Pillar of Punjabi culture
By Harnam Singh Shan

DR MOHAN SINGH (1899-1984) was one of the most learned scholars and litterateurs of Punjab. He was a literary giant gifted with creative vision and critical insight. His vast knowledge of Vedanta, Yoga Shastra, Buddhism. Islamic Sufism, Hindu Bhakti, Sikh religion, and folk-tradition is evident from his published works. His mastery of English, Persian, Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi; working knowledge of Sanskrit, Apabhramsha and Arabic; and an amazing vocabulary stood him in good stead in earning him name and fame as an eminent intellectual of classical tradition.

Mohan Singh was a prolific writer who wrote copiously in English, Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi with equal ease. As far as Punjabi, his mother tongue, was concerned, he contributed extensively to almost every genre of its literary activity and production. His contribution to the preservation, evaluation and dissemination of its literary heritage, in particular, had been monumental. The credit of being its first historian goes to him. Prof. Jules Bloch of Paris was therefore right in adjudging his second doctoral work, A History of Punjabi Literature (1933), as a "work of such a novelty, revealing such an amount of personal labour, bringing out such a huge mass of facts, hitherto unknown or at least unpublished". His critical editions of works of Waris Shah, Shah Hussain and Buleh Shah, together with his anthologies of the stray verses of Muslim Sufis and Hindu Bhagtas (Sufian da kalam and Punjabi Bhagti Kavya) garnered from unprobed manuscripts and rare publications, speak volumes for his zeal and incessant hard work.

Mohan Singh contributed to enrichment of the creative literature of Punjab. He, in fact, started his literary career as a writer of poems, essays and stories in Urdu, keeping which in view, Khuda Bakhsh of Patna, while analysis his first doctoral work — Modern Urdu Poetry: Characteristics and Tendencies — had remarked: "He is not only a prose-writer of distinction but also a poet of rare excellence". By virtue of his mastery of the poetic muse, Mohan Singh produced four collections of poems in Urdu, and six anthologies in Punjabi. These (Dhup Chhan, Nil Dhara, etc) consisted of lyrics, short poems, free verses and quatrains — 700 of which were published under the title Masti (Ecstasy).

The learned doctor also tried his hand at almost all other spheres of creative writing. He introduced the literary form of one-act-play in Punjabi through the publication in 1927 of Pankhrian, a collection of four plays. He produced two collections of his short stories, Devinder Batisi and Rang Tamashe, which are marked by wit, humour and sarcasm, evinced earlier in Sada Gulab, a collection of his short stories in Hindi and Chutkiyan, a collection of his essays in Urdu. Some of his essays in Punjabi, covering a very wide field of knowledge and experience, are preserved in Jitendar Sahitya Sarovar. His Panjabi Bhakha ate Chhandabandi indicates his acumen in the field of language and prosody.

Mohan Singh was often generous in appreciating the genuine scholarly pursuits of his young contemporaries in his favourite field study and research. Though we both hailed from the same region of West Punjab, called Pothodhar, I came to know him only in 1948 when I joined Panjab University as an Editor of its Publication Bureau in Shimla. He was at that time Head of its Punjabi Department, resettled then in a hostel of Khalsa College, Amritsar. When I happened to be there in 1952 on deputation, I called on him with my application for registration as a Ph.D candidate on my project regarding the life and work of Syed Hasham Shah with a critical edition of his masterpiece, Qissa Sassi Punnun. In spite of my repeated requests he insisted upon my taking up, instead, an in-depth study of the romance of Sohni Mehinwal and passed on his proposal to the university.

On the eve of his retirement from the university service (1928-59) in 1959, I was transferred to Amritsar and asked to take over the headship of the department from him. He received me with a pat on my back, appreciated my literary and research pursuits.

I brought the department soon after to the university campus at Chandigarh, raised it to the status and standard of a full-fledged Post-Graduate Department of Punjabi Studies and left for the UK in 1962 for advanced studies. Mohan Singh had also shifted to Chandigarh by the time and settled in Sector 16. On my return from London in 1965, I presented my Ph.D thesis to him for his perusal.

Mohan Singh was a large-hearted man and a well-known scholar. But that too was not all. He was also a mystic, a yogi and philosopher who adopted ‘Diwana’ as his nom de plume and described himself as Aashiq-o, falsfafi-o Shaair hai, aur Diwana kya hai kya Kahiye?

During the last phase of his life, he came under the influence of a man he happened to meet at Dehra Dun. He converted into a Gursikh Yogi began to share his spiritual experience and occupied himself in disseminating the message of Gurbani among the people around him. Several foreigners also visited him for learning Yoga philosophy and Gurmat Gyan, believing in the words of philosopher A.J. Bahm, that his "acquaintances with mankind’s cultural riches enables him not only to grasp the whole in a magnificent vision but also to reveal how it is studded with gemlike details".

Mohan Singh was born on March 17, 1899, in Devi village of Rawalpindi district, now in Pakistan. He breathed his last on May 25, 1984, at Chandigarh. As told by A.C. Julka, one his devoted disciples, "March 17, 1984, was his 85th birthday. He was as cheerful and alert as ever. In the evening, he declared his intentions of settling the karmik accounts forever. He was taken ill the same night and provided the excuse for casting away his mortal frame. From his hospital bed, he dictated a letter for May, his disciple in Germany, hinting clearly that his final merger would take place on May 25, 1984. The Yogi went back to his abode on the chosen day, leaving a big void behind.