TARA SINGHNEHRU PACT refers to an understanding arrived at in 1959 between Master Tara Singh, the Akali leader, and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India, in order to remove certain misgivings of the Sikhs with regard to government interference in their religious affairs. Looming in the background was the

ADDAN SHAH, BHAI (1688-1757), third in succession to Bhai Kanhaiya, founder of the Sevapanthi sect, was born in 1688 in the village of Lau in Jhang district, now in Pakistan. His parents were of a devout temperament and he inherited from them a deeply religious bent of mind. He

BRAHAM GIAN (Knowledge of the Divine), by a Sevapanthi saint Gopal Das, is a treatise in Punjabi on theology. The work is unpublished and the only extant copy of the manuscript is preserved in the private collection of Dr Tarlochan Singh Bedi at Patiala. It contains 219 folios and was

Darshan Singh \'Awara\', (1906-1982)started writing verse under the impulse of the struggle for freedom in the early twenties. The tone and diction of these poems were nationalist revolutionary and they were first published in a volume named Bijii di Tarak (The Lap of Lightning). It was confiscated by the British

GILL, TEJWANT SINGH THE most promising moderncritic is Tejwant Singh Gill (1928 -). His viewpoint is rather para-Marxist, but he is cautious enough not to lose his dialectic materialist moorings. In his essay, "Lekhak Te Raj Satta" (The Writer and the State) included in his collection titled Punjabi Sabhyachar,

Shah Mohmmad is rightly acclaimed as the national poet of the Punjab in the nineteenth century at least. Though he is said to have composed a kissa, i.e. a narrative poem of love as well, he is best known for his celebrated composition: Jangnama Singhan te Frangian. With the

LACHHMAN SINGH GILL (1917-1969), Akali politician and chief minister of the Punjab for a brief term, was born at Jagraon in Ludhiana district. He started life in 1937 as a government contractor. He entered politics via the Shiromani Akali Dal of which he became a member during the Punjabi

POTHI, popular Punjabi form of the Sanskrit pustaka (book), derived from the root pust (to bind) via the Pali potlhaka and Prakrit puttha. Besides Punjabi, the word poihi meaning a book is current in Maithili, Bhojpuri and Marathi languages as well. Among the Sikhs, however, polhi signifies a sacred book,

SARDUL SINGH CAVEESHAR (1886-1963), politician, newspaper editor and author, was born at Amritsar in 1886, the son of Sardar Kirpal Singh. He studied up to M.A. level, but left college in 1909 without taking the degree. In 1913 he launched an English journal, Sikh Review, from Delhi. He came

Sarna, Mohinder Singh born in 1923 at Rawalpindi, he joined the Indian Audits and Accounts Service after his B.A. (Hons.) and retired as Accountant General (Central Revenues) in 1981. He started writing at the age of twenty, and his first collection of short stories Father de Admi (Men of

Singh, Mohan, better known as \'Divana\', is a versatile writer, a research scholar, a critic, a linguist, a short story writer, an essayist, a dramatist, a poet, a free thinker and literary giant, who, apart from Punjabi, writes in English, Hindi and Urdu also. He started his career at

TARAN SINGH (1922-1981), scholar and teacher of Sikh studies, was born on 18 February 1922, the son of Bhai Nidhan Singh Makan of village Kallar Kohar in Jehlum district (now in Pakistan). Having received his early education in the village school, he passed his Giani (Honours in Punjabi) examination of