The University of Cambridge unveiled a portrait of late former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently, prompting influential academics to laud the decision on social media.
“I am glad Cambridge unveiled Manmohan Singh’s portrait. He was one of the world’s most respected leaders,” said former Chief Economic Adviser to the Indian government, Kaushik Basu,
Basu said he worked closely with Manmohan Singh and could “confidently say he stood out for the rare combination of intellect, modesty & integrity, and this gave India a special place on the world stage”.
It is rare for Cambridge to unveil portraits of its alumni, and the latest move is an acknowledgment of Singh’s intellectual heft.
Singh studied at the Faculty of Economics at the University. When the former Prime Minister passed away in 2024, the university issued a statement saying it was deeply saddened by the passing of one of its most distinguished alumni.
“One of India’s longest-serving Prime Ministers, Manmohan Singh was known for his Cambridge blue turbans, his probity and his modest and self-deprecating simplicity. His academic career took him from Punjab to the University of Cambridge, UK, where he earned a First-Class Honours degree in Economics in 1957,” the statement had said.
Professor of Economics Sriya Iyer had then said Manmohan Singh was a great economist, visionary, scholar and statesman of India.
“Beginning with the Adam Smith Prize which he won as a student during his time studying economics in Cambridge in the 1950s, as an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, and in his many roles concerned with financial and economic governance, culminating as India’s Prime Minister, Dr Singh quietly and respectfully championed the right to information, work, education, land and tolerance,” Iyer said.
After graduating from Cambridge, Singh completed a DPhil in Economics from Nuffield College at Oxford University in 1962. His book, ‘India’s Export Trends and Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth’, was an early critique of India’s inward-oriented trade policy.
Manmohan Singh was born in 1932 at Gah village in the Punjab province of the then undivided India.