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

SARAGARHI, BATTLE OF, a heroic action fought by a small detachment of Sikh soldiers against heavy odds, took place on 12 September 1897 in the Tirah region of North-West Frontier Province (now in Pakistan). The heroes of Saragarhi, barely 22 in number, belonged to the 36th Sikhs, since re-designated as

SARDAR, in Persian amalgam of sar (head) and dar (a suffix derived from the verb dash tan, i.e. to hold) meaning holder of headship, is an honorific signifying an officer of rank, a general or chief of a tribe or organization. Sikhs among whom, during the time of the Guru

SHAHIDGANJ AGITATION (1935-40) marked culmination of the tussle between Sikh and Muslim communities in the Punjab for the possession of a sacred site in Lahore upon which stood Gurdwara Shahidgahj (shahid = martyr, gahj = hoard, treasure or mart) in memory of Sikh martyrs of the eighteenth century and which

SIKANDARBALDEV SINGH PACT is the name popularly given to the rapprochement arrived at in 1942 between the Akalis and the Muslim dominated Unionist Party, then ruling the pre partition province of the Punjab, as a result of which the Akali nominee, Baldev Singh, joined the Unionist Cabinet under Sir Sikandar

SIKH GURDWARAS ACT, 1925, legislation passed by the Punjab Legislative Council which marked the culmination of the struggle of the Sikh people from 1920-1925 to wrest control of their places of worship from the mab-ants or priests into whose hands they had passed during the eighteenth century when the Khalsa

SIKHS AND THE TRANSFER OF POWER. The Sikhs, after the two Anglo Sikh wars, lost their kingdom and the Punjab came under the British rule in 1849. The British, by the construction of railways, roads and canals, brought the province stability. The Sikhs, along with other Punjab is, became the

SIKHS` RELATIONS WITH HILL STATES lying between the Ganga and the Chenab rivers from the time of the Gurus to the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh fluctuated from guarded friendship to open hostility. Guru Nanak (1469-1539) and later his son, Baba Sri Chand, had preached the Sikh tenets in the

SIKHS` RELATIONS WITH JATS OF BHARATPUR. Hindu Jats, who have ethnic affinity with the Sikh Jatts of the Punjab, had emerged, like the Sikhs, as a new political power in the region south of Delhi. Their first revolt in 1669 under their leader Gokul was ruthlessly suppressed by the Mughal

SIKHS` RELATIONS WITH MUGHAL EMPERORS. The Janam sakhis, traditional, accounts of the life of Guru Nanak (1469-1539), describe a meeting between him and Babar (1483-1530), founder of the Mughal dynasty, who was impressed by the former`s spiritual manner. Four of the Guru`s sabdas included in the Guru Granth Sahib allude

SIKHS` RELATIONS WITH NAWAB OF OUDH. For a whole decade prior to 1774, Sikhs had been regularly raiding and pillaging upper Ganga Yamuna Doab and Ruhilkhand bordering on Oudh. Yet they had not entered the territory of the Nawab, Shuja` udDaulah, who had become an ally of the British since

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,