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The Sikh Foundation

July 2006

Patwant Singh

Patwant Singh is a respected author and commentator on Sikhs and Sikh issues, world affairs, art and architecture, and Indian politics, among other topics. Singh was born in 1925 in Delhi, where he lives today.

Patwant Singh began his career in the family business of building and engineering but soon merged these interests with his love for writing. He started up his first periodical, The Indian Builder, in 1953 as publisher. In 1957, he unveiled his most influential journal, Design, the only magazine of its kind in the world at that time. Design was revolutionary in bringing together the latest thinking in the fields of architecture, urban planning, visual arts, graphics, and industrial design--subject areas that, up to that point, tended to have isolated audiences that rarely mixed. The journal’s strongly interdisciplinary approach led Singh to begin pondering questions about why Bombay, Delhi and other urban areas in India were being developed in ways that ran counter to his aesthetic and humanitarian sensibilities. When he realized that the answers had less to do with architecture and more to do with politicians, government policies and corruption, he began publishing newspaper articles in the 1960s with the aim of affecting public opinion and official policies.

The Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the Second Kashmir War in 1965 led Singh to think about international politics and India’s place in the world. These concerns are reflected in the focus of his first book, India and the Future of Asia, published in 1967. His second book, 1971’s The Struggle for Power in Asia, was intended as a corrective to narrow and skewed Western perspectives on Asia and its influence on the world. According to Singh, "The tragedy of our time is that instead of turning to the Asians to find out what they think . . . Western opinion on Asia [continues] to be shaped by Western minds, catering to Western needs."

In 1973, Patwant Singh bought eight acres of land in the Aravalli Hills in Haryana. While on the road looking for land to buy, he was flagged down by a small group of people by the side of the road. A young woman was in labor and experiencing complications beyond the level of expertise of her midwife, so her family was trying to get her to a hospital in the nearest town. Patwant Singh immediately resolved to build a hospital there. He persuaded some fellow trustees of a small trust to fund the idea and arranged for the state of Haryana to donate land for this purpose. When Singh had a massive heart attack in 1977, his appreciation for the quality medical care received led him to strengthen his resolve to build the rural hospital. Donors in India were joined by supporters in the US and Canada as well as even the Canadian International Development Agency, and with their support, the Kabliji Hospital and Rural Health Centre was built.

After 1984, Patwant Singh began to delve into Sikh issues, editing and contributing the opening essay of Punjab: The Fatal Miscalculation, which was published in 1985. The Golden Temple, published in 1989, aimed to be the definitive volume on the Harimandir Sahib and show how central this "fountainhead of inspiration" has been to Sikhs since its construction.

Of Dreams and Demons is Patwant Singh’s 1994 memoir, which highlights the intersections that connect his personal history to India’s history in the 1930s to the 1990s. He returned to the topics of religion and history with his 1999 publication, The Sikhs, a survey of Sikh history beginning with the historical context of South Asia before the time of the Gurus and stretching to the present day.

Garland Around My Neck: The Story of Puran Singh of Pingalwara was co-written with Harinder Kaur Sekhon as a tribute to this remarkable humanitarian who dedicated his life to sewa in order to bring a more healthy and humane world into existence. After 23 years of personally caring for ever-increasing numbers of people who were unable to take care of themselves, in 1957, Puran Singh expanded his service to society by establishing Pingalwara, which now serves over 1,000 residents. Unlike a hospital, which has the aim of treating the sick, Pingalwara was built for people--disabled, poor, mentally ill, with terminal diseases--who needed hope and a home. Patwant Singh and Harinder Kaur Sekhon relied on Punjab’s rich tradition of oral history in researching this book.

Patwant Singh’s latest book is The World According to Washington: An Asian View, published in 2005. In this work, the author examines the often violent history of relations between western imperial powers and Asia, including East Asia, South Asia, and West Asia. His perspective is passionately critical of the destruction western interventionists have wrought in Asia, largely through valuing their own political and economic interests over the interests of Asians themselves--and by backing up these interests with firepower. First, Singh writes, there was a time when "Europeans considered the domination of Asia their birthright." Now, incursions of US troops, US-made arms, and coercive development plans are the strategies of the world’s only remaining superpower. When Washington, DC and those in its pocket write history and cover current events, then, their perspective is so imbalanced that the general public in the western world is now ignorant of even the most basic facts about Asia. The World According to Washington was conceived as a corrective and fills in the missing histories of US involvement and interests in hotspots like India and Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Patwant Singh has also written extensively for newspapers and magazines and has appeared on radio and television. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Canada’s Globe and Mail, the UK’s Independent and elsewhere. Patwant Singh gave a lecture on July 22, 2006 at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York in conjunction with I See No Stranger: Early Sikh Art and Devotion, an exhibition jointly sponsored by the Sikh Foundation and the Sikh Art & Film Foundation.