Today in Sikh History : Index

Education was considered to be the key to modern awakening and this was one of Bhai Gurmukh Singh's persistent
concerns. As early as June 1882, a proposal had been made to set up a Sikh college. Soon after the establishment of
the Khalsa Diwan Amritsar in April 1883, Bhai Gurmukh Singh formally placed the motion before it at its special meeting
held in June 1883. It was taken up more vigorously later by the Khalsa Diwan Lahore. Bhai Gurmukh Singh enlisted the
co-operation of some government officials, and a Khalsa College Establishment Committee was constituted with Colonel
W.R.M. Holroyd, Director of Public Instruction, as chairman and Mr William Bell, a professor of Government College,
Lahore, as secretary. The efforts of Bhai Gurmukh Singh and other leaders of the Singh Sabha bore fruit and the
cornerstone of the college was laid at Amritsar on 5 March 1892 by Sir James B. Lyall, Lieutenant-Governor of the
Punjab.
To disseminate widely the Singh Sabha creed, Gurmukh Singh launched, one after another, the Gurmukhi Akhbar
(1880), the Vidyarak (1880), the Khalsd (1885), the Sudhararak (1886) and the Khalsa Gazette (1886). These were
among the first newspapers and periodicals in Punjabi, and besides serving the cause of religious reform, they gave birth
to a new literary idiom in the language. Bhai Gurmukh Singh also published, in 1889, a jantri or almanac, called Gur
Baras, the years of the Lord, the first of its kind in Punjabi in Gurmukhi script. Another work by him is Bharat di Itihaas, a
history of India in Punjabi. He also wrote Gurbani Bhavarth, a glossary in simple Punjabi to make the gurbani of the Guru
Granth Sahib intelligible to the common man. The work, however, remained unpublished.