Baba Gurbachan Singh Nirankari

Baba Gurbachan Singh was the head, or satguru, of the Sant Nirankari Mission, a sect that mainstream Sikhs hold to be outside the Panth. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism stresses that the Sant Nirankaris have nothing in common with the Nirankari Sikhs of Rawalpindi except the name. He stands at the centre of the story of 1978 to 1980: the Vaisakhi firing at Amritsar, his acquittal, and his killing.

Who he was. Wikipedia gives his birth as 10 December 1930 at Peshawar, and says his father, Baba Avtar Singh, named him successor in December 1962. ThePrint dates his succession to 1963. The Tribune writes that Avtar Singh had taken over the sect in 1943, proclaimed himself Satguru and introduced the book Avtar Bani.

Key moments

• The Sikh objection: ThePrint explains that the Nirankaris adopted Sikh symbols with variations that Sikhs found sacrilegious, replacing the Panj Pyare with seven stars and the khande da amrit with water touched by the satguru's feet, and that Sikhism allows no living Guru in place of the Guru Granth Sahib. The Damdami Taksal led the opposition, and on 28 November 1973 the SGPC passed a resolution against the Nirankari chief.
• 13 April 1978: Sikhs of the Damdami Taksal and the Akhand Kirtani Jatha marched on the Nirankari convention at Amritsar. The Encyclopaedia says Nirankari guardsmen fired on them, killing 13 on the spot and wounding 78. ThePrint says Bhai Fauja Singh was killed by Gurbachan Singh's guard; the Nirankaris say they were attacked by armed fanatics. The Tribune counts at least 17 dead, most of them Sikhs.
• After the clash the Akal Takht issued a hukamnama telling Sikhs to cut their ties with the Nirankaris.
• 4 January 1980: the sessions judge at Karnal set free all 64 Nirankari accused, Gurbachan Singh included. ThePrint says the court ruled they had acted in self-defence. The Encyclopaedia says the acquittal embittered Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.
• 24 April 1980: he was shot dead in Delhi as he alighted from his car after a congregation. ThePrint reports that Ranjit Singh, a carpenter who had entered the mission as a sewadar, was convicted of the murder and later became Jathedar of the Akal Takht. Wikipedia adds that the First Information Report named twenty people, among them associates of Bhindranwale, that the Delhi High Court upheld Ranjit Singh's conviction in 1997, and that the government then remitted the rest of his sentence to avoid a confrontation.

What he is remembered for. ThePrint calls the 1978 clash a turning point in Punjab's history. His son Hardev Singh succeeded him, and in 1981 wrote to the Jathedar of the Akal Takht that the Nirankaris meant no disrespect to Sikhism and offered to remove objectionable passages from their books. The Nirankaris say they were the ones attacked in 1978; the Panth's record of that day, and the Encyclopaedia's, is of Sikh marchers shot down.