In April 1948, Manmohan was admitted to Khalsa College, Amritsar. Since his father wanted him to become a doctor, he joined the two-year FSc course that would lead to further studies in medicine. After just a couple of months, he dropped out. He had lost interest in becoming a doctor. In fact, he had also lost interest in studying science.

“I didn’t have the time to think,” he recalls. “I went and joined my father in his shop. I didn’t like that either, because I was not treated as an equal. I was treated as an inferior person who ran errands – bringing water, bringing tea. Then I thought I must go back to college. And I entered Hindu College in September 1948.”

I wonder if he and his father disagreed over this. “We didn’t have differences, but I didn’t like sitting in the shop. I felt that due respect was not given to me.”

“Why Hindu College? Didn’t your family tell you to go back to Khalsa College?”

He shrugs. “Nobody cared.”

To me, it seems odd that he should switch colleges. It is not as though there were that many of them to choose from. The Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College had just closed down. The solitary government college was for women. That left Khalsa College and Hindu College.

Khalsa College was set up at Amritsar in 1897. It was the very first institution of higher education to be founded by a Sikh body, spurred by the desire to catch up with advances already made by other communities. Located in a grand building in a sprawling 330-acre campus on the outskirts of the city, the college was generously funded by the maharajas of Nabha, Patiala and Kapurthala, among other benefactors. A large number of donations also came in from the Sikh community. The government of Punjab supported the college till 1920, after which it withdrew from the management.

By 1933, Khalsa College was doing well enough to be placed on par with the highly reputed Forman Christian College and Government College, both at Lahore. Hindu College came much later. It was established in 1924 in the walled city, not far from the Golden Temple. Limited by the lack of space, it had fewer departments, fewer activities and fewer students compared to Khalsa College. As far as I can see, Khalsa College should have been the obvious choice.

“Not necessarily,” my father points out. “I had some experience of Khalsa College. It was far away. I had to stay in the hostel. And we didn’t have the money to pay hostel bills.”

“Were you that hard up?”

“We were very hard up in those days.”

“But when you joined the FSc course, you were prepared to pay.”

“Well, we tried, but then I found that my father had difficulty in footing the bill.”

“So you just went and joined Hindu College on your own?” He agrees, as if this was perfectly natural. “Somebody must have advised you – ’ This he denies. I persist. “But Pitaji must have had to deal with formalities – ”

“What formalities? There were no formalities, except to pay the fees.”

Hindu College was a twenty-minute walk from home. But while he would save on hostel fees, he would now have to pay for tuition. In the process of leaving Khalsa College, he lost his scholarship for the next two years. This was something he had not anticipated.

In September 1948, Manmohan went back to college. This time he joined the humanities stream with economics, political science, mathematics, English and French. Sant Ram Grover was then the principal. Vice-principal BL Kapoor and Dr Jugal Kishore Trikha taught him English, while Mastram Jain and SR Kalia introduced him to economics.

Hindu College was a lively place. He liked the college atmosphere. And his teachers showed him a great deal of affection. In the intermediate examination of 1950, he stood first in the university. This won him a scholarship for the next two years.

Economics was a subject that appealed to him immediately. “I was always interested in issues of poverty, why some countries are poor, why others are rich. And I was told that economics is the subject which asks these questions. We had to study economic theory as well as the Indian economy. In my BA I had to take an honours course in addition to economics and political science. That meant three additional papers – agricultural economics, currency and finance, and statistics. I had great interest in economics as well as in political science.”

“What did you do after class?”

“The college had a club – which was far away on Mall Road – for extracurricular activities. And it had a ground where hockey and other games could be played. Cricket was also very popular. The college ground was near the Government College for Women. We went there in the evenings and played hockey, football.”

I try to imagine my father chasing a ball, and fail completely. Clearly he was a student with many interests. In tune with his academic pursuits, he joined the Economics Society and the Political Science Society. The debating club was very active, and he would represent his college in competitions held in various cities. As president of the Punjabi Society, he got in touch with leading writers to invite them to the college. He was also the chief student editor of the college magazine, and president of the UN club.

In his final year, Manmohan was elected class representative. His friends then encouraged him to contest the election for the president of the students’ union. This he did, and was promptly defeated. Both of us laugh at his having lost his very first political battle.

I ask him about personalities who visited Hindu College half a century ago. Much to my surprise, he reels off several names: Ram Manohar Lohia, Aruna Asaf Ali, Cheddi Jagan – then leader of Guyana – along with his deputy Mr Forbes Burnham, and renowned Punjabi writers including Bhai Vir Singh, Dhani Ram Chhatrik and Nanak Singh.

During his college years he read voraciously. The broad sweep of his reading covered theological critique, social commentary and political ideology. Modern Punjabi literature was a special interest and he read in Gurmukhi as well as in Urdu. Poetry was a new discovery that led him to the writings of Bhai Vir Singh, Dhani Ram Chhatrik, Amrita Pritam and Professor Mohan Singh. Then there were the novels of Nanak Singh and Premchand, and the short stories of Gurbaksh Singh and Chandrashekhar.

“Did you get a chance to hear Congress leaders other than Aruna Asaf Ali?”

“Well, I heard Jawaharlal Nehru when he came to Amritsar. I also heard Sardar Patel.”

“Where did you hear Sardar Patel?”

“In Ambala. The convocation of the Punjab University was in Ambala in those days.”

Punjab University held its first convocation in March 1949. It was presided over by Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The simple and solemn affair took place in a temporary shelter erected in the cantonment area. An evidently moved Sardar Patel spoke of the creation of the university amidst the tragedy of Partition. He acknowledged that while the government had done its best by the people of Punjab, this was not nearly enough. Referring to the Akali Dal taking up the grievances of the Sikhs, Sardar Patel appealed for interests of the nation to be placed before those of the community.

When I ask him about Prime Minister Nehru, my father suddenly perks up. “Well, of course he had an appeal. Yes, very much so. He was the darling of the young people in his time. His ideals, his idealism inspired many, many people – young people in particular. Jawaharlal Nehru came to Amritsar for the elections of 1952. He gave a very emotional speech on why people should vote for the Congress party. I was quite impressed.”

“Any Akali leaders?”

“Yes, I used to go and attend some of their meetings as well. Not in the university, but in the town. Amritsar was the centre of Akali politics. It was – and still is – the headquarters of the Akali Dal, and of the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee. So Sikh politics has its roots in Amritsar. Whenever they used to have meetings, I attended them. When the Congress chaps came, I went there too, and when the socialists came, I went there as well. I was always interested in public affairs.”

He also became a member of the All India Sikh Students Federation. It was one way to be part of activities outside college. But he says he did little as part of this group.

“Did the student community connect with Punjab politics?”

“Yes and no. There was a lot of controversy in those days in the politics of Punjab – Akalis versus Congress, the role of the Punjabi language, the creation of a Punjabi-speaking state. There were several agitations. They spilled over to the student community at the academic level, but not in an unpleasant way. At that time the politics in Hindu College was dominated by the thinking of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. But there were also a number of nationalists.”

Sudarshan Bhaskar was Manmohan’s closest friend. Despite their very different temperaments – Sudarshan was humorous while Manmohan was solemn – the two got along very well. They spent much of their free time together, and in the company of fellow students Kailash Nath and Satpal Jain. Sudarshan often escaped his crowded home and sat in a park to study. Armed with his books on winter afternoons, he tended to doze off. Manmohan would scold him for this and point out that naps were out of the question once he took up a job.

When Sudarshan declared his intention to take up teaching, Manmohan suggested that becoming a good listener would help him be a good teacher. Perhaps sensing that Sudarshan remained unmoved, he also declared that there was no point dispensing free advice, for this was simply not valued.

Sudarshan’s family had moved to Amritsar in the 1920s. He was witness to the killings in 1947 and the fires that raged across the city. It was a ghastly experience, and one that turned him away from religion. Although he and Manmohan talked about everything else, this was the one subject they skirted. As Sudarshan would put it, in all the years that they had known each other, some things – very personal things – Manmohan never talked about.

Excerpted with permission from Strictly Personal: Manmohan & Gursharan, Daman Singh, HarperCollins India.