Principal Iqbal Singh

Principal Iqbal Singh was president of the Shiromani Akali Dal and the second "dictator", or commander, of the Punjabi Suba morcha of 1955. The SGPC's history of that morcha, Punjabi Sube De Morche Di Twarikh, names him only by that title and name. The pages opened for this page say nothing of his full name, his college or his later life.

The morcha began on 10 May 1955, when Master Tara Singh, the first dictator, went to jail. The history says that after his arrest Iqbal Singh was appointed second dictator and that under his command the morcha stayed hot for a continuous month. It says the police combed the city for him in vain, that ministers and other parts of the government claimed he was hiding inside Darbar Sahib, which it calls quite false, and that he worked from an open house in an open part of the city and gave the press several statements.

Key moments

• 25 May 1955: the history says that as president of the Akali Dal and dictator of the morcha he chose 25 May, the martyrdom day of Guru Arjan Dev, as Punjabi Suba Day to bring new energy to the morcha.
• During his month in command: two Congress Sikh leaders, Gurdial Singh Dhillon, Speaker of the Punjab Assembly, and Kapur Singh, chairman of the Punjab Council, said that the morcha should end with the Akali leaders and the Sachar government settling the matter round a table, a proposal they said they made after talking with Chief Minister Bhim Sen Sachar. The history says Iqbal Singh announced its rejection before the ink had dried, and that Sachar was then forced to call the proposal useless too.
• 10 June 1955: the first day of the morcha's second month. The history says the Akali high command had fixed this day for his arrest. He took a siropa at the Akal Takht, bowed at Darbar Sahib and came to the divan ready to court arrest, with 200 volunteers, who went forward in jathas of four and were sent to jail.

The history says about five thousand people had gone to jail in the morcha's first month. On 13 June Bhopinder Singh Man reached Amritsar as the third dictator and took command. Gurmit Singh's History of Sikh Struggles names a Principal Iqbal Singh as leader of a jatha of eleven Sikhs that the Akali leadership announced in May 1960 would march from the Akal Takht at Amritsar to Delhi; the jatha started on schedule and its members were arrested a few miles out.