That voice from 60s, now a shade diffident
Surinder Gill appeared like a meteor on the horizon of Punjabi poetry in the sixties with the publication of his “Shagan” and “Safar te suraj”.Those were the heady days when Shiv Kumar Batalvi had exploded like a super star of neo-romantic poetry in Punjabi; the progressive movement still retained its momentum and appeal and two magistrates — Jasbir Singh Ahluwalia and Pritam Singh — were trying to establish the credentials of “prayogsheel kavita”.

Tibet : what the doctor ordered
by Parshotam Mehra

Tibet, India and China: Critical Choices, Uncertain Future by Rajesh Kadian. Vision Books, New Delhi. Pages 232. Rs 325.

ANY meaningful discussion of the Tibetan question either in the present or as it has evolved over the past many centuries, pre-supposes a good understanding of the interaction with the country’s two large, populous and powerful neighbours to the north-east and the south.

With China, Tibet’s ties go back to the mid-seventh century when a Tibetan ruler married a Han princess of the reigning Tang dynasty. Chinese influence came in its wake, in the manner of dress and modes of living.

Hundreds of years later, in the 13th and 14th centuries, the Mongols, whose vast empire embraced China as well as Tibet, established close links with Tibet’s lamas after accepting their faith. It was a guru-chela relationship: the lay prince buttressing the authority of the high priest who, in turn, extended him spiritual support.

Under the Qing, or the more familier Manchus (1644-1912), the relationship evolved further. But, in essence, the Dalai Lamas treated it as a purely personal, almost familial one with the Manchu emperor, not the Han people.

Understandably this was to become a major bone of contention in the wake of the October, 1911, revolution and the birth of Sun Yat-sen’s republic and later (1949), Mao’s People’s Republic of China.

In India’s case, the story goes farther back for the relationship rests largely on close Buddhist linkages, Tibetan lamaism being an offshoot of the Mahayana school of Buddhism and the Dalai Lama, a Bodhisattva. Moreover, the Tibetan script was based on Devnagri, itself leaning heavily on Sanskrit.

In the event, traffic in learned pandits who travelled to Tibet with loads of religious texts made India, for the average Tibetan, a sacred land, a land of pilgrimage. In sum, the ties between India and Tibet were spiritual bonds, with a trickle of overland trade thrown in as it were.

There was an apparent change of stance under John Company and its successors but, as the Younghusband expedition of 1903-04 clearly demonstrated, Whitehall was not interested in making Tibet into an imperial protectorate. The only assurance it sought was that neither Russia nor China transformed the land of the lamas into a base for mounting hostile operations across the Himalayas.

Not to go farther back than the opening decades of this century, on the morrow of the overthrow of Manchu rule on the mainland (1912), the Dalai Lama’s government repudiated all vestiges of Chinese presence that had survived. It expelled the Amban and bedraggled Chinese soldiers who had sustained his unwelcome presence. And with tacit support from the Raj he established a measure of viable independence.

Nationalist China’s later attempts to subvert and suborn the Lhasa regime came largely unstuck and for two good reasons. To start with, the 13th Dalai Lama (who died in 1933) played his cards with singular political acumen. With his own unruly lamas under close surveillance, he had kept the Chinese at bay and at the same time refused to be a handmaiden of the British.

His remarkable success was due if partly to the weakness of the Guomindang regime, much too occupied with fighting its adversaries at home and abroad, to be able to project any worthwhile authority beyond its borders.

The Soviets in Russia had much too much on their plate to revive the Czarist dream of a shadowy overloardship. While nothing suited the Raj better than a relatively weak, quiet, trouble-free Tibetan buffer, to ensure peace on their northern border.

Paradoxical as it may sound, all that was needed to keep peace along British India’s nearly 2,000-mile long and difficult land frontier, was a paltry hundred odd troops at Gyantse and a score or less in Yatung, across the border in Sikkim. Pax Brittanica could not have been sustained at a cheaper cost!

Sadly for Tibet, by the late 1940s, things changed dramatically and for the worse. The Raj wound up with the transfer of power in 1947; barely two years later, Mao’s PRC burst into the international arena. All this while the youthful 14th Dalai Lama’s Tibet was trying vainly to find its feet.

In the fifty odd years since, all the three sides in the uneasy Tibet-India-China triangle continued to manoeuvre into new-old positions and postures.

Briefly, the Raj’s political legatees, Nehru’s India and its successor regimes, have broadly professed, even though failing miserably to sustain in practice, the proposition that under the British and earlier, Tibet and its Dalai Lama enjoyed a measure of robust autonomy, of near if not complete independence.

The mainland’s theoretical claims of untrammelled control and authority not withstanding, Lhasa had paid little heed; it rarely obeyed and was, more often than not, insolently defiant. Beijing’s writ did not run while Tibet and its Dalai Lama more or less managed their own affairs.

And insofar as they posed no threat to anybody, the lamas had insulated their country from all contact with the world outside and, for good or ill, remained a hermit kingdom.

This was anathema to the Chinese and the PRC’s major priority appeared to be to give weight and substance to all the power the Middle Kingdom had ever claimed, though rarely exercised. Hence the emphasis on the “liberation” of Tibet from the alleged imperialist stranglehold in which it was held both by its rulers and the world outside.

Lhasa was far from ready to withstand the verbal onslaught much less the well-prepared armed invasion that was to follow. A huge empty land, its small population was geared to a feudal way of life superimposed by the mumbo-jumbo of a top-heavy lamaist establishment. And had little to show by way of an army, much less its accoutrement. Its god-king, a spiritual-temporal ruler, had not even attained adulthood; its polity was badly riven by monastic infighting.

A grim domestic scenario was made grimmer by the fact that those who could help were not exactly willing. John Bull had walked out of the subcontinent and showed little enthusiasm. New Delhi led by a Prime Minister whose unearthly idealism foresaw a resurgent Asia under the India-China duumvirate was not quite clear as to what he could or should do. Nehru nurtured the fond hope that Beijing’s new masters would be reasonable and responsible.

In sum, the Dalai Lama who had fled his capital in the wake of the Chinese aggression would return to his seat of authority and things more or less slide back into their old grooves.

As ill-luck would have it, it did not work that way. The 17-point agreement (1951) between the “local government of Tibet” and the PRC was breached both in letter and in spirit. No wonder the Tibetan government and the Dalai Lama soon found themselves at a loose end; restrained, restricted, suffocated. Dissent spread against Tibet’s new masters and their overwhelming presence.

Soon there was a popular upsurge culminating in the March, 1959, rebellion in Lhasa. The Dalai Lama and thousands of his people fled their land for the safety and security of a life beyond the borders.

In the decades that followed, the Tibetan diaspora has spread into far off lands and climes, even though the preponderant mass of the refugee community settled down in India. Hoping, eventually, to return to their own land, and among their own people. Sadly, as the years rolled by, that hope seemed to fade farther and farther.

The book under review recounts the above tale through all its ups and downs, almost to the present day. There is a whole chapter on “Free Tibet” recapturing the stewardship of the 13th Dalai Lama and the functioning of the polity with little or no interference from without. The “Dragon Resurgent” is however soon up and sweeps all before it: free Tibet is a hopeless shambles and the luckless Dalai Lama, a refugee in a foreign land trying vainly to save all that he can from the ruins. With Beijing holding nearly all the trumps, his country’s “future”, as indeed his own, remains largely “uncertain”.

This thin volume has all the ingredients that made for “success”. Its five chapters are well-mapped and full of small bits of information; there are illustrations of old and new “rush hour” in Tibetan, and Chinese Lhasa and some useful sketches with one on Tibetan refuge centres in India. The appendices include the text of the Strasbourg proposals (1988) and there is a short bibliographical note.

The above notwithstanding, the book fails to deliver. Bearing all the imprints of hurried composition, it is a little too flashy, dramatising for effect both men and events. Essentially, it strikes one as a made-easy, instant history lacking both in depth and dimension.

The author, an Indian born medical specialist in the USA, has since 1990 written what the blurb claims to be “critically acclaimed and engagingly readable books” on the Indian army, its military involvement in Sri Lanka (1987-90) and the ongoing tangle in Kashmir. More strength to his elbow as one waits for another quickie!

More enthusiasm, less erudition
by Surjit Hans

The Sikhs by Patwant Singh. HarperCollins, New Delhi. Pages 312. Rs 490.

PATWANT Singh is not a professionally trained historian. He is a dilettante, “a person who takes up an art, activity, or subject merely for amusement, especially in a desultory or superficial way”.

He depends on the translations of the Adi Granth. Presumably, he cannot look up the original. On page 18 he makes Guru Nanak proclaim “there is no Hindu, there is no Mussalman” on the basis of a verse on page 1136 in the Granth. The verse is “na ham hindu na ham musalman”. First, Patwant Singh has mistranslated the verse. Second, it is by Guru Arjan, the fifth Guru, not by Guru Nanak.

Quite obviously the author has relied on undependable outside help. The saying, “there is no Hindu or Musalman” is apocryphal. The popular idea is that it was revealed to Guru Nanak during his prolonged dip in the Vein near Sultanpur Lodi.

One must admire the author’s courage, springing from innocence. No Sikh writing on the Sikhs is mentioned. Senapat Sukha Singh, Koer Singh, Santokh Singh, Ratan Singh Bhangu, Giani Gian Singh, the author has no knowledge of any of them.

In his naivete, Patwant Singh has invented a new historical method. He uses the hymns of Guru Nanak (in translation) as if they were expressive of his personal experience. Guru Nanak says exactly the opposite. The hymns are “khasm ki bani”, the word of God.

The author has two fixations. First, the Brahminical domination of the Indian polity. Page 11 details the senior positions occupied by the Brahmins in India today. Second, Sikh estrangement in recent times. Strangely, Patwant Singh does not quote Guru Nanak on the behaviour of the contemporary Brahmins. He is belatedly worried about the Brahminical domination in the Lahore Durbar on the eve of the First Anglo-Sikh War.

Modern scholarship is of the view that the idea of the birth of castes from the feet, thighs, hands and head of Primeval Man in the Rig Veda is a later interpolation. According to Santokh Singh, a Brahmin Sikh in the 19th century was honoured more than an ordinary Sikh. It could be that the idea of caste equality is a wretched gift of the abominable British rule.

The author makes mistakes not permitted by school boys. Guru Angad wrote only shloks, no shabds (hymns) (p 29). The earlier name of Guru Ram Das was Jetha, not Jeva. Let us be charitable to think that it is a printer’s devil (p 31). Mian Mir did not visit Lahore in the lifetime of Guru Arjan. Nor did Banda Bahadur abolish zamindari. He repeats the popular mystification that the younger sons of Guru Gobind Singh were bricked alive.

In this century a peculiar approach to Sikh history was invented. It is in resonance with the socio-political situation of the Sikhs. Erstwhile glory, current ordinariness. An aggrieved view of Sikh history maintains in tandem that the Sikh victories were the result of their valour and setbacks were due to betrayals. Hence the Sikh estrangement, “violence and venality” of the last chapter.

It would be useful occasionally to reverse the proposition. The Sikh defeats were the result of their betraying the ideals of Sikhism and victories were a consequence of the weaknesses of the enemy. It is sheer immaturity to blame the enemy for one’s discomfiture. Both the victors and the vanquished are jointly but unequally responsible for the outcome. The battles are oftener lost them won. It is time the political leadership in Punjab and the country owned up their part of responsibility for the tragedy of Operation Bluestar and the 1984 massacre.

According to a Greek proverb “pathe mathe” suffering not leading to wisdom is suffering lost. The problem is how to intellectually counter the politics of murder and genocide so that it can be organisationally stopped at the ground level. For the past hundred years the genie of mass politics has not been bottled. It would be foolish to think that this is the end; to assume that it is only the beginning would be wiser.

Leaders, groups and parties frown on dissent. To them it is a nuisance. But society as such cannot afford to do without dissent. At the moment of crisis ideas, initiatives and strategies can be had only in dissent. It is the received wisdom which has invited disaster. The Soviet Union collapsed because there was no altenative to official orthodoxy, and dissent had long been dead. The Sikh leadership need to pay attention to the problem. This is precisely the dilemma of Akali politics.

One redeeming feature of the book is that Patwant Singh has spoken up for Harjot Singh Oberoi, Pashaura Singh and (the late) Pyar Singh. One can “conspire” against an individual; communities cannot be conspired against. Only the leaders can do them in.

Harper Collins can certainly do with better editorial advice.

Factors behind famines of Punjab
by D. R. Chaudhry

Starvation and Colonialism: A Study of Famines in the Nineteenth Century British Punjab 1858-1901 by Navtej Singh. National Book Organisation, New Delhi. Pages XIII+254. Rs 350.

Starvation during famines has been traditionally associated with non-availability of food. Drought leads to a decline in food production that makes malnourishment of many and starvation by some inevitable. This belief was challenged and successfully demolished by Amartya Sen in his seminal work “ Poverty and famines”. Sen established beyond doubt that starvation is a function of entitlement to food and not food availability as such. Some of the worst famines in the world occurred when there was no significant decline in food supply. What matters is the ability of the people to command food through legal means. It is common man’s access to food that determines his survival. And this access is determined by socio-political arrangements in society at a particular juncture.

The Bengal famine of 1943 resulted in about three million deaths. There was no steep decline in food supply in 1943. The food supply during this harrowing year was about 5 per cent lower than the average of the preceding five years. It was, in fact, 13 per cent higher than in 1941 and there was no famine and no stravation death in 1941. The famished and the destitute who had trudged to Calcutta from the rural hinterland in search of food dropped dead on the pavements in front of shops full of food stocks.

Similar is the conclusion of Prof Sen about the famine in three other countries — Ethiopia, Sahel and Bangladesh. His path-breaking study has led to a paradigm shift in understanding the relationship between famine and starvation.

Navtej Singh’s study on famines in colonical Punjab is largely within Prof Sen’s framework. After the British established their control over Punjab in 1849, the province saw a series of devastating famines. Natural calamity in the form of failure of monsoon alone did not explain the people’s sufferings. It was the policies of the colonial administration which caused havoc. British rule projected Punjab as “the food basket” and “the most prosperous and economically well-off ptovince of India”. Yet Punjab experienced a series of calamitous famines.

Navtej Singh’s study covers the period from 1858 when the East India Company handed over the reins of power to the Crown to the year 1901 when the Land Alienation Act was passed which introduced radical changes in the agrarian structure of the state. During this period of a little over four decades Punjab had as many as seven severe famines.

The study under review reveals tellingly that with every famine the areas under distress increased. The entire Punjab came under famine fury by the end of the 19th century. The consolidation of British rule in Punjab was in direct proportion to the spreading of the ravages of famines. The phenomenon of famine was linked more intimately with the nature of the colonial administration than with the elements of nature as such.

Certain policies of the colonial administration brought about far-reaching changes in the agrarian strucutre which changed the very rhythm of rural life, putting peasantry to a great disadvantage. The introduction of the system of cash payment for land revenue in place of the traditional system of payment in kind was the most important innovation. The earlier system of payment in kind compensated a farmer in case of fluctuation in the price of his produce. But the new system provided him no such leverage.

For instance, wheat prices declined by half in 1851 and 1852 as compared to the average price of five years before the annexation of Punjab by the British, there was a loud protest by the peasantry all over the state on the question of over-assessment of land revenue but this failed to move the rulers. All kinds of coercive measures were adopted to collect land revenue. Rather, there was a steady increase in the land revenue demand over the years.

The increasing land revenue coupled with fixed dates of payment led to the impoverishment of the peasantry, compelling many to approach the village moneylender for cash. This encouraged usury for which the British Punjab was notorious. At the time of harvesting moneylenders lifted the produce of the farmers at cheaper rates to realise their loans.

This put the peasantry to a dual disadvantage. Even a slight damage to the crops in the event of less than plentiful rainfall landed a cultivator in great difficulty. He could neither pay the land revenue or the instalment of debt to the moneylender even after disposing of all his produce. This left him with no alternative but to starve though there was plenty of foodgrain in the market.

Promotion of commercial crops by the colonial administration brought little benefit to most of the cultivators. The money lender mopped off much of the benefit. Barring a small number of big land-owners, the peasantry came under the clutches of usurers who started buying the land of those who were not in a position to pay off their debts. The land became a commodity within the easy reach of usurious vultures. This led to growing alienation of land from the cultivators.

This traumatic development in the agrarian world of Punjab led to the emergence of the Unionist Party as the champion of the landed class and the passage of the Land Alienation Act in 1901 which barred non-farmers from owning land. This brought much needed relief to the debt-ridden cultivators.

Subsequent enactments further loosened the grip of money-lenders over the cultivators. In the process the Congress Party got identified with the usurious Mahajans and its attempt to paint the Unionist Party as a collaborator of the colonial rulers cut no ice with the peasantry, which remained under its complete sway cutting across castes and communities till the early forties.

The policy of the colonial government to export raw material to England and flood the Indian market with machine-made goods from Britain played havoc with traditional industry and craft. A large number of artisans lost their livelihood swelling the ranks of paupers who suffered the most during famines. This further contributed to the spectre of starvation during famines.

As correctly pointed out by the author, the response of the British administration to the famine was very much conditioned by the classical theory of thinkers like Adam Smith, Malthus and Edmund Burke. The classical approach stressed the development of nations by strong and self-reliant individuals and frowned upon any measure to provide relief to the poor and the destitute. The emphasis was on the free play of market forces and state intervention was supposed to disturb the equilibrium.

The fear of political unrest in society did not permit the colonial rulers to depend entirely on the theory of laissez faire and relief measures had to be taken to provide succour to the distressed during famines. But these measures were always half-hearted and meagre. Taqavi loans given to cultivators during famines were always paltry. But for the relief organised by some social organisations like the Arya Samaj, Singh Sabha and some Christian bodies, devastation during famines would have been more severe.

Colonel R. Smith, deputed to enquire into causes, hit the nail on the head when he defined these famines in his report as “famines of work than of food. When work can be had and paid for, food was always forthcoming”. Thus there was no shortage of food even during the worst famines but many had no access to it.

As a consequence, the weakest in the social set up suffered the most — the menials, artisans, weavers and labourers. The next to suffer were agriculturists who lost both their crops and the cattle. The traders, money-lenders, hoarders and black marketers were the beneficiaries of human misery.

If we have a responsive government, vigilant media, developed means of transport and communications and a somewhat vocal public opinion on important issues, starvation deaths can be ruled out in any part of the country, howsoever severe may be the intensity of famines. All this was lacking in the colonial Punjab and this explans the havoc caused by famines.

Certain policies followed by the colonial administration put food beyond the reach of a section of the population in time of scarcity. It is the socio-political arrangements fashioned by the colonial rulers, which disturbed the relationship between food and man to the disadvantage of the poor, and the deprived which made famines really devasting. This is the moral of the story of famines in colonial Punjab told by Navtej Singh in a simple, matter-of-fact style. No flourishes, no rhetoric.

Mutinies and why neighbours stroke them
by Surinder S. Jodhka

Kin State Intervention in Ethnic Conflict: Lesson from South Asia by Rajat Ganguly, Sage Publications, New Delhi, pages 266. Rs 350.

IT was in the 18th and 19th centuries that the development of capitalism and the changing political economy of Europe transformed its different cultural regions into the modern nation states. In most cases, the populations of these nation states in the modern West had homogeneous cultural composition, at least during the early phase of their formation. As Anthony D. Smith, a well-known British scholar of nationalism, points out, the modern nation state of the West were not merely political formations but also had “ethnic origins”.

However, the history of nationalism in South Asia, and in many other parts of the world, has been quite different from that of Europe. Unlike Europe, the nation states in South Asia did not emerge merely out of the internal changes in their political economy. More than anything else, it was the experience of colonial domination and that of the struggle for freedom against colonial rule that produced nationalist consciousness in most of the Third World.

However, despite the common experience of struggle against alien rule and colonial exploitation, the “new states” lacked strong cultural/ethnic roots. National boundaries were drawn arbitrarily, depending on the nature of political struggles or the convenience of colonial rulers.

The historically evolved ethnic identities were not given the territorial demarcation by the colonial rulers. As a result, many ethnic communities or nationalities got divided among different nation states. It is this divergence between the boundaries of “ethnic nationalities” and that of the nation states which has provided the scope for what Rajat Ganguly, the author of the book being reviewed, describes as “kin state intervention” in the ethnic conflicts in neighbouring countries in South Asia.

The “ethnic kin states”, as Ganguly describes, “are typically those states which border or are close to regions of ethnic conflict and which contain co-nationals of the secessionists with whom the secessionists share and maintain strong ethno-cultural and ethno-religious bonds”. Further, the co-nationals qualify to be an ethnic kin only when they are “a homeland society” and not a diaspora community of recent migrants.

He works with a primordialist notion of ethnic groups where they are distinguished on the basis of some inherent natural or primordial criterion and are not seen as “mobilised” or “constructed” communities. Ethnic groups in such a primordialist perspective are often seen as sharing certain common objective cultural attributes such as language, religion, customs and traditions. Ethnic identity of these groups is seen as being based on a self-awareness of such distinctiveness and its recognition by others.

Ganguly takes up five case studies from South Asia. These are: the role of Pakistan in the Kashmiri secessionist movement; role of India in the secession of Bangladesh; the role of Afghanistan and Iran in the Baluch attempt to secede from Pakistan; the role of Afghanistan in the Pakhtunistan movement in Pakistan; and the role of India in the Tamil secessionist movement in Sri Lanka. In each of these cases, he analyses the nature of intervention, motivating factors behind the intervention by the kin state and the consequences of such intervention for the secessionist movement.

The nature of intervention may vary from simple encouragement and sympathy to getting directly involved and providing military support to the secessionist movements. Further, the policy of intervention does not remain the same over the years. In some cases, like in the case of the Indian involvement in Sri Lanka, the policy could undergo dramatic changes.

The Indian involvement in the Tamil question in Sri Lanka underwent a complete change from being on the side of the secessionist movement of the Sri Lankan Tamils to helping the Sri Lankan government in suppressing the movement. Similarly, changes in the regimes in Afghanistan and Iran had direct bearings on the policy of these states towards the autonomy movements of Baluchs and Pakhtuns in Pakistan.

The motivating factors could also range from a genuine humanitarian concern for the secessionist movement of an oppressed minority to a purely instrumental interest in creating problems for the neighbouring state and weakening its ideological base. Ganguly cites the example of the then Eastern Pakistan where India got involved because of genuine humanitarian reason following a brutal military crackdown by the Pakistani army consisting of forces mostly from Western Pakistan when over 10 million Bengalis fled their homes and crossed the border in West Bengal.

Similarly, the Sri Lankan policy of racial discrimination against the members of the Tamil minority community generated internal pressure from the Indian Tamil population to intervene on humanitarian grounds to save their ethnic kin in Sri Lanka.

On the other end, Ganguly argues that Pakistani interest in Kashmir seems to stem from instrumental interest rather than a genuine concern for the Kashmiri secessionists, undertaken to discredit and embarrass India. Pakistan’s policy seems to be intended more to show the hollowness of India’s secular ideological credentials and perhaps to invite Indian military reprisals against the Kashmiris which could then be used for the purpose of propaganda against India rather than to win Kashmir for Pakistan.

Consequences of the kin state intervention for the secessionist movements also vary. While in some cases, such as in the then East Pakistan, the intervention could be helpful in achieving its objectives, in most cases the kin state intervention worked against the autonomy movements. Such interventions have tended to delegitimise the political mobilisation of the concerned ethnic groups. Involvement of the ethnic kin state tends to make the native state of the ethnic minority suspect its genuine political aspirations. The native state is more likely to use the various means available to it to weaken the movement.

While in the case of Kashmiris and Tamils, their native countries used direct force to suppress the movements, in the case of Baluchs the Pakistani state transformed the demographic composition of the region in such a manner that the Baluch population became a minority in their own province. Similarly, the Pakistani state could successfully co-opt the articulate middle class of the Pakhtuns, leaving the movement for a separate Pakhtunistan without a leadership.

There has so far not been much comparative work on South Asia. Rajat Ganguly’s book is surely a useful contribution to the field. One hopes that there would be more such works of comparative nature on the political sociology of South Asia.

That voice from 60s, now a shade diffident

Surinder Gill appeared like a meteor on the horizon of Punjabi poetry in the sixties with the publication of his “Shagan” and “Safar te suraj”. He would sing his poems like Shiv Kumar Batalvi and Surjit Patar and hence in “kavi darbars” he was much sought after.

Those were the heady days when Shiv Kumar Batalvi had exploded like a super star of neo-romantic poetry in Punjabi; the progressive movement still retained its momentum and appeal and two magistrates — Jasbir Singh Ahluwalia and Pritam Singh — were trying to establish the credentials of “prayogsheel kavita”.

Surinder Gill then suffered a severe attack of brain fever which crippled his memory. For 20-odd years till 1987 he could not write any poetry when his third collection of poems “Gunga dard” appeared to break the silent spell. Now after a decade or so the fourth collection of poems and “ghazals” has appeared.

As a young poet in the sixties he was counted among the most sensitive and sensuous poets of the times, Batalvi being the uncrowned prince among them. As Surinder Gill matured, he added a progressive vision to his creation. In fact most of the Punjabi writers subscribe to these ideals and they tend to impart a reformist and even a revolutionary edge to their writings.

In the present collection “Awaaz” (the call of conscience) published by Desh Punjab Parkashan, Jalandhar, the poet gives a clarion call to the people to wake up and respond to the challenges of life and times. He says, “Jaag jiwan de kavi, jaag hakk di hek la/ sacch te insaf da koi geet ga/jaag apne desh de/sutte kisana, kaamian te kalakaran nu jagaa/hakk da te sacch da koi geet ga. (Wake up, the poet of life, wake up! Sing a song of the rights of the people and of truth and justice. Wake up and arouse the sleeping peasants, workers and artists and sing a song of the rights and of truth.) In fact this is a call to the people to be politically conscious and act to bring about a change in the socio-economic system.

Poems like “Natak”, “Neki”, “Danda” and “Nahra” are on similar lines. They expose the system and inspire the people to organise a struggle against the forces of status quo and reaction. He says, “Andre ander dhukhde rehna/jeebha ton kujh na kahna/geet bane/os geet di huuk dilan vich utre/peerhan kutre.” (Give up smouldering silence. Let the painful cry of the song go deep into the hearts and wipe out the sorrows there.)

The poet believes that the alienated middle classes do not constitute the mass of the people in the country. In the theatre of life, the people have to identify the stage manager and director of the “play”. They must learn about his tricks and strategies and how he manipulates the scenes to keep his show going.

There are some poems in this collection that recreate the phase of terrorism in Punjab. Poems like “Lahu”, “Dokhi”, “Nawan saal” and so on bring back those terrible times. Here also the poet emphasises the need to identify the puppeteer who pulls the strings from behind the scene.

The death of writers like Vishwa Nath Tewari, Paash, Sumit, Jaimal Padda and others is mourned in the poem “Sutardhar”. This poem is an emotional reaction of an outraged soul. He says, “Last night a cracking sound came from the village fallows. Lips were sealed and the vision was cracked. The unidentified corpse was that of a flower.” The poet then takes heart and waits for a new dawn to break.

“Sacch da suraj”, “Dosti” and “Saal Mubarak” reflect his poetic optimism. He says, “Naven saal da suha suraj. Tere ghar de dar-dahileezan kare sunehre/naven saal da suha suraj/mere ghar de.../Naven saal da suchha suraj/sabhna de ghar, dardhileezan kare sunehre/sunnian chhattan heth na kaid rahan muskanan/khushboan te kade na laggan kojhe pehre.” (Let the crimson sun of the New Year shower its golden light on your, mine and everybody’s threshold. Smiles cannot be kept in captivity in desolate dungeons nor can the fragrances be imprisoned.)

The fire in the homes must be kept burning even at the cost of one’s own limbs. During a dark stormy night in chilly winter, the fire must crackle in the hearth.

Surinder Gill does not lose his optimism even during the most gloomy days.

In “Rah te suraj”, he reconstructs his childhood, when he had to walk miles to reach his school. On the way there was a thick growth of shrub which would sometimes cause slight cuts on the bare skin. He says, “Kade kade je mai thakk janda/tibbian te turno akk janda/mera suraj/mere modhe te hath dhar ke/Bolan vich moh mamta bhar ke/Jindgi di tikhi dhupp sahwen kharhna dasda/nikkian vaddian vangaran sang larhna dasda/toian vichon langhna, tibbe charhna dasda.” (If at times while walking through the dunes I got tired, the sun would descend on my side and fondly lead me across the heath. It would teach me to confront the harsh reality of life and to bravely face the big and small challenges that lay on the uneven, arduous path.)

And during those days, the poet says, tender shoots of maiden dreams appeared in the virgin soil of his mind. He chased those dreams through the sun and shower across continents but came back to the land where millions and millions of people live in dark and dank cave-like “homes” with black ceilings. Old and young denizens, with their angular faces and bleak sunken eyes, peep through narrow doors. Their sad and sullen appearances haunt the poet.

He believes that from such places one day a smouldering eye may grow into a radiant sun that will illuminate the vast expanse of the sprawling land. In this age when the one-eyed giant of electronic media is churning out image after image of glittering falsehood to coarsen people’s consciousness, can such a dream be realised?

Surinder Gill as a true progressive poet, has to stick to his guns. Maybe history takes yet another turn from Right to Left and again progressive ideals become the main concern of writers and intellectuals.

With this fond hope Gill has again wielded the pen. But the freshness of the sixties is no longer there. The dreams are a bit hazy. The vision has faded, the burning zeal has given way to cold reforms. The tide of revolutionary fervour has subsided.

But then, this has not happened to Gill alone. Many are writhing in the ravages of time.

The re-entry of the poet is welcome. It is yet to be seen how well he grapples with the new challenges of the epoch.