Jaswant Singh

Cardiff, Wales

1937–9, 1948–2024

Jaswant Singh was born in Lahore in 1936. In 1938, when Singh was 2 years old, his family migrated to Aldgate, east London where his father, Harnam Singh Koumani, owned 8 Golding Street. However, the house was bombed during the Second World War, leaving the family homeless. As a result, Singh’s father moved his family to Northampton, and subsequently Singh, his mother, Raj Kaur, and two sisters were sent back to Lahore whilst his father remained in Britain. In the summer of 1947 Singh’s family, along with nine other families, left Lahore and settled in Jaipur, given the violence they witnessed in Lahore because of the partition of India. After living in Jaipur for eight months, Singh was reunited with his father, who arrived from London with the purpose of taking his family back to Britain. At the same time, his father facilitated the migration of multiple families from India to Britain by helping individuals secure their passports.

Singh and his family lived with his uncle in Littleport, Cambridgeshire, before moving to Sutton in Cambridgeshire. Singh was the only racialized minority student in his secondary school, and many of his peers thought he had come from a jungle due to the popularity of the film The Jungle Book, starring Sabu. His headteacher held an assembly for the students to explain the importance of Singh’s turban, to mitigate the possibility of aggression towards him. The experience of living in Cambridgeshire was isolating, so Singh and his family decided to move to London, where they found a home in Shoreditch. Singh would often run away from school and, as a result, his father pulled him out of education in 1950; he was able to do so by telling the magistrate court that he had not put the right age on his son’s passport. In 1953 Singh returned to India with his family to marry.

In 1954 Singh and his family migrated to Cardiff, where his father opened a shop which sold clothes. The move to Wales was encouraged by Singh’s cousin, who had settled in Llandeilo where he worked on a farm. In 1959, whilst Singh was in India, his father changed the clothes store into Cardiff’s first Indian grocery store, called Eastern East Emporium. Singh would often travel to Birmingham to buy products. Whilst working at the store, Singh trained as a radio and television engineer and began a new career in this field.

When a community centre opened near Singh's home, he decided to volunteer and eventually secured a position as an information advisor to local migrant groups. In 1977, after his year-long contract came to an end, Singh decided to return to college and train as a social worker. He became the first South Asian social worker in Wales and worked for the South Riverside Community and Development Centre for eleven years. 1976 he founded Race Equality First, a charity which promotes racial equality in Wales. In 1983 the Commission for Racial Equality paid for Singh to visit the US to research their homelessness and child development policies.

In 1988, whilst working at the centre, Singh became a magistrate. In 1993 Singh became Cardiff’s first Sikh councillor for the Riverside ward, where he represented the Labour Party and, later, Plaid Cymru. He was a councillor for six years. In 2003 he helped found the Sri Dasmais Singh Sabha Gurdwara on Tudor Street in Cardiff after fundraising efforts within the Sikh community. In 2008 Singh became the Deputy Mayor of Cardiff. He received an MBE for his services. In 2012 he wrote a history of Sikhs in Wales, which was supported by the Butetown History and Arts Centre.

Jaswant Singh died on 7 May 2024. He had ten children.