Khushwant Singh

Khushwant Singh, खुशवंत सिंह ,ਖ਼ੁਸ਼ਵੰਤ ਸਿੰਘ born on 2 February ,1915 in Hadali, British India, now a part of Punjab, Pakistan, is a prominent Indian novelist and journalist. Singh's weekly column, "With Malice towards One and All", carried by several Indian newspapers, is among the most widely-read columns in the country.

An important post-colonial novelist writing in English, Singh is best known for his trenchant secularism, his humor, and an abiding love of poetry. His comparisons of social and behavioral characteristics of Westerners and Indians are laced with acid wit.

Life and career

Singh received his bachelor's degree from Government College, Lahore and qualified as a barrister from King's College, London. His father, Sir Sobha Singh, was a prominent builder in Lutyens' Delhi.

In August 1947, days before the partition of India and Pakistan, Singh, then a lawyer practicing in the High Court in Lahore, drove to his family's summer cottage at Kasauli in the foothills of the Himalayas. Continuing on to Delhi along 200 miles of strangely vacant road, he came upon a Jeep full of armed Sikhs who boasted that they had just massacred a village of Muslims. Such experiences were to be powerfully distilled in Singh's 1956 novel Train to Pakistan. (The 2006 edition of Train to Pakistan, published by Roli Books in New Delhi, also contains 66 photographs by Margaret Bourke-White that capture the partition's violent aftermath.)

Khushwant Singh has edited Yojana, an Indian government journal; The Illustrated Weekly of India, a newsweekly; and two major Indian newspapers, The National Herald and the Hindustan Times. During his tenure, The Illustrated Weekly became India's pre-eminent newsweekly. After Singh's departure, it suffered a huge drop in readership.

From 1980 through 1986, Singh was a member of Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament. Awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974 for service to his country, in 1984 he returned the award in protest against the siege of the Golden Temple by the Indian Army. Undeterred, in 2007 the Indian government awarded Singh an even more prestigious honor, the Padma Vibhushan.

Honors and awards

• Padma Bhushan, Government of India (1974)
• Honest Man of the Year, Sulabh International (2000)
• Punjab Rattan, Government of Panjab (2006)
• Padma Vibhushan, Government of India (2007)

Bibliography

• The Mark of Vishnu and Other Stories, 1950
• The History of Sikhs, 1953
• Train to Pakistan, 1956
• The Voice of God and Other Stories, 1957
• I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale, 1959
• The Sikhs Today, 1959
• The Fall of the Kingdom of the Punjab, 1962
• A History of the Sikhs, 1963
• Ranjit Singh: The Maharajah of the Punjab, 1963
• Ghadar 1915: India's first armed revolution, 1966
• A Bride for the Sahib and Other Stories, 1967
• Black Jasmine, 1971
• Tragedy of Punjab, 1984
• Delhi: A Novel, 1990
• Sex, Scotch and Scholarship: Selected Writings, 1992
• Not a Nice Man to Know: The Best of Khushwant Singh, 1993
• We Indians, 1993
• Women and Men in My Life, 1995
• Uncertain Liaisons; Sex, Strife and Togetherness in Urban India, 1995
• The Company of Women, 1999
• Truth, Love and a Little Malice(an autobiography), 2002
• With Malice towards One and All
• The End of India, 2003
• Burial at the Sea, 2004
• Paradise and Other Stories, 2004
• Death at My Doorstep, 2005
• The Illustrated History of the Sikhs, 2006

External links

• Essay on Khushwant Singh on Literary Encylopedia
• About Khushwant Singh on AllAboutSikhs
• Interview with Khushwant Singh
• India today Interview: "We've Had So Many Donkeys as PM"