Milkha Singh: The Flying Sikh Who Outran History

On paper, Milkha Singh’s life is measured in medals, records, and races. But to understand him only as an athlete is to miss the heart of his story. For before he became the “Flying Sikh,” he was just a boy running for his life.

It was 1947. Partition tore Punjab in two, and with it, tore families, villages, and histories apart. In Govindpura, now in Pakistan, a young Milkha watched as his parents and siblings were massacred before his eyes. The boy who would one day glide across Olympic tracks first ran barefoot through fields soaked in blood, chased not by a stopwatch, but by the kind of fear that never quite leaves you.

When he finally crossed into India, it was as a refugee—hungry, orphaned, carrying nothing but memories too heavy for his small shoulders. He lived in refugee camps in Delhi, sometimes sleeping on the railway platforms. He sold water, did odd jobs, and more than once considered slipping into a life of petty crime just to survive. That he did not is perhaps the first race he ever won—against despair itself.

The Indian Army was his second home. He joined in 1951, not out of a sense of destiny, but because it offered a bed, meals, and a chance to start over. It was here, in the barracks, that a coach noticed the speed in his legs. Training replaced idleness. Running became his new escape—not from Partition’s horrors, but through them.

What followed was a career that rewrote Indian athletics. Milkha Singh won gold in the 1958 Commonwealth Games, making him the first Indian male to do so. He swept Asian Games medals in 1958 and 1962, setting records that stood for years. His most famous race, the 400 metres final at the 1960 Rome Olympics, ended with him finishing fourth—missing the bronze by a fraction of a second. But in India, he had already won something far greater: he had made track and field a matter of national pride.

It was after his 400m victory in Lahore in 1960 that Pakistani President Ayub Khan famously called him “The Flying Sikh.” The title stuck, not just because of his speed, but because it captured the arc of his life: a man who had outrun the weight of history itself.

Milkha Singh was never just running for medals. He was running for the boy who had lost his family in Partition, for the refugee who had once eaten scraps to survive, for the India that was still stitching itself back together from the wounds of 1947. His victories were not just personal triumphs—they were proof that resilience can turn tragedy into fuel, that a refugee can become a nation’s symbol of pride.

Even in his later years, Milkha Singh carried himself with the discipline of a soldier and the humility of a villager. He refused endorsements that clashed with his values. He told young athletes to chase excellence, not money. And when he lost his son, Golfer Jeev Milkha Singh, he bore it with the same quiet dignity with which he had borne every loss.

In June 2021, when Milkha Singh passed away, India mourned not just a sportsman, but a generation’s living bridge to its most painful chapter. His life was a reminder that the human spirit, once it decides to move forward, can be as unstoppable as a sprinting man on an open track.

Today, when we see the tricolour rise at a sporting arena, we remember that somewhere, a boy who once ran barefoot through the fields of a burning Punjab taught us that speed alone does not make a champion—heart does. Milkha Singh’s heart was vast enough to carry his own pain, his country’s pride, and the unbreakable will of a people who refused to be defined by their suffering.

He was, and will always be, the Flying Sikh.