AVTAR SINGH VAHIRIA, polemicist and scholar of Sikh texts, was born on 12 June 1848 at Thoha Khalsa, a village in Rawalpindi district, now in Pakistan. As a small boy, he learnt to recite the Sikh psalms from his mother and maternal uncle, Prem Singh. After he had learnt

GANESHA SINGH, BHAI (d. 1888), assistant chief secretary of the Khalsa Diwan, initially called Singh Sabha General, which was established in 1880 to coordinate the activities of the Singh Sabhas at Lahore and Amritsar, was employed in the Amritsar municipal committee as a sarishtadar or clerk. When the Khalsa Diwan

LAKHPAT RAI (d. 1748), diwan or revenue minister at Lahore under two successive Mughal viceroys, Zakariya Khan (1726-45) and Yahiya Khan (1745-47). He came of a Hindu Khatri family of Kalanaur, in Gurdaspur district of the Punjab. In 1736 when Zakariya Khan organized a mobile column of 10,000 to scour

TARA CHAND, DIWAN (d. 1858), son of Diwan Karam Chand, entered the Sikh service in 1822. His first employment was in Peshawar under Diwan Kirpa Ram. He was sent in the following year to Kangra, with civil and military authority, to collect the revenues, and in 1832 was tranferred

BASANT SINGH, BHAI (d. 1900), one of the founder members of Sri Guru Singh Sabha, Lahore, established on 2 November 1879, worked as its accountant and later became its vice president. Differences between Bhai Basant Singh and other leaders of the Khalsa Diwan, Lahore, originating in the expulsion in April

GURMUKH SINGH, BABA (1888-1977), a Ghadr revolutionary, was born in 1888 to a poor peasant, Hoshnak Singh , of the village of Laltori Khurd, in Ludhiana district. Second of three brothers, he was sent to school at Ludhiana. His ambition was to join the army, but he could not

LAKKHI MALL, DIWAN (d. 1844), an official of the Lahore Government in the Indus territories, which included Dera Ismail Khan, annexed by Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1836. Lakkhi Mall`s charge also included Bannu which the Sikhs had occupied in 1825. In January 1844 Diwan Lakkhi Mall led an expedition

TEJA SINGH BHUCHCHAR (1887-1939) , one of the pioneers of the Gurdwara reform movement in the 1920`s was the eldest son of Mayya Singh and Mahitab Kaur, of the village of Bhuchchar Khurd, 25 km from Tarn Taran, in Amritsar district. He was born on 28 October 1887 at

BHASAUR SINGH SABHA, or to give its full name Sri Guru Singh Sabha, Bhasaur, was established in 1893 twenty years after the first Singh Sabha came into existence in Amritsar at the village of Bhasaur in the then princely state of Patiala. The Singh Sabha, a powerful

HAKIM RAI, DIWAN (1803-1868), whose forebears had served the Kanhaiya chiefs, was born the son of Kashi Ram in 1803. In 1824, he joined the army of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, but soon rose to the high civilian office of diwan. He became tutor to Karivar Nau Nihal Singh, the Maharaja`s

MONTAGUCHELMSFORD REFORMS AND THE SIKHS. The first time the elective principle was introduced to choose representatives for legislative bodies in India was with the introduction of the scheme known as Morley Minto reforms of 1909. By then the Muslims had succeeded in persuading Lord Minto, Governor General of India, that

TEJA SINGH SAMUNDRI (1882-1926), a leading figure in the Gurdwara reform movement, was born the son of Deva Singh and Nand Kaur at Rai ka Burj in Tarn Taran tahsil of Amritsar district, on 20 February 1882. On land being assigned to Deva Singh in the Sandal Bar tract