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 from University of Delhi.[14]
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.[15] The match, arranged by their families in the usual Indian way, lasted all their lives. The couple had three children:
Ajatshatru Singh, second son; took to politics, was elected to the state assembly from the Nagrota constituency and became a minister in the state government. His wife is the daughter of an army officer.
Jyotsna Singh, only daughter, married to Dhirendra Singh Chauhan, belonging to Mainpuri in Uttar Pradesh.[17]
Political career
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.[18] 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.
On 8 August 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,[citation needed] allegedly for harboring independent ambitions for Kashmir, which led to the imprisonment of Abdullah for eleven years following the Kashmir Conspiracy Case.
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.[19][20] 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.
In the 26th amendment[21] 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).[22] During the conclusion of the Cold War, he was India's ambassador to the USA. Singh received the Padma Vibhushan in 2005.
In 1971, he was sent as an envoy to the Eastern Bloc nations to explain India's position with regard to East Pakistan, then engaged in civil war with West Pakistan.[23] He attempted to resign following an aircraft crash in 1973, but the resignation was not accepted. The same year, he became the Minister for Health and Family planning, serving in this post until 1977.
Following the Emergency, Karan Singh was elected to the Lok Sabha from Udhampur in 1977 on a Congress ticket [the party had not split into Congress(I) and Congress(U) factions till then], and became Minister of Education and Culture in 1979 in Charan Singh's cabinet, representing Congress(U), which had split from Indira's Congress. Notably, Charan Singh became Prime Minister after the fall of Janata Party government headed by Morarji Desai. And Charan Singh himself resigned without facing Parliament even for a day as he was not sure of having a confidence motion passed in his favour. Karan Singh contested the 1980 Lok Sabha election on a Congress(U) ticket and won. In 1989–1990, he served as Indian Ambassador to the US, and this experience became the subject of a book he wrote, "Brief Sojourn".[24]
From 1967 to 1984, Karan Singh was a member of the Lok Sabha. In 1984, he contested the Lok Sabha polls as an independent candidate from Jammu but lost the election. He was a member of the Rajya Sabha from 30 November 1996 to 12 August 1999, representing National Conference, a Muslim dominated party active in Jammu and Kashmir. Later, he was a Rajya Sabha member from 28 January 2000 to 27 January 2018 representing INC. He is known for switching his loyalties from one political party to another quite frequently. He has served as Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University, Jammu and Kashmir University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and NIIT University.[25]
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressing at the launch of a film - I Believe Universal Values for a Global Society, by Raja Choudhury based on the beliefs of Dr. Karan Singh in 2011.
Karan Singh served as the chancellor of Banaras Hindu University for three terms up until 2018. In 2008, he awarded an honorary doctorate to the then prime minister Manmohan Singh,[29] and in 2016, he was asked by university administration to award an honorary doctorate to prime minister Narendra Modi, that the prime minister declined.[30]
Honours and awards
The Chancellor, Banaras Hindu University, Dr. Karan Singh presenting Honorary Doctorate Degree to the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, at the '90th Convocation Ceremony' in Varanasi on 15 March 2008Prime Minister Narendra Modi being welcomed by Dr. Karan Singh, on his arrival at the Banaras Hindu University, in Varanasi on February 22, 2016.
"In 1974, I led the Indian delegation to the World Population Conference in Bucharest, where my statement that 'development is the best contraceptive' became widely known and oft quoted. I must admit that 20 years later I am inclined to reverse this, and my position now is that 'contraception is the best development'.”[31]
Bibliography
Towards A New India (1974)
Population, Poverty and the Future of India (1975)
^Saraf, Nandini (2012). The Life and Times of Lokmanya Tilak. Prabhat Prakashan. p. 341. ISBN9788184301526. Before leaving Srinagar he also had long talks with Yuvraj Karan Singh, who was then being pressed to become the Sadr-i-Riyasat - Head of State of the State.
^1.Ramusack, Barbara N. (2004). The Indian princes and their states. Cambridge University Press. p. 278. ISBN978-0-521-26727-4., "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). 2.Naipaul, V. S. (2003), India: A Wounded Civilization, Random House Digital, Inc., p. 37, ISBN978-1-4000-3075-0 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). 3. Schmidt, Karl J. (1995), An atlas and survey of South Asian history, M.E. Sharpe, p. 78, ISBN978-1-56324-334-9 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.Breckenridge, Carol Appadurai (1995), Consuming modernity: public culture in a South Asian world, U of Minnesota Press, p. 84, ISBN978-0-8166-2306-8 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.Guha, Ramachandra (2008), India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy, HarperCollins, p. 441, ISBN978-0-06-095858-9 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. Cheesman, David (1997). Landlord power and rural indebtedness in colonial Sind, 1865–1901. London: Routledge. p. 10. ISBN978-0-7007-0470-5. 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. Merriam-Webster, Inc (1997), Merriam-Webster's geographical dictionary, Merriam-Webster, p. 520, ISBN978-0-87779-546-9 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. Ward, Philip (September 1989), Northern India, Rajasthan, Agra, Delhi: a travel guide, Pelican Publishing, p. 91, ISBN978-0-88289-753-0 Quote: "A monarchy is only as good as the reigning monarch: thus it is with the princely states. Once they seemed immutable, invincible. In 1971 they were "derecognized," their privileges, privy purses and titles all abolished at a stroke" (page 91)
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