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			Khushwant Singh&nbsp;has gathered both fans and detractors by the thousands over five and a half decades of prolific writing.
		
			He is many things to many people. The more you read about him, the hungrier you get. He is the high priest of journalism who can be said to be India&#39;s best. he is a free thinker and an international celebrity. Khushwant Singh had become a legend and an icon in his lifetime. He is a lawyer, critic and columnist. He is a prolific writer and historian who people love to hate and one who people may even agree is &quot;not a nice man to know&quot;. Yet, you would love to read him day after day to no end.
		
			Khushwant Singh was born in Hadali, Khushab District, Punjab&nbsp;(which now lies in Pakistan), in a Sikh&nbsp;family. His father, Sir Sobha Singh, was a prominent builder in Lutyens&#39; Delhi. His uncle Sardar Ujjal Singh&nbsp;(1895&ndash;1983) was Ex. Governor of Punjab &amp; Tamil Nadu.
		
			He was educated at Modern School, Delhi, Government College, Lahore, St, Stephan&#39;s College, Delhi and King&#39;s College, London,&nbsp;before reading for the Bar at the Inner Temple.
		
			Singh started his professional career as a practising lawyer in 1938. He worked at Lahore Court for eight years. In 1947 he entered Indian Foreign Service for the newly independent India. He started as Information Officer of the Government of India in Toronto, Canada. He was Press Attach&eacute; and Public Officer for the Indian High Commission for four years in London and Ottawa. In 1951 he joined the All India Radio as a journalist. Between 1954 and 1956 he worked in Department of Mass Communications of UNESCO at Paris.&nbsp;From 1956 he turned to editorial services. He had edited&nbsp;Yojana,&nbsp;an Indian government journal; The Illustrated Weekly of India,&nbsp;a newsweekly; and two major Indian newspapers,&nbsp;The National Herald&nbsp;and The Hindustan Times. During his tenure,&nbsp;The Illustrated Weekly&nbsp;became India&#39;s pre-eminent newsweekly, with its circulation raising from 65,000 to 400000.&nbsp;After working for nine years in the weekly, on 25 July 1978, a week before he was to retire, the management asked Singh to leave &quot;with immediate effect&quot;.&nbsp;A new editor was installed the same day.&nbsp;After Singh&#39;s departure, the weekly suffered a huge drop in readership.
		
			From 1980 to 1986, Singh was a member of Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan&nbsp;in 1974 for service to his country. In 1984, he returned the award in protest against the siege of Sri Harmandir Sahib&nbsp;by the Indian Army.&nbsp;In 2007, the Indian government awarded Khushwant Singh the Padam Vibhushan.
		
			As a public figure, Singh was accused of favouring the ruling Congress Party, especially during the reign of Indira Gandhi.&nbsp;He was derisively called an &#39;establishment liberal&#39;. Singh&#39;s faith in the Indian political system was shaken by the anti-Sikh riots&nbsp;that followed Indira Gandhi&#39;s assassination, in which major Congress politicians are alleged to be involved; but he remained resolutely positive on the promise of Indian democracy&nbsp;and worked via Citizen&#39;s Justice Committee&nbsp;floated by H.S. Phoolka&nbsp;who is a senior advocate of Delhi High Court.
		
			Singh was a votary of greater diplomatic relations with Israel&nbsp;at a time when India&nbsp;did not want to displease Arab&nbsp;nations where thousands of Indians found employment. He visited Israel in the 1970s and was impressed by its progress.
		
			Singh was married to Kawal Malik and had a son, named Rahul Singh, and a daughter, named Mala. Actress Amrita Singh&nbsp;is the daughter of his brother Daljit Singh&#39;s son - Shavinder Singh and Rukhsana Sultana. He stayed in &quot;Sujan Singh Park&quot;, near Khan Market&nbsp;New Delhi, Delhi&#39;s first apartment complex, built by his father in 1945, and named after his grandfather.&nbsp;His grandniece Tisca Chopra&nbsp;is a noted TV and Film Actress.
		
			Singh was a self-proclaimed agnostic, as the title of his 2011 book&nbsp;Agnostic Khushwant: There is no God&nbsp;explicitly revealed. He was particularly against organised religion. He was evidently inclined towards atheism, as he said, &quot;One can be a saintly person without believing in God and a detestable villain believing in him. In my personalised religion, There Is No God!&quot;&nbsp;He also once said, &quot;I don&#39;t believe in rebirth or in reincarnation, in the day of judgement or in heaven or hell. I accept the finality of death.&quot;&nbsp;His last bookThe Good, The Bad and The Ridiculous&nbsp;was published in October 2013, following which he retired from writing.&nbsp;The book was his continued critique of religion and especially its practice in India, including the critique of the clergy and priests. It earned a lot of acclaim in India, where such debates are rare.
		
			Singh died due to natural causes on 20 March 2014 at his Delhi-based residence, at the age of 99. His death was mourned by many including the President, Vice President and Prime Minister of India.&nbsp;He was survived by his son and daughter. He was cremated at Lodhi Crematorium in Delhi at 4 in the afternoon of the same day.&nbsp;During his lifetime, Khushwant Singh was keen on burial because he believed that with a burial you give back to the earth what you have taken. He had requested the management of the Bahai Faith&nbsp;if he could be buried in their cemetery. After initial agreement, they had proposed some conditions which were unacceptable to Singh, and hence the idea was later abandoned.&nbsp;He was born in Hadali, Khushab District in the Punjab Province&nbsp;of modern Pakistan,&nbsp;in 1915. According to his wishes, some of his ashes were brought and scattered in Hadali.
		
			Honors and Awards
		
			* &nbsp;Rockfeller Grant, 1966
		
			* Padma Bhushan,&nbsp;Government of India (1974)(He returned the decoration in 1984 in protest against the Union government&#39;s siege of the Golden Temple, Amritsar)
		
			* Honest Man of the Year, Sulabh International (2000)
		
			* Punjab Rattan Award, The Government of Punjab (2006)
		
			* Padam Vibhusan, Government of India (2007)
		
			* Sahitya Academy Fellowship Award&nbsp;by Sahitya academy of India (2010)
		
			* &#39;All-India Minorities Forum Annual Fellowship Award&#39; by Uttar Pradesh&nbsp;Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav&nbsp;(2012)
		
			* Lifetime achievement award by Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai Litfest in 2013
		
			* Fellow of King&#39;s College London on January 2014
		
			Books
		
			* The Mark of Vishnu and Other Stories, (Short Story) 1950
		
			* The History of Sikhs,&nbsp;1953
		
			* Train to Pakistan, (Novel) 1956
		
			* The Voice of God and Other Stories, (Short Story) 1957
		
			* I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale, (Novel) 1959
		
			* The Sikhs Today,&nbsp;1959
		
			* The Fall of the Kingdom of the Punjab, 1962
		
			* A History of the Sikhs, 1963
		
			* Ranjit Singh:The Maharajah of the Punjab, 1963
		
			* Ghadar 1915:India&#39;s first armed revolution, 1966
		
			* A History of the Sikhs, 1966 (2nd edition)
		
			* A Bride for the Sahib and Other Stories, (Short Story) 1967
		
			* Black Jasmine, (Short Story) 1971
		
			* Tragedy of Punjab, 1984
		
			* Delhi: A Novel&nbsp;1990
		
			*&nbsp;Not a Nice Man to Know: The Best of Khushwant Singh, 1993
		
			* We Indians, 1993
		
			* Women and Men in My Life, 1995
		
			* Declaring Love in Four Languages,&nbsp;by Khushwant Singh and Sharda Kaushik, 1997
		
			* India: An Introduction,&nbsp;by Khushwant Singh
		
			* The Company of Women, (Novel) 1999
		
			* Truth, Love and a Little Malice&nbsp;(an autobiography), 2002
		
			* With Malice towards One and All
		
			* The End of India, 2003
		
			* Burial at the Sea, 2004
		
			* Paradise and Other Stories, 2004
		
			* A History of the Sikhs: 1469&ndash;1838, 2004
		
			* Death at My Doorstep, 2005
		
			* A History of the Sikhs: 1839&ndash;2004, 2005
		
			* The Illustrated History of the Sikhs, 2006
		
			* Why I Supported the Emergency: Essays and Profiles, 2009
		
			* The Sunset Club, (Novel) 2010
		
			* Agnostic Khushwant: There is no God, 2012
		
			* The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous, 2013 (Co-authored with Humra Qureshi)
		
			* Maharaja in Denims,&nbsp;(Fiction Novel) 2014
		
			Short Story Collections
		
			* The Mark of Vishnu and Other Stories,&nbsp;London, Saturn Press, 1950.
		
			* The Voice of God and Other Stories,&nbsp;Bombay, Jaico, 1957.
		
			* A Bride for the Sahib and Other Stories,&nbsp;New Delhi, Hind, 1967.
		
			* Black Jasmine,&nbsp;Bombay, Jaico, 1971
		
			* The Collected Stories,&nbsp;N.p., Ravi Dayal, 1989.
		
			* The Portrait of a Lady
		
			* The Strain
		
			* Success Mantra
		
			* A Love Affair In London
		
			Play
		
			Television Documentary: Third World&mdash;Free Press (also presenter; Third Eye series), 1983 (UK).
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