Master Tara Singh

Master Tara Singh led the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) and the Shiromani Akali Dal for much of the period from 1930 to 1962. He was the Sikh spokesman at the time of the Partition of the Punjab, and he led the demand for a Punjabi-speaking state that was met in 1966, after he had been displaced as leader.

Early life. He was born Nanak Chand on 24 June 1885 at Haryal village, Rawalpindi district, in a Hindu Malhotra Khatri family. In 1902, in the ninth grade, he took initiation into the Khalsa from Sant Atar Singh, with an elder brother and a cousin, and became Tara Singh. He studied on a scholarship at Khalsa College, Amritsar, graduated in 1907 and trained as a teacher at Lahore. At 23 he became headmaster of the Khalsa high school at Lyallpur, hence the title "Master".

Key moments

• March 1921: secretary of the newly formed SGPC. In 1923 he was arrested with other Sikh leaders on charges of sedition and conspiracy and was released in 1926 after more than two years in jail.
• 1926 and 1930: vice-president of the SGPC under Baba Kharak Singh, then elected its president in 1930 while in jail during the Congress civil disobedience movement. Directly or through nominees he kept control of the SGPC and the Akali Dal until 1962.
• 1943 to 1947: the Akali Dal under him proposed an "Azad Punjab" excluding Muslim-majority districts. Before the Cabinet Mission he said he was for a united India, but if Pakistan was conceded he wanted a separate Sikh state. On 3 March 1947 he protested in Lahore with the slogan "Death to Pakistan". After attacks on Sikhs in Rawalpindi and Attock in March 1947 the Sikhs accepted partition rather than be absorbed into Pakistan, and Baldev Singh gave their consent to the Mountbatten plan on 3 June. The Partition left about two million Sikhs on the Pakistan side of the line.
• 16 October 1955: he called a Sikh congress at Amritsar, attended by nearly 1,300, which rejected the States Reorganization Commission's report. The 1955 agitation led to about 12,000 arrests.
• 11 March 1956: the Akali Dal adopted the Regional Formula, which he doubted but did not overrule. On 14 June 1958 he repudiated it and revived the demand for a Punjabi-speaking state.
• 24 to 25 May 1960: arrested on the eve of a march and held at Dharamsala. The 1960 campaign led to about 30,000 jailings by official figures.
• 15 August to 1 October 1961: a fast of 48 days for the Punjabi Suba, ended after mediation. On 24 November 1961 five Sikhs were named Panj Pyare to judge whether he had kept his vow; their verdict, announced on 29 November, found him guilty of breaking a solemn vow taken before the fast and imposed a penance.
• 22 July 1962: a convention of Sant Fateh Singh's supporters at Mushkiana formed a rival Akali Dal. The break had begun in January 1961, when Tara Singh urged Fateh Singh to end his 22-day fast and was booed at Majhi Sahib and Muktsar.
• 17 January 1965: in the SGPC elections Fateh Singh's Sant Akali Dal won 90 seats and Tara Singh's faction 45. Leadership of the Punjabi Suba movement passed to Fateh Singh.
• 22 November 1967: he died. The Punjabi-speaking state had come into being on 1 November 1966.

Remembered for: leading the SGPC and the Akali Dal as the Panth's political voice, speaking for the Sikhs at Partition, and carrying the Punjabi Suba demand through its first two decades. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism records that he lost the leadership of the movement to Sant Fateh Singh before it succeeded.