VADDA GHALLUGHARA, lit. major holocaust or carnage, so called to distinguish it from another similar disaster, Chhota (minor) Ghallughara that took place in 1746, is how a one day battle between the Dal Khalsa and Ahmad Shah Durrani fought on 5 February 1762 with a heavy toll of life is

AKAL TAKHT is the primary seat of Sikh religious authority and central altar for Sikh political assembly. Through hukamnamas, edicts or writes, it may issue decretals providing guidance or clarification on any point of Sikh doctrine or practice referred to it, may lay under penance personages charged with violation of

BASAWAN, SHAIKH, a ranked Muslim officer at Maharaja Ranjit Singh`s court, started his career as an assistant to Misr Beli Ram, who had entered the Maharaja`s service in 1809 and who in 1816 had become superintendent of the to shakhana or treasury. Basawan by dint of hard work gradually rose

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

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

JARNAIL SINGH BHINDRANVALE, SANT (1947-1984), a phenomenal figure of modern Sikhism who within his seven brief years of a total of 37, marked by a precipitous course, emerged as a man of extraordinary grit and charisma. Soon he came to be talked about in the farflung academe as well

KHALSA DIWAN AMRITSAR, established at Amritsar on 11 April 1883 to oversee and provide direction to the work of the Singh Sabha. This reform movement had originated in Amritsar with the formation of the first Singh Sabha on 1 October 1873. Singh Sabhas began springing up in other places,

MAN SINGH, JUSTICE (1887-1949), known as Bhai Man Singh up to his thirties, was born in 1887 at Ambala, now in Haryana, the youngest of the three sons of Nand Singh who had fought against the British in the second AngloSikh war (1849) and had then worked under them

SAHAJDHARl, a gradualist among Sikhs. Like other Sikhs, the Sahajdharis believe in the Ten Gurus and in the Guru Granth Sahib, though they exempt themselves from the obligation of keeping their hair unshorn. Receiving the rites of Khalsa baptism one day and maintaining long uncut hair and beard remain,

SIKH ARMY PANCHAYATS, or regimental committees, were a singularly characteristic phenomenon of the post Ranjit Singh period of Sikh rule in the Punjab. Based on the Sikh principle of equality as well as of the supremacy of sangat or the sarbatt khalsa, they wielded great power during 1841-45. Like the

SUNDAR SINGH, SANT GIANI (1883-1930), teacher of the sacred texts and exegete from whose seat in his native village the Bhindrarivala school of Sikh learning derived its name, was born on 18 August 1883, the son of Khazan Singh and Mahitab Kaur alias Tab Kaur, a devoted couple of

VAHIGURU JI KA KHALSA VAHIGURU JI KI FATEH, form of Sikh salutation, was made current among the Sikhs by command of Guru Gobind Singh at the time of the manifestation of the Khalsa in 1699. The salutation used in the days of Guru Nanak was Sati Kartar (Hail the