PAL SINGH ARIF, SANT (1873-1958), mystic and poet, was born on Maghar sudi 15, 1930 Bk/4 December 1873, the son of Gurdit Singh Sandhu and Sahib Kaur of the village of Paddhari, now in Amritsar district of the Punjab. He learnt to read and write Punjabi from the village granthi and Urdu from a Muslim He developed a taste for folk poetry and started composing verse of his own quite early in his youth. Pal Singh was also fond of the company of holy men, Hindu, Sikh and Muslim. At the age of 20, he was married to Nihal Kaur, daughter of Chanda Singh, of the village of Sarighna, in his own district.A year later, he enlisted in British Burmese army, and migrated to Burma.
BARHE, village 6 km southwest of Budhlada Mandi (29° 55`N, 75° 33`E) in Bathinda district of the Punjab, is sacred to Guru Tegh Bahadur, who, according to the Sakhi Pothi, spent a rainy season here, while travelling through the Malva country. Gurdwara Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib commemorating the visit is on the northwestern outskirts of the village, near a big pond a part of which has been converted into a sarovar. An extensive complex has developed around the old Manji Sahib, a domed room with a square platform within it, near an old van tree.
Ham Hindu Nahin, by Bhai Kahn Singh, lit. "We, i.e. Sikhs, are not Hindus," is a clear-cut declaration of Sikh identity registered by a Sikh scholar and intellectual towards the close of the nineteenth century. The statement constitutes the basic dictum of the book which appeared under this challenging title in 1898. In the signed introduction to the work, the author puts down HB as his initials. Decoded, the initials stand for Kahn Singh. The book was registered under this title in the Punjab Gazette on 30 June 1899 at number 447. The author\'s name, Kahn Singh, started appearing in the book from 1907. The book recalled the days of long-drawn polemic between Hindus and Sikhs.