Milkha Singh: Biography of the Flying Sikh

Birth and childhood in undivided Punjab

Milkha Singh was born into a farming family in Gobindpura, a village in the Punjab region of British India that is now in Pakistan. Like many people born in rural India at the time, he had no reliable birth certificate. Dates including 20 November 1929 and 17 October 1935 are often quoted; in his autobiography he acknowledged the confusion and said that 20 November 1932 was the date recorded officially. This biography uses that official date while noting the uncertainty.

He attended the village school and later a government school several miles away. Britannica recounts his memory of walking barefoot to school in the summer heat and running from one patch of shade to the next to protect his feet, an image he later connected with his love of running.

Family and education

Milkha Singh was one of fifteen children in a Sikh farming family. Eight of his siblings had died before Partition, and in 1947 his parents, a brother and two sisters were killed in the violence that followed. He escaped to India as a teenager and lived for a time with a married sister in Delhi, an experience he described as the most painful of his life.

His schooling was brief. He walked and ran several kilometres each way to the village school as a child, but Partition ended any formal education. He has written that his real education came in the army, where coaches and officers taught him training methods, discipline and diet. Later in life he often said he regretted not having had the chance to study further.

Partition and survival

The Partition of India in 1947 destroyed that childhood. During the violence that followed, his parents and several siblings were killed. Milkha, still a boy, escaped and travelled to India as a refugee. For a time he lived on railway platforms and in refugee camps, and survived by doing odd jobs such as polishing shoes and cleaning shops. He later wrote openly about how close he came to drifting into crime, and about the anger and grief he carried from those years.

Discovered in the army

With encouragement from his brother, he tried repeatedly to join the Indian Army and was finally accepted in the early 1950s; Britannica gives 1952. The army gave him food, discipline and, unexpectedly, a sport. Under the coach Havildar Gurdev Singh he began running in unit races and discovered that he had exceptional speed and a capacity for punishing training. He trained so hard, by his own account, that he sometimes collapsed or vomited after sessions.

Strong performances in the 400 metres at national level earned him a place in India's team for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. He did not progress beyond the heats in the 200 m or 400 m, but meeting world-class athletes, including the American 400 m champion Charles Jenkins, convinced him of what was possible with structured training.

1958: Asian and Commonwealth champion

The breakthrough year was 1958. At the National Games in Cuttack he won the 200 m and 400 m and set national records. At the Asian Games in Tokyo he again won both events. Later that year, at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff, he won the 440 yards in 46.6 seconds. It was the first Commonwealth Games gold medal won by an athlete from independent India, and it made him a national hero overnight. The army promoted him from sepoy to junior commissioned officer, and the Government of India awarded him the Padma Shri, which he received in 1959.

The Flying Sikh

In 1960 Milkha Singh was invited to run in Lahore against Pakistan's leading sprinter, Abdul Khaliq. Returning to the country where his family had been killed was painful, and he initially hesitated. He went, and he won. Pakistan's President, General Ayub Khan, is reported to have told him that he had not run but flown, and named him "the Flying Sikh". The nickname stayed with him for the rest of his life.

Rome 1960: the race he never forgot

Milkha Singh went to the 1960 Rome Olympics as one of the contenders in the 400 m. In the final he led through the early part of the race but eased slightly around the halfway mark, and in a very close finish he placed fourth, missing the bronze medal in a photo finish. His time of 45.73 seconds became an Indian national record that stood for around 40 years. He became the first Indian man to reach an Olympic athletics final. For the rest of his life he spoke of the race as his greatest regret, and of his wish to see an Indian win an Olympic track medal.

Medals and results

Later career

At the 1962 Asian Games in Jakarta he won gold in the 400 m and as part of India's 4 × 400 m relay team. He went to his third Olympics in Tokyo in 1964, competing in the relay, where India did not advance from the heats. Britannica credits him with 77 international race wins over his career.

Family and work after athletics

Milkha Singh met Nirmal Saini, captain of the Indian women's volleyball team, in the 1950s. They married in the early 1960s; Britannica gives 1963 and other sources give 1962. They had three daughters and a son, Jeev Milkha Singh, who became an international professional golfer. In 1999 the couple also adopted the young son of an army havildar killed in the Kargil conflict.

After retiring from the track he served as Director of Sports in the Punjab government, retiring from that post in 1998, while Nirmal also held a senior sports post for women in the state. The family lived in Chandigarh.

Wife and children

He met Nirmal Saini, a former captain of the Indian women's volleyball team, in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1955, and they married in 1962. They had three daughters and a son, Jeev Milkha Singh, who became a professional golfer and won on the European and Asian Tours. In 1999 the couple adopted the young son of Havildar Bikram Singh, who had been killed in the Battle of Tiger Hill during the Kargil war. Nirmal died of COVID-19 on 13 June 2021, five days before him. The family home was in Chandigarh.

Net worth

CareerMasti has not found a credible published estimate of Milkha Singh's net worth, so we do not give one. He was known for donating his medals to the nation and for selling the rights to his life story for one rupee.

The Race of My Life and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag

In 2013 he published his autobiography, The Race of My Life, written with his daughter Sonia Sanwalka. The same year the book inspired Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, with Farhan Akhtar in the title role. Milkha Singh reportedly accepted just one rupee for the film rights, choosing a note printed in 1958, the year of his Cardiff gold.

Death

In May 2021 Milkha Singh was admitted to hospital with COVID-19 pneumonia. Nirmal Saini died of the disease on 13 June 2021, and Milkha Singh died in Chandigarh on 18 June 2021, five days later. His death prompted tributes from across India and from the athletics world.

Legacy

Milkha Singh's story connects the trauma of Partition with the hopes of a new nation, and it has become one of the defining sporting stories of modern India. He was the first Indian to win individual gold at both the Asian and Commonwealth Games in the 400 m, and for decades he set the standard by which Indian runners were measured. His famous near-miss in Rome later became a point of comparison for P. T. Usha's own fourth place in 1984, and his wish for an Indian track-and-field Olympic medal was eventually realised by Neeraj Chopra's javelin gold in Tokyo in 2021, a few weeks after his death.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica: Milkha Singh
2. Wikipedia: Milkha Singh (cross-checked results)
3. Olympics.com: India at Los Angeles 1984 (Rome 1960 comparison)

Facts checked against the sources above by Tulasiram Pemmadi on 8 November 2026 (IST). Where reliable sources disagree, the article says so. Spotted an error? See our corrections page or email contact@nextplayintel.com.

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