Sundar Singh was birthed into a Sikh[1][2] family in the village of Rampur (near Doraha), Ludhiana district (Punjab state), in northern India.

Singh's mother took him to sit at the feet of a Hindu sadhu, an ascetic holy man, who lived in the jungle some miles away, while also sending him to Ewing Christian High School, Ludhiana, to learn English.

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.

"[4] After returning to his home village, where he was given an unexpectedly warm welcome, Sundar Singh traveled northward for his mission of converting through the Punjab, over the Bannihal Pass into Kashmir, and then back through Muslim Afghanistan and into the brigand-infested North-West Frontier and Baluchistan.

According to his biographers, he did not form close relationships with fellow students, meeting them only at meal times and designated prayer sessions.

That first year, 1912, he returned with an extraordinary account of finding a three-hundred-year-old hermit in a mountain cave—the Maharishi of Kailas, with whom he spent some weeks in deep fellowship.

According to Singh, in a town called Rasar he had been thrown into a dry well full of bones and rotting flesh and left to die, but three days later he was rescued.

[6] The origins of this brotherhood were reputed to be linked to one of the Magi at Christ's nativity and then the second-century AD disciples of the apostle Thomas circulating in India.

One reason why no one believed his version of this story was because Singh did not keep written records and he was unaccompanied by any other Christian disciples who might have witnessed the events.

During his twenties, Sundar Singh's gospel work widened greatly, and long before he was thirty, his name and picture were familiar all over the Christian world.

He described a struggle with Satan to retain his humility, but people described him as always human, approachable and humble, with a sense of fun and a love of nature.

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.

He was welcomed by Christians of many traditions, and his words searched the hearts of people who now faced the aftermath of World War I and who seemed to evidence a shallow attitude to life.

Singh was appalled by what he saw as the materialism, emptiness and irreligion he found throughout the West, contrasting it with Asia's awareness of God, no matter how limited that might be.

In the early 1940s, Bishop Augustine Peters, another converted missionary from South India, sought out Singh's brother Rajender, led him to the Christian faith and baptised him in Punjab.

In February 1929, in response to questions from Theology students in Calcutta, India, he elaborated: "There was punishment, but it was not eternal...Everyone after this life would be given a fair chance of making good, and attaining to the measure of fullness the soul was capable of.

[15] Aldous Huxley mentions Singh in his book The Perennial Philosophy, quoting him: "The children of god are very dear but very queer, very nice but very narrow.

Lewis' science fiction novel That Hideous Strength, there is a mention of an Indian Christian mystic who is known as the "Sura,"[17] who, like Singh, mysteriously disappears.