profile by Roopinder Singh

SHE has worked hard to make history interesting-when she found that her lectures reached only a few who attended her classes at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. She reached out to a wider audience by writing a book, and another, and more, including one specifically to make history interesting to children, Mysteries of the Past: Archaeological Sites in India (National Book Trust, 2002). Upinder Singh, the co-winner of the Infosys Prize in Social Sciences: History, is indeed an outstanding historian of ancient and early medieval India. She was selected by a jury headed by the Nobel Laureate Prof. Amartya Sen.

The prize has been launched by the software giant to honour “outstanding researchers who will make a difference to India’s future”, and the annual award for each category is Rs 50 lakh, which in this case will be shared between her and her co-laureate, Prof. Abhijit Banerjee, Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA, who won it for the category of Social Sciences: Economics.

Upinder Singh’s first book, Kings, Brahmanas, and Temples in Orissa: An Epigraphic Study (AD 300-1147) published by Munshiram Manoharlal, 1994, was based on her doctoral thesis which she had earned at McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

A volume, Ancient Delhi (Oxford University Press) followed in 1999. Her recent books include The Discovery of Ancient India: Early Archaeologists and the Beginnings of Archaeology (Permanent Black, 2004); Delhi: Ancient History, edited by her, (Social Science Press, 2006), A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: from the Stone Age to the 12th century (Pearson Longman, 2008).

As the citation of the Infosys Prize says: “Professor Upinder Singh is being recognised for her rich contributions as an outstanding historian of ancient and early medieval India. Depth and breadth of her scholarly research are matched by a rare ability to communicate her findings to a broad audience of students and intellectually curious non-specialists.”

A student of History Honours at St Stephen’s College, Delhi, Upinder Singh did two postgraduate degrees, an M.A. in History and an M.Phil. in History, both from the University of Delhi. She completed her Ph.D at McGill University and came back to teach at St Stephen’s College, before joining Delhi University.

She is a recipient of the prestigious Daniel Ingalls Fellowship at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University (2005). In 1999 she was awarded the Ancient India and Iran Trust/Wallace India Visiting Fellowship to pursue research in Cambridge and London. During this period, she was also a Visiting Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. In 1985 she was awarded the Netherlands Government Reciprocal Fellowship to pursue research at the Instituut Kern, Leiden. She is the National Co-ordinator for History at the Institute of Life Long Learning at the University of Delhi, which aims at creating a large corpus of high quality and exciting e-learning material for undergraduate students all over the country.

Her many students testify that she has “inspired and trained a younger generation of historians to adopt innovative methods in the study of early Indian history. A wonderfully creative historian, Singh is a key figure in rejuvenating the study of early history and archaeology in India.”

This article was published in The Tribune on December 8, 2009. Please click here to read an earlier account of the release of her book A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India, which Jaspreet and I attended, and here to read a 2004 interview with her following the release of her book, The Discovery of Ancient India: Early Archaeologists and the Beginnings of Archaeology.

A pretty young woman looked at me meaningfully, realised that I was unable to recognise her, and came up to my wife and me to introduce herself as the granddaughter of Bhai Kahn Singh of Nabha. We were at a gathering at Whispering Willows, an upmarket commercial farm on Chandigarh’s outskirts on Sunday. “What do you do now,” I asked her. I had not seen anything written by her since she got married a few years ago. “I work as a volunteer in Sikhyaa and another school for slum children,” she said. 

Major A P Singh, her father, continues to dedicate himself to perpetuating the legacy of Bhai Kahn Singh, and among his achievements is a statue in the honour of Punjab’s pioneering encyclopaedist at Nabha who I have long been an admirer of.  Please click here to read my article on Bhai Kahn Singh.

Salman Rushdie is always in the news and it took Midnight’s Children to propel him into the dizzying heights of literary stardom, and to earn him Booker immortality . There is no doubt that Rushdie is a difficult author to read, for the persistent, the rewards are great. Every reader has his or her favourites, and mine include Midnights Children and Shalimar the Clown.

Rushdie courts controversy, and keeps on churning not only bestsellers, but also works acclaimed by literary critics. The fact that he was named Best of the Booker on the 40^th anniversary of the prestigious literary prize, is again an occasion to look at the man and his work. Please click here to read my recent article on Salman Rushdie.

In the wake of the now waning interest in Princess Diana, some of my friends reminded me of the middle that I had written when she died on August 31, 1997, in the tragic car accident in Paris. Please follow the link given below to read the middle.

The New Year has started well and I have had a chance to write on two achievers, both of whom I am rather proud to know:

Today, it was announced that the winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award for English is Rupa Bajwa. The girl from Amritsar has a disarming smile, and a very sharp mind that has produced her internationally acclaimed bestseller, The Sari Shop. Set in Amritsar, the book explores the live of Ramchand who works in the sari shop but dares to dream. What happens next should best come to you from the pages of the book.

Rupa Bajwa is busy working on her next book. She graciously agreed to answer some questions from me. Please click here to read more about this young and gifted author.

Earlier, in a surprise visit, Prof Gurinder Singh Mann came all the way from Santa Barbara to attend the inauguration of the World Punjabi Centre, Punjabi University, Patiala.

Prof Mann is Founder-Director of the Center for Sikh and Punjab Studies at the UCSB, which has done commendable work in popularising Punjab and Punjabi in Western academia. I have known Prof Mann since the time we both were in New York in the late 1980s. He is a man with a clear vision of what he wants to leave as his legacy, and he has untiringly worked towards it. Though he keeps a schedule that is hectic to say the least, he was kind enough to spare some time for me. You can read what I wrote about him by clicking here.