Tara Singh Varma

Tarapatie Oedayraj Singh Varma was born on 29 August 1948 in Springlands, British Guiana. She was raised in a Surinamese teaching household and later lived in Suriname, where she started teacher training at the Surinaamse Kweekschool and courses at the Surinaamse Rechtschool without finishing either programme.

After moving to the Netherlands she built a base in Amsterdam's Surinamese-Hindustani community. She took courses in immigration law and later cadre training with GroenLinks. Community organising, not a conventional party career track, was her route into public life.

From 7 September 1982 to 29 April 1986 she served as a duo member of the Amsterdam municipal council for the Communist Party of the Netherlands. From 29 April 1986 to 12 April 1994 she was a full councillor for Links Akkoord.

In those years she combined council work with activism for migrant women, sex workers and newcomers. She chaired the Landelijke Federatie Surinaamse Vrouwenzaken and sat on boards including Zami, SOM-Media, the Vrijwilligers Centrale Amsterdam and, later, De Rode Draad. Colleagues remembered a politician who kept close to neighbourhood organisations rather than Hague networks.

On 17 May 1994 Singh Varma entered the Tweede Kamer for GroenLinks. She had stood sixth on the list and took a seat after list leader Ina Brouwer did not. Contemporaries noted that she arrived at the same moment as Sam Cherribi and Mohamed Rabbae, making her the first woman of colour in the chamber.

Her portfolio included home affairs, welfare and health. She spoke often about minority women and kept extensive extra-parliamentary board work. She said extreme-right intimidation was a constant pressure of that pioneering role.

For the 1998 election GroenLinks placed her ninth, a position expected to be hard to win. The party won eleven seats and she returned, helped by more than 13,000 preference votes concentrated in Amsterdam's Surinamese electorate.

The result confirmed that she commanded a personal constituency even when her parliamentary profile was modest. Absolute Facts and Parlement.com both underline that preference vote as the clearest measure of her grassroots strength.

From 14 October 1998 into 1999 she sat on the parliamentary inquiry into the Bijlmermeer aircraft disaster of October 1992. Hearings were widely televised and brought her national recognition.

She later said the work left her deeply involved with victims and the multicultural Bijlmer community. That emotional load featured in her later explanations of mental illness after she left the chamber.

In 1994 she faced questions about fundraising and committee finances. A commission chaired by former minister Dieuwke de Graaff-Nauta concluded that embezzlement was not proven, but that she had been negligent as treasurer of the Grenada committee.

Later reporting around the Ninash Foundation in India claimed she had promised large annual support that never arrived. Those financial disputes damaged her reputation even before the illness scandal broke.

From 2000 she was often absent and sometimes entered the chamber in a wheelchair. In October 2000 she said she had terminal cancer and prepared to leave politics. She resigned on 30 May 2001, telling interviewers she expected to die soon and had considered euthanasia.

In June and July 2001 TROS Opgelicht?! reported that she did not have the cancer she had described, and that charity pledges had not been paid. GroenLinks accepted that her story was untrue. Party leader Paul Rosenmoller said he felt deceived. In August 2001 and in 2002 she apologised, saying she had lived in a delusional world caused by psychotic depression and post-traumatic stress. Minister Roger van Boxtel renamed the Singh Varma Prize as De Triomf. Jet Homoet's documentary Tara followed the collapse in real time.

Parlement.com records one daughter. After 2026 news of her death, foster daughter Mala Angna spoke publicly to NOS as the family contact.

Singh Varma described herself as Hindustani by background though not strictly observant. She lived for decades in Amsterdam and remained closely tied to Surinamese community life even after leaving national politics.

After 2001 she largely left the national stage. From 2005 she edited the opinion magazine Volkskrant Suriname. She later worked in a Surinamese sandwich shop in Amsterdam-Oost and served as a commissioner of a shelter organisation for Surinamese addicts; funding for that organisation was stopped in 2008 amid quality concerns.

In 2017 she appeared as a programme maker on Amsterdam local radio. For many younger Dutch voters she was remembered mainly through the 2001 scandal rather than her earlier council and inquiry work.

On 14 September 2026 Mala Angna confirmed to NOS that Tara Singh Varma had died at the age of 78. Dutch outlets including AT5, NU.nl, NRC and De Telegraaf reported the news the same day.

No cause of death was released publicly. Absolute Facts and Dutch Wikipedia recorded the announcement date as 14 September 2026.

Singh Varma's legacy sits in two frames. She was the first woman of colour in the Dutch House of Representatives and a Bijlmer inquiry member rooted in Amsterdam's migrant communities. She was also the politician whose false terminal-illness story became a lasting case study in trust, mental health and party oversight.

Femke Halsema later said GroenLinks had been too slow to question her because of fear of racism accusations. Documentary Tara and books such as De zaak Singh Varma kept the episode in public memory. Her death in 2026 reopened that debate while also returning attention to the pioneering path she opened for later migrant women in Dutch politics.