Shiromani Akali Dal and the Fragility of Governance in British Punjab, 1920–1925

Abstract

This paper argues that the emergence of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in 1920 exposed the fundamental flaws in British colonial rule in Punjab and constituted a serious structural challenge to the British government. This study offers a novel theoretical framework based on three new concepts: collaborative captivity, the judicial-proprietary paradox, and legislative fragmentation. Current historiography, however, concentrates on either the efficacy of Sikh mobilization or the strategic skill of British officials. In addition to opposing colonial authority, the study demonstrates how the SAD systematically undermined the state's alliances by taking advantage of the traditional Sikh identity that the British had created for military recruitment. The study demonstrates how the SAD changed military sociology from a pillar of colonial power into a channel of imperial weakness, building on Oberoi's important analysis of colonial Sikh identity formation and Fox's cultural materialist perspective on Akali mobilization. The Sikh Gurdwara Act of 1925 is reinterpreted as a tactical tool of legislative division, allowing a fundamentally weak colonial state to survive by channeling religious independence into manageable institutional structures, rather than as a generous reform or a definitive nationalist victory. The paper advances the theoretical conversation on movement institutionalization, colonial knowledge creation, and the relationship between legal frameworks and political legitimacy by offering new perspectives on how anti-colonial movements might take advantage of the internal conflicts of garrison states.