Upinder Singh is an Indian historian currently Professor of History and Dean of the Faculty at Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana. Previously, she served as Head of History Department at Delhi University. She is the daughter of former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. She is also the recipient of the inaugural Infosys Award in the Social Sciences (History) category.
Wiki/Biography
Upinder Singh was born on Monday, June 22, 1959, in Amritsar, Punjab, India (age 63; as of 2022). In 1966, Manmohan Singh moved with his family to New York and worked at UNCTAD.
Manmohan Singh with wife Gursharan and daughter Upinder Singh
However, Manmohan and his wife Gulsharan want their daughter to grow up in India and embrace Indian values. So when Upinder was ten years old, they returned to India and started living in Delhi. Upinder grew up with her two sisters, Daman and Amrit, all three of them were voracious readers, a quality instilled in them by their father. In an interview, Daman recalled his childhood memories and said:
Our most exciting outing was when my father took us to a bookstore. Our birthday gifts are always books. There was a time when we lived just a stone’s throw from the Derry Sports Club, which had a great library. I remember fighting with my sisters over library cards, borrowing two books, then rushing home and scrambling to finish them so I could borrow the next two books. “
Childhood photos of Upinder Singh, Daman Singh and Amrit Singh
She received her BA (Honours) in History from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and subsequently obtained her MA in History (1981) and MPhil (1984) from the University of Delhi. In 1991, she completed her PhD at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, with a thesis titled “Kings, Brahmins and Temples in Orissa: A Study of Inscriptions (300-1147 AD)”. She later received scholarships to conduct research at Leiden, Cambridge, Harvard University and Leuven.
appearance
Height (approximately): 5′4″
Hair Color: Salt & Pepper
Eye color: black
family and caste
Upinder Singh belongs to the Kohli Sikh family.
Parents and siblings
Her father, Manmohan Singh, was an Indian National Congress politician who served as the 13th Prime Minister of India. Her mother’s name is Gulsharan Kaur. Upinder is the eldest among her sisters. Her sister Amrit Singh is an American human rights lawyer. Her sister Dharmaman Singh is a writer and novelist.
Dharmaman Singh with her parents Manmohan Singh and Gurshalan Kaur
Manmohan Singh with daughter Upinder Singh (in red circle) and wife Gursharan Kaur
Dharmaman Singh’s sister Amrit Singh
husband and children
Her husband is Vijay Tankha, an academic and professor of philosophy. They have two sons: Madhav Tankha and Raghav Tankha.
Upinder with husband Vijay and son Madhav
Upinder Singh and his son Madhav Tankha
Profession
From 1981 to 2004, Upinder Singh taught at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. In 1985, Singer received a reciprocal scholarship from the Dutch government to conduct research at the Kern Institute in Leiden. She owns various literary works. Upinder Singh writes on various aspects of ancient Indian social, economic, and religious history, the intersection between political thought and practice, and Indian archeology (the modern history of ancient sites and monuments, and cultural interactions between India and Southeast Asia). Her research papers have been published in various Indian and international journals. Upinder Singh first came to prominence in historical scholarship in 1994 with the publication of Kings, Brahmins and Temples in Orissa: An Epigraphic Study.
In 1999, she was awarded the Ancient India and Iran Trust/Wallace India Visiting Fellowship to conduct research in Cambridge and London. During this period she was also a visiting fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. In 2004, she started teaching in the History Department of Delhi University until 2018. She served as National History Coordinator at the Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi.
Upinder Singh, Head of Department of History, University of Delhi delivers Paduru Gururaj Bhat Memorial Lecture in Udupi
In 2004, she published Discoveries in Ancient India: Early Archaeologists and the Beginnings of Archeology. Singer is also the recipient of the prestigious Daniel Ingalls Fellowship of the Harvard-Yenching Institute at Harvard University (2005). Singh’s book A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the Twelfth Century (2008) describes primary sources such as ancient texts, artifacts, inscriptions and coins. From May 2010 to June 2010, as an Erasmus Mundus scholarship winner, she served as a visiting professor at the University of Leuven in Belgium. She made a seminal contribution to ancient urban history with Delhi: An Ancient History (1999). Singh has written the book “Ancient India: New Research” with his colleague Professor Nayanjot Lahiri of the University of Delhi. 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, she was appointed Professor of History and Dean of the Faculty at Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana. Other research papers she has authored include Political Violence in Ancient India (2017), Ideas in Ancient India: Essays on Religion, Politics and Archeology (2016), and Rethinking Early Medieval India (2011). She co-edited Asian Encounters: Exploring Connected Histories (2014). She has also served as a member of the Governing Council of the Delhi School of Heritage Studies 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. Department of History, Presidency College.
dispute
Attacked by ABVP activists
In 2008, activists from right-wing student group ABVP attacked Delhi University’s history department, claiming that Singh had edited a book in which an article by AK Ramanujan cast doubt on Rama’s existence. Singh was rushed to safety by special forces. The university denied the allegation, saying Singh “…is neither the editor nor the compiler of the book ‘Cultural History of Ancient India.'”
Facts/Trivia
- She was known as U Singh by her students. Her family affectionately calls her “Kiki.”
- In 2009, she was awarded the Infosys Social Sciences Prize – History Prize in recognition of her contribution as an outstanding historian of ancient and early medieval Indian history.
- All three of Manmohan Singh’s daughters married outside the Sikh faith. An excerpt from Daman Singh’s book Strictly Personal: Manmohan and Gursharan (2014) reveals that Upinder’s marriage to Vijay Tanka gave Manmohan and Gulshalan brought immense suffering. In fact, it took Gurshalan quite some time to accept Vijay and eat with him at the same table. Eventually, they began to like him and accept him.
- An excerpt from Strictly Personal: Manmohan and Gulshalan (2014) also states that Manmohan Singh’s home in Delhi’s Ashok Vihar was attacked by mobs during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots . At that time, Manmohan Singh was the governor of the Reserve Bank of India and came to Delhi to pay tribute to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984, for having committed suicide earlier that year. Operation Blue Star was authorized at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Upinder Singh and her husband Vijay Tankha were living at home at the time. When the mob closed in and burned down their home, Vijay Tankha tricked them into believing that the house belonged to him. As he was a Hindu, the goons spared the house. Finally, the family sold the house in 1986 because several houses in the area still showed signs of the riots.
- Initially, Upinder applied for economics out of respect for her father, but she later opted out because she was terrible at math. Manmohan Singh was not particularly happy with her decision. Daman reveals in her book that Manmohan had a low opinion of social science subjects other than economics. Manmohan’s occasional careless remarks about historical research hurt Upinder. Therefore, Daman studied mathematics to please her father. However, when Daman switched to IRMA, her father was unhappy again.
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education