Baba Avtar Singh Nirankari

Baba Avtar Singh was the second head of the Sant Nirankari movement, a body that mainstream Sikhs hold to be outside the Panth. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism stresses that it is not to be mixed up with the Nirankari Sikhs of Rawalpindi. It says the founder, Buta Singh, was once a member of the Nirankari Darbar at Rawalpindi, and that Avtar Singh succeeded him and, after Partition, migrated to Delhi and set up a centre there.

The Mission's account: The Sant Nirankari Mission's own page says Baba Avtar Singh was born at Latifal village in present-day Pakistan on 31 December 1899, and that in 1943 Baba Buta Singh handed over to him. It says that after the 1947 partition he established the Sant Nirankari Mandal in Delhi, which gave the expanding mission an administrative structure; that he gave his message through the Sampuran Avtar Vani and worked to free people from ritualism and superstition; that in 1962 he entrusted the mission's responsibility to Baba Gurbachan Singh; and that he died on 17 September 1969.

The SGPC's account: The SGPC's white paper "They Massacre Sikhs", reproduced in the second volume of Gurmit Singh's History of Sikh Struggles, takes a hostile view. It calls his followers "pseudo-Nirankaris" and says Avtar Singh made a living baking bread and selling it as a pedlar in Peshawar until 1947, when he migrated to Delhi as a refugee, where he rented a tenement in the Paharganj area. Its central charge is doctrinal: that the sect's first tenet is belief that Avtar Singh and, after him, his son Gurbachan Singh is God Almighty in human form. It says he proclaimed his son, then aged 41, to be God before his death in 1969. These are the SGPC's claims against a rival body, and the Mission's own account says nothing of them.

• 31 December 1899: born at Latifal, the Mission says.
• 1943: Baba Buta Singh hands over to him, the Mission says.
• After 1947: he moves to Delhi and sets up a centre there; the Mission says he founded the Sant Nirankari Mandal.
• 1962: he entrusts the mission's responsibility to Baba Gurbachan Singh.
• 17 September 1969: he dies.

The two dates that can look like a conflict, 1962 and 1969, fit together: 1962 is when the Mission says he handed over responsibility, and 1969 is when it says he died. He is remembered in Sikh history as the head of the movement whose son and successor became the centre of the clashes between the Sikhs and the Sant Nirankaris in 1978 to 1980.