Sardar Swaran Singh

Sardar Swaran Singh (1907 to 1994) was the most senior Sikh in the Congress and one of independent India's longest-serving Union ministers. He appears in this record twice: as a Panthic Party legislator and Punjab minister in the 1940s, and as the Congress's go-between with the Akalis in the early 1980s, in talks that collapsed before Operation Blue Star.

He was born on 19 August 1907 at Shankar village in Jalandhar district, took an M.Sc. in physics at Government College, Lahore, and lectured in physics at Khalsa College, Lyallpur. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says his father, Jamadar Partap Singh, was called to the presidency of the SGPC in 1933.

Key moments

• 1946: elected to the Punjab Legislative Assembly and made secretary of the Panthic Party; he then joined the Punjab government as a minister. Wikipedia adds that he was Punjab's Home Minister from 15 August 1947 until 1952.
• 1952 to 1975: 23 years as a ranking Cabinet minister under Nehru, Shastri and Indira Gandhi, holding Works, Housing and Supply; Steel, Mines and Fuel; Railways; Food and Agriculture; External Affairs (1964 to 1966 and 1970 to 1974); and Defence (1966 to 1970 and 1974 to 1975).
• 1981: Capt Amarinder Singh told The Tribune in 2005 that he was brought into the Akali talks after Swaran Singh "opted out in 1981". The report does not say why.
• October and November 1983: after Indira Gandhi released the Akali prisoners on 15 October 1983, Swaran Singh met Sant Harchand Singh Longowal and discussed the Akalis' demands, which Kuldip Nayar describes as mostly mundane apart from the Anandpur Sahib Resolution and the sharing of river water. He carried the terms to Indira Gandhi, who accepted them and praised his work, and she set up a Cabinet subcommittee, of Pranab Mukherjee, R. Venkataraman, P. V. Narasimha Rao and P. C. Sethi, which accepted his formula.
• The collapse, in Nayar's account: the Akalis were told the government had approved the formula and were shown a draft statement. The statement placed before Parliament differed substantially, left out several concessions Swaran Singh had made, and again required the consent of Rajasthan and Haryana on water. The Akalis called it a betrayal. Swaran Singh later told Nayar he suspected the subcommittee had never told Indira Gandhi that the Akalis had already seen the draft; Nayar says who was responsible "may never be revealed".
• 1992: Padma Vibhushan, per Wikipedia. His last years went to the Bhai Vir Singh Sadan, a centre for the study of Sikh letters. He died in Delhi on 30 October 1994.

Nayar also recalls that Swaran Singh, walking in on a meeting with Bhindranwale, sat on the floor rather than take the only chair, saying he preferred to sit in the sant's presence.

Remembered for: the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism praises him as a cool-headed, adroit negotiator of simple habits, Nehru's closest adviser on political and diplomatic matters. In the Panth's story he is the Congress negotiator whose agreed formula did not survive Delhi.