Sant Nihal Singh Alias Bhai Maharaj Singh - Book By M.L. Ahluwalia

Preface To 'Sant Nihal Singh Alias Bhai Maharaj Singh' By M.L. Ahluwalia 

Hero-worship may, no doubt, be out of tune with the democratic traditions of our age, but a country or a community which does not honour its heroes often loses its moorings with all that may be good and noble in its past.

The Punjabi University, therefore, deserves our unreserved gratitude for taking up publication of monographs on the lives and times of those sons of the soil, but for whose dedicat­ed self-denial, there would have been very Jittle for us to be proud of in our history. Sant Nihal Singh, popularly known as Bhai Maharaj Singh, was one of those noble persons who spearheaded the freedom struggle soon after the British had realised their much-cherished aim of flying the Union Jack over the citadel of Lahore in place of the saffron-colour flag of the Sarkar Khalsa ji.

The records relating to Bhai Maharaj Singh had come to my notice among the Foreign and Political Department series of the National Archives of India as early as 1959. This chance discovery not only unfolded, for the first time, the revolutionary career of this great spiritualist of the 19th century Punjab but also provided a new insight about the part played by the Punjabis in the country's freedom struggle during the period.

I must take this opportunity to thank my present Director, Dr. S. N. Prasad and the ex-Director Shri K. D. Bhargava for kindly permitting me to undertake this work, and also giving me quite a few pertinent suggestions in the planning of this volume ; to Dr. Ganda Singh, and Dr. Fauja Singh Bajwa on whose standard works I have drawn liberal1y; to Sarvashri Gurdial Singh, M.A., Lecturer,