Sardar Swarn Singh was India’s longest-serving Union Cabinet minister and he was a popular and efficient Foreign Minister. He was a very intelligent and well-educated (lecturer of physics and LLB) minister. He was President of the National Congress in 1969 and 1978. On August 9, 1971, he signed the treaty of peace, friendship and cooperation between the USSR and India and the treaty was binding for 20 years. Swarn Singh was chairperson of the committee entrusted with the responsibility of studying the constitution of India in 1976 during the national emergency. He served as a member of the board of directors from 1985 to 1989 for sessions 123-132 of the UNESCO Board of Directors. He was a member of the Commonwealth Institute Mission to South Africa and he met with Nelson Mandela in Prison three times to prepare Commonwealth Report to solve the problem. Sardar Swarn Singh was awarded the Padma Vibhushan award.
Swarn Singh Purewal was born on August 19, 1907, into a Jat Sikh family in Shanker village, Jalandhar district of Punjab. He completed a degree in Physics with honors from the Government College Lahore and did LLB in 1932 from the Government Law College Lahore. He served as a lecturer in Physics at Khalsa college Jalandhar and later started a law practice in criminal law.
In 1938, he joined the Akali Dal political party and by the mid-forties, he became a prominent leader. He played a prominent role in the compromise between the Indian National Congress party and the Akali Dal party in the early 1940s. He was elected as deputy leader of the Panthic Party before 1946. In 1946, he was elected a member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly and became Parliamentary Secretary to the Punjab Coalition Government.
Sardar Swarn Singh was sworn in as Home Minister in the cabinet of Punjab state on August 15, 1947. Jawaharlal Nehru included him in the central cabinet in 1952. He spent 23 years of his life as a high-ranking Cabinet Minister in the Government of India. He had a reputation for being an effective debater and negotiator. He is considered a very important and effective Foreign Minister. He played a crucial role at the UN Security Council on Bangladesh to settle the matter amicably. He was familiar with and was a proficient speaker of several languages. He assisted Jawaharlal Nehru in his talk with the Chou-In-Lai on the Indo-China border dispute in 1960. He was also in the Indian Delegation during the rounds of talks with Pakistan in 1962-63.
Image source:
Comments