AMAR SINGH WASU (1884-1932), Akali activist and journalist, was born Ganga Ram at the village of Wasu, in Gujrat district, now in Pakistan, in 1884, the son of Ladha Mall and Lachhmi Devi. Under the influence of the Singh Sabha movement, the family went through the Sikh initiatory rites,

BHANDARA SINGH, a shopkeeper of Sirhind, was a devotee of Guru Gobind Singh. According to Bhai Santokh Singh, Sn Gur Pratap Suraj Granth, he received the vows of the Khalsa on the historic Baisakhi day of 1699.

DAL SINGH, BHAI (1885-1921), one of the Nankana Sahib martyrs, was born on 8 Assu 1942 Bk / 23 September 1885, the son of Bhai Musadda Singh and Mat Gulabi, a Kamboj couple of Nizampur village in Amritsar district. The family later migrated to Chakk No. 38 Nizampur Deva

GOBIND SINGH, GURU (1666-1708), the tenth and the last Guru or Prophet teacher of the Sikh faith, was born Gobind Rai on Poh sudi 7, 1723 Bk/22 December 1666 at Patna, in Bihar. His father, Guru Tegh Bahadur, the Ninth Guru, was then travelling across Bengal and Assam. Returning to

JATHA, from Sanskrit yutha meaning a herd, flock, multitude, troop, band or host, signifies in the Sikh tradition a band of volunteers coming forth to carry out a specific task, be it armed combat or a peaceful and nonviolent agitation. It is not clear when the term jathd first gained

KHALSA DIWAN MAJHA, an association of reformist Sikhs representing the districts of Lahore, Amritsar and Gurdaspur, was set up in 1904. The Singh Sabha movement had created among the Sikhs a new consciousness for the need to reform their religious and social practices. Early in 1904, Risaldar Basant Singh of

MANGAL SINGH KIRPAN BAHADUR, BHAI (1895-1921), one of the Nankana Sahib martyrs was born in 1895, the son of Bhai Ratia and Mat Hukmi in the village of Uddokc, in Gurdaspur district. He lost both of his parents while yet a small child, and grew up in very adverse circumstances

NIRANJAN SINGH, PROFESSOR (1892-1979), educationist and writer, was born in 1892, the youngest of the five sons of Bhai Gopi Chand and Mai Mulan Devi, a Sahijdhari Sikh couple of the village of Harial in Gu|jarkhan tahsil, Rawalpindi district (now in Pakistan). His father died in 1901 and his brothers,

SAHIB SINGH, PROFESSOR (1892-1977), grammarian and theologian, was born on 16 February 1892 in a Hindu family of the village of Phattevali in Sialkot district of undivided Punjab. He was originally named Natthu Ram by his father, Hiranand, who kept a small shop in the village. Soon the family shifted

SIKH STUDENTS FEDERATION. A front of the Sikh youth studying in schools, colleges and universities formed in 1944, at Lahore, with Sarup Singh, then a senior law student, as president. Its primary object was the promotion among the Sikh youth of the Sikh priciples and values and to bring to

TANKHAHNAMA, by Bhai Nand Lal, is a Sikh penal code laying down punishments and fines for those guilty of religious misconduct. Tankhah, a Persian word, actually means salary, reward or profit, and nama, also Persian denoting an epistle, a code or a catalogue. In Sikh usage, however, tankhah stands for

VIR SINGH. BHAI (1872-1957), poet, scholar and exegete, was a major figure in the Sikh renaissance and in the movement for the revival and renewal of Punjabi literary tradition. His identification with all the important concerns of modern Sikhism was so complete that he came to be canonized as Bhai,