London: India's "reluctant prime minister" and the "architect of economic reforms" is how sections of the UK media have been honouring the legacy of Dr Manmohan Singh, the former prime minister who passed away aged 92 in New Delhi on Thursday.
British High Commissioner to the India Lindy Cameron took to social media to pay tribute to “a great Prime Minister, Finance Minister and global statesman who advanced India's interests through bold economic reforms and played a key role in putting India in its rightful place on the world stage and stabilising the global economy after the financial crisis”.
“The UK will always be proud of his invaluable partnership with three UK Prime Ministers, and proud of him as an alumnus of two of our great universities. My thoughts and wishes are with his family and the people of India,” she said.
Singh's tenure overlapped with Labour prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and Conservative David Cameron, who later wrote in his memoir that he “got on well” with this “saintly man” who was robust on the threats India faced.
“On a later visit he told me that another terrorist attack like that in Mumbai in July 2011, and India would have to take military action against Pakistan,” notes the former UK PM in ‘For the Record', published in 2019.
Manoj Ladwa, founder and chairman of UK-based policy and events platform India Global Forum (IGF), described the former PM as a “towering statesman and visionary economist”.
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