Khem Singh Bedi

Sir Khem Singh Bedi KCIE (21 February 1832 – 10 April 1905) was a prominent Sikh spiritual leader, landowner and politician in the Punjab during the British Raj.

Bedi was born in Kallar Syedan in the Rawalpindi District in 1832. He was a thirteenth direct descendant of Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikhism. His father Baba Attar Singh was killed in a family feud on 25 November 1839 and Bedi and his elder brother Sampuran Singh inherited jagirs in the Doaba along with 41 villages in Depalpur Tehsil. Following the annexation of the Punjab by the East India Company in 1849, 14 of those villages were appropriated by the new administration.

In 1855, the Punjab administration established the Department of Public Instruction with the aim to open 30 single-teacher primary schools across the Punjab. Bedi lent his full support to the scheme, additionally opening his own schools in Rawalpindi. At least fifty schools for boys and girls were opened in the Punjab with his assistance.

During the Indian Mutiny of 1857 Bedi helped British troops quell an uprising in Gugera. He distinguished himself in a cavalry charge on 21 September 1857, and the following day narrowly escaped an ambush which killed the Extra Assistant Commissioner of Gogera, Leopold Fitzhardinge Berkeley. Following the rebellion, he was given a robe of honour and a double barrelled rifle.

On 1 October 1873 he co-founded the Singh Sabha Movement in response to growing Christian and Brahmo Samaj proselytising in the region. The movement aimed to re-capture the original message of the Gurus and re-establish Sikh identity. It sought to address issues of personal identity, formulate theoretical concepts, reform social customs and give prominence to the Punjabi language in the Gurmukhi script of the Gurus. Within a decade 121 separate Singh Sabhas had emerged across the region.

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