30 October 1902[EoS][EoS]Diwali day, 30 October 1902
The Chief Khalsa Diwan is established
The Chief Khalsa Diwan held its opening session at Amritsar on Diwali in 1902, uniting the feuding Lahore and Amritsar Diwans. It was the main Sikh council until the Akali bodies overtook it after 1919, and it remains active in education.
Quarrels between the two old Diwans and the deaths of many of their leaders led to calls for one central body. Bhai Arjan Singh of Bagrian became president and Sundar Singh Majithia secretary. Twenty-nine Singh Sabhas affiliated at the start, and 53 within a year. Membership was open to initiated Sikhs who could read and write Gurmukhi.
It ran preachers, schools and a weekly paper, the Khalsa Advocate, from 1903. It supported the Anand Marriage Act of 1909, set up the Sikh Educational Conference in 1908, and published a code of Sikh practice, Gurmat Prakash, in 1915.
Its loyalty to the British cost it support. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism points to its soft line on peasant unrest and on the Rakab Ganj agitation, its denunciation of the Ghadar party, and its zeal for wartime recruitment. After Jallianwala Bagh in 1919, the Sikh League, the SGPC and the Akali Dal took the lead in religion and politics.[EoS][EoS]