BANI BIRDH PRATAP is a collection of religious and devotional poetry in a mixture of Braj and Punjabi, written in Gurmukhi script by Baba Ram Das, a Divana sadhu. The volume is preserved with reverence due to a religious scripture in the dera or monastery of the Divana sect established

Baba Bohar (The Old Banyan Tree) is a poetic play, a long monologue. A tree personified is in conversation with the children who are playing under it; it starts with the contemporary situation in Punjab and goes back to elaborating its glorious past from the time of the Sikh Gurus

GAGGOBUA, village 27 km southwest of Amritsar (31°38\'N, 74°52\'E) along the Amritsar Khemkaran road, is sacred to Guru Hargobind (1595-1644), who came here once following the chase. Gurdwara Manji Sahib Chhevin Patshahi, constructed at the site of the old shrine, marks the spot where Guru Hargobind had halted. The

JAGIASI, also Jagiasu orJijnasu is a religious sect cognate with the UdasT section of the NanakpanthTs of Sindh. The word jagidsd is derived from Sanskrit jijndsd (desire to know), jagidsi denoting one desirous of knowledge, of spiritual insight. T`.ic members of the Jagiasi sect are mostly sahajdhdns i.e. gradualists, believing

PREM SINGH HOTI, BABA (1882-1954), historian and biographer, was born on 2 November 1882 at Hoti, near Mardan, in North-West Frontier Province, now part of Pakistan. His father Ganda Singh, a man of means, traced his ancestry back to Bhalla family of Goindval, in Amritsar district, to which noted Sikh

AKALI DAL, CENTRAL, a political organization of the Sikhs set up in March 1934 as a parallel body to the Shiromani Akali Dal. The latter was formed on 14 December 1920 to assist the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee in its campaign for the reformation of the management of the

BARATH, a village 8 km southwest of Pathankot (32° 15`N, 75° 32`E) in Gurdaspur district of the Punjab, has a historical shrine, Gurdwara Tap Asthan Baba Sri Chand Ji, popularly called Gurdwara Barath Sahib. Baba Sri Chand, the elder son of Guru Nanak, chose for himself the life of

Baba Bolda Hai (The Old Man Speaks Out) of Gursham Singh is a play dealing with the 1984 riots in Delhi. Gursharan Singh points to the people responsible for this ghastly act and criticises main the political leaders who, in his view, were the real culprits. The common man is

GARHIA, BHAI, a devout Sikh who received blessing from Guru Hargobind. The Guru sent him to preach in Kashmir on a special request from the sahgat of that area. Bhai Garhia met on the way a Muslim divine, Shah Daula, near Gujrat, now in Pakistan, and engaged in a

JAVALA SINGH, BHAI SAHIB (1872-1952), a renowned exponent of the Sikh devotional music, was born in 1872 at the village of  Saidpur in Kapurthala district of the Punjab. His father, Bhai Deva Singh and grandfather, Parijab Singh were in their day celebrated rdgis or musicians who recited Sikh kirtan

KUKAS or NAMDHARIS, the name given to the members of a sectarian group that arose among the Sikhs towards the close of the nineteenth century. Kuk, in Punjabi, means a scream or shout. While chanting the sacred hymns at their religious congregations, the adherents of the new order broke into