Nawab Kapur Singh Ji was born at Kaloke in 1697 and became the leading figure of the Khalsa in the 1730s and 1740s, in the worst years of the persecution.
In 1733 the Lahore government offered the Sikhs a jagir and the title of Nawab as a truce. The assembly deliberated and gave the title to the man then serving in the langar, sweeping and fanning, which was Kapur Singh. He accepted on the Panth's instruction and continued the service.
He divided the fighting men into the Budha Dal, over forty, and the Taruna Dal, under, and gave each its role: the veterans to hold the shrines and the young to campaign. In 1748 this became the Dal Khalsa.
He brought up Jassa Singh Ahluwalia in his own household and handed the command to him.
He is the organiser rather than the conqueror, and in a tradition that remembers battles he is thinly commemorated. Gurdwara Baba Kapur Singh at Amritsar is the main site.
The Budha Dal took the shrines and the Taruna Dal took the field, and the Taruna Dal was itself divided into five jathas with a drum and a standard each. That division of work by age is what kept the Khalsa in existence through both of the ghallugharas.
A jagir came with the title, worth about a lakh a year. It lasted a couple of seasons before the Lahore government reversed itself and the campaign against the Sikhs resumed harder than it had been before the offer was made.
He came through the Chhota Ghallughara of 1746 and was at Amritsar for the gurmatas that set policy at Baisakhi and Diwali. He died there in 1753 and is commemorated at Amritsar and almost nowhere else.