The Babbar Akalis broke from the main Akali movement after Nankana Sahib, holding that non-violence would not work against an armed state. They were concentrated in the Doaba, in Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur districts, and drew heavily on Ghadar returnees.
Kishan Singh Gargajj, Karam Singh Daulatpur and Dhanna Singh Behbalpur led them. They published a cyclostyled paper, the Babbar Akali Doaba, and they targeted informers and loyalist officials rather than the British directly.
Between 1922 and 1924 they killed a number of men they identified as collaborators. The government responded with a large operation across the Doaba.
The conspiracy case tried ninety one men at Lahore. Six were hanged in February 1926, others were transported for life, several died in custody, and Dhanna Singh blew himself up with a bomb rather than be taken alive. The whole movement ran about four years from start to finish.
They are commemorated in the Doaba villages and almost nowhere else. The main Akali movement's success and the Babbars' failure has shaped which of the two is remembered.
The Babbars broke from the main Akali movement over its commitment to non-violence and organised in the Doaba between 1921 and 1925.
They targeted informers and officials, published a cyclostyled paper, and were suppressed after a series of trials. Six were hanged at Lahore in February 1926.
Most of them were former soldiers and Ghadar returnees. The Doaba villages they came from are the same villages that had sent men abroad a decade earlier.