Indu Prakash Singh was born in the city ofJaunpur, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to Dayawati Singh and Bhagwati Din Singh who was a Barrister at the time of the British Raj. His grandfather Suraj Bali Singh was a freedom fighter in the Indian independence movement. He finished his schooling from Madho Patti, Jaunpur, from where he did his undergraduate degree at , Jaunpur. He went on to do a M.A degree in Philosophy from Allahabad University from where he also received his PHd in 1958.
Career
He later joined the Indian Foreign Service in the batch of 1955, having stood first All-India IFS entrance examination. After administrative training in the state of West Bengal which included a spell at Santiniketan, he joined the Oxford University for a special course in International relations. After serving in Indian Diplomatic Mission in Cairo, Beirut, Washington, D.C. and Kathmandu, he was appointed India's Ambassador to Sudan. Subsequently, he served as Deputy High Commissioner and Acting High Commissioner of India in London and as ambassador in Madrid and Rangoon, Myanmar. He also served in the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry of the Government of India in various capacities. As a diplomat, Dr. Singh had the opportunity to take part in a large number of international and bilateral meetings. Prominent among these were. The first Islamic Summit held in Rabat in 1969, the Indo-Pak meeting in Islamabad to resume diplomatic relations in 1976, the Non-aligned Coordination Bureau Foreign Ministers' Meeting in New Delhi in 1977 of which he was Secretary-General, and the meeting of the Common wealth Committee on Southern Africa to discuss the independence of Zimbabwe. He retired from the Indian Foreign Service in September 1989, after declining an offer of extension of service by the Government of India.
Political career
Following his retirement in 1989, Dr. Singh entered political life joining the Indian National Congress, which was then part of V.P Singh's National Front. He stood in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections from the Jaunpur constituency, U.P, with a Congress ticket but was defeated by the BJP's Raja Yadavendra Dutt Dubey. He went on to become General Secretary of the Congress in 1990. In 1991, he launched his own Political party – the ‘Sajhawadi Party’ – modeled around the politico-economic ideology he had outlined in his last book – "Commonism – A Manifesto of a New Social Order". He had another failed attempt at standing for Lok Sabha from the Sajhawadi Party in the Delhi bi-election in 1992, which was won by Indian National Congress candidate and veteran Bollywood actor Rajesh Khanna. In 1995, Dr. Singh merged the Sajhawadi Party with the Bharatiya Janata Party and became head of the BJP’s foreign cell. He became National Council Member of the BJP when the party briefly held power in 1998–99. During this period he became Chairman of the carrying a Cabinet Rank. He also served from 1999 to 2002 as Vice-Chairman of the Research and Information Systems for Developing Countries – an autonomous think tank under the Ministry of External Affairs that specializes in policy research on international economic issues and development cooperation.
