Manmohan Singh

Dr Manmohan Singh was the first Sikh to be Prime Minister of India. He held the office for ten years, from 2004 to 2014, after serving as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India and, from 1991, as finance minister, the post from which he opened India's economy. He died in New Delhi on 26 December 2024, aged 92.

He was born on 26 September 1932 in the village of Gah, now in Pakistan. NPR reports that his family moved east at Partition and that his grandfather was among those killed in the violence.

Key moments

• 1991: as finance minister he drafted a budget that opened India to foreign investment, cut import duties and ended the licence system known as the Permit Raj (NPR).
• November 1984: he was Governor of the Reserve Bank. His daughter Daman Singh's 2014 book Strictly Personal, as reported by ThePrint, tells how a mob came to burn the family's house in Ashok Vihar, Delhi, and was turned away when a relative said he owned it. The family sold the house in 1986.
• 22 May 2004: he was sworn in as Prime Minister. The Tribune noted that he was the first Prime Minister from the Sikh community and led the first Congress-led coalition. Sonia Gandhi, who had declined the post after the Congress victory, chose him (NPR).
• 11 August 2005: in the Rajya Sabha, during the debate on the Nanavati Commission report, he said: "I bow my head in shame that such a thing took place". He apologised "not only to the Sikh community but to the whole nation", and said the government would reopen cases, including those against policemen, wherever the law allowed. He also said the Commission had disproved the charge that top Congress leaders were involved, and he asked that no one play politics with the tragedy.
• 2013: during his visit to Washington, Sikhs for Justice secured a summons against him from a US court over alleged rights violations in Punjab's counter-insurgency of the 1990s. The Congress party's New York lawyer called the suit a publicity gimmick (India TV News).

How the apology was received: opinion among Sikhs was divided. The Tribune reported on 14 August 2005 that a convention of the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee and Akali Dal (Delhi) called it the first goodwill shown by a Congress Prime Minister. An SGPC member, Harinder Singh Delhi, and the Akali leader Parkash Singh Badal said Sonia Gandhi should apologise instead. The SGPC general secretary, Sukhdev Singh Bhaur, said the apology formally confirmed that the Congress was responsible, and that the resignations of Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar were not enough.

He is remembered as the architect of India's economic reforms and the first Sikh Prime Minister. NPR notes that critics called him the Gandhis' "puppet". In 2005 Akali leaders asked, beyond the apology, for the arrest and prosecution of those named in the Nanavati report.