AVTAR SINGH AZAD Avtar Singh \'Azad\', (1906 - 1972) the minor Punjabi poet, is not deserving of notice. Before independence, he had published four collections of poems, Swant Bundan (Drops of Bliss), Savan Pinghan (The Swings of Savan), Vishva Vedna (Plight of the World) and Kansoan (Intimations), and published a translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam under the title of Khayyam Khumari (Inebriations of Khayyam). His style is rhetorical in the way of most Urdu poetry.
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BHAG SINGH, BHAI (1880-1921), one of the Nankana Sahib martyrs, was born in 1880, the son of Bhai Amir Singh and Mai Nihal Kaur of village Nizampur, in Amritsar district. The family later shifted to Chakk No. 38 Deva Singhvala, in the newly developed canal colony of Sheikhupura. Bhag Singh`s boyhood and early youth were spent as a common peasant until at the age of 26 when he enlisted in 124th Baloch Battalion. After ten years of service he retired on pension (two rupees per month). He joined the colours again during the First Great War (1914-18) but was wounded and discharged on medical grounds. He rejoined the army but came back home within six months, demobilized at the end of the war. Next, he stood among the ranks of the Akali reformists falling a martyr in the Nankana Sahib massacre on 20 February 1921. See NANKANA SAHIB MASSACRE
