In Memoriam

Prof. Tej Vir Singh (1929 - 2021)

I have been feeling uncomfortable with spending time on social media over the last few years, but occasionally it has been useful to catch up the agenda of our daily life as well as the updates on the academia. It also makes us to face the unfortunate moments of our life, like learning about the loss of Eduardo Fayos-Sola, David Harrison, and recently, Tej Vir Singh. When I woke up in the morning of 10 April, I sadly learned that Tej had passed away.
In the last few years, occasionally we exchanged messages through social media and glad to see that he was still active in research. Recently he seemed pleased when I agreed to contribute a chapter to the book that he and David Fennell were developing. Unfortunately, Tej Vir did not witness the book published

Tej has been an iconic personality in tourism research and like a guru in India, his home country. He was the first scholar receiving a PhD degree on tourism in India. In addition to his sons, he fathered two specific initiatives in his country. The first is the foundation of the Centre for Tourism Research and Development. In this centre, as a teacher, researcher, and mentor, Tej played a significant leading role in the production and dissemination of tourism knowledge, both nationally and internationally.

The second is the journal, Tourism Recreation Research (TRR), where he served as an editor-in-chief until recent years since its foundation in 1976. TRR was also among those exceptional journals that were able to sustain life and succeed with the passion and patience of its founding editors. Tej was so happy to see how the journal, like a child, was growing and securing a strong position in the minds of international tourism scholars across the world. The journal was, and is still, successful both in generating and penetrating the inclusion of papers from a much wider perspective of tourism together with its interdisciplinary nature.

As an indication of his expanding international networks, Tej was a founding member of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism under the leadership of Jafar Jafari (1989). He was also awarded the UNWTO Ulysses Prize for Excellence in the Creation and Dissemination of Knowledge in 2013, as a landmark of his significant contribution to the development of tourism education and research. In addition, to pay an additional respect, Anatolia also has three records with Tej. First, we invited him as a keynote speaker on a panel of the 4th World Conference for Graduate Research in Tourism, Hospitality & Leisure, 22-27 April 2008, Antalya, Turkey. Together with the contribution of other three editors, the panel created an engaging debate about the nature of tourism studies and the tips on how to write for tourism journals.

Second, almost ten years later (2-7 October 2018), we invited him once again to visit Cappadocia, but this time for a more special occasion. Our committee decided to dedicate the traditional award of the Interdisciplinary Tourism Research Conference to Tej in recognition of his lifelong contribution and social role played to the institutionalization of tourism studies, both nationally and internationally. Since then, we exchanged a number of emails to organize his trip to Turkey. Meanwhile, he consulted with his doctor to seek advice on several occasions. He actually purchased the tickets both for himself and his wife but had to cancel it because his doctor did not allow him to travel abroad. The conference had a successful end but Tej was unable to join us for the award ceremony.

Third, we wanted to add his name in the list of prolific scholars that appeared as a series in Anatolia (2013-2020). To make his contributions open to a wider academic community, we communicated with Shalini Singh and Masood Ansar Naqvi, who together wrote an excellent portrait published in 2019. Please feel free to read it at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13032917.2019.1624379?tab=permissions&scroll=top

Rest in peace, Tej…
Metin Kozak