BIKRAM SINGH, RAJA (1842-1898). born in January 1842, succeeded his father, Wazir Singh, to the throne of Faridkot state in 1874. A dominant figure in Faridkot history, Raja Bikram Singh modernized the state administration. He employed retired British officials of experience and in 1875 set up offices and courts

GHULLA SINGH, BHAI (d. 1924), one of the martyrs of Jaito, was born around 1896, the son of Bhai Narain Singh and Mat Kishan Kaur, a Jatt Sikh couple of the village of Bhalur, near Bagha Purana, in present day Faridkot district of the Punjab. Tall and heavily built,

KISHAN KAUR, MAI (1860-1952), known for her fearless role in the Jaito agitation, was the daughter of Suba Singh and Mat Sobhari of the village of Lohgarh in Ludhiana district of the Punjab. The family, goldsmith by profession, later migrated to Daudhar in Moga tahsil of present day Faridkot

PREM SUMARAG, lit. the true way to love (/w?w=love; 5M=good or true; warag^path) is an anonymous work in old Punjabi evoking a model of Sikh way of life and of Sikh society. Written probably in the eighteenth century, it is a kind of rahitndmd attempting to prescribe norms of behaviour,

SANHSIS, also called Sansis, Sainsis and Bhatus, are a nomadic people counted among one of the Scheduled Tribes in the Constitution of India which entitles them to certain special rights and privileges. They claim descent from one of the Aryan tribes entering India centuries ago. Some of the immigrants

BILAVAL KI VAR, by Guru Ram Das, is one of his eight vars in a corpus of twenty-two included in the Guru Granth Sahib. It occurs in Raga Bilaval, and consists of thirteen pauris or stanzas, each comprising five lines, with the exception of pauri 10 which is of

GIAN SINGH RAREVALA (1901-1979), administrator and politician, was born on 16 December 1901 at his mother`s village Bhari in Ludhiana district. His own ancestral village was Rara, also in Ludhiana district, where his father Ratan Singh was a bisveddr (fiefholder) of the former princely state of Patiala. Gian Singh

LAKHISAR, a small habitation in the neighbourhood of Goniana Mandi (30°18`N, 74°54`E) in Bathinda district of the Punjab, is famous for the historical shrine, Gurdwara Lakkhi Jangal, raised in honour of Guru Gobind Singh. According to Sikh tradition,the name Lakkhi Jangal was given this semi desert tract by Guru

PUAT, is an old village in Ludhiana district, 8 km east of Machhivara (30°55`N, 76°12`E). Guru Gobind Singh passed through this village after quitting Chamkaur on the night of 7 December 1705. but there was no Sikh shrine constructed here. It was only after the migrations of 1947 that

SARUP SINGH, RAJA (1812-1864), son of Karam Singh of Bazidpur and a collateral of Raja Sangat Sihgh (1811-34) of Jind who had died childless, ascended the gaddi of Jind in April 1837. The gap between the death of Raja Sangat Singh and die assumption of the dirone by Raja

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

GURU NANAK VIDYAK SOCIETY, established in Bombay in July 1947 by the Deccan Khalsa Diwan, and registered with the Registrar of Companies on 27 March 1948 to provide educational facilities for the children of refugee families migrating to Bombay from riotaffected areas in the north. Funds were raised through voluntary