Ishar Singh Majhail

Sardar Ishar Singh Majhail (1901 to 1977) was an Akali of the Guru ka Bagh and Jaito generation who became a Punjab minister. The SGPC's list of presidents shows him as president from 18 January 1954 to 7 February 1955. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism's entry on him does not mention the SGPC presidency, so we match the two on the name Majhail. He is not to be confused with Advocate Ishar Singh.

Life: The Encyclopaedia says he was born in January 1901 at Sarai Amanat Khan village in Amritsar district. His father went to Indonesia when he was about two and a half and died there soon after, and his widowed mother raised him. He studied at Malwa Khalsa High School, Ludhiana, where he was one of the fewest students from the Majha districts, and kept the surname Majhail for life. He turned down a teaching post to join the Akali reform movement.

Key moments

• 1922: jailed for six months in the Guru ka Bagh morcha. He was jailed again for two years in the Jaito morcha of 1923.
• October 1927: the SGPC set up the Shahid Sikh Missionary College to train preachers, and he completed its two-year course.
• 1930: six months in jail in the farmers' agitation, extended by a year because he had a newspaper in jail.
• 1936: took part in the Gurdwara Shahid Ganj morcha at Lahore.
• 1937: the Encyclopaedia says an Akali procession supporting jhatka at Jandiala Sher Khan in Sheikhupura district was attacked by a mob, in a year of acute tension between Sikhs and Muslims, and that Ishar Singh Majhail and Jathedar Mohan Singh Nagoke came out with drawn swords and drove the mob away, rescuing the wounded Sikhs.
• 1938: secretary of the managing committee of the Sikh National College, Lahore.
• 1940 to 1941: president of the managing committee of Sri Darbar Sahib, Amritsar.
• 1942: took part in the Quit India movement launched by the Indian National Congress.
• February 1946: elected to the Punjab Legislative Assembly. After Partition he joined Gopi Chand Bhargava's Congress ministry, and after re-election in 1952 he was again appointed to the cabinet.
• 18 January 1954 to 7 February 1955: SGPC president by the SGPC's list. He took over from Pritam Singh Khuranj, and his term ended on 7 February 1955, when Master Tara Singh again took the presidency. Neither source gives a reason.
• 20 April 1977: died at Chandigarh, having withdrawn from active politics in the 1950s to develop his farm at Arno village in Patiala district.

Remembered for: a career that ran from the Guru ka Bagh and Jaito morchas to a ministry in independent Punjab, with a year at the head of the SGPC.