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.

KOMAGATA MARU, a Japanese tramp steamer, renamed Guru Nanak Jahaz, launched from Hong Kong by Baba Gurdit Singh (1860-1954), an adventurous Sikh businessman, to take a batch of Indian emigrants to Canada. This was done to circumvent the new Canadian Immigration Ordinances which, aiming to stop the influx of