Community, Nation and Region: Shrimoni Akali Dal (SAD) and the Politics of Community Formation

This article relies on a historical sociology approach to trace the shifting trajectory of community formation and the forging of boundaries through three discrete though corresponding imaginaries—panth (community), qaum (nation) and punjabiyat (regional identity)—in the Sikh political narrative. The emergence of each of these grand ideas of Sikh solidity has a history putatively inter-laced with the social make up and political economy of its time. The central object of enquiry for this article is the Shrimoni Akali Dal (SAD) and the attempt is to examine the shifting terrain of its religio-political goals and objectives. Since its inception in 1920, the SAD as a political organisation and Shrimoni Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee as the chief ecclesiastical authority, have been the principle bearers of the Sikh religio-political consciousness. The three constitutive imageries of community formation that SAD in particular and Sikh politics in general has fostered, do not betray a linear trajectory. Instead, there is a discernible simultaneity where each of these ideas co-exist, but subject to contextual operationalisation.