DEVA SINGH, SIR (1834-1890), a highranking Patiala state administrator, was born in 1834 into an Arora Sikh family, the son of Colonel Khushal Singh, a brave soldier who had once killed a tiger (sher, in Punjabi) near one of the city gates conferring upon it the name Sheranvala which lasts

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

JALLA. PANDIT (d. 1844), a Brahman priest of Jammu, who, assigned tutor to Hira Singh Dogra when he was a small boy, remained his lifelong companion and became his adviser and deputy as he assumed the office of prime minister of the Sikh kingdom in September 1843. Jalla completely

JODHA RAM (d. 1845), a Brahman of Jammu hills, was the father in law of Pandit Jalla, adviser and confidant of Raja Hira Singh Dogra, who became in 1843 the prime minister of the Sikh kingdom of Lahore. It was Jodha Ram who captured Jawahar Singh, brother of Maharani

JOGENDRA SINGH, SIR (1877-1946). scholar and statesman of old Sikh lineage, and counted among the politest and most accomplished men of his day, was born the second son of Javala Singh on 25 May 1877 at Aira Estate, in Kheri district of what then used to be the United

LAL KAUL, PANDIT (d. 1849), a Kashmiri Brahman, served the Amir of Afghanistan before entering Maharaja Ranjit Singh`s service. He look part in the Sikh expedition to Kashmir in 1819 under Misl Divan Chand. After this he was for three years employed as governor of Multan, and was subsequently appointed

MATHRA SINGH, DOCTOR (1883-1917), patriot and revolutionary, was born the son of Hari Singh, a Kohli Khatri, and Bhag Sudhi, at Dhudial in Pakistan. He attended the village primary school and passed his Matriculation examination from the Khalsa High School at Chakval. In 1901, he joined a pharmaceutical firm at

MOHAN SINGH TUR, JATHEDAR (1915-1979), cminest Akali politician, was born at village Tur in Tarn Taran tahsil of Amritsar in 1915, the son of Jagat Singh, an Akali activist of the Akali Lahir (Gurdwara Reform movement) of the early 1920`s and a member of the first Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak

PARTAP SINGH KAIRON (1901-1965). political leader of wide influence and chief minister of the Punjab from 1956 to 1964, was born on 1 October 1901 in the village of Kairon, in Amritsar district of the Punjab, in a farming family of modest means. His father Nihal Singh, who had

PATIALA AND EAST PUNJAB STATES UNION, popularly known as PEPSU, formed on 5 May 1948 by merging together of eight East Punjab princely states of Patiala, Jind, Nabha, Kapurthala, Faridkot, Kalsia, Malerkotia and Nalagarh, was formally inaugurated on 15 July 1948 by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Deputy Prime Minister of

PRATAP SINGH, MAHARAJA (1919-1995). Tall and handsome, His Highness Maharaja Sir Pratap Singh, Malvendra Bahadur, was the ruler of the princely state of Nabha. The state ceased to be in 1948 when a new and larger political unit called Patiala and East Punjab States Union, short PEPSU, came into

PUNJABI SUBA MOVEMENT, a long drawn political agitation launched by the Sikhs demanding the creation of Punjabi Suba or Punjabi speaking state in the Punjab. At Independence it was commonly recognized that the Indian states then comprising the country did not have any rational or scientific basis. They were more