Bhai Randhir Singh was born at Narangwal in Ludhiana district in 1878, the son of a magistrate, and took amrit as a young man. He founded what became the Akhand Kirtani Jatha, a body known for continuous kirtan through the night and for a strict rehat.
He was arrested in 1915 in connection with the Ghadar rising and sentenced to life. He served sixteen years, mostly in Lahore, Rajahmundry, Nagpur and Hazaribagh.
In jail he fought and won the right of Sikh prisoners to keep the kesh and to wear the kara, and he refused food cooked by others, which meant long periods of hunger. His prison memoir, Jail Chithian, is one of the very few first-person accounts of the Indian prison system from that period written in Punjabi.
He wrote extensively on Sikh practice and his writings remain the doctrinal basis of the Akhand Kirtani Jatha.
He is one of the small number of people who were both a Ghadar convict and a religious figure of standing, and each half of his following tends to ignore the other.
The jatha's practice is its own: kirtan sung through the night without a break, the whole sangat singing rather than a party performing to it, and a rehat stricter than the mainstream on several points including the keski for women. It came directly out of what he did in prison and afterward, and it has spread well beyond Punjab.
He wrote a great deal in Punjabi, including his prison memoir, and the Akhand Kirtani Jatha grew out of his practice and continues as a distinct body.
He came from Narangwal in Ludhiana district, was a graduate, and had been a government servant before he went into the movement.