SURAHI (SURABHI, SURAHA) Your gait is that of Suraha (Surahi, Surabhi) and the hair on your tail glitter (Basant Kabir, p. 1196) Comments : The word \'Suraha\' seems to be a derivative from Surabhi, \'the boon granting or wish-rulfilling cow\'. In the hymn pertaining to the above reference, Kabir has addressed a dog, who was seen licking the flour from the handmill. Instead of the word Surabhi the word Kamadhenu has been used in the Sikh Scripture. See : Kamadhenu.
TARA SINGH, SARDAR (1888-1956), lawyer, legislator and judge, was born in 1888, the son of Pratap Singh Gill of Moga, a district town of the Punjab. Having matriculated from a local high school in 1903, he graduated from Khalsa College, Amritsar, in 1907 and obtained his law degree from the Panjab University, Lahore, in 1910. He started legal practice at Firozpur but soon shifted to his native Moga. His interest in local civic affairs, besides his professional work, soon made him popular. He also took active interest in the Gurdwara Reform movement launched in 1920 and participated in the Jaito morcha which commenced in August 1923.
THAKUR SINGH SANDHANVALIA (1837-1887), one of the founders of the Singh Sabha and a scion of the Sandharivalia family, who masterminded the campaign for the restoration of Maharaja Duleep Singh to the throne of the Punjab, was son of Lahina Singh, who in the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singhenjoyed the title of Ujjaldidar, Nirmalbuddh, Sardaribawaqar (resplendent presence, pure of intellect, the Sardar with prestige marked). Born in 1837, in a Punjab which was soon to fall into chaos as a result of courtly intrigue and murder, Thakur Singh was a mere child of six at the time of his father`s death.
UNITY CONFERENCE, convened on 3 November 1932 at Allahabad by a small group of Hindu and Muslim leaders led by Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya and Maulana Shaukat `All, to which were invited delegates representing a broad spectrum of Indian religious communities, interest groups, and political organizations, aimed at drafting agreements concerning Indian constitutional advance and political representation in provincial and central legislatures.
VISAKHA SINGH, SANT (1905-1968), holy preacher of the Sikh faith, was born at the village of Janetpura, in Ludhiana district, on 13 April 1903, the son of Karam Singh and Kahn Kaur, though most of his adult life was spent at Kishanpura, in Firozpur district. He had his early education at the village gurdwara where he learnt to read the Guru Granth Sahib and recite kirtan. The massacre of reformist Sikhs in the shrine at Nankana Sahib on 20 February 1921 proved a turning point in his life. He received the rites of Khalsa initiation at the Akal Takht at Amritsar and plunged into the Akali movement for the reform of Sikh shrines.
ABBOTT, SIR JAMES (1807-1896), British Resident\'s assistant at Lahore, capital of the sikh kingdom, after the first Anglo - Sikh war (1845-46), was born on 12 March 1807, the son of Henry Alexius Abbott. Passing out of the military college of the East India Company at Addiscombe, England, Abbott received commission as a second lieutenant in the Bengal artillery in 1823. In November 1830, he joined the army of the Indus, under Sir John Keane, for the invasion of Afghanistan. In 1842, he was appointed assistant to the British Resident at Indore.
AMIR SINGH, GIANI (1870-1954), a widely revered Sikh school man, was born in 1870 at the village of Dargahi Shah in Jhang district, now in Pakistan. His parents, Prem Singh and Thakari Devi, a religious minded couple of modest means, admitted him at the age of 15 to Mahant Jawahar Singh Sevapanthi`s dera or monastery, in Sattovali Gali in Amritsar, to learn Sikh sacred music and scriptures. After the death, in 1888, of Mahant Jawahar Singh, Amir Singh had his further education and religious training under Mahant Uttam Singh, the new head of the dera, and later from Giani Bhagvan Singh and Giani Bakhshish Singh, both noted men of letters of their time. Soon Giani Amir Singh`s scholarship came to be acknowledged. Mahant Uttam Singh, head of the dera, chose him his successor during his own lifetime.
ARDAS, supplication and recollection, is the ritual prayer which Sikhs, individually or in congregation, recite morning and evening and in fact whenever they perform a religious service and at the beginning and conclusion of family, public or religious functions. The word ardas seems to have been derived from Persian `arzdasht, meaning a petition, a memorial or an address to a superior authority. The Sikh ardas is rendered to God Almighty in a supplicatory mood standing in front of the Guru Granth Sahib or, where the Guru Granth Sahib is not present, standing in a similarly reverential posture.
AURANGZIB, MUHI UDDIN MUHAMMAD ALAMGIR (1618-1707), the last of the great Mughal emperors of India, ascended the throne of Delhi on 21 July 1658 after he had gained a decisive victory in the war of succession at Samugarh, near Agra, on 29 May 1658. Aurangzib`s appointment in 1636 as viceroy of the Mughal provinces in the Deccan had first brought him into prominence. In 1645, he was transferred to Gujarat. Between 1648 and 1652, he served as governor of Sindh and Multan.
