He gave Punjabi literature its first Dalit hero

Vishav Bharti

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 16

“Undoubtedly, these characters will live in our collective memory…” thus spoke a literary critic of Gurdial Singh’s works a long time ago. Today, when he is no more, his friends and foes alike recall his contribution: Punjabi literature before and after Jagseer of “Marhi Da Deeva” (The Last Flicker). 

Edit: He gave voice to the marginalised

Jaitu-based Punjabi writer Gurdial Singh passed away at a hospital in Bathinda after a brief illness. He was 83. Working as a carpenter in his early life, hawking door to door, Gurdial Singh’s writing career spanned more than six decades, from his first short story “Bhaganwale” in 1952, published by Prof Mohan Singh in his literary journal “Punj Darya”, to the first volume of his novel “Aahan (Locust Swarm)” in 2009.

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He won 17 awards, including the Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel “Adh Chanani Raat”, Jnanpith Award, Sahitya Akademi Fellowship and Padma Shri. Two national award-winning films were made on his novels “Marhi Da Diva” in 1989 and “Annhe Ghorey Da Daan” in 2011. The latter was the first Punjabi film to make it to the Venice International Film Festival, the world’s oldest.

When Gurdial Singh died on Tuesday, he was working on the second part of the 700-page novel “Aahan”, which he had, during a chance meeting in Chandigarh, described as an epic set during the Praja Mandal Movement. However, critics were not impressed. They called “Aahan” a literary disaster.

But there was much more to define his literary career. Playwright Ajmer Aulakh recalls how Gurdial Singh’s “Marhi Da Diva”, published in 1966, was a departure from the works of his predecessors, such as Nanak Singh and Jaswant Singh Kanwal, as it had a Dalit hero. The novel inspired a generation of young Punjabi writers to look for characters from rural life.

“He gave us our first Dalit hero,” says a Chandigarh-based critic. “After Jagseer, the protagonist of “Marhi Da Deeva”, a new discourse in Punjabi Dalit literature starts. He paved the way for Dalit writing,” she points out. “His life will be seen as a writer who, through his immortal characters, challenged the haves and highlighted the problems of have-nots,” she adds.

Perhaps, he was the only working class experiential writer who created outstanding works without jumping on to the “Dalit” bandwagon. “He himself was from the lowest rung of society and worked as a daily-wage carpenter. Unlike many modern day Dalit fashionistas, he was not a loudmouth,” recalls London-based Punjabi writer Amarjit Chandan.