PARTAP SINGH. GIANI (1855-1920), Sikh school-man and calligraphist, was born in 1855, the son of Bhai Bhag Singh Giani of Lahore. As a young boy, Partap Singh learnt Punjabi, Urdu and Sanskrit and studied Sikh Scriptures. In 1884, he accompanied Thakur Singh Sandhanvalia to England to read the Guru Granth Sahib to the deposed Sikh ruler of the Punjab, Maharaja Duleep Singh. Partap Singh remained in England for six months. On return to India, he worked as a granthi, scripturereader, at Gurdwara Kaulsar in Amritsar.
POONA RESIDENCY CORRESPONDENCE is an English rendering, in several volumes, of selections from the Persian records of the Peshwa Dafiar, a collection of British official records of the Resident`s transactions concerning the cis Sutlej region. Prior to the establishment of the Delhi Residency (1803) and the Ludhiana Agency (1809), the British Resident with the Scindia at Fatehgarh was responsible for all such political transactions. The correspondence contains information, sometimes trivial, even conjectural, about the Sikhs before and after 1800.Mr Collins, who was .
RAM SINGH, CAPTAIN (1864-1949), soldier and Akali politician, was born the son of Nattha Singh of Sunam, now in Sarigrur district of the Punjab. His father had served in the army of the Sikh rulers of Lahore and later in the British Indian army. Born in 1864, Ram Singh spent his early life in his native village where he received his early education. As he grew up, he enlisted in the Patiala state army, but soon left it to join 15th Sikh Battalion of the Indian army on 15 April 1882. He served meritoriously in the Sudan campaigns of 1884-85 and 1897-98 and on the North-West Frontier of India, rising steadily in rank and becoming a Subedar Major and Honorary Captain by the time he retired in 1908.
ROUND TABLE CONFERENCES, held in London during 1930-32, were a series of high level meetings attended by representatives of the British government, rulers of Indian princely states and leaders of public opinion in British India to discuss proposals for introducing further constitutional reforms in India on the basis of the Simon Commission`s report. The adjectival term `round table`, reminding one of the Arthurian legends, has been defined as "pertaining to a conference, discussion or deliberation in which each participant has equal status.
SAKA PANJA SAHIB, the heroic event which took place at Hasan Abdal railway station, close to the sacred shrine of Pahja Sahib on the morning of 30 October 1922 and which has since passed into folklore as an instance of Sikh courage and resolution. A nonviolent morcha or agitation to assert the right to felling trees for Guru ka Langar from the land attached to Gurdwara Guru ka Bagh in Amritsar district, already taken over from the priests by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee after a negotiated set dement, had started on 8 August 1922. At first Sikh volunteers were arrested and tried for trespass, but from 25 August police resorted to beating day after day the batches of Sikhs that came.This went on till 13 September when, on the intervention of the Punjab Governor, the beating stopped and the procedure of arrests resumed.
SHAH ZAMAN, son of Taimur Shah and grandson of Ahmad Shah Durrani, became the ruler of Afghanistan in May 1793 at the age of 23. As soon as Shah Zaman came to the throne, he proclaimed his intention of reestablishing the Afghan sway in India. His first attempt to conquer India brought him as far as Hasan Abdal; he had to return to Afghanistan to put down a revolt by his brother, Mahmud. Two years later he was back in the Punjab again and, in addition to retaking Hasan Abdal, he captured Rohtas from the Sukkar chakkias, Ranjit Singh thus being the first Sikh chieftain to suffer aggression at his hands. Once again Shah Zaman had to return home, this time to prevent an invasion of his own country from me west.
SIKH ARCHITECTURE, style and design of building conspicuously popular among the Sikhs, is owed primarily to their religious monuments. Their secular edifices such as fortresses, palaces, samadhs (mausoleums built over places of cremation), havelis (fortified houses), bungas (residential cum educational houses ), educational institutions, etc, are no different from the contemporary style which is generally a mixture of Mughal and Rajput architecture, or as Percy Browne, an art historian, has described, a late form of the Mughal style of architecture.
SIMON COMMISSION, designated after the name of its chairman, Sir John Simon (1873-1954), was constituted in 1927 as a royal parliamentary commission. As proposed by the Viceroy, Lord Irwin (later Halifax), all of its seven members were British, selected from among the members of the two Houses of Parliament. However, only the chairman of the Commission was at the time of his appointment a statesman of the first rank who was well known in India. The other members of the Commission were : Baron Strathcona, Edward C.G. Cadogan, and George R. Lane Fox, all three Conservatives; Viscount Burnham, a Unionist; and Vernon Hartshorn and Clement R. Attlee, Socialist or Labour.