NEW DELHI: When Manmohan Singh‘s daughter Upinder Singh lit the pyre of the former PM, she was following the Sikh tradition of not allowing differentiation on gender lines in who leads rituals linked to cremation. Members of the Sikh community point out that their women have for long carried out rituals on the passing of their parents.
The visuals of Upinder Singh performing the rites will still be seen as yet another challenge to well-entrenched patriarchal norms, especially in the north, to exclude women from important religious rituals and encourage a trend which saw former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee being cremated in 2018 by his foster daughter Namita Kaul Bhattacharya.
Earlier, in June 2014, former minister from BJP Gopinath Munde was cremated by his daughter Pankaja Munde.
Approached for his comment, a Sikh community activist said Upinder Singh’s act of leading the rituals only reaffirms the importance of putting the male and female child on the same footing and challenges discriminatory attitudes that stem from patriarchy and not religion.
Singh’s cremation was carried out in keeping with Sikh traditions amid chanting of hymns. A stoic Upinder Singh was a picture of dignity as she kept her composure while lighting the pyre surrounded by family members including her mother Gursharan Kaur, sisters Daman Singh and Amrit Singh and other family members. Singh’s grandchildren too were said to have been present during the rituals.
While Upinder Singh is a historian, Singh’s second child Daman Singh is a writer known for her book “Strictly Personal: Manmohan and Gursharan” that came out in 2014. His third daughter Amrit Singh is a human rights lawyer based in the United States.