1920 – 1925
The gurdwara reform
Unknown · WikimediaThe Akali movement freed the Sikh shrines from corrupt hereditary mahants in a campaign of mass non-violence: the Nankana massacre of 1921, the Keys Affair, the beatings at Guru ka Bagh, the Jaito morcha. The Gurdwara Act of 1925 placed the shrines under an elected committee.
The Babbar Akalis
Not all the Akalis stayed non-violent. In 1922 a group in Doaba, the Babbar Akalis, many of them former soldiers and Ghadarites, took up arms against informers and officials they blamed for the killings at Nankana. They were hunted down by 1924, and six were hanged in 1926.