The Sri Guru Singh Sabha is founded at Amritsar
Alarmed by missionary conversions and attacks on the Gurus, leading Sikhs at Amritsar founded the Sri Guru Singh Sabha in 1873. Its first formal session met before the Akal Takht and began a reform movement that spread across the Sikh world.
Two events in 1873 set it going. That February, four Sikh pupils at the Amritsar Mission School announced they would become Christians. Then Pandit Shardha Ram of Phillaur spoke disrespectfully of the Gurus in a series of talks at Amritsar.
Thakur Singh Sandhanwalia, Baba Khem Singh Bedi, Kanwar Bikrama Singh and Giani Gian Singh called a meeting on 30 July. The first formal session followed on 1 October, with Thakur Singh as chairman and Giani Gian Singh as secretary. Its aims included teaching the Sikh faith, publishing books, using Punjabi in print, and bringing back those who had left. It chose to avoid politics and criticism of other faiths.
A second Sabha followed at Lahore on 2 November 1879, with Bhai Gurmukh Singh as secretary. The two later split. The Lahore group saw Sikhs as a separate faith without privilege of birth, while Baba Khem Singh Bedi's party at Amritsar stayed closer to Hindu custom and the status of the Gurus' descendants. Ham Hindu Nahin, published by Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha in 1898, became the best known statement of the Lahore view.[EoS][EoS]