Upinder Singh is an Indian historian who is Professor of History and Dean of the Faculty at Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana. Prior to that, he served as Head of the Department of History, University of Delhi. She is the daughter of former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He is also an Infosys First Prize winner in the Social Sciences (History) category.
Contents
Wiki/Biography
Upinder Singh was born on Monday, 22 June 1959 (age 63; as of 2022) in Amritsar, Punjab, India. In 1966, Manmohan Singh and his family moved to New York, where he worked at UNCTAD.
Manmohan Singh with his wife Gursharan and daughter Apinder Singh
However, Manmohan and his wife Gursharan wanted their daughters to grow up in India with Indian values. So they returned to India and started living in Delhi when Apinder was ten years old. Appinder grew up with his two sisters, Deman and Amrit, and all three were avid readers, something their father instilled in them. In an interview, Deman recalled his childhood memories and said:
Our most interesting outing was when Dad took us to a bookstore. Our birthday presents were always books. There was a time when we lived within walking distance of the Delhi Gymkhana Club, which has an excellent library. “I remember fighting with my sisters about library cards, borrowing two books, rushing home and racing to finish them so I could borrow the next two.”
Childhood picture of Upinder Singh, Daman Singh and Amrit Singh
He received his BA in History from St. Stephen’s College and received his MA in History (1981) and MA (1984) from the University of Delhi. In 1991, he completed his PhD at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, with a thesis entitled Kings, Brahmans and Temples in Orissa: An Epigraphic Survey (300-1147 CE). He later received fellowships to conduct research in Leiden, Cambridge, Harvard, and Leuven.
Physical appearance
Height (approx): 5′4″
Hair color: salt and pepper
Eye Color: Black
family
Upinder Singh belongs to Kohli Sikh family.
parents and siblings
His father, Manmohan Singh, is an Indian politician from the Congress Party who was the 13th Prime Minister of India. His mother’s name is Gursharan Kaur. Appinder is the eldest among her sisters. His sister Amrit Singh is an American human rights lawyer. His sister, Deman Singh, is an author and novelist.
Daman Singh with his parents Manmohan Singh and Gursharan Kaur
Manmohan Singh with daughter Apinder Singh (in red circle) and wife Gursharan Kaur
Deman Singh’s younger sister, Amrit Singh
husband and children
She is married to a fellow academic, Vijay Tankha, who is a professor of philosophy. They have two sons together, Madhav Tankha and Raghav Tankha.
Upinder with husband Vijay and son Madhav
Upinder Singh with his son Madhav Tankha
Career
From 1981 to 2004, Appinder Singh taught at St. Stephen’s College in Delhi. In 1985, Singh received a Dutch Government Reciprocal Fellowship to conduct research at the Kern Institute, Leiden. He has various literary works. Upinder Singh’s writings cover various aspects of ancient Indian social, economic and religious history, the intersection between political ideas and practices, and Indian archeology (modern histories of ancient sites and monuments and cultural interactions between India and Southeast Asia). His research papers have been published in various Indian and international journals. In 1994, Upinder Singh first made his mark in the field of historical scholarship when he published Kings, Brahmans and Temples in Orissa: An Epigraphic Survey.
In 1999, he was awarded an Ancient India and Iran Trust/Wallace India Visiting Fellowship to conduct research in Cambridge and London. During this period he was also a Visiting Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. In 2004, he started teaching at the Faculty of History at the University of Delhi, where he worked until 2018. He worked as the National Coordinator of History at the Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi.
Upinder Singh, Head of the Department of History, University of Delhi delivers the Paduru Gururaj Bhatt Memorial Lecture in Udupi
In 2004, he published Discovering Ancient India: Early Archaeologists and the Beginnings of Archaeology. Singh is also the recipient of the prestigious Daniel Ingall Fellowship at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University (2005). Singh’s book A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the Twelfth Century (2008) describes original sources such as ancient texts, artefacts, inscriptions and coins. From May 2010 to June 2010, he was visiting professor at the University of Leuven, Belgium, as a recipient of an Erasmus Mundus Fellowship. He made a pioneering contribution to ancient urban history through his book Delhi: An Ancient History (1999). Along with his colleague Professor Nayanjot Lahiri of Delhi University, Singh wrote the book Ancient India: A New Study. Their work illuminates the intricacies of nineteenth and early twentieth century archeology and the complexities of ancient Indian history.
Upinder Singh and Nayanjot Lahiri also co-authored Buddhism in Asia: Revival and Reinvention (2018). In 2018, he was appointed as Professor of History and Dean of the Faculty at Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana. Other research works he has authored include Political Violence in Ancient India (2017), The Idea of Ancient India: Essays on Religion, Politics and Archeology (2016) and Rethinking Early Medieval India (2011). He co-edited Asian Encounters: Exploring Connected Histories (2014). He has also served as a member of the Governing Council of the Delhi Institute of Heritage Research and Management, a member of the Editorial Board of South Asian Studies, an Adjunct Professor at Mangalore University and an external member of the Departmental Research Committee of the Department of History, Presidency College.
Confrontation
ABVP activists were attacked
In 2008, activists from the right-wing student group ABVP attacked Delhi University’s history department, alleging that Singh had edited a book in which an essay by AK Ramanujan questioned the existence of Rama. Singh was airlifted to safety by SPG. The university denied the allegation, saying Singh was “…neither the editor nor the compiler of a book on the cultural history of ancient India”.
Facts/Trivia
- He is referred to as U Singh by the students. Her family lovingly calls her Kiki.
- In 2009, he was awarded the Infosys Prize in Social Sciences – History in recognition of his services as an outstanding historian of ancient and early medieval Indian history.
- All three of Manmohan Singh’s daughters married outside the Sikh faith. An extract from Deman Singh’s book Strictly Personal: Manmohan and Gursharan (2014) reveals that Apinder’s marriage to Vijay Tankha caused immense pain to Manmohan and Gursharan. It actually took Gursharan quite a while to accept Vijay and eat at the same table with him. Eventually, they liked him and accepted him.
- An excerpt from Strictly Personal: Manmohan and Gursharan (2014) also claimed that Manmohan Singh’s family home in Delhi’s Ashok Vihar was attacked by a mob during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. On 31 October 1984, he was beaten by his Sikh bodyguards for authorizing Operation Blue Star at the Golden Temple in Amritsar earlier that year. Appinder Singh and her husband Vijay Tankha were living in the household at the time. When the mob came close to burning down their family home, Vijay Tankha tricked them into believing that the house belonged to him. As he was a Hindu, the mob spared the house. The family eventually sold the house in 1986 because several houses in the area still bore signs of disturbance.
- Initially, Upinder applied to economics out of respect for his father, but he later gave it up because he was terrible at math. Manmohan Singh was not particularly impressed with his decision. In his book, Daman revealed that Manmohan had a low opinion of social science disciplines other than economics. Manmohan’s occasional careless remarks about the study of history hurt Upinder. Therefore, Daman took up mathematics to please his father. However, when Daman moved to IRMA, his father was still displeased.
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