Jathedar Sadhu Singh Bhaura

Jathedar Sadhu Singh Bhaura headed the Akal Takht for sixteen years, from 1964 to 1980. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says he was born on 6 June 1905 at Chakk No. 7 in Lyallpur district, now in Pakistan, to Bhai Ran Singh and Mai Atam Kaur, and matriculated at Khalsa High School, Lyallpur, where Master Tara Singh was headmaster.

The Encyclopaedia says he served in the police at Quetta from 1923 to 1925, resigned to join the Akali agitation for gurdwara reform, and studied at the Shahid Sikh Missionary College at Amritsar from 1926 to 1928. From 1928 to 1964 he headed the Sikh preaching centres at Aligarh and Hapur in Uttar Pradesh, where he is said to have initiated nearly half a million people according to Sikh rites, most of them Vanjara Sikhs of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Key moments

• 1955 to 1960: member of the executive committee of the Shiromani Akali Dal, and took part in several of its agitations.
• 1961 to 1964: Jathedar of Takht Sri Kesgarh Sahib at Anandpur Sahib.
• 1964: raised to Jathedar of the Akal Takht.
• 10 June 1978: he issued an edict calling on all Sikhs to boycott the neo-Nirankari sect socially, as the Encyclopaedia puts it. ThePrint dates the Akal Takht's hukamnama excommunicating the Nirankaris only to June 1978, after the clash at Amritsar on 13 April 1978.
• 1980: to prevent a vertical split in the Akali Dal he formed a seven-member committee of senior leaders to act as a collegiate executive; soon after, he resigned on health grounds.

He retired to live with his sons and died at Jalandhar on 7 March 1984. Wikipedia's table of Jathedars gives Giani Gurdial Singh Ajnoha as the next Jathedar, from 2 March 1980. Of his years as Jathedar the Encyclopaedia singles out the edict of 1978 and the committee of 1980.