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The Inner Temple Yearbook 2021–2022
THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF KHUSHWANT SINGH Barrister, diplomat, editor, novelist, poet, philosopher and columnist; the Archive Assistant, Ayah Al-Rawni, revisits the life of one of the most dynamic figures in modern India.
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Khushwant Singh in his residence in New Delhi, October 1995 © Photo by Sondeep Shankar/Getty Images
Khushwant Singh was born into an affluent Sikh family in the Punjab, just a few years after the decision was announced to move the capital of the British Raj from Calcutta to Delhi. With preparations taking place to build a new capital city, his father, who worked in construction, moved to Delhi with most of the family, while Khushwant remained in the village of Hadali with his grandmother. As was custom in his village, there was no record of his actual birthday, but Khushwant was later informed that he was born in the summer months, a year into the First World War. He gave himself the birthday 15 August 1915. Khushwant and his grandmother eventually joined the rest of the family in Delhi, where he was enrolled in Modern School – the first private and coeducational school established in the city (although, according to Khushwant, with so few girls in the school, it was co-ed in name only.) It took Khushwant some time to adapt to city life and, unlike his classmates, he had no prior knowledge of English. Over time, English became one of his strongest subjects, which, in hindsight, is not surprising. He moved onto St Stephen’s College in Delhi, and then to Lahore Government College University, finally completing his education in London, where he chose to study in King’s College London – because to him, it sounded quite grand. He was admitted by The Inner Temple in 1934 and called in 1939. Although he did not discuss the Inn in any great detail, his autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice, describes his impressions of London, his experience as a student, and the lives of his cohort of Indian classmates. In his first year, he was quite reserved and did not have much to do in his spare time, but his network eventually grew, and he saw much more of England.
Following his return to India, he became a practising lawyer in the Lahore High Court. In 1947, with Indian independence on the horizon, there were reports of riots breaking out in parts of the Punjab. Although partition of India had been announced, Khushwant assumed the situation would quieten down and hoped he could remain in Lahore, where many of his close friends lived. But one morning, he saw smoke and heard gunfire. The riots were not just a story in the newspaper but a reality on his doorstep. On the advice of a British friend, who was head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in the Punjab, Khushwant left his house key with a Muslim friend, before he and his wife, carried what little they could to join the Hindu and Sikh refugees leaving for Delhi. On this journey, they passed Muslims headed in the opposite direction and witnessed the carnage that took place during partition, where nearly a million people were killed. They eventually made it to Delhi a day before Indian independence, and Khushwant was in the crowd watching Lord Mountbatten lower the Union Jack as the flag of India was raised. Coincidentally, Indian independence fell on the same ‘birthday’ he had made up for himself as a child. In his writing, he described the jubilant celebrations that felt surreal against the backdrop of sectarian violence, and which only came to an end after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, who Khushwant described as the “lone voice of sanity” in India. Immediately after Indian independence, Khushwant joined the India Foreign Service, working under Krishna Menon, a fellow barrister (Middle Temple) in London, and taking on other communications and media roles in Canada. In 1954, he went to Paris to join the UNESCO Department of Mass Communications for two years.
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