Pingalwara (All India Pingalwara Charitable Society)

What it is: Pingalwara, in Amritsar, is a home for the destitute, sick, abandoned and disabled, run by the All India Pingalwara Charitable Society. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism calls it a unique institution in Punjab, admitting people regardless of caste or creed. It was founded by Bhagat Puran Singh.

How it began: Bhagat Puran Singh was born in 1904 at Rajewal in Ludhiana district, into a Hindu family. The Encyclopaedia says he took a vow of celibacy and went to Lahore, where he did seva at Gurdwara Dera Sahib. Pingalwara's own site dates his work in Lahore from 1924. After Partition in August 1947 he came to Amritsar and began a social service camp, and the site gives 1947 as the year Pingalwara was founded. In July 1952 it moved to a building allotted by the Punjab Government's Rehabilitation Department, and on 6 March 1967 it was registered as the All-India Pingalwara Society. The SGPC and the state government began to give money, alongside donations and collectors who gathered small coins from passengers on trains and buses.

Leaders, in order: Bhagat Puran Singh headed it until his death on 5 August 1992. Dr Inderjit Kaur, born on 25 January 1942 and a graduate of Government Medical College, Patiala (MBBS 1967), has been its patron-president since 1992, according to Pingalwara's site. In August 2024 The Tribune named Dr Jagdeep Singh as vice-president.

Key moments

• 9 June 1955: its printing press begins work, per Pingalwara's site.
• 1976 to 1977: yearly spending passes Rs 21 lakh. By 1978 more than 400 patients, disabled people and destitute women and children live there, with free meals, clothing and medical care (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism).
• 3 August 2024: Pingalwara opens special wards for abandoned patients at the Government Medical College and Sri Guru Ram Das Charitable Hospital in Amritsar, as the society marked Bhagat Puran Singh's death anniversary (The Tribune).

Where it stands: Pingalwara's site claims over 1,804 destitute patients, about 775 children educated, a press printing 50,000 pages a day and 80 books a year, and an artificial limb centre that has fitted 24,753 patients. It lists branches at Amritsar, Manawala, Goindwal, Jalandhar, Sangrur, Pandori Warraich, Chandigarh, Pamali and Delhi, and in Canada and the UK, though the same page also says it has eight branches. The Tribune called the Manawala campus on the Amritsar-Jalandhar road one of its largest facilities in March 2026.