MATHRA SINGH, DOCTOR (1883-1917), patriot and revolutionary, was born the son of Hari Singh, a Kohli Khatri, and Bhag Sudhi, at Dhudial in Pakistan. He attended the village primary school and passed his Matriculation examination from the Khalsa High School at Chakval. In 1901, he joined a pharmaceutical firm at

MOHAN SINGH TUR, JATHEDAR (1915-1979), cminest Akali politician, was born at village Tur in Tarn Taran tahsil of Amritsar in 1915, the son of Jagat Singh, an Akali activist of the Akali Lahir (Gurdwara Reform movement) of the early 1920`s and a member of the first Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak

PARTAP SINGH KAIRON (1901-1965). political leader of wide influence and chief minister of the Punjab from 1956 to 1964, was born on 1 October 1901 in the village of Kairon, in Amritsar district of the Punjab, in a farming family of modest means. His father Nihal Singh, who had

PATIALA AND EAST PUNJAB STATES UNION, popularly known as PEPSU, formed on 5 May 1948 by merging together of eight East Punjab princely states of Patiala, Jind, Nabha, Kapurthala, Faridkot, Kalsia, Malerkotia and Nalagarh, was formally inaugurated on 15 July 1948 by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Deputy Prime Minister of

PRATAP SINGH, MAHARAJA (1919-1995). Tall and handsome, His Highness Maharaja Sir Pratap Singh, Malvendra Bahadur, was the ruler of the princely state of Nabha. The state ceased to be in 1948 when a new and larger political unit called Patiala and East Punjab States Union, short PEPSU, came into

PUNJABI SUBA MOVEMENT, a long drawn political agitation launched by the Sikhs demanding the creation of Punjabi Suba or Punjabi speaking state in the Punjab. At Independence it was commonly recognized that the Indian states then comprising the country did not have any rational or scientific basis. They were more

BALDEV SINGH (1902-1961), industrialist, politician and the first Defence Minister of India at Independence was born on 11 July 1902. of a Sikh family of ChokarJatts at the village of Dummna, in Ropar district of the Punjab. His father, Inder Singh, who started life as a government official in

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

BELI RAM (d. 1843). head of the royal to shakhana at Lahore, was the second of the five sons of Misr Divan Chand, a general in Maharaja Ranjit Singh`s army. He joined the Maharaja`s treasury in 1809 and within seven years rose to occupy the highest position in it.

SWARAN SINGH (1907-1994). Tall and wiry, Sardar Swaran Singh, was born on 19 August 1907 in a farming family of the village of Shankar in Jalandhar district. He was married to Charan Kaur (1925). The family laid much store by education. One of the two sons was sent up to

BIJAYBINOD, a chronicle in Punjabi verse of the turbulent period following the death in 1839 of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the sovereign of the Punjab, written according to internal evidence in 1901 Bk/AD 1844. The only known manuscript of the work, still unpublished, is preserved in the private collection of Bhai

YAHIYA KHAN, the eldest son of Nawab Zakariya Khan, became governor of Lahore under the Mughals in 1745 after the death of his father. He continued his father\'s policy of repression against the Sikhs. During his regime, a fracas between a band of Sikh horsemen and the State constabulary resulted