Bhai Vir Singh
Father of modern Punjabi literature: poet, novelist and editor in the Singh Sabha movement, whose Rana Surat Singh is the first Punjabi epic in modern verse.
Bhai Vir Singh was born in Amritsar in 1872 into a family of scholars and doctors, and became the father of modern Punjabi literature and a leader of the Singh Sabha movement.
He founded the Wazir Hind Press and the weekly Khalsa Samachar in 1899, and wrote novels, Sundri, Bijay Singh and Satwant Kaur, set in the eighteenth-century persecutions, which created a new Sikh literature of heroism and faith. His epic Rana Surat Singh and his short lyrics, especially the collection Matak Hulare, brought a new mystical poetry to Punjabi.
He edited the works of Bhai Gurdas and Bhai Santokh Singh's Suraj Prakash, and wrote commentaries on the Guru Granth Sahib. He received the Sahitya Akademi award in 1955 and the Padma Bhushan in 1956, and died in 1957. His house in Amritsar is a museum.