The grand old man of Punjabi letters

Jaspal Singh

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The life of Jaswant Singh Kanwal, the greatest living Punjabi novelist, who recently entered the 100th year of his life, has been an anomaly. He was born at Dhudike in Moga district but migrated to Malaya as a school dropout in the 1930s. He returned to India after a few years to set out his literary itinerary, which though was not pre-planned. His first novel Sacch Nu Phansi (Truth goes to the gallows) appeared in the beginning of the forties of the last century. After that there was no looking back. The 1950s and 1960s were the most fruitful decades in Kanwal’s literary career. This was the time when he was intimately associated with the Progressive Movement though his writing was never motivated by any doctrinaire ideology. Most of his novels have been romances in the manner of Punjabi kissas (love legends). Punjabi folk romances were his main inspiration since these were usually based on love, romance, revolt and sacrifice. Kanwal’s novels like Pali, Puranmashi and Civil Lines fell in this category of progressive romances. But he moved on to a more radical theme in Raat Baaki Hai (The night is still not over) when he took a left turn and tried to project the basic contradictions of the feudal order. Lahu di Loa (The glow of blood), which appeared in the mid-1970s, was based on the Naxalite movement in Punjab. It had an interesting chequered history. India was under the Emergency when it was written and no Punjabi publisher would touch it, even with a pair of tongs. Consequently, Kanwal had to fly to Singapore to get it published there and smuggle the lot to India. After the Emergency was lifted, several prints of the novel appeared in India itself. But the traditional communist parties were annoyed at such an ultra-Leftist turn at their cost. At this juncture, he made a failed attempt to become torchbearer of a socialist revolution. England-based Punjabi writer Raghbir Dhand wrote a longish piece Loa da Lahu (The blood of the glow) reviling his conceptual and ideological standpoint.

Kanwal’s novels became very popular with Punjabi readers since he captured the unconscious yearning of the rural Punjabi psyche in the manner of the medieval ‘kissakars’. This literary strategy helped to wean people away from the ‘kissas’ and get attracted to the book culture, particularly novels. Nanak Singh had already prepared the ground for such an enterprise with his lower middle class urban characters and situations.  In Raat Baaki Hai, Bhawani, Tarikh Vekhdi Hai and Jera, the rural downtrodden found his voice with a little lacing of romance. During the 1950s and 1960s, college going boys would pick-up his novels to read in buses. The other writer who was equally popular with the youth at that time was Gurbaksh Singh Preetlari. His journal Preetlari was almost a Bible of romantic progressivism, something what Kanwal was projecting through his novels.

Meanwhile, Punjab was embroiled in the worst crisis of its post-Partition history. The Khalistan movement and, in its wake, Operation Blue Star and Delhi riots added fuel to the fire of bruised Sikh psyche. This turn of events swept Kanwal off his feet and he became a staunch votary of the idea of Khalistan. He wrote a lot about Sikh-centric problems of Punjab. Religious concerns began to dominate his secular socialist discourse. Jand Punjab Da, Ainian Chon Uttho Surma, Sikh Jaddo Jehad, Apna Kaumi Ghar, Punjabio Marna Hai Ke Jeena, Haal Muridan Da, Mittar Piare Nu, Ik Jaffarnama Hor and so on were the writings of this phase. After having flirted with the concept of Khalistan, Kanwal courted another controversy pertaining to the ‘flood of migrant labourers’ in Punjab. He believed that these people from UP and Bihar had usurped the jobs of Punjabis. He forgot that Punjabi farmers were in dire need of this labour force. Thousands of young Punjabis had migrated to Canada, America, England, Australia and other foreign lands for economic reasons. Many more were ready to bid farewell to their homeland. Also, most of the migrant labourers, who had made Punjab their home, had adopted the language and its culture. In the rural government schools of Punjab more than 50 per cent students belong to the Purbia region. They understand, speak, and write the language like the locals. Some of them have even adopted Sikhism. This xenophobia was misplaced.

Despite such conceptual anomalies, Kanwal had been felicitated by many well-known organisations and institutions, including the National Sahitya Akademi, Government of Punjab and Guru Nanak Dev University to name only a few. Thousands of his readers and Punjabis, in general, would wish this grand old man of letters a longer life to go beyond the fabled century. His pen ought to remain as taut as ever so that people could see him taking still another ideological shift.

The writer is a Punjabi critic