Khushwant Singh

Khushwant Singh was a Sikh writer, historian, lawyer, diplomat and editor whose A History of the Sikhs and Partition novel Train to Pakistan made him one of the most widely read authors on Punjab. He was born on 2 February 1915 at Hadali, now in Pakistan, the son of Sir Sobha Singh, a prominent builder in Lutyens' Delhi. He studied at St. Stephen's College, Delhi, and Government College, Lahore (BA 1934), took an LL.B. at King's College London in 1938 and was called to the bar at the Inner Temple. He practised law at Lahore from 1939, joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1947 and All India Radio in 1951, and worked for UNESCO in Paris from 1954 to 1956. As editor he lifted The Illustrated Weekly of India from 65,000 to 400,000 copies, and he also edited the National Herald and the Hindustan Times. He sat in the Rajya Sabha from 1980 to 1986.

Key moments

• 1956: Train to Pakistan, which ThePrint calls a must-read for anyone who wants to understand Partition.
• 1962 to 1966: The Fall of the Kingdom of the Punjab (1962), Ranjit Singh: The Maharaja of the Punjab (1963), A History of the Sikhs (1963) and Ghadar 1915 (1966). Oxford University Press later issued the History in two volumes, in 2004 and 2005.
• 1974: awarded the Padma Bhushan.
• 1984: returned the Padma Bhushan in protest against the Indian government's siege of Sri Harmandir Sahib, as SikhRI records, and as Dawn reported in his obituary.
• After November 1984: Wikipedia says the anti-Sikh violence that followed Indira Gandhi's assassination shook his faith in the political system, and that he worked with the Citizens Justice Committee that H.S. Phoolka founded.
• 2007: Padma Vibhushan. 2010: Sahitya Akademi Fellowship.
• 20 March 2014: died at his home in Delhi, aged 99.

Contested positions. He described himself as an agnostic. ThePrint reports that critics called him a lapdog of the Nehru-Gandhi family, that he openly backed Sanjay Gandhi before and after the Emergency, and that he admitted this support helped him win his Rajya Sabha seat and the Hindustan Times editorship. ThePrint also says he openly criticised Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.

What he is remembered for. For making the story of the Sikhs and of Partition readable in English for a wide audience, and for giving back a national honour when the army entered Sri Harmandir Sahib.