Khushwant Singh

His uncle Sardar Ujjal Singh (1895–1983) was previously Governor of Punjab and Tamil Nadu.

His birth name, given by his grandmother, was Khushal Singh (meaning "Prosperous Lion").

He was called by a pet name "Shalee".

At school his name earned him ridicule as other boys would mock him with an expression, "Shalee Shoolee, Bagh dee Moolee" (meaning, "This shalee or shoolee is the radish of some garden.") He chose Khushwant so that it rhymes with his elder brother's name Bhagwant.

He declared that his new name was "self-manufactured and meaningless".

However, he later discovered that there was a Hindu physician with the same name, and the number subsequently increased.

Khushwant Singh (born Khushal Singh, 2 February 1915 – 20 March 2014) was an Indian author, lawyer, diplomat, journalist and politician.

Births and deaths were not recorded in his time, and for him his father simply made up 2 February 1915 for his school enrollment at Modern School, New Delhi.

But his grandmother Lakshmi Devi asserted that he was born in August, so he later set the date for himself as 15 August.

Sobha Singh was a prominent builder in Lutyens' Delhi.

He entered the Delhi Modern School in 1920 and studied there till 1930.

There he met his future wife, Kanwal Malik, one year his junior.

He studied Intermediate of Arts at St. Stephen's College in Delhi during 1930-1932.

He pursued higher education at Government College, Lahore, in 1932, and got his BA in 1934 by a "third-class degree".

Then he went to King's College London to study law, and was awarded an LL.B.

from University of London in 1938.

He was subsequently called to the bar at the London Inner Temple.

Khushwant Singh started his professional career as a practicing lawyer in 1939 at Lahore in the Chamber of Manzur Qadir and Ijaz Husain Batalvi.

He worked at Lahore Court for eight years where he worked with some of his best friends and fans including Akhtar Aly Kureshy, Advocate, and Raja Muhammad Arif, Advocate.

His experience in the 1947 Partition of India inspired him to write Train to Pakistan in 1956 (made into film in 1998), which became his most well-known novel.

Born in Punjab, Khushwant Singh was educated in Modern School, New Delhi, St. Stephen's College, and graduated from Government College, Lahore.

He studied at King's College London and was awarded an LL.B. from University of London.

He was called to the bar at the London Inner Temple.

After working as a lawyer in Lahore High Court for eight years, he joined the Indian Foreign Service upon the Independence of India from British Empire in 1947.

In 1947, he entered the Indian Foreign Service for the newly independent India.

He started as Information Officer of the Government of India in Toronto, Canada, and moved on to be the Press Attaché and Public Officer for the Indian High Commission for four years in London and Ottawa.

He was appointed journalist in the All India Radio in 1951, and then moved to the Department of Mass Communications of UNESCO at Paris in 1956.

These last two careers encouraged him to pursue a literary career.

As a writer, he was best known for his trenchant secularism, humour, sarcasm and an abiding love of poetry.

His comparisons of social and behavioural characteristics of Westerners and Indians are laced with acid wit.

In 1951, he joined the All India Radio as a journalist.

He founded and edited Yojana, an Indian government journal in 1951–1953; The Illustrated Weekly of India, a newsweekly;The National Herald.

Between 1954 and 1956 he worked in Department of Mass Communication of the UNESCO at Paris.

From 1956 he turned to editorial services.

He served as the editor of several literary and news magazines, as well as two newspapers, through the 1970s and 1980s.

Khushwant Singh was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974; however, he returned the award in 1984 in protest against Operation Blue Star in which the Indian Army raided Amritsar.

Between 1980 and 1986 he served as Member of Parliament in Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Parliament of India.

In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, the second-highest civilian award in India.

Khushwant Singh was born in Hadali, Khushab District, Punjab (which now lies in Pakistan), in a Sikh family.

He was the younger son of Sir Sobha Singh, who later witnessed against Bhagat Singh, and Veeran Bai.