Khan Noonien Singh

Khan Noonien Singh was an Indian activist, politician and dictator best known for his rule as Prime Minister of the Republic of India from 1984 to 1991 and as Khan of the Great Khanate of India from 1991 to 1996. Singh was born in 1947 to Adhar Singh and Hira Dakkar on the very date India officially became independent. Dakkar, notably, was the granddaughter of the famed Indian pirate/revolutionary and member of Britain's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Prince Chhatrasal Dakkar, better known as Captain Nemo. He was one of several hundred 'midnight children' born at the very moment India gained independence and like many of them was a metahuman. Singh, in particular, possessed latent psychic abilities that enabled him to quickly understand the emotions and intentions of those around him, a tool which greatly enabled him both as a child and into adulthood. Singh, owing to these abilities, would be discovered, kidnapped and forcibly recruited into the Chrysalis Project, a program intended to develop superior humans. The Chrysalis Project was the brainchild of the post-World War II incarnation of Hydra and was overseen by Wilhelm Strasse, a Nazi scientist smuggled out as part of Operation Paperclip who remained loyal to the ideals of that system. Singh's treatment at the hands of the Chrysalis Project, which de facto raised him from 1950 to 1958, was extraordinarily mixed as was the case with many metahumans part of the project. On one hand, they were idealised as incarnations of a new super-race that would one day rule the world by the Hydra scientists running the program. On the other hand, the fact that so many Chrysalis subjects were not in line with Hydra's Nazi racial ideals meant many were subject to physical violence and abuse and the project often tasked the metahuman children with a wide array of dangerous tasks.

Singh in particular was put in a number of heavily perilous situations at the behest of the Chrysalis Project. He was tasked with obtaining Kanamit technology during the brief lull between their departure from Earth and the world's governments seizing their technology. Singh managed to pilfer only a single device, which was nonetheless enough to allow the Chrysalis Project to rapidly analyse human DNA. Singh was also sent to the underwater city of Rapture in 1959 to obtain plasmids, managing to sneak both in and out undetected thanks to playing off different factions within the city against each other. Hydra viewed the plasmids as a potential tool to augment their own ranks and avoid the need for the likes of Singh to directly father children. Singh also was tasked with carrying out contact with various other large criminal and terrorist cells to offer Hydra's covert support to the likes of SPECTRE, THRUSH and KAOS as part of efforts to provoke global instability. By the time he reached age 13, Singh had already had dozens upon dozens of brushes with death and killed over 30 people personally. However, at this age, Singh finally came to question the Chrysalis Project's intentions, recognising the contradictions that his youth had caused him to ignore before. Singh would lead a small insurrection against Hydra in India, burning down the local Chrysalis Project facility and murdering several of those he knew were operating on Hydra's behalf within India, most notably the mad scientist Dr. Cyclops. In the years that followed, Singh was somewhat aimless and unsure of what to do next, absent other direction. In other circumstances, he might have become a superhero and he initially did hold the likes of Superman in high esteem. However, in the early 1960's, the emergence of the mutant community helped push him in a different direction.

The global backlash towards mutants was largely sparked by a belief that being born with superpowers was a result of literally mutation at birth. To many who hated them, mutants were as abominable as any kaiju and for similar reasons. The hostility to metahumans in general was pervasive, but there was a sense that for those who had become superhuman there was some attachment to baseline humanity left. However, mutants did not have to have that attachment and thus, in the view of anti-mutant activists, a distinct threat. In response to this backlash came the rise of Erik Lensherr, known better as Magneto. Magneto advocated a doctrine that mutants were the next stage of human evolution and should seek to take their rightful place as dominant over the rest of humanity, echoing the beliefs of John Wainwright. Singh would quickly come to embrace this mindset, though he welded it with unique elements of his own country's circumstances. Seeing the destitution and poverty so many experienced in India firsthand–himself having lived through it after fleeing the Chrysalis Project–Singh came to believe that a part of why mutants should dominate was out of a sense of duty to uplift 'lower' humanity's station. In this sense, Singh's Augment ideology can be understood as a spiritual successor to Gellert Grindelwald's perspective of wizard supremacy for the good of wizards and non-wizards alike as well as the even earlier conception of 'white man's burden' that was popular in the 19th century. Singh wrote a series of letters to Lensherr outlining his beliefs of this sort and, while Lensherr never formally replied, a number of his later attitudes reflected heavy similarities to Singh's thought and were a blueprint for his governorship of Genosha in the 1980's.

Singh was able to lie low until the late 1970's, when like many other Indian metahumans he was designated an enemy of the state by Prime Minister Priya Duryodhani. Duryodhani, seeking to seize dictatorial power for herself, used fear of civil unrest and metahumans as a tool to justify taking on emergency powers that enabled her to suspend elections and quash dissent by force. Most relevant to Singh, however, were the efforts of Duryodhani's government to eliminate the Midnight Children and other metahumans. Hundreds of them were taken into government custody and subjected to abusive medical procedures that left most of them depowered and sterile. Singh himself was imprisoned and subject to this horrendous treatment, but managed to escape with some portion of his powers remaining. Singh was reportedly hidden by a man named Raghaven, who due to a psychotic break perceived Singh as his own son Raghu whom had been a victim of police violence during the Emergency. Eventually, the Emergency ended in 1977 and Duryodhani was removed from power in subsequent elections, but an embittered Singh vowed vengeance. He concluded the only way to protect metahumans in India was for them to seize control of the state apparatus. Singh over the next several years worked to build a power base, making contact with outside metahumans such as the Tomorrow People and Lensherr's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in a bid to gain support for his plans to seize political power. Within India, Singh recruited the bulk of surviving Midnight Children to his side and additionally built support among opposition to the regime, in particular focusing on dissenting government officials like Indu Sarkar and Vikram Malhotra (whom Singh gained the loyalty of by having a mutant ally of his heal a series of physical and mental injuries inflicted upon him by police).

Singh himself, meanwhile, used his charm to infiltrate the Kaurava Party and get close to Duryodhani. By the time of her 1980 return to power, Singh was a part of Duryodhani's personal guard. By repeatedly halting (staged) assassination attempts, Singh has made himself seem a loyal supporter of Duryodhani. Singh continued to bide his time and build a covert power base of mutants and baseline humans alike within India while waiting for the opportune moment to claim full power. That moment would arrive in 1984, when World War III broke out after, in the wake of most American-based superheroes being abducted by the otherworldly beings known as the Beyonder or the Monitor, President Cyclops/Webster made a poorly-timed joke that convinced the Soviets to activate Project Koschei and invade large swathes of Europe and North America. While the rest of the world was distracted by trying to use Gojira to contain Cthulhu, the ongoing fighting in Germany, Hawaii and the Rockies and British Prime Minister Jim Jasper's proclamation of a fascist regime in Britain after usurping Joan Carpenter, Singh had a perfect opening to organise the assassination of Duryodhani and her followers. Singh personally struck down the Prime Minister and allies embedded throughout India made quick work of fellow Kaurava Party members. Not only Kaurava Party leaders were targeted, Singh also eliminated a number of key opposition figures, high-ranking figures within the Indian military and even prominent businessmen and actors whom he deemed a threat to his rule. Singh's proclamation of taking power in India occurred only after well over 1,000 men and women whom could have stood in his way were eliminated by his followers. The official story Singh provided was that Soviet operatives had sought to decapitate the Indian government as they had already done in neighbouring China, which already was beginning to collapse into civil war. Singh's assumption of the role of Prime Minister of India was thus framed as an effort to maintain stability.

Singh's swift action and prepared excuses were crucial to giving his regime the legitimacy it needed early on. In the name of anti-communism, Singh was able to continue to purge potential threats to his rule. Singh did not, however, only have an iron fist to offer the people of India. He also pursued investment in infrastructure, education, healthcare and entertainment for the public, something that was both a logical outgrowth of his philosophy and a crucial act to wooing an uncertain public to his side. Singh spent the first three years of his reign largely focused on this consolidation of power, but after the 1986 general election allowed Singh loyalists to sweep Parliament, Singh felt comfortable enough to begin looking outward once more. His first priority was India's large neighbour: China. Chinese-Indian relations had long been frosty, with a number of border skirmishes being fought with the country under their previous leader Chairman Peng Guoliang. But now Peng was dead, a victim of a Soviet first strike on Beijing, and a country with hundreds of millions was in the middle of a bloody struggle for power not seen since the 1930's. Chinese refugees fled into Southeast Asia and India alike and Singh was easily able to make the case that intervention to restore order in China was a matter of India's national interest. Both the Soviets and the United States also viewed restoring stability in China as important, but even after World War III formally ended in 1985, neither side was willing to trust the other in the country. India, in a sense, would be a nice, neutral compromise in the minds of American and Soviet leaders who agreed to Singh's plan. Singh selected the warlord Wu Qinghua as the ideal candidate to manage China, ostensibly due to her ties to the old government coupled with a reformist bent. However, in reality, there was another reason for choosing her. Wu Qinghua was closely aligned with the Chinese criminal masterminds Fu Manchu, Shen Yu, and Zhang Tong–all three of whom were closely tied to the supernatural elements of Chinese history. The three figures were de facto immortal and possessed a number of heightened physical and mental abilities. Singh viewed them as natural allies to his own belief system and, as it turned out, they agreed.

By 1989, Indian support and the supernatural arsenal of the 3 'hidden hands' behind Chairwoman Wu enabled China to once again be under one government (outside of Taiwan and Zheng Fa, which stubbornly clung to independence). With an ally/de facto puppet state secured in the North, Singh next sought to recruit additional allies across the globe. His vision had cleared considerably thanks to learning more of the supernatural world from Zhang–the Augment world would not only be run by mutants and superhumans, but by wizards, witches, cyborgs, vampires and any others whom had, by birth or by growth, transcended the domain of 'normal' humans. Singh invested a lot of time drawing former subjects to psychic research programs like the Athena Plan, Project Firestarter and the Zener Project to India, offering not only protection but a chance for vengeance. Singh also engaged in overtures to supernatural beings he considered potential allies, to mixed success. Lucius Malfoy and other remnant Death Eaters in Britain cordially received his overtures, but did not sincerely plan to taking much action to align with him. Queen Beryl's Dark Kingdom comparatively was more open to such an arrangement, though Beryl herself harboured ambitions to rule the world on her own and viewed Singh as disposable. On the other hand, the ancient vampire known as Sariel who held those he fed upon in an unusually strong thrall, rejected the prospect of any alliance outright, vowing to conquer the world on his own. Singh quickly realised he could not solely rely on unusual humans as allies and by the time he officially proclaimed the Great Khanate of India he was ready to form alliances of convenience with mundane humans.

Singh took advantage of the end of the Cold War to find allies among dictators in the Third World and the collapsed Soviet Union, sponsoring the likes of Ivan Radek, Zateb Kazin and Henry Krull. The formal beginning of the conflicts dubbed the Eugenics Wars would only begin in 1992 following the assumption of power by ultranationalists in Japan. Japan's existing pro-American government had been badly weakened by the destruction of Tokyo by the entity known as Akira in 1989 and order was restored largely at gunpoint by ultranationalist General Ryoichi Yoshi, who was deeply nostalgic for Japan's imperial past. Singh viewed Yoshi as a potential ally and privately urged him to form a military regime, but Yoshi instead stood aside in favour of Mogataru Koga. However, an economic crisis allowed the collapse of his government and the ascension of Hiroshi Goto as Prime Minister, who began implementing Yoshi's far-right policies including responding to rising violence in schools (demonstrated primarily by 1989's Akademi High School murders) by forcing teenagers into deathmatches. For the Goto government, the United States was a particular enemy and, with Singh's support, Japan launched an open war on the United States in 1992. The war was brief, owing to Japan's comparatively weak military footing. Most of the potential aces in the hole–the use of mechas, weaponization of Monsterland kaiju or large-scale intervention by Japanese superheroes–were stymied by antiwar sentiment on the part of those whom could have introduced them. In the end, Japan was defeated and the Singh-aligned government collapsed (though not before killing US President Roger Durling in an attack on the US Capitol).

Singh was undeterred by the failure of his Japanese allies. Indeed, he ramped up the Great Khanate's support to sympathetic factions across the globe. When South Africa collapsed into civil war amidst a coup by hardliner Karl Voster, Singh made sure to provide Vorster with large amounts of weapons and even some metahuman support. Singh also provided manpower and weapons to M. Bison's regime in Panau as it began invading neighbouring island nations such as Banoi, Lilliput and Patusan. Genosha proved to be a natural ally of Singh's government, acting as a hub from which Indian-made weapons and volunteers provided by Singh could flow to various allies of convenience. The terrorist organisation Cobra also partnered with Singh out of convenience, ramping up the threat posed by the group considerably since the denting given to it by 1980's counterterrorism efforts. Cobra was Singh's preferred proxy for installing Khanate-friendly governments in Southeast Asia, which succeeded in Sarkhan and Laos even as it drew Vietnam, Vietmahl, Cambodia and Thailand to unite against them. Even ostensible opponents of metahumans were willing to form alliances of convenience with Singh's government. When Ayatollah Daryaei's Iran annexed Iraq, proclaimed the formation of the United Islamic Republic and invaded Kuwait, Qumar and Asran simultaneously, India and their puppet government in China were the nations who blocked a resolution condemning their actions at the United Nations and funnelled heavy amounts of aid to the country. The period from 1992 to 1994 was characterised by these small-scale proxy conflicts.

It was 1995 that would see the conflict really ramp up in intensity thanks to the crashing of a meteor near the Tiber River carrying the element Tiberium. Singh, wishing to seize the material for his own use, convinced his ally Hank Scorpio to mount a coup in the United States. Scorpio temporarily seized control of the eastern seaboard and held President Jack Stanton hostage before being defeated. In Russia, a coup was likewise attempted by Ivan Tretiak, a Russian hardliner seeking to restore the USSR by ousting Russian President Sergei Karpov. While these coups were ultimately repelled, they delayed the securing of Tiberium. Singh would form a common cause with the Brotherhood of Nod, whom under the command of their enigmatic leader Kane wanted to seize Tiberium as well. Singh's support for Scorpio, Tretiak and Nod would at last force the world's hands, with Russia and the US agreeing to implement crippling sanctions on India and China. China's government yielded first, with Wu Qinghua being forced to stand down in favour of Lian Ma. Meanwhile, Singh's hold in India, for the first time in a dozen years, faced dissent. Strikes and protests that could have been crushed with little backlash in previous years now escalated to riots, the people of India no longer believing in Singh's promises of a brighter future for India. Singh still resisted launching outright war until 1996, when the Global Defense Initiative announced an intervention into India to remove a Brotherhood of Nod cell within the country. Singh ordered the Indian Armed Forces to resist the intervention, which they did for a time but the outcome was never in doubt. Singh vanished from New Delhi alongside his closest allies and followers on June 4th. Lakshmi Rupavathy, the leader of Singh's previously-impotent opposition, would become Prime Minister of what was now once again the Republic of India.

Singh's disappearance led to no shortage of theories as to what happened to him. Some believed that Singh committed suicide after realising his failure to fulfill his ambitions, although the disappearance of many of his high ranking allies led to comments that this would require a Jamestown style mass suicide. Some claimed Singh and the Brotherhood of Nod's leader Kane had in fact been the same person and Singh had simply gone to join the Brotherhood in full as his rule in India collapsed. Due to the lack of resemblance between Kane and Singh, this theory was largely the provenance of cranks. Some claimed that Singh escaped back in time or to a parallel reality–with declassified documents indicating Singh had made contact with a parallel world dominated by a nation calling itself the Domination of Draka serving as fuel for this belief. One of the most popular theories was that Singh and his followers escaped to outer space, either to find another planet to settle upon or simply to wait to return to Earth. Many who believed this theory claimed that Singh and his followers were responsible for directing the Harvester fleet towards Earth or launching the Wolf-Biederman asteroid (sometimes also known as 'Dottie') at the planet, citing that the meteor appeared to change trajectories before heading towards the planet, unlike the previous near-miss of the Hamner-Brown comet. Despite Khan's brutal rule, he remained widely admired in India, with a surprisingly large cult worshipping him as a living god.

In reality, Singh had escaped from planet Earth aboard the experimental spacecraft SS Botany Bay. together with his most loyal and trusted subordinates. Going into suspended animation, Singh and his followers spent centuries drifting away from Earth. In 2267, the Botany Bay was discovered by the USS Enterprize. Revived from their sleep, Singh and his followers attempted to seize control of the Enterprize before being defeated. As the captain of the Enterprize, James T. Kirk, was an admirer of Singh as a capable, determined man, he was magnanimous in victory and offered Singh and his followers a chance to build their own society on the uninhabited planet Ceti Alpha V. Only six months afterwards, Ceti Alpha VI was destroyed in a cosmic disaster. The resulting harsh conditions killed most of Singh's followers including his wife, Marla McGivers. Blaming Kirk's lack of oversight for the disaster, Singh swore vengeance upon him. His chance for revenge came in 2285, when the USS Reliant visited what it believed to be Ceti Alpha VI. Singh subsequently hijacked the reliant and attempted to kill Kirk, dying in the attempt.