The Satth Project

Lahore · 31.55° N, 74.34° E · Under the Company

Lahore

ਲਾਹੌਰ

Lahore was the capital of the Mughal subah, then of the Sikh state after Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji took it in 1799 at nineteen, then of British Punjab after 1849.

Guru Arjan Dev Ji died in Mughal custody here in 1606.

Six members of the Babbar Akali movement were hanged at Lahore Central Jail on 27 February 1926: Kishan Singh Gargaj, Nand Singh, Babu Santa Singh, Dalip Singh, Dharam Singh and Karam Singh. The movement grew out of the 13th Sikh Educational Conference at Hoshiarpur in March 1921. Associated Doaba villages include Chak Kalan, Binga, Kaulgarh and Daulatpur. 2026 is the centenary of the executions.

Shaheed Bhagat Singh Ji, Shaheed Sukhdev Singh Ji and Shaheed Rajguru Ji were hanged here on 23 March 1931.

Lahore went to Pakistan in 1947.

The city holds the Badshahi Masjid, the fort, the Shalimar gardens and the samadh of Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji, which stands between the fort and the mosque. Gurdwara Dera Sahib, marking the martyrdom of Guru Arjan Dev Ji, is in the same group of buildings.

It was the centre of Punjabi and Urdu publishing, of the press, of the colleges and of the courts. Almost every writer and political figure in this site's account of the twentieth century worked in Lahore at some point before 1947.

The Punjab Assembly sat here, and it was that body which voted in June 1947 to partition the province. The line was drawn five weeks later and the city went to Pakistan.

What we don't know

  • Leader-to-village pairings for the Babbar Akalis beyond Dharam Singh Hayatpur are not cleanly documented.
  • The records of the Punjab government up to 1947 are in Lahore and are largely out of reach of researchers in India, which shapes what can be written about the province from this side.

Where to check this

  1. The Tribune, on the Babbar Akali movement. The Tribune, Chandigarh - archive ↗

Named but not linked. These are real, findable documents. This project has not consulted them for this page.

  • Sikh Research Institute, The Forgotten Babbars.
  • ExecutedToday, 27 February 1926.

This page has not yet been read through by the editor. Treat it with more caution than the rest.

How this page was written. The text is compiled from the standard published histories and reference works, not from a document held in hand. Nobody from this project has visited the place or read the archive. The list above is where a reader can go to check it, not a record of what was consulted line by line. Dates and figures are the received account. If you hold something better, write in and it will be corrected.

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This is one of 122 accounts in Under the Company, the chapter of this site covering British Punjab, from annexation to the canal colonies.

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