Kirpal Singh

Colonel Kirpal Singh died on 29 August 2004 at the Army Base Hospital, New Delhi, so ending a glorious chapter in the annals of mental health in India.

Born in 1911, Kirpal Singh obtained his Licentiate from the Amritsar Medical School and worked in Kenya for over five years, after which enrolling in the Madras Medical College to obtain the MBBS. He joined the Army during the Second World War and was subsequently selected for in-service training in psychiatry, which he completed in 1944. Then he was posted as the psychiatrist to the Military Hospital, Lahore where he presented his first scientific paper in 1945 at the Conference of Army Psychiatrists, held at Rangoon in 1945. Later, he became the first Indian to be elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association. Subsequently, he trained in mental health at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Kirpal Singh was one of the founder members when the Indian Psychiatric Society (IPS) was founded in 1947, and served as its President twice, in 1957 and 1968. He was the first recipient of the Sandoz Award in 1967 and delivered the DLN Murthy Rao Oration in 1983. An award named after him was instituted by the IPS in 1982. He was a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and of the National Academy of Medical Sciences. He retired from the Army as Director of Psychological Research nearly four decades ago, but continued to maintain an active interest in clinical practice, as well as other professional matters. Despite his age and indifferent health, he travelled to Pune for the first Military Psychiatry CME, held in 1997. Probably the last formal event he attended was the annual conference of the Delhi Psychiatric Society in December 2003.

Possessed of phenomenal courage and will power, Kirpal Singh never mentioned the pain he suffered towards the last few years of his life. During his regular weekly visits to the Army Base Hospital Department of Psychiatry, he always brought along the latest issues of the British and American journals of psychiatry and encouraged the younger psychiatrists to write scientific papers. His death marks the passing of an era. For me, it is a great personal loss. For nearly four decades he had been my mentor and role-model, as he was to generations of military psychiatrists. Almost to the end, even after I had retired from the army, he would telephone every other week to find out about what was happening on the mental health scene and, lately, to enquire about the book, Mental Health: An Indian Perspective (1946-2003), to which he had contributed a chapter. That we could not formally present him with a copy of the book, which is awaiting release, will always remain a source of deep regret.