Dr Ganda Singh

Dr Ganda Singh was a Punjab historian whose research, in the words of the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, started new trends in Sikh historiography. It says he was born on 15 November 1900 at Hariana, an old town near Hoshiarpur, the son of Jawala Singh. He left Forman Christian College, Lahore, to join the army in 1919, served in Mesopotamia, and was wounded there. He later went to Iran as an accounts officer of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company at Abadan, where the British scholar Sir Arnold Wilson's work on a bibliography of Persia made him want to prepare a bibliography of Punjab.

Key moments

• October 1931: Khalsa College, Amritsar, placed him in charge of its newly created Sikh History Research Department, which he led until 1949, travelling widely to libraries, archives and private collections for material. The Encyclopaedia calls the department newly created in 1931; the Daily Excelsior says it began in 1930 under its first head, S. Karam Singh, and gives Ganda Singh 1931 to 1950.
• 1949: moved to Patiala as Director of Archives and Curator of Museum under the PEPSU government; in 1950 he was given the Punjabi Department as well.
• 1954: awarded a doctorate by Panjab University, Chandigarh, for his thesis on Ahmad Shah Durrani.
• Later: principal of Khalsa College, Patiala, he was invited by Punjabi University, Patiala, to organise its Department of Punjab Historical Studies, and he set up the Punjab History Conference in 1965 and in 1967 launched the university's journal The Panjab Past and Present, which he edited.
• 1983: honoured by the Government of India with the Padma Bhushan.
• November 1987: honoured by the Indian History Congress as one of five distinguished historians of India. He died at Patiala on 27 December 1987.

His books: the Encyclopaedia lists more than two dozen full-length volumes, among them a Life of Banda Singh Bahadur (1935), Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1939), A Short History of the Sikhs (1950, with Teja Singh), Ahmad Shah Durrani (1959), Some Confidential Papers of the Akali Movement (1965), Bibliography of the Panjab (1966), a Punjabi life of Sardar Jassa Singh Ahluwalia (1969), Maharaja Duleep Singh Correspondence (1977) and Seditious Literature of the Panjab (1987). The SGPC paid tribute to him on 28 March 1964. He gave his large collection of rare books, maps, documents and manuscripts to Punjabi University, Patiala.

In the record of the Hindu-Sikh tension and of 1984: Gurmit Singh's History of Sikh Struggles reproduces his essay "Hindu-Sikh Tension in the Punjab". It argues that the tension was unknown under Sikh rule and in 1857, and traces it to the language used about Guru Nanak and the Sikh scripture by the Arya Samaj founder, Swami Dayanand, in the Satyarth Prakash of 1875, saying the second edition, after Dayanand's death in 1883, was more hostile. The same book lists him among the Sikhs who returned honours conferred by the Government of India after Operation Blue Star in June 1984, with Khushwant Singh, Sadhu Singh Hamdard, Bhagat Puran Singh and Khushdeva Singh.