Master Tara Singh dies

Who: Master Tara Singh, born Nanak Chand on June 24, 1885, in Haryal, Rawalpindi district. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism calls him the dominant figure on the Sikh political scene for the middle third of the twentieth century.

What: He died on November 22, 1967, aged 82, five years after the Akali Dal he led had split and more than two years after his group lost the 1965 SGPC elections. Born into a Hindu family, he took Khalsa initiation in 1902, studied at Khalsa College Amritsar and earned the title "Master" as headmaster of the Khalsa school at Lyallpur. In March 1921 he became secretary of the new SGPC and went to jail several times in the Gurdwara Reform movement. From 1930 to 1962, except for short breaks, he held the SGPC and the Akali Dal directly or through a trusted nominee, and the SGPC's own list shows him president again and again in those years.

He opposed Pakistan, the Akali Dal under him put forward the Azad Punjab scheme in 1943 and, after Partition, he led the Punjabi Suba agitations. About 12,000 were arrested in 1955, and in 1960 between 30,000 (the official count) and 57,129 (the Akali count). His fast unto death in 1961 lasted 48 days, and the Panj Piare later ordered penance because he had broken his oath. In 1962 Sant Fateh Singh set up a rival Akali Dal, and in early 1965 his group beat Tara Singh's in the SGPC elections. The state he had demanded came in 1966. In the 1967 elections his candidates won only two seats, and J.S. Grewal's study of his last year says that breaking the 1961 fast remained a heavy burden on his mind.

Where: Punjab. Live History India says he died at Amritsar; the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism does not give the place, and we found no source that settles it.

Why it mattered: The Encyclopaedia says the Punjabi Suba demand had become synonymous with Tara Singh, and that when he died the Punjabi-speaking state had come into being, making Sikhs the dominant political force there. It sums up his creed this way: the Sikhs, organised as the Panth, were a distinct community; religion and politics were inseparable in Sikhism; and a territorial state under Sikh domination was inherent in the Sikh ideology. A portrait of him was unveiled in Parliament House on August 21, 2003.