LIVE | India bids farewell to Manmohan Singh; Rahul Gandhi attacks Modi govt
UK honours legacy of India’s ‘reluctant prime minister’ Manmohan Singh
India's "reluctant prime minister" and the "architect of economic reforms" is how sections of the UK media have been honouring the legacy of Dr Manmohan Sing.
British High Commissioner to the India Lindy Cameron took to social media to pay tribute to “a great Prime Minister, Finance Minister and global statesman who advanced India’s interests through bold economic reforms and played a key role in putting India in its rightful place on the world stage and stabilising the global economy after the financial crisis”.
“The UK will always be proud of his invaluable partnership with three UK Prime Ministers, and proud of him as an alumnus of two of our great universities. My thoughts and wishes are with his family and the people of India,” she said.
Singh’s tenure overlapped with Labour prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and Conservative David Cameron, who later wrote in his memoir that he “got on well” with this “saintly man” who was robust on the threats India faced.
“On a later visit he told me that another terrorist attack like that in Mumbai in July 2011, and India would have to take military action against Pakistan,” notes the former UK PM in ‘For the Record’, published in 2019.
Manoj Ladwa, founder and chairman of UK-based policy and events platform India Global Forum (IGF), described the former PM as a “towering statesman and visionary economist”.
“His transformative reforms in the 1990s not only shaped India’s future but also helped spark my own commitment to fostering stronger UK-India ties. As an alumnus of Oxford and Cambridge, he symbolised the deep cultural and academic connections between our nations. His legacy will inspire generations,” he said.
‘The Guardian’ newspaper referenced Singh’s “trademark sky-blue turbans and home-spun white kurta pyjamas” in its obituary.
“Singh, called India’s ‘reluctant prime minister’ due to his shyness and preference for being behind the scenes, was considered an unlikely choice to lead the world’s biggest democracy. But when Congress leader Sonia Gandhi led her party to a surprise victory in 2004, she turned to Singh to be prime minister,” the newspaper notes.
“He served a rare full two terms as prime minister in India’s tumultuous politics and is credited with spurring the rapid economic growth that lifted tens of millions of Indians from poverty,” it adds.
The BBC, in its obituary, hailed Singh as one of India's longest-serving prime ministers who was considered the “architect of key liberalising economic reforms, as premier from 2004-2014 and before that as finance minister”.
“In his maiden speech as finance minister he famously quoted Victor Hugo, saying that ‘no power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come’.
That served as a launchpad for an ambitious and unprecedented economic reform programme: he cut taxes, devalued the rupee, privatised state-run companies and encouraged foreign investment. The economy revived, industry picked up, inflation was checked and growth rates remained consistently high in the 1990s,” reads the report.
In January last year, Singh was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Indian Students and Alumni Union (NISAU) UK during their annual India-UK Achievers Honours in London.
“The India-UK relationship is indeed especially defined by our educational partnership. The founding fathers of our nation, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr B.R. Ambedkar, Sardar Patel and many others studied in the UK and went on to become great leaders, leaving a legacy which continues to inspire India and the world. Over the years countless Indian students have had the opportunity to study in the UK,” Singh said in his acceptance message at the time. PTI
Locals recall Manmohan Singh's special bond with Amritsar
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh shared a special bonding with the holy city of Amritsar, where he spent his growing up years.
Born at Gah in Punjab province which now falls in Pakistan's Chakwal district before his family migrated to Amritsar after Partition, Singh completed his schooling from Amritsar and did his graduation in economics from the Hindu College in Amritsar.
Singh's half-brother Surjit Singh Kohli said the former prime minister had deep affection for his grandmother who raised him following his mother's death when he was very young.
After migrating, the Singh family settled at a small rented house in Amritsar till he graduated.
Stating that economics was his favourite subject, retired professor of Hindu College, Rajinder Loomba, recalled that his wife Gursharan Kaur's parents also belonged to the holy city.
A few years ago, Singh attended the convocation-cum-alumni meet of Hindu College as the chief guest and interacted with the college staff like an ordinary person, reminiscing old memories, Loomba said.
Singh talked about the teachers who taught him at the college besides interacting and clicking photographs with the students and faculty members, he recalled.
Raj Kumar (71), a local resident, told PTI Videos that Singh used to live in Petha Wala Bazaar near the Golden Temple.
Recalling Singh as a very humble person, Kumar said, "Dr Singh used to live here. I was a child when his family shifted out. It was a very nice family." The house where the Singh family lived is in a dilapidated state now as no one stays there since they moved out a long time ago, Kumar said.
Some other locals recalled Manmohan Singh as a man who always took special pain for Amritsar, saying the UPA government headed by him got several projects sanctioned for the holy city.
The Congress leader, who steered the country for 10 years from 2004-2014 and helped set up the country's economic framework as finance minister before that, was a renowned name in the global financial and economic sectors. PTI