­ing is now not on the walls but on the com­puter screens. The pop­u­la­tion dis­per­sion and re­sult­ing di­ver­sity that evolved as a re­sult of mi­gra­tion and con­ver­sions into to Sikh faith, along with tech­ni­cal evo­lu­tions have made adapt­ing to a new world re­al­ity nec­es­sary and fea­si­ble. This new world re­al­ity can en­able Sikhs to emerge from the pre­sent cross­roads, as the Sikhs did in the 1700s. 

The Vir­tual Sar­batt Khalsa at the Akal Takht

If the Sikhs from around the world can make this vi­sion a new re­al­ity, then Sikhs would have re­asserted the sig­nif­i­cant role of Akal Takht. The gaps of phys­i­cal dis­tances have been re­placed with vir­tual con­nec­tiv­ity where the work on align­ment of thought process, con­sen­sus build­ing can take place 24×7 un­in­ter­rupted. Now the ideas of the wel­fare of all –Sar­bat da bhala can be shared openly across na­tions, na­tion­al­i­ties, time zones, with com­par­a­tively fewer cen­sor­ship re­straints and po­lit­i­cal con­trols. 

The com­puter screen is go­ing to be­come a glue to join the faith­ful or to un­leash schism. This quan­tum jump can trans­form the ex­ist­ing lack of faith along with feel­ings of dis­il­lu­sion­ment in the in­sti­tu­tion that can be rec­ti­fied.  The Akal Takht can reemerge as the epi­cen­tre of Sikh af­fairs and may even en­able to de­velop a vir­tual Sar­batt Khalsa to se­lect and anoint a com­mit­ted but re­luc­tant Nawab Ka­pur Singh as the uni­ver­sally ac­cept­able vi­sion­ary Jathedar of Akal Takht.

Ref­er­ences:

1. Singh, Teja & Singh, Ganda. A Short His­tory of Sikhs. Pun­jabi Uni­ver­sity, Pa­tiala (1994)
2. Singh, Dr. San­tokh. The Gu­ru’s Word & Il­lus­trated Sikh His­tory. Spir­i­tual Awak­en­ing Stud­ies, Prince­ton, ON (2000)
3. Singh, Ka­pur. The Golden Tem­ple: Its Theo-Po­lit­i­cal Sta­tus. Dharam Par­char Com­mit­tee (1995)
4. Dil­geer, Har­jin­der Singh, The Akal Takht. Pun­jabi Book Com­pany (1980)
5. Gandhi, Sur­jit Singh. His­tory of the Sikh Gu­rus (A Com­pre­hen­sive Study). Gur Das Ka­pur and Sons, Delhi (1978)

Ti­tle Photo Cour­tesy: Akaal Boonga Paint­ing by Simp­son & William, Vic­to­ria & Al­bert Mu­seum, Lon­don

Hail­ing from Myan­mar, ed­u­cated in In­dia, Bhupin­der Singh is an en­gi­neer by pro­fes­sion, do­ing busi­ness in Hous­ton, USA, with a keen in­ter­est in writ­ing books and ar­ti­cles on Sikh his­tory, mo­ti­va­tion and spir­i­tu­al­ity.