JASWANT SINGH, BHAGAT (1881-1967), prominent in the Gurdwara Reform movement of 1920-25, was born at Rawalpindi, now in Pakistan, on 15 Poh 1938 Bk/27 December 1881, the son of Chaudhari Sayan Singh. After matriculating from Mission School, Rawalpindi, he passed his B.A. examination from Gordon College, Rawalpindi. In 1921,

SINGH SABHA MOVEMENT, a reform movement among the Sikhs which assuming a critical turn in the seventies of the nineteenth century, became a vitally rejuvenating force at a time when Sikhism was fast losing its distinctive identity. Following closely upon the two successive movements, Nirankari and Namdhari, it was an

JAVALA SINGH, son of Desa Singh of Raja Sarisi, in Amritsar district, accompanied Thakur Singh Sandharivalia to England in 1884 to call on the deposed sovereign of the Punjab, Dulccp Singh, and stayed there for nine months as the Maharaja`s guest. In February 1887,Javala Singh joined Thakur Singh in

THAKAR SINGH, DOCTOR (1885-1945), a Ghadr activist who also took part in the Akali movement of 1920-25, was the son of Sher Singh of Ikulaha, a village 6 km southwest of Kharina (30"42`N, 76°13`E) in Ludhiana district of die Punjab. He was an undergraduate at Khalsa College, Amritsar, when he

KUKAS or NAMDHARIS, the name given to the members of a sectarian group that arose among the Sikhs towards the close of the nineteenth century. Kuk, in Punjabi, means a scream or shout. While chanting the sacred hymns at their religious congregations, the adherents of the new order broke into

MAHANT, originally the superior of a math or any other similar religious establishment. In the Punjab of early Sikhism, its characteristic usage referred to the leaders of Nath deras. The term acquired a distinctive Sikh application during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, period during which many Sikh gurdwaras passed into

MALUK SINGH converted to the Kuka or Namdhari faith in 1864. With a band of 50 of his companions, he set up what he called a Kuka government in his village, Tharajvala, in Firozpur district, by declaring British rule as having ended. He was arrested and imprisoned for this.

MANGAL SINGH, a Risaldar in the erstwhile princely state of Patiala, was born in 1842, the son of jagirdar Hira Singh. He was arrested in 1872 for his alleged involvement in the attack by the Kukas on the butchers of Malerkotia, and was imprisoned at Allahabad.

AKALI MOVEMENT, variously known as Gurdwara Reform Movement or Gurdwara Agitation is how Sikh\'s long drawn campaign in the early twenties of the twentieth century for the liberation of their gurdwaras or holy shrines is described. The campaign which elicited enthusiastic support, especially, from the rural masses, took the

MIAN KHIMA, Maharaja Duleep Singh`s favorite Muhammadan attendant who had served him since his childhood. He came with the Maharaja to Fatehgarh after the latter was dethroned and exiled from Lahore by the British in 1849. At Fatehgarh he was replaced by Bhajan Lal, an English educated young Brahman

BABAR AKALI MOVEMENT, a radical outgrowth of the Akali movement for the reform of Sikh places of worship during the early 1920\'s. The latter, aiming to have the shrines released from the control of priests who had become lax and effete over the generations, was peaceful in its character

MORCHA, in Persian murchah or murchal meaning entrenchments, fortification or battlefront, has, apart from its usage in military strategy, entered Indian political vocabulary via the Gurdwara Reform or Akali movement of the early 1920`s. In that prolonged agitation for the liberation of Sikh historical shrines from the control of a