On the centenary of his martyrdom

A hundred years ago, on 17 July 1926, a Sikh reformer died inside a British prison in Lahore, having refused to purchase his freedom with a single signature. He declined high office throughout his life, believing that movements decay when individuals rise above institutions. And yet, the building that houses the headquarters of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee within the Golden Temple complex bears his name to this day — Teja Singh Samundri Hall.

Sardar Teja Singh Samundri was born on 20 February 1882 at Rai Ka Burj in Tarn Taran tehsil of Amritsar district, to Sardar Deva Singh and Nand Kaur, a Jat Sikh family of modest means. When new agricultural land was allotted to his father in the canal colonies of the Sandal Bar tract, the family shifted to the town of Samundri in the Lyallpur district of undivided Punjab — now in Pakistan — and it was from this new home that the toponym “Samundri” became permanently attached to his name.

His formal schooling never went beyond the primary stage, though he was deeply read in Sikh scripture and history. As a young man he enlisted in the British Indian Army, rising to the rank of Dafadar in the 22nd Cavalry, but army life did not hold him; after about three and a half years he returned home to devote himself to the religious and social awakening of the Panth.

A builder of schools and a voice in print

Joining the Chief Khalsa Diwan, he founded the Khalsa Diwan Samundri and later wove several such local societies into the larger Khalsa Diwan Bar. Convinced that reform began with education, he established schools — a Khalsa Middle School in his own village and the Sri Guru Gobind Singh Khalsa High School at Sarhali in Amritsar district — and, well ahead of his time, championed learning for both the young and for women. He also helped found the Sikh daily newspaper “Akali,” giving the reform movement a powerful voice in print. His belief in equality was lived, not merely spoken: in the villages around Amritsar and Tarn Taran he broke caste barriers by inviting Dalits to draw water from common wells and to serve beside him in public.

The Rakab Ganj vow

His association with Delhi’s Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib runs deep. When the colonial government moved to demolish a boundary wall of the shrine, Samundri organised public meetings in protest and was among the roughly one hundred Sikhs who volunteered to lay down their lives to see the wall restored. It is fitting, therefore, that his centenary should be observed at the very same Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib.

Founder of the SGPC

The Nankana Sahib tragedy of 1921 drew him fully into the Gurdwara Reform Movement, and he was named to the committee formed to manage Nankana Sahib thereafter. When the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee was constituted in November 1920 to wrest control of the gurdwaras from British-backed mahants, Samundri was among its founding members, later serving as its Vice-President; he was also Vice-President of the Shiromani Akali Dal and, in 1923, a member of the All-India Congress Committee. Through the Chabian da Morcha over the keys of the Golden Temple treasury, the Guru Ka Bagh agitation, and the Jaito Morcha in support of the deposed Maharaja of Nabha, he emerged as one of the movement’s steadiest organising minds.

Sacrifice without spectacle

His sacrifice was material as well as moral. When the SGPC needed funds to pursue a legal appeal to the Privy Council and could raise only half the sum, Samundri mortgaged roughly fifty acres of his own land to provide the remaining amount; after the case was ultimately won, his family declined to accept reimbursement. In 1923 he was honoured as one of the Panj Piare chosen to lead the kar sewa of the sacred sarovar at the Golden Temple — the first such service in over eighty years.

Arrested in October 1923 and tried on charges of sedition, he was moved from the Amritsar jail to the Lahore Fort and finally to the Lahore Central Jail. Even after the Sikh Gurdwaras Act was passed in July 1925 — a hard-won legislative victory for the movement — he refused to sign the undertaking that would have secured his release, choosing continued imprisonment over conditional freedom. He died in custody on 17 July 1926. Master Tara Singh, who was imprisoned alongside him, remembered him as “a complete Gursikh” and observed that Samundri did not become a martyr only in death — his entire life had been one of martyrdom.

A legacy that still speaks

His memory endures in the handsome Teja Singh Samundri Hall in Amritsar, the nerve-centre of the SGPC. His line, too, carried forward his devotion to learning: his son, Sardar Bishan Singh, became the founding Vice-Chancellor of Guru Nanak Dev University and a principal of Khalsa College, Amritsar, while his grandson, Sardar Taranjit Singh Sandhu, served as India’s Ambassador to the United States. In an age of loud and impatient politics, Sardar Teja Singh Samundri remains a reminder that quiet courage, unbending integrity and a faith in institutions over individuals can leave the deepest mark of all.

Observing the Centenary

On his 100th Martyrdom Anniversary, Shabad Kirtan will be performed by Padma Shri Bhai Harjinder Singh (Srinagar Wale) on Friday, 17 July 2026, from 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM, followed by Guru Ka Langar, at Bhai Lakhi Shah Vanjara Hall, Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib, New Delhi.

At the invitation of Sardar Taranjit Singh Sandhu

END OF ARTICLE