Bhagat Puran Singh

Bhagat Puran Singh was a Sikh sewadar who gave his life to the abandoned, disabled and destitute, and the founder of Pingalwara in Amritsar. The Government of India's press release for his 2004 commemorative stamp says he was born Ramji Das on 4 June 1904 at Rajewal in Ludhiana district, embraced Sikhism in 1923 and was renamed Puran Singh. Pingalwara's own account says he was born into a Hindu family, left school in the tenth class because of poverty, and found his inspiration in the Gurus' teaching and in the gurdwaras Dehra Sahib and Shahid Ganj at Lahore.

Key moments

• 1924: Pingalwara dates the start of his service at Lahore to the year he was about 19. The press release says he looked after an abandoned, disabled boy for 14 years, named him Piara, and carried him on his back wherever he went.
• 1947: after Partition he began a social service camp in Amritsar, which grew into Pingalwara, the "home of the crippled".
• July 1952: Pingalwara moved to a building allotted by the Punjab Government's Rehabilitation Department. It was registered as the All-India Pingalwara Society on 6 March 1967.
• 1984: he handed back his Padma Shri after the Army attack on Sri Harmandir Sahib. Sources give different years for the award: 1977, 1979 and 1981.
• 5 August 1992: he died.

By 1978 Pingalwara housed more than 400 patients, disabled people and destitute women and children, with free meals, clothing and medical care through local hospitals, and ran its own printing press. It admits people regardless of caste or creed. Wikipedia lists the tracts and books he gave out free on planting trees, pollution, soil erosion and population, among them Plant or Perish.

What he is remembered for. Sewa without distinction: he is remembered for tending, with his own hands, people others left at the roadside. Handing back the Padma Shri placed his moral witness within the Panth's grief over June 1984. India issued a five rupee stamp for him in 2004, and Wikipedia records that Guru Nanak Dev University set up a chair in his name in 2005.