Beas, river, 250 mi (402 km) long, rising in the Himalayas and flowing generally SW through the fertile Kulu Valley of Himachal Pradesh and the Shiwalik Range to join the Sutlej River, S of Am...

Ludhiana, city (1991 pop. 1,042,740), Punjab state, NW India. Founded in the late 15th cent., it lies on the old Grand Trunk Road, the great thoroughfare connecting Delhi with Amritsar. Hosier...

Ranjit Singh, 1780–1839, Indian maharaja, ruler of the Sikhs. Seizing Lahore (1799) and Amritsar (1809), he established himself as the leading Sikh chieftain. In 1809 he made a treaty with the...

Chelmsford, Frederic John Napier Thesiger, 3d Baron and 1st Viscount, 1868–1933, British colonial administrator. After serving as governor of Queensland and New South Wales in Australia (1905–...

Sikhism, religion centered in the Indian state of Punjab, numbering worldwide some 19 million. Some 300,000 Sikhs live in Britain, and there are smaller communities in North America, Australia...

Reading, Rufus Daniel Isaacs, 1st marquess of, 1860–1935, British statesman. Called to the bar in 1887, he achieved great success in his profession. He entered Parliament as a Liberal in 1904,...

Nehru, Jawaharlal, 1889–1964, Indian statesman, b. Allahabad; son of Motilal Nehru. A politician and statesman of great skill, Nehru was enormously popular in India. Educated in England at Har...

Punjab [Pers.,=five rivers], historic region in the NW of the Indian subcontinent. Since 1947 it has been separated into an Indian state and a Pakistani province bearing the same name. The Ind...

Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, 1869–1948, Indian political and spiritual leader, b. Porbandar. Educated in India and in London, he was admitted to the English bar in 1889 and practiced law unsuc...

India, officially Republic of India, republic (2005 est pop. 1,080,264,000), 1,261,810 sq mi (3,268,090 sq km), S Asia. The second most populous country in the world, it is also sometimes call...