In 1937, he entered the Punjab Legislative Assembly as an Akali nominee, defeating the Congress candidate, Baba Gurdit Singh of Sarhali. As a Congress worker he was jailed in 1932 for five years for participating in the Civil Disobedience movement. He was also a member of the Indian National Congress, the main all India party associated with the independence movement. He joined the Shiromani Akali Dal, party of Sikh activists. But he soon entered active politics and closed down the paper. Returning to India in 1929, Partap Singh started from Amritsar a weekly paper in English, The New Era, the First issue appearing on 13 April 1931. Partap Singh evolved a pragmatic, determined approach to political, economic and social issues. He believed that affluence on farms was within reach of the Punjabi villager only if he had an independent and vital government. Mile upon mile of oranges, grapes and peaches he saw in California planted in his mind the vision of a fruitladen Punjab. Partap Singh was deeply influenced by the American way of life. He simultaneously concerned himself with the problems of Indian freedom and worked with groups determined to advance independence, if necessary by revolutionary activity. He eventually took a Master`s degree in political science at the University of Michigan. There he had to earn his own way by working on farms and in factories. When still a student of the Khalsa College at Amritsar, Partap Singh left home for the United States of America. His father Nihal Singh, who had been active in the Singh Sabha movement, was a pioneer of women`s education and had founded in his village a Sikh school for girls. political leader of wide influence and chief minister of the Punjab from 1956 to 1964, was born on 1 October 1901 in the village of Kairon, in Amritsar district of the Punjab, in a farming family of modest means.
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