One of the longest serving Prime Ministers of India and the first Sikh to hold the powerful position, Manmohan Singh passed away on December 26, 2024. He was 92. The former PM of India, Manmohan Singh, was admitted to AIIMS hospital’s emergency department on Thursday evening. “With profound grief, we inform the demise of the former Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, aged 92. He was being treated for age-related medical conditions and had a sudden loss of consciousness at home on 26 December 2024. Resuscitative measures were started immediately at home. He was brought to the Medical Emergency at AIIMS, New Delhi at 8:06 PM. Despite all efforts, he could not be revived and was declared dead at 9:51 PM. Kimalade,” an offiial statement by the hospital read.
He is survived by his wife Gursharan Kaur and three daughters namely: Upinder Singh, Daman Singh, and Amrit Singh and their families.
All about Manmohan Singh’s illustrious family
Dr. Manmohan Singh (File photo)
Born on September 26, 1932, in Gah, West Punjab (present day Pakistan), Manmohan Singh was the son of Gurmukh Singh and Amrit Kaur. During the India-Pakistan partition in 1947, Manmohan Singh and his family had migrated to Independent India. The family first migrated to Haldwani, India and a year later relocated to Amritsar in Punjab, India, as per Wikipedia. Manmohan Singh studied Economics from Panjab University, followed by the University of Cambridge and a doctorate in Economics from University of Oxford. He worked for the United Nations from 1966–1969, after which he started his bureaucratic career when Shri Lalit Narayan Mishra hired Singh as an advisor in the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry, as per Wikipedia. This was the beginning of his illustrious career and the rest, as they say, is history.
In 1958, Manmohan Singh married Gursharan Kaur, who went on to be his partner for life. Just like Singh, his wife Gursharan Kaur was also quite learned as she was a history professor and an author.
NEW DELHI, INDIA – FEBRAURY 05: In this photo provided by the German Government Press Office (BPA), (L-R) Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, his wife Gursharan Kaur and Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi are seen ahead of the state banquet at the official residence of the state president on February 5, 2014 in new Delhi, India. Gauck is in India for an official six day visit. (Photo by Guido Bergmann/Bundesregierung via Getty Images)
Manmohan Singh and his wife Gursharan Kaur have three daughters– Upinder Singh, Daman Singh, and Amrit Singh– who are just as well-educated as their parents. Here are more details about them:
Upinder Singh is a History professor and Dean of Faculty at the Ashoka University, and she is also an author with six books to her credit. She is also the former head of the History Department at the University of Delhi, and she has won several awards including the 2009 Infosys Prize for Social Sciences. Some of her notable books are: ‘Ancient Delhi’ and ‘A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India’.
Their second daughter, Daman Singh studied from St. Stephen’s College in Delhi and the Institute of Rural Management in Anand, Gujarat (IRMA). She too is an author and some of her books are ‘The Last Frontier: People’, ‘Forests in Mizoram’, a novel titled ‘Nine by Nine’. She also wrote her parents Manmohan Singh and Gursharan Kaur’s biography titled ‘Strictly Personal’. Daman Singh is married to Ashok Pattnaik, who is an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of 1983 batch. In 2016, he served as the CEO of the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID).
Meanwhile, Manmohan Singh and Gursharan Kaur’s youngest daughter, Amrit Singh, is a human rights lawyer and a Professor at the Stanford Law School where she teaches the Practice of Law. She is also the founding Executive Director of Rule of Law Impact Lab, as per reports.
Former-PM Manmohan Singh’s works often spoke much louder than his words. He was described as “one of the world’s most revered leaders” and “a man of uncommon decency and grace”, by The Independent. Meanwhile, the late Khushwant Singh once even lauded Singh as the best prime minister India has had, as per Wikipedia.
The scholar, economist, bureaucrat and the 13th Prime Minister of India, Shri Manmohan Singh will forever be remembered for his works and integrity.
