Srinivas Kumar Sinha was born 7 January 1926 in Patna, Bihar, the son of Mithilesh Kumar Sinha, IP, Inspector-general of police of the state of Bihar. He was the grandson of the first Indian Inspector General of India in the British Raj, Alakh Kumar Sinha. He graduated with Honours from Patna University in 1943 at the age of 17, and joined the Indian Army soon thereafter, passing out as the Best Cadet from the Officers' Training School, Belgaum, the war time equivalent of the Sword of Honour and was commissioned into Jat Regiment. He saw combat service during the Second World War in Burma and Indonesia and, after India became independent, in Kashmir. He served two tenures in Nagaland and Manipur taking part in counter insurgency operations.
Military career
Promoted to captain on 10 September 1951, in 1953, Sinha secured the top position at the Defence Services Staff College in India and in 1962 again, at the Joint Services Staff College in the United Kingdom. He held all levels of active command in the Army from a platoon to a field army. He was promoted lieutenant-colonel on 9 June 1965. He commanded a battalion in Ladakh, a brigade in Manipur, a mountain division in Assam, an infantry division in Jammu, a corps in the Punjab and the Western Army. He held key staff and instructional appointments. He served as Director, Military Intelligence, Adjutant General and Vice Chief of Army Staff at Army Headquarters. He also served as an instructor at Mhow and Staff College, Wellington. During his Army career he was associated with Jammu and Kashmir from Day One that is, 27 October 1947. He was involved as a junior staff officer in organizing the massive airlift from Delhi to Srinagar in October 1947, in the wake of the attack from across the border in Pakistan, which was critical to the Indian efforts to beat back the raiders. In 1949, he was appointed Secretary of the Indian delegation on delineation of the Cease Fire Line in Kashmir at a meeting convened by the United Nations. He led the Indian delegation to Italy in 1972 for a conference on application of human rights to warfare. He was awarded the Param Vishisht Seva Medal in 1973, and was promoted to major-general on 28 December. He was made Honorary ADC to the President of India. He also served as the President of the Gorkha Brigade. In a publication in the US by the noted South Asian expert, Stephen F. Cohen, he has been referred to as one of India's most outstanding post-independence Generals. On 1 August 1978, Sinha was promoted to lieutenant-general. He sought premature retirement from the Army in 1983 on being denied the appointment of Army Chief. His surprise supersession and resignation became a national controversy. His dignified statement at the time of his supersession added to his stature. He stated that he did not question the decision of the Government but accepted it and had chosen to fade away from the Army. All newspapers and magazines wrote very favourably about him. Former Prime Minister, former Defence Minister and many senior political leaders issued a joint statement in his favour and also raised the issue in the Parliament. The officer chosen to be the Chief was his friend and a competent General.the main reason he was not picked for COAS was Indira Gandhi who was unhappy with him for refusing to attack the Golden Temple as he believed that the Army should not be used for any operational tasks in religious shrines because that would cause great turmoil in the Military and exactly was what happened. He was removed from the command of Western Army and posted as Vice Chief at AHQ. At the Command, Gen Sinha was replaced by Sundarji who promptly carried out Operation Blue Star. Vaidya, Sinha's junior was promoted Chief and subsequently Sundarji also got the promotion. This fact is so well known. It was a surprise when he was superseded and Gen A S Vaidya, then Eastern Army Commander was appointed as the Chief of Army Staff. Vaidya was in-charge when Operation Blue Star took place. Sinha remained in national focus after quitting the Army through his lectures on academic subjects in Universities and numerous edit page articles in national newspapers.
In 1990 Sinha was appointed India's Ambassador to Nepal, when autocratic rule prevailed in that country and bilateral relations with India had hit their nadir in the wake of the trade and transit impasse of 1989. During his tenure in Nepal, democracy was restored in Nepal and India-Nepal relations were raised to a high level of cordiality. The Prime Minister of India stated that Sinha had played a major role in this happy development. The Prime Minister of Nepal wrote, "General Sinha was as much India's Ambassador to Nepal as Nepal's Ambassador to India".
In 1997, Gen Sinha was appointed Governor of Assam at a time when insurgency in that State was at its peak. He crafted a three prong strategy of unified command, economic development and psychological initiatives. Heavy attrition was inflicted on the militants through co-ordinated and intensified military operations breaking the back of the militants. He was instrumental in installing one lakh shallow tube wells in Brahmaputra valley turning Assam from a rice deficit State to a rice surplus State. His psychological initiatives had a large emotional content. Such an approach was tried out for the first time and it yielded rich dividends. His 42-page printed report to the President on illegal migration from Bangladesh addressed the root cause of insurgency in the State. This report was serialised and published in full in all newspapers of the State. His recommendation on scrapping the Illegal Migration Detection By Tribunal Act, which facilitated illegal migration and applied only to Assam and not to other states, took the people of Assam by storm. Although controversial in some circles at the time, the Supreme Court struck down the IMDT ACT quoting extensively from his report. He started being referred to as "our man in Raj Bhavan". His attempts to make the people of Assam proud of their past and the rest of India proud of Assam, touched the emotional chords of the people. He projected the three icons of Assam, Shankardev, Lachit Borphukan and the great statesman Gopinath Bordoloi as national heroes. Documentaries on their lives were prepared and shown on Doordarshan. At the initiative of Assam's top heritage scholar, pioneer economist and litterateur Principal Bhabananda Deka and columnist, storywriter, novelist Arnab Jan Deka, the Indian Army's chief General V P Malik instituted the Lachit Barphukan Award and the installation of a statue of Lachit at the National Defence Academy, Pune. This was announced on 24 April 1999 at an all-India level national seminar and lecture programme held in New Delhi by Guwahati-based research organisation Assam Foundation-India founded by Principal Deka and his associates, the Delhi programme by General Malik with endorsement from VP Krishna Kant, Assam chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta and governor Sinha publicly thanked General Malik for deciding to institute the award in memory of the Assamese General. Within a year a gold medal had been instituted in his name at the National Defence Acaqdemy for the cadet with best officer-like qualities. India's leading dailies like Hindustan Times, The Assam Tribune, The Hindu extensively reported about this Delhi event on the next day's editions on 25 April 1999. A detailed report quoting newspapers like Hindustan Times, The Hindu and The Assam Tribune about General Malik's announcement about institution of Lachit Barphukan Award and statue at National Defence Academy on 24 April 1999 was reprinted by top Assamese literary journal 'Prantik' in its issue dated 1 September 2016. Senior journalist, Shri D N Bezboruah, former Editor of The Sentinel and President of The Editors' Guild of India, wrote about him, "a Governor who far outshone all his predecessors in not being just a titular Head of State, but a Governor who served the State brilliantly with deep commitment to its people for six glorious and eventful years. He sought to rebuild the psychological alienation that crept in between Assam and the Indian heartland." When he departed from Assam in 2003 insurgency was virtually over in the State and he was popularly referred to as "a true son of the soil of Assam."
On 4 June 2003, General Sinha became Governor of Jammu and Kashmir.His movement after a very successful tenure from Assam to Jammu and Kashmir received much publicity in the media. In 2003, when he took over as Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, insurgency continued to be at its peak in the State. On an average ten people were being killed every day and the annual arrival of tourists in the Valley was a mere 28,000. Tourism is the mainstay of the economy of the Valley. On taking over as Governor, he had announced that he would attempt to promote the spirit of amity amongst all communities in the State and cordial feelings towards the rest of the country that he hadseen in October 1947 when he had come to Kashmir for the first time. At a time when the entire subcontinent was in the throes of Partition Holocaust, complete amity amongst the people had reigned in Srinagar. He recalled the slogan he had heard at that time, 'HamalewarHoshiyar, Hum Kashmiri Hindu, Muslim, Sikh Taiyar', as also Mahatma Gandhi’s acknowledgement of the solace the Valley provided at a time when communal frenzy had taken over much of India. He realised that the three-prong strategy of unity of command, economic development and psychological initiatives that had worked so well in Assam, could also succeed in Jammu and Kashmir with suitable modifications. The Army had a large presence in the state and they were naturally very cooperative with him. All the senior Commanders had known him and had worked with him while he was in the Army. This was a great asset to him in getting things done even when the civil administration was initially not very co-operative. The improvements in the security situation brought down the daily rate of killing from ten to one. With improved security situation, tourist arrivals to the Valley increased from 28,000 a year to 6 lakhs by 2008, when he relinquished the appointment of Governor. The second prong of economic development was taken care of by a massive aid package from the Government of India. Like the one lakh shallow tube wells project in Assam, he was instrumental in starting a 1000 micro hydel projects on the mountains in the state. The idea was to place a turbine on a water mill and generate 3 to 5 KW of electricity providing about 30 light points in a village. The third prong was psychological initiatives. The Army was already involved in Operation Sadhbahvna, a massive and innovative civic action programme; he stepped up such initiatives with efforts to revive Kashmir’s liberal Islamic traditions. He inaugurated seminars and conferences on Kashmiriyat at Srinagar, with scholars from Pakistan and several Central Asian states. The highlight of these initiatives was a Sufi Music Programme on the banks of the Dal lake in 2008 with the popular "Junoon" band from Pakistan. Although separatists had requested Pakistan not to send the band, and called for a boycott of the performance, the show was very well attended. The leader of the band, Salman Ali, in his opening remarks said that he had come from Pakistan to launch a music jihad for peace. The leading English daily of Pakistan, Dawn, reported aptly on the concert in its 28 May 2008 issue under the title "Breaking Barriers". "Music knew no boundaries", it wrote, "The People of Kashmir expressed their anger against religious militants and their violence". These successes did not go down well with separatists. Just before his departure from Kashmir on 25 June 2008, the separatists succeeded in spreading false information about the State Government’s decision to lease land for putting up temporary facilities for pilgrims to the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board, of which the Governor is the Chairman. After his departure, the Kashmir Valley became embroiled in a massive agitation based largely on rumors and false propaganda, which was followed by counter-agitations in Jammu. The psychological initiatives to win over the Kashmiri people by promoting their old and valued traditions of Kashmiriyat was derailed by an uncalled communal frenzy on all sides.
Books
General Sinha has been a prolific writer having contributed nearly 300 edit page articles in national newspapers. He is the author of nine books including one on Jammu and Kashmir Operation of 1947–48 and his autobiography, A Soldier Recalls. His other books are of Matters Military, Pataliputra, Veer Kuer Singh, A Governor's Musings, Reminiscences and Reflections and Changing India, Guarding India's Integrity: A Pro-Active Governor Speaks. The latter covers at length, his tenures as Governor of Assam and of Jammu and Kashmir, and has a foreword by Dr A P J Kalam. His last book Raj to Swaraj was finished just a few days before his demise.
Death
He passed away on 17 November 2016 at the age of 91 years leaving behind his wife Premini Sinha, three daughters, Meenakshi, Mrinalini and Manisha and a son Yashvardhan Kumar Sinha, a seasoned diplomat and currently employed as Central Information Commissioner of India. Both Mrinalini and Manisha are historians. Mrinalini Sinha is Alice Freeman Palmer Professor in the Department of History at the University of Michigan. Manisha Sinha is Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut.
