Khushwant Singh
Novelist and historian from Hadali in the Salt Range. His Train to Pakistan and two-volume History of the Sikhs are classics.
Khushwant Singh was born in 1915 at Hadali in the Salt Range, the son of Sobha Singh, a builder of New Delhi. He studied law in London, practised in Lahore, and moved to Delhi at Partition.
His novel Train to Pakistan of 1956 describes the Partition violence in a village on the Sutlej called Mano Majra, and is one of the best-known books about 1947. His two-volume History of the Sikhs is the standard history in English. He edited the Illustrated Weekly of India and wrote a famous column, 'With Malice Towards One and All', for decades.
He returned his Padma Bhushan in 1984 in protest at Operation Blue Star. He died in 2014 at ninety-nine and his ashes were buried at Hadali.