Havildar Ishar Singh

Ishar Singh was born in 1858 at Jhorran in Ludhiana district and joined the army in 1887. By 1897 he was a havildar, a sergeant, in the 36th Sikhs, posted on the Samana ridge in the Tirah region of the North-West Frontier.

On 12 September 1897 he commanded the twenty-one men holding the signalling post of Saragarhi, between Fort Lockhart and Fort Gulistan, when some ten thousand Afridi and Orakzai tribesmen attacked. The garrison refused to surrender and held the post for some seven hours, signalling the progress of the battle by heliograph to Fort Lockhart. Ishar Singh ordered his men to fall back to an inner room while he held the entrance alone.

All twenty-one were killed; the tribesmen lost, by British estimates, around 180 dead. All twenty-one received the Indian Order of Merit, the highest gallantry award an Indian soldier could then receive. 12 September is Saragarhi Day, kept by the Sikh Regiment, by Sikhs around the world, and in the British Parliament.