Born on 28 July 1926 in a village in Varanasi, Singh received a PhD degree from Banaras Hindu University and began his teaching career at the same university and has been a professor of Hindi literature in other universities.

Singh who was the first chairman of JNU's Centre of Indian Languages retired from the university in 1992 but continued to remain as a professor emeritus.

He has authored over a dozen works. Prominent among them are Kavita Ke Naye Pratiman, Chhayavaad and Dusari Parampara Ki Khoj among others. He has received the Sahitya Akademi award for literary criticism in the year 1971 for Kavita Ke Naye Pratiman.

Talking about Singh, in his article on thewire.in portal, senior journalist, Kuldeep Kumar, said, “He has always been admired for his razor sharp mind, formidable intellect, vast erudition and argumentative skills. When he began writing in the early 1950s, the Hindi world took immediate notice of a new talent because notwithstanding his Marxist ideas and communist politics, he displayed a freshness of approach, keen critical insight and sensitivity for the ‘literariness’ of a work.” 

Singh has also been the editor of Janyug and Alochana magazines.

Singh had been the former president of the All India Progressive Writers' Association (AIPWA), and has also contested and lost the Lok Sabha elections as a Communist Party of India (CPI) candidate in 1959 from Chandauli in Uttar Pradesh.

RIP Namwar Singh.