AKAL TAKHT is the primary seat of Sikh religious authority and central altar for Sikh political assembly. Through hukamnamas, edicts or writes, it may issue decretals providing guidance or clarification on any point of Sikh doctrine or practice referred to it, may lay under penance personages charged with violation of

AKALI, a term now appropriated by members of the dominant Sikh political party, the Shiromani Akali Dal, founded in 1920, and groups splitting from it from time to time, was earlier used for Nihangs (q.v.), an order of armed religious zealots among the baptized Sikhs. The word Nihang is

AKALI DAL, CENTRAL, a political organization of the Sikhs set up in March 1934 as a parallel body to the Shiromani Akali Dal. The latter was formed on 14 December 1920 to assist the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee in its campaign for the reformation of the management of the

AKALI DAL, SHIROMANI (shiromani= exalted, foremost in rank; dal = corps, of akali volunteers who had shed fear of death), the premier political party of the modern period of Sikhism seeking to protect the political rights of the Sikhs, to represent them in the public bodies and legislative councils being

ALL-PARTIES CONFERENCES (more aptly, ALL-PARTY CONFERENCES), a series of conventions which took place in 1928 bringing together representatives of various political parties and communities in India with a view to working out a mutually agreed formula for the country\'s constitutional advance in response to the invitation of the British government.