Tara Singh

Tara Singh (born June 24, 1885, Haryal, near Rawalpindi, India [now in Pakistan]—died November 22, 1967, Chandigarh) was a Sikh leader known chiefly for his advocacy of an autonomous Punjabi-speaking Sikh nation in the Punjab region. He was a champion of Sikh rights against the dominant Hindus, Muslims, and British.

Tara Singh was born a Hindu, but while a student in Rawalpindi he became attracted to Sikhism and underwent the required initiation ceremony. Upon graduation from Khalsa College at Amritsar in 1907, he entered the Sikh school system in Lyallpur, becoming a high school teacher, or “master,” a title associated with him thereafter.

A devout worker for the cause of Sikh religious and political integrity, Tara Singh often found himself in opposition to civil authority. He was jailed for civil disobedience 14 times between 1930 and 1966. In 1930 he became deeply involved with the civil disobedience (satyagraha) movement of Mohandas K. Gandhi and was a leader of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD; Supreme Akali Party), the principal Sikh political organization, and of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (Supreme Committee of Temple Management), which oversees the gurdwaras (Sikh houses of worship). He was best known as an agitator for a Punjabi-speaking state as a means of keeping Sikh religious and political traditions intact.

In 1961 Tara Singh declared that he would fast until the Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, ceded a portion of the Punjab as a Sikh state or until death claimed him. He began his fast in August at the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) at Amritsar, but Nehru responded that submission to Tara Singh’s demands would be against India’s secular constitution and unfair to the Hindus in Punjab. After a personal letter from Nehru promising to investigate Sikh claims, Tara Singh broke his 48-day fast, incurring the wrath of the Sikh people. Tara Singh was brought to trial before a council of pijaras (Sikh religious leaders) and pleaded guilty. His failure to starve to death in defense of his ideals had discredited him as a leader of the SAD, and Sant Fateh Singh was elected in his place. Tara Singh’s dream of a Punjabi-speaking state was realized in 1966, when the Indian state of Punjab was divided and the Hindi-speaking portion of it was created as the separate state of Haryana.