Karan Singh

Karan Singh (born 9 March 1931) is an Indian politician and philosopher.

He is the Titular Maharaja of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.

2. Quote: "The princes of India – their number and variety reflecting to a large extent the chaos that had come to the country with the break up of the Mughal empire – had lost real power in the British time. Through generations of idle servitude they had grown to specialize only in style. A bogus, extinguishable glamour: in 1947, with Independence, they had lost their state, and Mrs. Gandhi in 1971 had, without much public outcry, abolished their privy purses and titles."

(pp 37–38).

In 1949, at age of eighteen, Singh was appointed as the Prince Regent of Jammu and Kashmir state after his father stepped down as the ruler, following the state's accession to India.

In 1950, the 19-year-old Karan Singh was married to 13-year-old Yasho Rajya Lakshmi, granddaughter of Mohan Shumsher Rana, Maharajah of Nepal, belonging to the Rana dynasty of Nepal.

Her father, General Maharajkumar Sharada Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana, was a son of Mohan Shumsher.

The match, arranged by their families in the usual Indian way, was entirely harmonious and lasted all their lives.

The couple had three children:

From 1952 to 1965 he was the Sadr-i-Riyasat (President) of the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

He is the chairperson trustee of the Dharmarth Trust of Jammu and Kashmir which maintains 175 temples in north India and works in other areas such as historical preservation.

Singh was a member of India's Upper House of Parliament, the Rajya Sabha, representing the national capital territory of Delhi.

He is a senior member of the Indian National Congress party who served successively as President (Sadr-i-Riyasat) and Governor of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir.

He was a life trustee and president of India International Center.

On August 8, 1953 as the President (Sadr-i-Riyasat) of Jammu and Kashmir, Karan Singh backed a coup d'etat against the elected Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah, allegedly for harboring independent ambitions for Kashmir, which led to the imprisonment of Abdullah for eleven years following the Kashmir Conspiracy Case.

Two years later, he voluntarily surrendered his privy purse, which he had been entitled to since the death of his father in 1961.

He placed the entire sum into a charitable trust named after his parents.

From that point, he served successively as regent, the Sadr-i-Riyasat, and the first governor of the state of Jammu and Kashmir from 1965 to 1967.

In 1967, he resigned as Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, and became the youngest-ever member of the Union Cabinet, holding the portfolios of Tourism and Civil Aviation between 1967 and 1973.

In the 26th amendment to the Constitution of India promulgated in 1971, the Government of India, of which Karan Singh was a Union cabinet minister, abolished all official symbols of princely India, including titles, privileges, and remuneration (privy purses).

1., "Through a constitutional amendment passed in 1971, Indira Gandhi stripped the princes of the titles, privy purses and regal privileges which her father's government had granted."

(p 278).

3. Quote: "Although the Indian states were alternately requested or forced into union with either India or Pakistan, the real death of princely India came when the Twenty-sixth Amendment Act (1971) abolished the princes' titles, privileges, and privy purses."

(page 78).

4. Quote: "The third stage in the political evolution of the princes from rulers to citizens occurred in 1971, when the constitution ceased to recognize them as princes and their privy purses, titles, and special privileges were abolished."

(page 84).

5. Quote: "Her success at the polls emboldened Mrs. Gandhi to act decisively against the princes. Through 1971, the two sides tried and failed to find a settlement. The princes were willing to forgo their privy purses, but hoped at least to save their titles. But with her overwhelming majority in Parliament, the prime minister had no need to compromise. On 2 December, she introduced a bill to amend the constitution and abolish all princely privileges. It was passed in the Lok Sabha by 381 votes to six, and in the Rajya Sabha by 167 votes to seven. In her own speech, the prime minister invited 'the princes to join the elite of the modern age, the elite which earns respect by its talent, energy and contribution to human progress, all of which can only be done when we work together as equals without regarding anybody as of special status.' " (page 441).

6. Quote: "The Indian princes survived the British Raj by only a few years. The Indian republic stripped them of their powers and then their titles."

(page 10).

7. Quote: "Indian States: "Various (formerly) semi-independent areas in India ruled by native princes .... Under British rule ... administered by residents assisted by political agents.

Titles and remaining privileges of princes abolished by Indian government 1971." (page 520). 8. Quote: "A monarchy is only as good as the reigning monarch: thus it is with the princely states.

Once they seemed immutable, invincible.

He was elected chancellor of Banaras Hindu University for three terms until 2018 when he was succeeded by Giridhar Malaviya.

He has been a prospective presidential candidate over the years.

Yuvraj Karan Singh was born at the Martinez Hotel, Cannes, France, into the Dogra dynasty.

He was the only son of Sir Hari Singh, Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir.

His mother, Maharani Tara Devi, who was the fourth wife of his father, was the daughter of a landowning Katoch Rajput family and came from (Vijaypur near Bilaspur) in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh.

Singh was educated at Doon School, Dehradun, a boarding school, which represented a departure from the usual practise of princes being educated by tutors at home.

The school was very elite, but it nevertheless meant that Karan Singh shared the classroom (though not the hostel) with boys from non-royal backgrounds, and received a standard education.

Unusually for the scion of an Indian royal family, he then enrolled in a college for a graduate degree, receiving first a B.A. degree from Jammu and Kashmir University, Srinagar, and subsequently an M.A. degree in Political Science and a PhD degree from University of Delhi.