The Backdrop of Punjabi Literature: From Sufism to the Radical Short Story. (Part 2)
By Rana Nayar
Read The Backdrop of Punjabi Literature: Part 1
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British
rule to Modernism
The emergence of modern Punjabi
literature, ironically, coincided with the beginnings of the British rule upon
the soil of Punjab, which happened only in the early 1850s. The setting up of a
Christian mission at Ludhiana in 1835 (where a printing press was installed for
using Gurmukhi fonts, and which also issued the first Punjabi grammar in 1838),
the publication of a Punjabi dictionary by Reverend J. Newton in 1854 and the
ripple-down effect of the strengthening and modernizing the education system
under the patronage of the Singh Sabha Movement in 1860s, were some of the
developments that made it possible for ‘modernism’ to emerge in Punjabi
literary culture. It needs to be pointed out here that ‘modernism’ is being
used here as an umbrella term to cover a whole range of developments in the
Punjabi literary culture, starting with the break from tradition or the past to
a commitment to progressive ideology, from the experimental nature of the
avant-garde to the newness of the forward-looking.
Both in the realms of Punjabi poetry and novel, it is Bhai Vir Singh who is
often seen as the harbinger of modernism. Starting off as a pamphleteer, he
soon evolved into a major literary figure of his times, contributing a large
body of qualitative and trail-blazing literature. If Bhai Vir Singh retrieved
Punjabi poetry from the excesses of Persian poetry, he also energized the
narrative tradition by adapxing the Western form of the novel to his indigenous
expression and ideology. Though his poetry, with its dominant mystical strain,
easily gets linked to the tradition of the Sikh philosophy and thought, his
efforts at creating historical romances such as Sundari, Satwant Kaur and Baba Naudh
Singh, largely remain imitative of Walter Scott and his ilk.
Rooting
the Punjabi novel in the soil of Punjab
Breaking away from such imitative efforts,
his successor Nanak Singh, under the reformist influence of the Singh Sabha
Movement, tried rather successfully to root the Punjabi novel in the very soil
and substance of Punjab. Turning to the indigenous modes of story telling such
as Quissa, popular in the medieval period, Nanak Singh gave to the
Punjabi novel a distinctive local character and habitation. It was through his
efforts that the novel managed to reclaim not only its vital link with the oral
tradition, but also its soft, delicate formless texture. In the novels of Nanak
Singh, fluidity of sentimentalism goes hand in hand with the ideological
concerns of a social reformer, something that Sohan Singh Seetal and Jaswant
Singh Kanwal, who were to come later, also tried to emulate, fairly
successfully.
Interestingly, it was in the Punjabi
language that the anchalik upnayas (whose beginnings literary historians often
trace back to Phaneshwar Nath Renu’s Hindi novel Maila Anchal) made its
appearance first of all. Kartar Singh Duggal’s Andraan, a novel written
in the Pothoari dialect and steeped in the localism of the same region, its
geography, economy, ecology, customs and conventions, was published as far back
as 1948. In a way, emergence of this particular form of novel did help in
foregrounding hard-core social realism in the Punjabi novel, which was to
acquire its ideological underpinnings from a curious blend of Marxist thought
and Gandhian socialism. Sant Singh Sekhon, Surinder Singh Narula, Amrita Pritam
and Narinder Pal Singh, among several others, made a consistent and significant
contribution towards this paradigm shift. By enabling the fiction to shed its
obsessive, maudlin sentimentality, even quasi-romantic character, these
luminaries slowly but surely paved the way for the advent of a truly modernist
novel in Punjabi, with a distinctive psychological/sociological thrust.
Gurdial
Singh – Radicalising the Punjabi Novel
Until the times of Gurdial Singh, two
diametrically opposed ideologies viz., a brand of naïve romanticism and an
indigenous form of realism had continued to exert pressures and
counter-pressures upon the content and/or form of the Punjabi novel. Apart from
these ideological tensions, which helped shape the aesthetic concerns as well
as their articulation, Punjabi fiction had continued to shift back and forth
between the rural and the urban, the past and the present, the poetic and the
realistic. The historical importance of Gurdial Singh’s fiction lies in the
fact that it sought to encapsulate the dialectics of tradition and modernity,
even tried to attain a rare synthesis of the two, wherever possible, something
that had eluded Punjabi fiction until then. If Gurdial Singh radicalised the
Punjabi novel by infusing into it a new consciousness about the
oppressed/underprivileged, Ajit Cour and Daleep Kaur Tiwana opened up newer
possibilities by interrogating the marginalized status/position of Punjabi
women in a heavily accented, feudal and patriarchal, societal regime. Niranjan
Tasneem, Mohan Kahlon, Surjit Sethi and several others, in their distinctive
ways, have continued to push the frontiers of the Punjabi fiction.
Punjabi
Poetry in the modern context
Apart from Bhai Vir Singh, Dhani Ram
‘Chatrik’ (1876-1954), Puran Singh (1881-1931), Mohan Singh (1905-1978), Amrita
Pritam (1919-2005) are among the prominent poets of the first generation, who
sought to re-inscribe the ideology and aesthetics of Punjabi poetry in the
modern context. Though in some form or the other, their poetry bore the scars
of the trauma of Partition, each one of them wrote in as varied an idiom and as
distinct a voice as anyone could. Steeped in the Indian tradition of romance
and conforming to the classical rigour, Chatrik used poetry to celebrate varied
moods of nature, or occasionally evoke an undying sense of patriotism through
his nationalist verses. Brought up on a heavy dose of English and American
poetry, Puran Singh was definitely more liberal and direct than most of his
predecessors, and his poetic expression always bristled with naked sensuousness
and primal celebration of human body. Most explicitly Freudian, he openly
proclaims in one of his poems, “I want to be an animal again.” Mohan Singh
could be described as a ‘progressive modern’ for it was he who liberated
Punjabi poetry from the constraints of mysticism and/or revivalism. His range
was simply astounding as he moved impercepxibly from the romantic felicities of
Saave Pattar to the political consciousness of Adhvate, from the Freudian
flights of Kasumbhara to the socialist fancies of Vadda Vela. If there is
anything that defines Amrita Pritam’s poetry, it is the boldness of her
expression, pungency of her social criticism and relentless critique of defunct
morality that often works to the detriment of women. In a poem entitled
'Kumwari' (The Virgin) in her collection Kagaz Te Canvas, which
won her the prestigious Jnanpeeth, she tells the story of a young girl in her
characteristic sardonic tone: “When I moved into your bed/I was not alone there
– there were two of us/A married woman and a virgin/To sleep with you/I had to
offer the virgin in me/I did so/This slaughter is permitted in law/Not the
indignity of it…”
Shiv
Batalavi and Harbhajan Singh – Soul stirring lyricism
In 1950s, when Mohan Singh and Amrita
Pritam had already won great accolades and the future of the Punjabi poetry
didn’t appear to be very encouraging, it was the soul-stirring lyricism of Shiv
Batalavi and the thought-content of Harbhajan Singh that infused new
possibilities into it. Attuning himself to the raw, jagged rhythms of his
work-a-day, earthy life, Shiv Batalavi created such haunting melodies of pain
and suffering that they continue to resound in our hearts, even today. A
skilful craftsman of words, he had this rare ability to make even a fleeting,
ordinary moment pulsate with eternal possibilities. To this day, his poetic
drama Luna, in which he re-interpreted the popular legend of Puran Bhagat from
a woman’s standpoint, remains one of the best works ever produced in
contemporary Punjabi literature.
Harbhajan Singh’s breadth of experience and
range of sympathies is simply unnerving, as he responds to the bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the same inwardness with which he portrays the
exploitation of an underdog in his own society. Often his aestheticism becomes
a challenge to the critical and militant mood of the progressives, as in these
lines: “Whenever I enter into a dialogue with you/My breath sends out notes of
a flute/….Or if you can not trust yourself with the flute/You may ply your
sword on the flute and go.” Among the second generation of poets, we may
mention Pritam Singh ‘Safeer,’ Santokh Singh Dheer, Prabhjot Kaur and Jaswant
Singh Neki, who, through their varied contributions, enriched the ever-growing
corpus of modern Punjabi poetry.
The
60s Naxalite Movement
In the 60s, Punjab suddenly found itself in
the vortex of the Naxalite movement, much in the manner of other states of
India, where the failure to implement land reforms had backfired. So extensive
was the influence of this movement that it threatened to swallow up all the
major gains Punjab was poised to make on account of the Green Revolution. Such
were the conditions that led the progressive movement into its militant phase,
with Bawa Balwant, Paash, Ravinder Ravi, Ajaib Kamal, Harbhajan Halwarwi,
Amarjit Chandan and several others emerging as its major votaries. While
others, fearing persecution, migrated to foreign lands, Paash, Bawa Balwant and
Halwarwi, continued to spearhead the movement, even when it was on the decline.
Later, when the high tide of terrorism swepx through the Punjab, Paash and
Ravinder Ravi fell to assassins’ bullets. But while they lived, Paash and his
friends were swepx off by the ideology of Che Guavera and Fidel Castro, and
charmed by the poetic practises of Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz. They have left
behind a rich corpus of poetry that sizzles with political radicalism and
revolutionary fervour, and articulates a trans-national commitment to the
solidarity of the oppressed.
Though this phase didn’t last very long, it
seems to have left a lasting impact on the growth of the contemporary Punjabi
poetry. Surjit Pattar and Dr Jagtar are among those who came riding the crest
of militancy, but have, over the years, softened a great deal, and now
integrate their lyrical aestheticism with social criticism truly well. In one
of his verses, written during the heydays of militancy, Surjit Pattar agonizes
over the tragedy, saying, “This Punjab spanning two rivers and a half/Perhaps
belongs to a political leader/I’m not a leader/My Punjab was done to death/A
long time ago.” A gentle, persuasive irony runs through the whole gamut of his
poetry, though sometimes, he does allow the mellifluousness of his Sufi-like
voice dominate, especially in his ghazals, through which he has helped redefine
and expand the frontiers of Punjabi poetry in the recent times. Among others,
some of the younger poets who have left an indelible impact on the contemporary
scene are Mohanjit, Jaswant Deed, Swrajbir, Joga Singh, Sati Kumar and
Dev.
Women
Poets
Another feature of modern Punjabi poetry is
the presence of an overwhelmingly large number of women poets, who have
impressed their readers not only by virtue of their prolific output but also
the quality of their contributions. Manjit Tiwana, Pal Kaur, Surjit Kalsi,
Nirupama Dutt, Gagan Gill, Amar Jyoti and Vineeta are some of the younger women
poets who, through their sustained interrogation of patriarchy, have charted
new paths in the Punjabi poetic tradition. Not only are they more liberal and
less inhibited in their portrayal of man-woman relationship, but also more
aggressively innovative in fashioning out the contours of an entirely new
‘female aesthetics.’ Unlike their predecessors, who thought woman was incomplete
without man; these poets emphasized the emotional and intellectual autonomy of
woman, thus bringing significant questions of gender ‘identity’ and
‘difference’ to the fore. One of the collections of Amar Jyoti is significantly
titled Mainun Sita Naa Kaho (Don’t you call me Sita!). Confronted with
the maniacal frenzy of terrorism, Manjit Tiwana is forced to ask: “What times
are these/Sitting on its threshold/We ask the whereabouts of our
home.”
The
new short story writers
It is an established historical fact that
short story, in its archival, primeval form, is essentially Indian in its
origin and character, and that its beginnings can safely be traced back to its
mythological/archetypal sources such as The Mahabharata, Pauranik Tales, Panchtantra,
Katha Sarit Sagar and Jatak Tales et al. It is also a fact that, owing to a
large number of factors, the short story slowly lost out its pre-eminent
position in our literary culture and didn’t regain it up until the end of the
19th or the beginning of the 20th century. When it finally did re-surface in
several Indian languages, including Punjabi, it carried a definitive
ideological and aesthetic imprint of the realistic form that Balzac, Flaubert,
Maupassant, Chekhov and other European masters had helped to develop.
In the Punjabi language, however, Charan
Singh Shaheed, Joshua Fazal Deen, Heera Singh Dard and Nanak Singh were among
the early practitioners of the short story. Some of the factors that helped in
popularizing this form in its early days were the proliferation of printing
presses across Punjab, the mushrooming of literary magazines, journals and
newspapers, and the spread of literary education. In its initial stages, at
least, the Punjabi short story was subversively used as a tool for propagating
Sikh ideology and thought, as most of the story-tellers also happened to be
strong votaries of the Singh Sabha Movement, too.
With the emergence of Gurbaksh Singh
Preetlari, Sant Singh Sekhon, Kulwant Singh Virk, Kartar Singh Duggal and Sujan
Singh, the Punjabi short story anchored itself firmly into the progressive,
Marxist ideology. This is also the time when attempxs were made to harmonise
the conflicting claims of ideology and aesthetics. More than others, it was
Kulwant Singh Virk who understood and responded rather well to the multiple
challenges that the story, as a modern form, often poses. Along with his
irresistible penchant for the dramatic mode, his stories reveal a remarkable
sense of control over his material and expression. Virk knew the art of
counterbalancing a rare economy of style with an equally forceful and profound
understanding of human psychology.
In a manner of speaking, most of his
successors, especially Mohan Bhandari, Gurbachan Bhullar, Prem Parkash and
Gulzar Sandhu et al owe their broad sense of ‘new humanism’ and ‘catholicism’
to Virk, as much as they owe their understanding of the art and craft of
story-writing to him. This tradition is being ably supported and enriched
through the efforts of some of the promising story tellers on the scene today,
among whom we could easily count people like Chandan Negi, Jasbir Bhullar, Prem
Gorky, Waryam Sandhu, Swaran Chandan, Harjit Atwal and Veena Verma. It would
not be preposterous to claim that the contemporary Punjabi short story, being
an extremely vibrant and innovative form, has a fairly bright future, and even
the potential to compete with the best anywhere in the world.
Punjabi
Playwriting
Unlike the short story, drama as a form in
Punjabi has not had a very eventful or a consistent track record of growth and
evolution, as it has been somewhat sporadic and fitful. Interestingly, the
beginnings of the Punjabi drama/theatre are often traced back to the fortuitous
efforts of Norah Richards, the Irish wife of a Unitarian minister preaching in
Punjab. An amateur actor, she had also been associated with the Irish National
Theatre Dublin once. Around 1913-14, Norah started drama competitions among her
students of Dyal Singh College, Lahore, where she was teaching then. It was in
one of these competitions that Ishwar Nanda, then a student and now widely
recognized as one of the pioneers of Punjabi drama, discovered his talent for
playwriting. His one-act play Suhag (1913) was adjudged the best and
that marked the beginning of the indigenous theatre movement in Punjabi. Ishwar
Nanda went on to write over twenty one-act plays, all of which show a definite
influence of Ibsen, fired as he was by an unsparing zeal for social reform and
change.
Among others, this tradition of playwriting
found able and worthy legatees in Sant Singh Sekhon, Gurdial Singh Phul and
Harcharan Singh, who not only strengthened but also nurtured the dramatic
tradition founded by Ishwar Nanda. From time to time, Kartar Singh Duggal,
Surjit Sethi, Harsharan Singh and Balwant Gargi contributed very significantly
towards the incremental growth of this tradition. Of course, Gursharan Singh
stands apart by virtue of his formidable contribution to the popularity and
growth of street theatre in the far off villages of Punjab. Over a period of
time, Punjabi drama has not only acquired a distinctive identity of its own,
but also managed to get overwhelming support from the public as well as the
much needed official recognition. That for two successive years, Sahitya
Akademi has chosen to confer its prestigious literary award upon two eminent
playwrights in Punjabi, Charan Das Sidhu and Ajmer Aulakh, is an ample proof of
the kind of popularity Punjabi drama is beginning to enjoy now.
Though Atamjit, who invariably writes and
directs his own plays, has not received similar official recognition so far, in
terms of talent and genius, or for that matter, popularity, he is no less than
any of his contemporaries. Atamjit has, in fact, crossed the narrow,
geographical barriers of Punjab and staged his plays in Canada as well as U.S.
Another person, who is responsible for giving international exposure to Punjabi
theatre, is Neelam Man Singh Chaudhury, though she is primarily a director, not
a playwright. Fusing together elements of Punjabi folk and classical forms such
as the dhadhi (a form of recital), kavishar (ad lib performance)
and gatha (martial arts), she has, under the banner of her production
house, The Company, staged plays in France, England, Germany, Japan, U.S. and
elsewhere.
The
Survey so far
One could, if one wishes, go into the
growth of Punjabi prose and criticism, too, but as there are constraints of
space, I have chosen to leave it out of the scope of the present essay, at
least. In the same way, I have not been able to create ‘separate’ space for the
literature of the Punjabi Diaspora. Despite that, my conscious effort in this
essay has been to offer as comprehensive a view of Punjabi literature and/or
history as I possibly could. However, I’m not too sure how far I’ve succeeded
in doing what I had set out to do. In the ultimate analysis, all surveys only
succeed in offering a bird’s eye view of the subject, and howsoever hard one
may try, often remain partial, even prejudiced. So I won’t be audacious enough
to claim that I have managed to sum up all the major trends, movements and
developments that swepx through the Punjabi literature and/or literary forms in
course of its long march over a thousand years or so, but I’ve certainly tried
to map out some of these. For whatever else I couldn’t somehow achieve, I find
it convenient to offer an apology.
Professor
Rana Nayar is a translator of poetry and short fiction from Punjabi to English.
He has more than forty volumes of poetry and translation works to his
credit. He has been a pioneer in bringing into Punjabi translation a great
number of classics from Punjabi literature. Among the prominent Punjabi authors
he has translated are included such literary giants as Gurdial Singh, Raghubir
Dhand, Mohan Bhandari and Beeba Balwant.
Source:
http://www.cultivasian.org/writers-block/item/82-rana-nayar-11.html
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