Baba Kharak Singh forgotten, even on 150th anniv

Chandigarh : The British had banned Gandhi caps and black turbans inside jails. When Baba Kharak Singh, who was lodged in the Dera Ghazi Khan jail (in North West Frontier) was asked to remove his turban, he threw away all his clothes, saying: “I will not wear these till the government lifts the ban.”
The chill could have killed the man, who was in his mid-fifties. To cajole him, jail officials lifted the ban on black turban and top Congress leadership requested him to put on his clothes, but Baba Kharak Singh refused to do so. After five-and-a-half years on June 4, 1927, he walked out of the jail in ‘kachera’ (shorts).
Kharak Singh was a top Congress leader who after Lala Lajpat Rai’s arrest became the president of the Punjab Provincial Congress Committee in 1922.
However, the Congress government didn’t feel the need to celebrate his 150th birthday on Wednesday. Akalis, on the other hand, did try to make up for it by giving advertisements in newspapers as he was one of the founders of the SGPC too and had served as its president in 1922.
Present day rulers may have completely forgotten him, but Prof Mohinder Singh, a historian, known for his seminal work on the Akali Movement, recalls that Nehru valued him so much that on his birthday, he would visit Baba ji’s house in Delhi with a bouquet and sweets.
He says: “During one of the visits, Baba ji was taking bath. Nehru didn’t leave the flowers and sweets with the family but preferred to wait till he came out”. He calls it unfortunate that such a landmark day went unnoticed. “I don’t think Congress and Akali leaders today have even heard his name.”