Whenever any person dies, he or she leaves behind a void. But time fills the void, and life moves on. However, when a learned person departs from this world, even time announces its inability, or unwillingness, to fill the void quickly. Perhaps it is nature’s way of reminding us of the invaluableness of knowledge and wisdom.

Dr Singhvi was a man of oceanic scholarship. He could speak and write effortlessly about law (his first profession, on which he left a deep imprint at a young age), diplomacy (he was perhaps the best Indian high commissioner in London), literature (he served for many years as chairman of the selection board for the Jnanpeeth award), spirituality (an authority on Jainism and all other branches of Indic religions, he made commendable contribution to projecting their essential unity to global audiences), and diaspora issues (he was the driving force behind the NDA government’s pioneering policy of dual citizenship for ‘Persons of Indian Origin’ and institutionalising the ‘Pravasi Bharatiya Divas’).

By describing him as ‘Saraswati Putra’, former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee paid the most appropriate homage to Dr Singhvi.

To present a glimpse of his greatness, let me cite a small excerpt from his 1996 speech at Stanford University, titled ‘Building Bridges for India through a Global Indogenic Movement’. The term ‘Sethu’ is very much in discussion these days because of the controversy over ‘Ram Sethu’. But look at the profound sense that Dr Singhvi mined from the word.

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