Tavleen Singh is a distinguished Indian journalist, political reporter, and author, currently serving as a leading columnist for The Indian Express. With a career spanning over four decades, she is widely recognized for her incisive commentary on Indian politics, public policy, and governance.
Professional Experience & Journey: Singh began her journalistic career in the United Kingdom with the Evening Mail in Slough, where she trained under the Westminster Press training scheme. She returned to India in 1974, joining The Statesman as a reporter. Her extensive fieldwork includes tenure as a Special Correspondent for The Telegraph in 1982 and as the South Asia Correspondent for the Sunday Times, London. Over the years, she has contributed to major publications including India Today and has played a pioneering role in Indian television journalism, heading the Delhi bureau for Plus Channel.
Expertise & Focus Areas: Renowned for her deep understanding of India's political landscape, Singh has covered some of the most critical events in the nation's history, including the Punjab insurgency and the conflict in Kashmir. Her writing often bridges the gap between the "Durbar" of Delhi’s political elite and the ground realities of rural India. She currently writes the popular weekly column "Fifth Column" for The Indian Express, appearing every Sunday, where she offers critical analysis of government policies and political shifts.
Authoritativeness & Recognition Singh is a celebrated author of several best-selling books that serve as important records of contemporary Indian history. Her notable works include:
Kashmir: A Tragedy of Errors (1995)
Lollipop Street: Why India Will Survive Her Politicians (1999)
Durbar (2012)
India's Broken Tryst (2016)
Messiah Modi: A Tale of Great Expectations (2020)
Her fearless reporting has earned her significant accolades, including the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Woman Mediaperson (1988) and the Sanskriti Award (1985) for her comprehensive coverage of the Punjab crisis.
Trust & Credibility As a veteran voice in Indian media, Singh is known for her unyielding candor and independent perspective. Her long-standing association with The Indian Express, a publication known for its "Journalism of Courage," reinforces her standing as a...

August 14, 2022 04:10 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: Tomorrow as India celebrates her 75th birthday as a modern nation state, should we be optimistic? Filled with hope? Or are there evil currents in the air that could drag us towards another long season of bad times?
Mon, Aug 15, 2022
August 07, 2022 04:04 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: Karnataka CM should be ashamed that he has become a proponent of this jungle justice. Those who believe that it was this kind of rough justice that won Adityanath a second term in office should also be ashamed.
Sun, Aug 07, 2022
July 31, 2022 04:16 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: Fuel and food prices have risen alarmingly, but why is it not possible for Opposition parties to demand a debate without waving placards and leaping around in the well of the house?
Tue, Aug 02, 2022
July 24, 2022 04:04 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: If every dissident voice is crushed, it confirms to those who cherish the freedoms that democracy allows, that India is slowly but surely slipping towards illiberalism. What happened to Zubair proves that those who say India is increasingly becoming an illiberal democracy are right.
Sun, Jul 24, 2022
July 17, 2022 03:58 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: The best thing that Sonia and her children can do for the Congress party is to gracefully become non-executive members on the board that controls the family firm.
Sun, Jul 17, 2022
July 10, 2022 03:58 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: India’s journey as a modern nation state has been damaged by our inability to end extreme poverty and by other economic and social failures. But through it all, if there has been one thing that we can be rightly proud of, it is our democracy.
Sun, Jul 10, 2022
July 03, 2022 04:15 IST
There have been hundreds of jihadi killings in India, especially in Kashmir, but this beheading in Udaipur indicates that the fanaticism that defines radical Islam has gone up a few notches.
Sun, Jul 03, 2022
June 26, 2022 04:15 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: Why are we no longer shocked by the amorality that has come to characterise our political culture? Why does the Election Commission not ask some questions?
Sun, Jun 26, 2022
June 19, 2022 03:53 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: We know for certain that the angry young men who set trains and buses on fire last week and blocked roads and railway tracks were doing this out of a passionate desire to serve the nation by joining the army.
Sun, Jun 19, 2022
June 12, 2022 06:00 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: "If religion had not become part of our political discourse, none of this would have happened. But, because it has, we have a situation in which BJP spokespersons appear to have been encouraged to demean Islam."
Sun, Jun 12, 2022
June 05, 2022 03:25 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: Targeted killings have caused Kashmiri Pandits to start fleeing the Valley, reviving horrific memories from thirty years ago.
Sun, Jun 05, 2022
May 29, 2022 03:30 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: It was Ukraine’s right to choose not to be crushed under the jackboot of a brutal dictator who does not allow his own people democracy and freedom.
Sun, May 29, 2022
May 22, 2022 03:56 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: The message to Muslims who chose India over Pakistan in 1947 is that they made a bad choice. They must now learn to accept that although they chose to remain Indian, they should now learn to live in India as lesser citizens.
Sun, May 22, 2022
May 15, 2022 04:00 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: On the triumphalist Hindutva movement that now claims that the Taj Mahal was a Hindu monument, I have one question: when do bulldozers arrive to demolish the most famous mausoleum in the world?
Sun, May 15, 2022
May 08, 2022 03:00 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: Sycophants have a place in autocracies where for a while they thrive by singing praises to the Dear Leader, but even there, they end up weakening him eventually instead of helping him become a better autocrat.
Sun, May 08, 2022
May 01, 2022 03:04 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: Mohan Bhagwat deserves respect for saying what he did. What is very hard to understand is why it was not the Prime Minister who took the lead in saying something about the deliberate targeting of the Muslim community by his chief ministers, ministers, acolytes, Twitter warriors and party spokesmen.
Sun, May 01, 2022
April 24, 2022 04:06 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: So, the homes and businesses smashed to smithereens in Delhi were in a Muslim area from which stones were thrown at a Hindu religious procession. The BJP chose its most aggressive spokesmen to defend this policy on primetime.
Sun, Apr 24, 2022
April 17, 2022 03:59 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: What we saw in Khargone was the law of the jungle
Wed, Apr 20, 2022
April 10, 2022 03:30 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: Fanaticism and religiosity go together, so it is difficult to say whether it has been the extreme religiosity of the past few years that has created this deluge of fanatics, or something else.
Sun, Apr 10, 2022
April 03, 2022 03:52 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: The only thing that gratuitous violence achieves is to create more gratuitous violence, and to create the impression that in India the rule of law is slowly weakening.
Sun, Apr 03, 2022
March 27, 2022 03:55 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: Dissent is so absent from the conversations in India today that there are not even questions asked about why we have not moved away from our debilitating dependence on Russian armaments decades after the Soviet Union died.
Mon, Mar 28, 2022
March 20, 2022 03:33 IST
Jagmohan was a trusted hatchet man who had proved his loyalty to the Gandhi family during the Emergency by obeying Sanjay Gandhi’s orders to bulldoze slums in Delhi in the name of ‘beautification’.
Sun, Mar 20, 2022
March 13, 2022 05:26 IST
It was not a bad slogan and indeed a worthy cause, but the tenor of the gathering indicated that it came from an old Congress playbook from a time when the language of political power was English.
Sun, Mar 13, 2022
March 06, 2022 03:51 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: It should shame us all that we could end up being on the wrong side of history because of some twisted idea of ‘national interest’. In a war that could have autocracies pitted against democracies, it cannot possibly be in India’s national interest to be on the side of monsters like Putin.
Sun, Mar 06, 2022
February 27, 2022 03:57 IST
Tavleen Singh writes: There must be geopolitical reasons why we cannot always stand firmly on the side of democracies, but as I have no understanding of them, I shall now write about what I intended to this week before Russia invaded Ukraine.
Sun, Feb 27, 2022


