01Arya Samaj, DAV and the bank
He was born at Dhudike in Ferozepur district (now Moga) and practised law at Hisar and then Lahore. Swami Dayananda’s Arya Samaj shaped his public life. He worked with Lala Hansraj to build the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College at Lahore, opened in 1886, and he was among the founders of the Punjab National Bank in 1894, a bank owned and run by Indians. He organised famine relief in the 1890s and kept orphans from being taken away by missions. In May 1907, during the canal colony agitation, he was deported to Mandalay without trial and released that November.
02America, Congress and the lathi at Lahore
He spent the First World War years in the United States, where he wrote Young India (1916) and founded the Indian Home Rule League of America in 1917. Back in India, he presided over the special Congress session at Calcutta in September 1920 and founded the Servants of the People Society in 1921. On 30 October 1928 he led a silent march at Lahore against the all-white Simon Commission. The police charged, and he was beaten on the chest with lathis on the orders of Superintendent James Scott. He died on 17 November 1928. A month later Bhagat Singh and Rajguru shot a police officer, J. P. Saunders, at Lahore in answer.
