SOBHA SINGH (1901-1986), painter, famous especially for his portraits of the Gurus, was born on 29 November 1901 in a Ramgarhia family of Sri Hargobindpur, in Gurdaspur district of the Punjab. His father, Deva Singh, had been in the Indian cavalry. At the age of 15, Sobha

AKALI SAHAYAK BUREAU, lit. a bureau to help (sahayak, from Skt. sahaya, one who lends one company or support) the Akalis, then engaged in a bitter struggle for the reformation of the management of their places of worship, was a small office set up at Amritsar in 1923 by the

GOBINDGARH FORT, raised in the lime of Maharaja Ranjit Singh on the ruins of an old fortress built at Amritsar by Guj[jar Singh (d. 1788) of the Bharigi clan, was named in honour of Guru Gobind Singh. The Fort took four years, 1805-09, to build. According to

Kalepani, Diwan Singh passed his Matriculation in 1916 and in 1921 he got the diploma in Medical Service from Agra and joined the Medical Corps of the Indian Army. The most important period of life began when he was transferred to Rangoon, from where he was transferred to the

Singh, Sujan was born in 1909 at Dera Baba Nanak, Gurdaspur and died on 21st April 1983 in Amritsar, Punjab. He spent his early childhood in Bengal with his father who was a contractor there. After the death of his father when he was just 11 years old, he

AMRITA SHERGIL (1913-1941), colourful and innovative painter of modern India, was born on 30 January 1913 in Budapest, Hungary. Her father, Umrao Singh Sher Gil, scholar and savant, learned in Sanskrit as well as in Persian, came of an old Sikh family of the village of Majitha, in Amritsar

GURDIAL SINGH DHILLON (1915-1992), parliamentarian, diplomat and statesman, was a scion of the Bhangi Sardars who had ruled over the central Punjab during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Born at Sarhali, in Jalandhar district of the Punjab, at his ndnke, mother`s village, on 6 August 1915, the

Kanwal, Kesar Singh is a femous short story writer of this period who has pursued the same tendency of reforming certain evils of our society. By going through the stories of his collection Prem Dian Tahngha one feels that no doubt in his aim he is one with other short

SURSURI The moon abides in the forehead of Shankra (Shiva) and batnes in Sursuri (Ganges). (Dhanasari Trilochan, p-695) If the water of Sursuri becomes wine, the saints even then do not drink it; the impure wine and other waters, when they mix with the waters of Sursuri, they do

Singh, Takhat, an eminent poet, was born in 1914 and died in 1990. He entered the field of Punjabi poetry via Urdu in which he commands a considerable reputation. As a consequence of his training in Urdu, he has written mostly ghazals. In fact, he has brought the ghazal

ASCETICISM, derived from the Greek word askesis, connotes the `training` or `exercise` of the body and the mind. Asceticism or ascetic practices belong to the domain of religious culture, and fasts, pilgrimages, ablutions, purificatory rituals, vigils, abstinence from certain foods and drinks, primitive and strange dress, nudity, uncut hair, tonsure.

GURDIT SINGH, BABA (1861-1954), patriot of Komagata Maru fame, was born in 1861, into a Sandhu Sikh family of Sarhali, a village in Amritsar district. Gurdit Singh`s grandfather had served in the Sikh army as an officer but his father, Hukam Singh, was a small farmer of moderate means.