VADHAVA SINGH, BHAl (d. 1924), son of Bhai Jhanda Singh, Gill Jatt, and Mat Dharam Kaur of village Gharik. He was the only son of his parents. He never married. He was illiterate, and had strong religious inclinations. At the age of 40, he took the vows of the Khalsa

BHAGVAN SINGH LAUNGOVALIA (d. 1944), patriot, Akali activist and one of the founders of the Praja Mandal, a platform meant to provide voice to the people of Indian states ruled by Indian princes during British times to ventilate their grievances and protest against the oppression, misrule and extravagances of

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,

ISHAR SINGH MARHANA (1878-1941), Akali activist and Ghadr revolutionary, was born on 1 January 1878, younger of the two sons of BhaIJind Singh, a SandhuJatt, and Mai Chand Kaur, of farming stock of the village of Marhana, near Tarn Taran, in Ainritsar district of the Punjab. He learnt Gurmukhi

PANJAB RIYASTI PRAJA MANDAL (riydsti=of the princely states; praja= subjects, people; mandat=society, party), an organization of the people of the Punjab princely states established in 1928 to work for securing to them civil liberties and political rights. In what was then known as British India, the Indian National Congress had

SHER SINGH, GIANI (1890-1944), political leader, orator and newspaper editor, was born the son of Varyam Singh and Nand Kaur at the village of Thikrivala, now in Sangrur district of the Punjab, .in January 1890. An attack of smallpox when he was barely two years old left him totally

VARYAM SINGH. BHAI (1870-1921), one of the Nankana Sahib martyrs, was the second of the four sons of Bhai Bhag Singh and Mai Chand Kaur, Kamboj landowners of Nizampur village, about 8 km east of Amritsar. The family later migrated to Nizampur Chelevala in Sheikh upura district (now in Pakistan).

AKALI, a term now appropriated by members of the dominant Sikh political party, the Shiromani Akali Dal, founded in 1920, and groups splitting from it from time to time, was earlier used for Nihangs (q.v.), an order of armed religious zealots among the baptized Sikhs. The word Nihang is

BHAI PHERU, GURDWARA (also called Gurdwara Sangat Sahib), named after its founder, the well known Udasi Sikh preacher Bhai Pherii (1640-1706), is located at Mien ki Maur, in Chuniari tahsil of Lahore district in Pakistan. During Sikh times, large endowments in land extending to about 2,750 acres were inscribed to

GOPAL SINGH (1883-1941), an Akali reformer, was born in November 1883 at the village of Sagari, in Rawalpindi district, now in Pakistan. His father, Sundar Singh (d. 1895) was a small shopkeeper. Within three years of Gopal Singh`s father`s death, his two elder brothers also passed away and the

LABH SINGH. BABU (1895-1947), Akali politician, was born in 1895 at the village of Lasara, in Jalandhar district, the son of Dula Singh. He spent his early youth at Quetta and passed his Matriculation examination from the high school there. In 1914, he took up service in the army