BEGA, BHAI, or Bhai Vega. a Pasi Khatri of the village of Dalla, now in Kapurthala district of the Punjab. His name appears among pious and devoted Sikhs of the time of Guru Amar Das in Bhai Gurdas, Varan, XI. 16. He was among the Sikhs who waited upon

BISHAN KAUR, mother of Mata Gujari and wife of Lal Chand, was a woman gifted with good looks and fortune. Both husband and wife were the devoted Sikhs of Guru Hargobind. They were among the guests assembled to witness the nuptial ceremonies of Suraj Mall, son of Guru Hargobind.

CHHOTA GHALLUGHARA, lit. minor holocaust or carnage, as distinguished from Vadda Ghallughara (q.v.) or major massacre, is how Sikh chronicles refer to a bloody action during the severe campaign of persecution launched by the Mughal government at Lahore against the Sikhs in 1746. Early in that year, Jaspat Rai, the

DELHI SIKH GURDWARAS MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE was a byproduct of the Akali campaign for the reformation of the management of gurdwaras in the Punjab. To wrest control of the holy shrines from the hands of a corrupt and effete priestly order, the Sikhs had set up on 15 November 1920 a

FATEHNAMAH, by Bhai Dyal Singh, is a versified account of the victory (fateh, in Persian) of the Sikhs in the battle fought on Sunday, 22 Baisakh 1854 Bk/30 April 1797, against Shah Zaman`s forces led by one of his generals Ahmad Khan, also called Shahanchi Khan, in which the latter

GURU KA LANGAR (lit., langar or refectory of the Guru) is a community kitchen run in the name of the Guru. It is usually attached to a gurdwara. Langar, a Persian word, means \'an ahnshouse\', \'an asylum for the poor and the destitute\', \'a public kitchen kept by a

HUKAM SINGH, SARDAR (1895-1983), politician, parliamentarian and jurist, famous for his ready repartee, was born at Montgomery (Sahiwal) on 30 August 1895, the son of Sham Singh, a businessman of moderate means. Hukam Singh had his preliminary acquaintance with Punjabi letters at the local gurudwara and matriculated in 1913

JAVAND SINGH, one of the five Siklis who administered pdhulov the vows of Khalsa to Maharaja Dulcep Singh at Aden, belonged to the village of Barki, in Lahore district. After serving for a while as a police constable, he had retired to his village to take to farming. When

KARAM SINGH NIRMALA, nephew of Himmat Singh of the Nishanarivali chicfship, who had captured Shahabad Markanda and Isma`ilabad in January 1764 after the sack of Sirhind. On Himmat Singh`s death without issue in 1771, Karam Singh succeeded him in the leadership of the Nishanarivali misl. Karam Singh commanded a

KHALSA DIWAN LAHORE, formed on 11 April 1886 by a group of Sikhs who following a schism had severed their connections with the Khalsa Diwan Amritsar. Bhai Attar Singh, chief of Bhadaur, was named president and Bhai Gurmukh Singh chief secretary. The Diwan was formally registered with the government

LANGAH, BHAI, a well known figure in early Sikh history, was originally a follower of Sultan Sakhi Sarwar. Son of Abu ulKhair, a Dhillon Jatt with a Muslim name, belonging to the village of Jhabal, in the present Amritsar district of the Punjab, he was one of the three

MASSE KHAN RANGHAR (d. 1740), a Rarighar Rajput landlord converted to Islam, belonged to the village of MandialT, 8 km south of Amritsar. He was appointed kotwdl of Amritsar by Zakariya Khan, the Mughal governor of Lahore (1726-45), after the death of Qazi `Abdur Rahman who had met his end