AMAR SINGH (1888-1962), who came into prominence in the Gurdwara reform movement, was the eldest of the three sons of Gopal Singh of the village of Jhabal, in Amritsar district of the Punjab. His great grandfather, Gulab Singh, had served in the army of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and his

ANAND SINGH, RAI (d. 1827), vakil or agent of the Sikh kingdom, belonged to the famed Bhandan family of Batala founded by Bhag Mall, a wealthy adventurer. In 1809, Anand Singh was appointed an agent of the Sikh Darbar at Ludhiana, the British military station and political agency. He

ANDREWS, CHARLES FREER (1871-1940). Anglican missionary, scholar and educationist, was born to John Edwin Andrews on 12 February 1871 in NewcastleonTyne in Great Britain. His father was a minister of the Evangelical Anglican Church. Andrews grew up in an intense and emotional religious environment. A nearly fatal attack of rheumatic

ANGLOSIKH RELATIONS need to be traced to the transformation of the British East India Company, a commercial organization, into a political power in India . Victory at Plassey (23 June 1757) brought Bengal under the de facto control of the British, and that at Buxar (22 October 1764) made Oudh

ATA MUHAMMAD KHAN BARAKZAI, son of Painda Khan Barakzai, became the governor of Kashmir in 1809. When Shah Shuja`, the king of Afghanistan, was dethroned, he fled towards the Punjab. At Attock he was captured by the governor, Jaharidad Khan. who sent him to Kashmir to be handed over

AURANGZIB, MUHI UDDIN MUHAMMAD ALAMGIR (1618-1707), the last of the great Mughal emperors of India, ascended the throne of Delhi on 21 July 1658 after he had gained a decisive victory in the war of succession at Samugarh, near Agra, on 29 May 1658. Aurangzib`s appointment in 1636 as

BABAR, ZAHIR UD-DIN MUHAMMAD (1483-1530), soldier of fortune, founder of the Mughal dynasty in India, diarist and poet, descending in the fifth generation from Timur, was born on 14 February 1483. In June 1494, he succeeded his father, \'Umar Shaikh\', as ruler of Farghana, whose revenues supported no more than

BAGHEL SINGH (d. 1802), who succeeded in 1765 Karora Singh as leader of the Karor singhia misi or chief ship, is celebrated in Sikh history as the vanquisher of Mughal Delhi. A Dhalival Jatt, Baghel Singh arose from the village of Jhabal, in Amritsar district, to become a formidable

BANDA SINGH BAHADUR (1670-1716). eighteenth century Sikh warrior who for the first time seized territory for the Khalsa and paved the way for the ulimate conquest of the Punjab by them, was born Lachhman Dev on 27 October 1670 at Rajauri in the Punchh district of Kashmir. According to

BANTA SINGH (1890-1915). a Ghadr revolutionary, was born the son of Buta Singh in 1890 at Sangval, in Jalandhar district of the Punjab. He passed his matriculation examination from the local D.A.V. High School and left for abroad, first travelling to China and then onwards to America. In 1914,

BARELAVI, SAYYID AHMAD (1786-1831), leader of the militant Wahabi movement in India for the purification and rehabilitation of Islam, was born at Rae Bareli, in present day Uttar Pradesh, on 29 November 1786, in a Sayyid family. At school, he took more interest in sports than in studies. He attained

BAZIGARS or acrobats, a counterpart of nats outside the Punjab, are a nomadic people travelling from one place to the other, using camels and donkeys as pack animals. Earlier they had been an occupational group performing bazi, i.e. acrobatic feats, in the form of various types of jumps and other