People
Dr. Amrik Singh: A Tribute
by V.N. DUTTA
Soft-spoken and a well-meaning man with affable manners, Dr. Amrik Singh stood firmly for the welfare of the teaching community and the advancement of higher standards of excellence in education. With an insatiable quest for learning, he sought knowledge not for its own sake, but for the cultivation of the mind and the regeneration of society.
He regarded education as the key to all progress. He was an individual meeting whom was an intellectual stimulus. With his death, the cause of education has suffered a loss in the country
Amrik Singh graduated from Khalsa College, Amritsar in 1940. The Khalsa College, founded in 1896, was then a unique institution with some distinguished teachers such as Teja Singh, Waryyam Singh, Gurbachan Singh Talib, Sant Singh Sekhon and Arjan Nath Matoo.
Though Amrik Singh took his M.A. degree in English from the prestigious Government College, Lahore, he remained consistently in touch with his Khalsa College teachers from whom he imbibed his quest for learning and his left-wing radical orientation of a dissident, protester and an agitator against the spurious, the sham and the hypocritical.
Amrik Singh told this writer that after obtaining his M.A. degree, his father Dr. Gopal Singh, a medical practitioner, advised him to travel and meet some of the leading intellectuals to widen his learning and experiences.
Amrik Singh often recollected how intellectually profitable and rich his experiences were at Lucknow and Allahabad Universities where he spent some days in the company of eminent educationists. At Lucknow University, he met Professor N.K. Siddhanta, who had secured a first class in the English tripos at Cambridge. He was greatly impressed by the wide learning and intellectual calibre of D.P. Mukherjee, a leading Marxist and easily one of the rare intellectuals endowed with an acute sense of originality and sensitivity.
Amrik Singh joined Khalsa College, Delhi in 1951.
I remember vividly visiting Sardar Hukam Singh, the Deputy Speaker, Lok Sabha in early 1954. Sardar Hukam Singh was then the Chairman of the Khalsa College governing body. As we were conversing, the telephone rang. Hukam Singh picked up the phone, and spoke for about two minutes. After he replaced the receiver, he said: "Well, we have in our college a promising teacher, but he is always agitating for the rights of teachers and causing us great embarrassment."
Throughout his life, Amrik Singh engaged himself in reading, writing and teaching. He read widely, and was never a scholar of the library. He wore his learning lightly.
He possessed an uncommon common sense, which gave to his personality not the image of a pensive, brow-knitted scholar, but of a simple warm-hearted smiling friend, dedicated to the cause of education. In his youth he visited bookshops in Connaught Place, but with his growing age, he worked mostly at the India International Centre Library.
Ideologically, Amrik Singh was not a Marxist. He belonged to no political party. He was a rationalist, an eclectic. Religious rituals and ceremonies he abjured. Religion he regarded essentially an inward experience of spiritual growth. He respected the feelings and sentiments of others, who followed their religious practices.
Though Amrik Singh obtained his Ph.D. in English literature from London University, his deep and abiding interest lay in his study of education and its promotion in the country.
For the enhancement of literary skills, he floated at his expense a fortnightly journal, India Book Chronicle, which continues to be published from Jaipur. Amrik Singh never desisted from criticising the Government and University authorities whenever they acted arbitrarily by diluting academic standards, or disregarding the rights and interests of the teaching community.
Amrik Singh travelled alone.
He chartered his own course. Witty and sharp with a twinkle in his eyes, he was, indeed, a loveable person, good in company.
Never did anyone, to my knowledge, hear him speak ill of anyone.
His gentle smile and warm handshake I shall ever miss.
Conversation about this article
1: Dr. I.D. Shukla (Chandigarh, Punjab), June 23, 2010, 6:50 AM.
Even if I had gone to Cambridge, I would not have met a teacher like him. If there is another life after this, I would still like to be his student.
2: D. S. Bagga (Noida, India), April 17, 2014, 10:07 AM.
Like Inder Dev who has commented above, I was also taught by Dr Amrik Singh. He was a man of profound knowledge and wisdom. All those taught by him cannot forget his extremely affectionate and polite nature. We must establish a forum for at least one annual lecture in his memory or set up a foundation to nurture academics of the high standard bench-marked by him.