YADAVINDER SINGH, LIEUTENANT GENERAL MAHARAJA (1913-1974), Grand Commander of the Indian Empire, Companion of the British Empire, Doctor of Laws from Banaras and Panjab Universities, was the last hereditary ruler of the east while Indian princely state of Patiala. Born on 7 January 1913 during the high noon of

ALL-PARTIES CONFERENCES (more aptly, ALL-PARTY CONFERENCES), a series of conventions which took place in 1928 bringing together representatives of various political parties and communities in India with a view to working out a mutually agreed formula for the country\'s constitutional advance in response to the invitation of the British government.

BALVANT SINGH CANADIAN (1882-1917), a prominent figure in the Ghadr movement, was born on 14 September 1882 at Khurdpur, a village in Jalandhar district of the Punjab. His father, Budh Singh, lived in easy circumstances. For his education, Balvant Singh was sent to the middle school at Adampur. But

DADU DIAL (1544-1603), ascetic and mystic, was in the line of the saints of medieval India. In his career and teaching he relived the Kablr legend. He was born in AD 1544 in Ahmedabad .in Gujarat to a Muslim couple. He had little formal education and took to his

GHADR MOVEMENT. Ghadr, commonly translated as "mutiny," was the name given to the newspaper edited and published for the Hindustani Association of the Pacific Goast which was founded at Portland, United States of America, in 1912. The movement this Association gave rise to for revolutionary activity in India also came

JALLIANVALA BAGH MASSACRE, involving the killing of hundreds of unarmed, defenceless Indians by a senior British military officer, took place on 13 April 1919 in the heart of Amritsar, the holiest city of the Sikhs, on a day sacred to them as the birth anniversary of the Khalsa. Jalliarivala Bagh,

KIRPAL SINGH, ARTIST (1923-1990), the creator of Sikh history in colour, was born the son of Bhagat Singh and Har Kaur in a small village Vara Chain Singhvala in Firozpur district of the Punjab on 10 December 1923. He inherited interest in art from his father who

NEHRU COMMITTEE REPORT AND THE SIKHS. Constitutional reforms introduced under the Government of India Act, 1919, did not satisfy the Indian public opinion which continued to press for a fully responsible government in India. The Act itself contained a provision that after ten years a statutory commission would be

RADCLIFFE AWARD, under which the dividing line between the West (Pakistan) Punjab and the East (Indian) Punjab was drawn, is so called after the name of the Chairman of the Punjab Boundary Commission, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, an eminent British jurist especially invited to fix the boundaries between the newly created

SURJIT SINGH MAJlTHIA (1912-1995) with acquiline features and large luminous eyes was a very hand some looking man. He cut an extraordinarily impressive figure on the fiekl of sport. Alert and agile, he was a cricketer of considerable repute. Besides, he filled several leadership roles in the social and

ZAIL SINGH, GIANI (1916-1994), the first Punjabi to become President of the Republic of India, was born on 5 May 1916, the son of Bhai Kishan Singh and Mata Ind Kaur, a Ramgarhia couple of a small village, Sandhvan, near Kot Kapura, in the princely state of Faridkot. Kishan

ALVARINE, an Italian (Irishman, according to C. Grey`s European Adventurers of Northern India), who joined service under the Sikh Darbar in 1841. He died at Lahore soon afterwards.