Sundar Singh was born into an important landowning Sikh family in Patiala State in northern India. Sundar Singh's mother took him week by week to sit at the feet of a Sadhu, an ascetic holy man, who lived in the jungle some miles away, but she also sent him to a Christian mission school where he could learn English.The death of Sundar Singh's mother, when he was fourteen, plunged him into violence and despair. He turned on the missionaries, persecuted their converts, and ridiculed their faith. In final defiance of their religion, he bought a Bible and burned it page by page in his home compound while his friends watched. The same night he went to his room determined to commit suicide on a railway line.
That night, in a dream, Christ appeared and spoke to Sundar in Hindustani, "How long are you going to persecute me? I died for you. For you I gave my life. You were praying to know the right way; why don't you take it? I am the Way." The next morning Sundar woke up and announced his intention to follow Christ to his father. His father pleaded and demanded that he give up this absurd "conversion." When he refused, Sher Singh gave a farewell feast for his son, then denounced him and expelled him from the family. Several hours later, Sundar realised that his food had been poisoned, and his life was saved only by the help of a nearby Christian doctor. On his sixteenth birthday he was publicly baptised in the parish church in Simla, a town high in the Himalayan foothills. For some time previously he had been staying at the Christian Leprosy Home at Sabathu serving the leprosy patients there. It was to remain one of his most beloved bases and he returned there after his baptism.
Then, in October 1906, he set out from it in quite a new way. He walked onto the road, a tall, good-looking, vigorous teenager, wearing a yellow robe and turban. Everyone stared at him as he passed. The yellow robe was the "uniform" of a Hindu sadhu, traditionally an ascetic devoted to the gods, who either begged his way along the roads or sat, silent, remote, and often filthy, meditating in the jungle or some lonely place. The young Sundar Singh had also chosen the sadhu's way, but he would be a very different sort of sadhu.
"I am not worthy to follow in the steps of my Lord," he said, "but, like Him, I want no home, no possessions. Like Him I will belong to the road, sharing the suffering of my people, eating with those who will give me shelter, and telling all men of the love of God."
The months and years ahead were full of many hardships...his feet became torn from the rough tracks, he was stoned, arrested, and slept in a way-side hut with an unexpected cobra for company. the little Christian communities of the north were referring to him as "the apostle with the bleeding feet."
One day, while in Bombay, a brahmin had collapsed in the hot, crowded carriage and, at the next station, the Anglo-Indian stationmaster came rushing with a cup of water from the refreshment room. The brahmin -- a high-caste Hindu -- thrust it away in horror. He needed water, but he could only accept it in his own drinking vessel. When that was brought, he drank and was revived. In the same way, Sundar Singh realised, India would not widely accept the gospel of Jesus offered in Western guise. That, he recognised, was why many listeners had responded to him in his Indian sadhu's robe.
In December 1909 he began training for the Christian ministry at the Anglican college in Lahore. Although Singh had been baptized by an Anglican priest, he was ignorant of the ecclesisatical culture and conventions of Anglicanism. His inability to adapt to Anglican life hindered him from fitting in with the routines of academic study. Much in the college course seemed to Singh to be irrelevant to the gospel as India needed to hear it. Singh was told he must now discard his sadhu's robe and wear "respectable" European clerical dress; use formal Anglican worship; sing English hymns; and never preach outside his parish without special permission. With deep sadness he left the college in 1910, still dressed in his yellow robe, and in 1912 began his annual trek into Tibet as the winter snows began to melt on the Himalayan tracks and passes.
His years as an evangelist and teacher in Tibet and Northern India were filled with hardships, difficulties, and persecutions, but he was often rescued by members of the "Sunnyasi Mission" -- secret disciples of Jesus wearing their Hindu markings, whom he claimed to have found all over India. As Sundar Singh moved through his twenties his ministry widened greatly, and long before he was thirty years old his name and picture were familiar all over the Christian world. He was, though, always human, approachable and humble, with a sense of fun and a love of nature. This, with his "illustrations" from ordinary life, gave his addresses great impact. Many people said, "He not only looks like Jesus, he talks like Jesus must have talked." Yet all his talks and his personal speech sprang out of profound early morning meditation, especially on the Gospels. In 1918 he made a long tour of South India and Ceylon, and the following year he was invited to Burma, Malaya, China, and Japan.
Sadhu continued preaching the Gospel of Jesus where ever he could for the next decade, but always there burned in him a desire to see the Gospel reach the people of Tibet. In April 1929, Sadhu made one last trip into Tibet. He has never been seen or heard from since.
