14 Facts About Namvar Singh

Namvar Singh was an Indian literary critic, linguist, academician and theoretician.

Namvar Singh received his doctorate degree from Banaras Hindu University where he taught for some time.

Namvar Singh served as a professor of Hindi literature in several other universities.

Namvar Singh was the founder and first chairman of Jawaharlal Nehru University's Centre of Indian Languages and continued to remain as a professor emeritus after his retirement in 1992.

Namvar Singh then moved to Varanasi to pursue his further studies and did his matriculation and higher secondary education at Udai Pratap Autonomous College, Varanasi.

Namvar Singh enrolled in Banaras Hindu University for higher studies, where he completed his bachelor's in 1949 and master's with gold medal in 1951.

Namvar Singh later became a professor of Hindi at Jodhpur University.

Namvar Singh was the founder and first chairman of JNU's Centre of Indian Languages.

In 1959, Namvar Singh unsuccessfully contested the general election as a Communist Party of India candidate from the Chandauli constituency in Uttar Pradesh.

Namvar Singh polled over 18,000 votes, finishing a distant third.

Apart from his academic engagement, Namvar Singh worked as the editor of a weekly news magazine Janyuga, and Alochana, a Hindi magazine for literary criticism.

Namvar Singh worked as the chairman of the Raja Rammohun Roy Library Foundation.

Namvar Singh served as the chairman of the selection board for the Jnanpith Award.

Namvar Singh died on 19 February 2019 in Delhi at the age of 92.