BELA, pronounced bella, means, in Punjabi usage, a jungle of tall grasses, reeds and assorted shrubbery along the banks of rivers and streams. The word also received a different connotation when an Udasi saint and preacher, Banakhandi, established in AD 1818 a preaching centre on an Island in the River

BELA SINGH, BHAI (1865-1921), son of Bhai Mayya and Mai Raji, a Saini Sikh couple, was born at Kartarpur in Jalandhar district. The family originally belonged to Faridkot state, from where Bela Singh`s grandfather, Bhai Sobha, had migrated to Kartarpur where he served in Guru ka Larigar run by

BHAG SINGH, BHAI (1872-1914), one of the leaders of the Punjabi immigrants in Canada, was born at the village of Bhikhivind, in Amritsar district. His father`s name was Narain Singh and mother`s Man Kaur. Bhag Singh joined the British Indian cavalry at the age of twenty, receiving a discharge

JAVAND SINGH MOKAL (d. 1840), soldier and courtier of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. His father, Thakur Singh, held a minor command. Javand Singh joined the Sikh army as a trooper. He was placed under Diwan Muhkam Chand and took pan in the battle fought near Attock, in July 1813. The

MEVA SINGH (d. 1915), a simple but religious minded peasant who was a reciter of the Guru Granth Sahib, came from the village of Lopoke, in Amritsar district. He migrated to Canada where he was an associate of Bhai Bhag Singh Bhikhivind and Balvant Singh Khurdpur, two prominent leaders of

SADH BELA, near Sakkhar in the Sindh province of Pakistan, was a prominent preaching center of Udasi Sikhs. It was established in 1823 by Bankhandi (d. 1863), a leading figure in the Mihanshahi order of the Udasis. Sadh Bela still attracts Sahijdhari Sikh devotees in large numbers living in