Visakha Singh or Wasakha Singh (1877-1957), a prominent leader of the Ghadar Party, was born on 13 April 1877 in village Dadehar of district Amritsar. Dial Singh was his father and his mother’s name was Ind Kaur. One of his ancestors, Mohar Singh, is said to have received Amrit rites from Guru Gobind Singh himself. Visakha Singh grew up in a religious household. He received his early education at the village gurdwara, as was customary at that time, and learned to read Sikh texts. At the age of twelve, he underwent Sikh initiatory rites. He married Ram Kaur when he was very young. His wife died within four years of their marriage, but he never married again.
He joined the British Indian Army at the age of nineteen but left the service in 1907. Hereafter, he moved to China. He travelled from China to the United States of America, where he co-owned a 500-acre farm with Jawala Singh. Visakha Singh and Jawala Singh founded Guru Nanak Educational Society with the goal of assisting needy Indian students studying in America. He was also one of the founders of the Stockton Gurdwara.
The first issue of the Ghadr, the revolutionary Ghadar party's weekly organ, reached the hands of Indians working on California farms, carrying reports of conferences of Indian immigrants held in the states of Oregon and Washington. Visakha Singh travelled to Sacramento for the party meeting on December 31, 1913, and was elected to the central executive committee. He responded to the party's invitation to return to India and joined the planned armed rebellion. However, when he arrived in Madras on January 7, 1915, he was arrested. He was detained in his village and placed under house arrest. He did, however, keep his ties to the Ghadar Party. When the plot was revealed to the British by a spy, Visakha Singh and several other Ghadar leaders were apprehended by police. He was tried in the Lahore conspiracy case I and sentenced to transportation for life and forfeiture of property on September 13, 1915. He went on strike in the Andamans for over a month to protest the maltreatment of political prisoners. After being released from prison as part of a general amnesty for certain categories of political prisoners, he arrived in his village on 14 April 1920 in very poor health.
Visakha Singh continued to work actively for the country's freedom. He helped form the Desh Bhagat Parivar Sahaik Committee, of which he was elected president, to assist political prisoners imprisoned. Visakha Singh was a revered name in Sikh religious circles. In Guru ka Bagh Morcha, he led a Jatha of 100 volunteers to court arrest. On 10 January 1931, he was one of the Panj Piaras (Five beloved Sikhs) who began the kar seva or cleansing of the holy sarovar at Tarn Taran. He was also one of the Panj Piare who laid the foundation stone for Gurdwara Panja Sahib's new building on October 14, 1932. In 1934, he was appointed as the Jathedar of the Akal Takht in Amritsar. He was imprisoned again in 1940 and 1942. After independence, he continued his social service. On December 5, 1957, after a brief illness, he died in a Tarn Tarn district hospital.