Shaheed Darshan Singh Pheruman

Darshan Singh Pheruman was an Akali reformer and politician who fasted unto death in 1969 to have Chandigarh given to Punjab, and died on the 74th day. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says he was born at the village of Pheruman in Amritsar district on 1 August 1885, joined the Indian army as a sepoy in 1912, left it two years later and became a contractor at Hissar, until a taunt from his deeply religious mother led him to give up the business and join the Akali movement for gurdwara reform.

Key moments

• 1921: arrested in the morcha to recover the keys of the Golden Temple treasury, which the British deputy commissioner of Amritsar had seized, and jailed for a year.
• December 1924: led the 14th Shahidi jatha to Jaito and was jailed for ten months.
• 1926: detained in Malaya, where he fasted for 21 days in jail against an order forbidding the kachhera, and won his point.

He later went to jail in the Civil Disobedience movement. For a number of years he was a member of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee and its general secretary for two terms. The Encyclopaedia says he was elected to the Rajya Sabha as a nominee of the Congress and kept his seat until 1964, and that in 1959 he left the Congress to become a founder of the Swatantra Party. The two fit if he served out his term: Wikipedia's list of Rajya Sabha members from Punjab dates his last term 3 April 1958 to 2 April 1964 and names the Swatantra Party for it.

The fast of 1969: Gurmit Singh's History of Sikh Struggles says that on 1 August 1969 he announced a fast unto death from 15 August to secure the inclusion of Chandigarh in Punjab. Gurmit Singh writes that he accused the Akali leadership of lacking courage and blamed Sant Fateh Singh and Master Tara Singh for lowering the image of the Sikhs in the eyes of the public by running away from martyrdom. The book says he was arrested at his village on the night of 12 and 13 August under the Punjab Security Act and that at 4 p.m. on 15 August he performed the Ardas he would have performed at the Akal Takht and began the fast in custody; the Encyclopaedia places it in the Central Jail at Amritsar.

As he weakened he was moved to the Government Hospital at Amritsar under police guard. On 27 October 1969 he wrote to the Prime Minister that a Sikh is bound by what he says in Ardas before his Guru. Sant Fateh Singh visited the hospital that day with a basket of flowers to ask him to end the fast. Pheruman died the same day, the 74th day, according to Gurmit Singh, who says the Punjab Government cremated him at Pheruman on 28 October and that police used lathis on about 50,000 people who besieged the Chief Minister and Sant Chanan Singh.

What he is remembered for: on 12 and 13 November 1969, at the bhog held for him, the Working Committee of the All India Sikh Students Federation declared him the first martyr in the cause of the Sikh Homeland and decided to adopt his will as part of its programme, according to Gurmit Singh. The Encyclopaedia says his name is honoured among the martyrs of the Sikh faith for upholding the sanctity of a Sikh's plighted word. J.S. Grewal writes that the fast did not reflect well on Sant Fateh Singh, who announced his own fast for 26 January 1970; the Prime Minister's award on Chandigarh followed on 29 January 1970.