What does the next generation inherit from Khushwant Singh? Not the obvious: his best works were the histories of the Sikhs, but given the fate of lawsuits and silencing that overtakes those who attempt histories of the Hindus or other communities, he will have few imitators. Those books, along with his love for Urdu poetry and sacred verse, contained some of the best of Khushwant: his love for his community is displayed in the history of the Sikhs, but they are also impartial, analytical and questioning in the best of Indian intellectual tradition. Given the present-day chill on examining the past, it is sad but true that there is unlikely to be a Khushwant School of Scholarship.
He should have left his strongest mark on today's bestseller writers, but most of the pulp fiction crew haven't read his books or his columns. Few would share his breadth of inquiry, his delight in (usually) unmalicious gossip. The pleasure he took in scatological gossip is not emulated by a more prudish generation. There is also the key difference in mindset. Today's pulp fiction writers cultivate their market; Khushwant Singh wrote back to his readers. What he left behind was not so much a legacy of either scholarly or pulp-fiction writing: his life was an object lesson in how to be a writer. Khushwant Singh protected his personal time (the sign on the door of his Sujan Singh Park flat discouraged visitors from dropping in without an appointment), but his hospitality was legendary. He wrote countless endorsements for fledgling writers to whom his words of encouragement meant the world. He left behind few monumental works; but all of his life, he wrote with far more good humour than malice. He was not a writer to emulate in his political beliefs - the willingness to bend during the Emergency years was damaging - but he lived a generous, rich, broad life.
Khushwant's greatest gift is so crucial, and yet very few Indian writers have it: he was no hypocrite. He loved his Scotch and his ribaldry, and he insisted on celebrating all the joys of the world, from the sacred to the unabashedly vulgar. The man who lived a suprisingly clean life revelled in his wonderfully dirty mind. That, in a country of prudes ruled by the pieties of hypocrites, makes him a role model for all Indian writers. May his tribe increase.