PUNJABI POET-5

Amarjit Singh Chandan, The Poet

Amarjit Chandan is a noted Punjabi poet and essayist. He is the author of eight collections of poetry and three books of essays in Punjabi (in the Gurmukhi and the Persian script) and one book of poetry in English translation. Born in Nairobi, he graduated from Punjab University. As a result of his active involvement in the Maoist Naxalite movement in his youth, he was imprisoned and spent two years in solitary confinement. Later he worked for various Punjabi literary and political magazines, including the Mumbai-based Economic and Political Weekly, before migrating to England in 1980. He lives in London.


Chandan has edited many anthologies of world poetry and fiction, including two collections of “British Punjabi” poetry and short fiction. Translated into Greek, Turkish, Hungarian, Romanian and various Indian languages, his work is included in several anthologies in India and abroad. He has participated in poetry readings in England, Hungary and at Columbia University. An active translator, he has translated work by Brecht, Neruda, Ritsos, Hikmet and Cardenal, among others, into Punjabi. 

Audio Collection of His Poetry: Punjabi Poetry Audio - Amarjit chandan's Poetry in his own voice

In recognition of his contribution to contemporary Punjabi letters, he was awarded the lifetime achievement award by the Punjab Government in December 2004, and yet another lifetime achievement award by the Punjabi community in Britain (All-Party Parliamentary Group, London) in 2006. He was among the British poets on Radio 3 selected by Andrew Motion on National Poetry Day in 2001.

Chandan’s poetry does not invoke the theme of place with any easy sentimentalism. Nakoda, his home town in the Punjab, does recur in these selected poems with an insistent longing. There is a particularly vibrant memory of the entire village sharing a collective dream as it congregates to watch a silent film in the year 1930. But the memories of home are more layered than they may initially seem. The sight of a billboard advertising lasan or garlic in a distant country appears to arouse a simple nostalgia, but the poet is also aware of the aching cargo of loss the word evokes for the women farm labourers of California. And for all the memories of childhood and adolescence — his mother’s laughter, the clang of the village school-bell — there is also the unforgettable sound of prison gates.

There is a silence in Chandan’s poetry — a deep sense of the unspoken, and more accurately, the unspeakable. This is, no doubt, intimately connected with his years of solitary confinement in an Amritsar prison. In an interview (not included in this edition) he declares that his belief in “violence as a midwife of change” has long been buried. But what is not so easy to bury is memory: memory of torture, sleep deprivation and of the interminable hours in a prison cell, in which time frayed his nerves “like chalk screeching on a blackboard. You count your breaths, lose count and start again . . . I’m a poet, yet there are no words to explain these feelings, this loss of spirit.”

When he edited the Maoist movement’s official publication, Lokyudh, he believed words were his weapon. There is little evidence of that bellicosity in these poems. Words here are precarious and makeshift signposts in a vast hinterland of memory. They do not seek to tame silence, merely make a fragile truce with its un-mappability.

Amarjeet Chandan
And 
Paash

PUNJABI POET-4

LAL SINGH 'DIL'

LAL SINGHJ DIL


by: Nirupma Dutt

Lal Singh Dil. Samrala. Nov 1978. Photo by Amarjit Chandan

Lal Singh Dil (1943-2007) 

How is one to remember Lal Singh Dil? The literary status of Dil in the world of Punjabi literature was never disputed and he is often described as the poets’ poet. Punjabi poet Surjit Patar says: “He will be counted as one of the top Punjabi poets of the twentieth century.” However, there was more to Dil’s life than is difficult to slot. It was a life of immense struggle as his story stands witness to the deep-rooted human discrimination in the name of caste, which, a creation of the Hindu way of life, is yet to be found in all major religions that have been based on conversion from Hinduism. Sadly enough, it has also been a part of the Left group cadres, which ideologically do not recognize religion, caste or creed. So Dil’s various attempts to transcend the caste barrier by joining the Naxalite movement of the late sixties in Punjab or later converting to Islam with the new name of Mohammad Bushra met with frustration that his simple poetic heart opposed.

However, his life and struggle raise the issue of caste prejudice and a big question mark after his death. Punjab has a higher Dalit percentage than that of the other states. Scheduled Caste form about 30 percent of the total population and eight percent of these castes live in the rural area and are landless and mostly Sikh Jats are the land owners. The Dalits take the religion of their masters as per old practice.

Born to a low-caste Ramdasia Chamar (tanner) family, Dil was the first of his clan to pass Class X, while doing his daily labour, and go to college. He was training to be a basic school teacher when Naxalbari intervened. Dil’s poetry was true to his life and that of those around him and the experience of poverty, injustice and oppression was so real and told so well that he was hailed as the bard of the Naxalite movement in Punjab. In the dream of a society free of caste and class, Dil saw a new dawn for the oppressed. However, the extreme Left cadres were not without the caste factor and when the movement was crushed the torture meted out to the Dalits by the upper-caste police was far worse. Dil went underground and moved to Muzaffar Nagar in Uttar Pradesh. Here comes the progresson of Dil. As a caretaker of a mango orchard there, he came in contact with Muslim culture. Once again he saw escape from caste oppression and converted to Islam. In a historical letter written to his mentor-friend Amarjit Chandan in February 1974, he revealed his decision in a long letter saying a crescent moon had appeared on the palm of his hand and adding a line: “Allah is very kind to Maoists because he understands cultures.”

Years later Dil was to tell me, “Caste prejudice exists among the Muslims too.” And this was a scathing comment on the “Manu-made” evil that exists among the Muslims, Christians and Sikhs of the sub-continent because it is so deeply rooted in the Hindu way of life that it is difficult to get rid of it even after conversion. However, Dil remained a devout Muslim saying his namaz , keeping rozas (fasting) and eating only halaal. While he did not put his last wish to be buried on paper yet he had articulated it to his close riends and relatives. Gulzar Mohammad Goria, a writer and Dil’s constant companion, told me: “The wish was communicated to his brothers and left-wing activists. However, there was no Muslim burial ground is Samrala as the Wakf Board had leased out the ground to a Sadhu, who has built a temple there.” It would have meant taking his body to the neighbouring village of Bhaundli but it may not have been accepted there so the brothers of dil conferred and respecting the fact that he had converted to Islam, they yet decided to cremate him as they had done with other elders of the family. Goria adds, “We did not wish to rake a controversy that would make Dil the Muslim overshadow Dil the great poet.”

A great poet he was undoubtedly and his collection of poetry Satluj di Hava (1971), Bahut Saare Suraj (1982), andSathar (1997) as well as his autobiography, Dastaan, enjoy an exalted place in Punjabi letters. However, his life was a constant struggle. He was never married nor did he enjoy the companionship of any woman. His body and mind wrecked by police torture, he took to country brew. When the Naxalite movement was crushed all the activists went back to their class folds. Dil had nowhere to go to. His dreams for a better life were gone and till the end he remained a ‘proclaimed offender’ in police records because there was no one to help and set the record straight. Sadly, many Naxalite writers and artistes were to receive honours, posts and money from the government but even the meager pension of Languages Department, Punjab was not to find its way to Dil’s hovel through his long years of penury or illness.

For some years after his return to Samrala, Goria and he reopened the mosque in Samrala with Dil saying the morning and evening azaan (call for prayer). Goria recalls: “God is everywhere and our effort in opening the mosque was directed to give confidence to a minority community who should not be afraid of going to their own place for prayer. However, when people started coming to the mosque, the Wakf Board intervened and took over. Well, the Wakf Board must be having its own reason because political ideology apart, Dil and Goria were just a bit too fond of their drink.

With the money sent by his well-wishers in England, his hut was made over into a pucca home and a wooden shack built to serve as a teashop so that he may earn a living by selling tea. He did so in partnership with Pala, a local upper-caste drug addict, but after his death the shop was closed. On Sunday when hundreds of all shades gathered to bid adieu to Dil, but for one all old comrades took care not to mention the two truths of dil’s life: one that he had converted to Islam and the other he found solace in addiction. Expressing regret as an ex-Naxalite activist Manmohan Sharma, an admirer of the days when red had not faded, says: “This is how society exhumes radicalism and Dil the radical was not acceptable either to the society or his own party cadres.” Chandan adds more explicitly: “Beneath the faded red, the Hindus and Sikhs, they would not have anything to do with his last wish for a burial.”

Dil was a legend in his lifetime and now after him his poetry lives and so does his struggle and protest. He had told this writer that one day people would come and sing qawwalisunder the banyan tree outside his hovel. It will happen one day, for in ‘Manto-town’ (Samrala being the birth place of Saadat Hasan Munto) Dil was the true faqir and Manto and Dil were forever buried in many a heart.

(Lal Singh Dil, poet, born 11 April 1943, Ghungraali Sikhaan, Ludhiana; died 14 August 2007 Dayanand Medical College and Hospital Ludhiana.)