BELI RAM (d. 1843). head of the royal to shakhana at Lahore, was the second of the five sons of Misr Divan Chand, a general in Maharaja Ranjit Singh`s army. He joined the Maharaja`s treasury in 1809 and within seven years rose to occupy the highest position in it.

SWARAN SINGH (1907-1994). Tall and wiry, Sardar Swaran Singh, was born on 19 August 1907 in a farming family of the village of Shankar in Jalandhar district. He was married to Charan Kaur (1925). The family laid much store by education. One of the two sons was sent up to

BIJAYBINOD, a chronicle in Punjabi verse of the turbulent period following the death in 1839 of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the sovereign of the Punjab, written according to internal evidence in 1901 Bk/AD 1844. The only known manuscript of the work, still unpublished, is preserved in the private collection of Bhai

YAHIYA KHAN, the eldest son of Nawab Zakariya Khan, became governor of Lahore under the Mughals in 1745 after the death of his father. He continued his father\'s policy of repression against the Sikhs. During his regime, a fracas between a band of Sikh horsemen and the State constabulary resulted

CHIRAGH DIN, FAQlR (d. 1851). son of Faqir Aziz udDin, foreign minister to Maharaja Ranjit Singh, was governor of Jasrota. a small principality in the Sivalik hills, and was shortly afterwards placed in attendance on Prince Kharak Singh. In 1842, he succeeded his brother, Shah Din, as the Sikh

ZAIL SINGH, GIANI (1916-1994), the first Punjabi to become President of the Republic of India, was born on 5 May 1916, the son of Bhai Kishan Singh and Mata Ind Kaur, a Ramgarhia couple of a small village, Sandhvan, near Kot Kapura, in the princely state of Faridkot. Kishan

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