Nanak Singhਨਾਨਕ ਸਿੰਘ

Early life

Nanak Singh was born Hans Raj on 4 July 1897 in the Jhelum district of undivided Punjab, in what is today Pakistan. He was born into a poor Punjabi Hindu family and received almost no formal schooling; poverty closed the classroom door early. As a young man he was drawn to Sikhism, adopted the Sikh faith, and took the name Nanak Singh, under which he would become famous.

Even without much education he began writing young, composing verses on historical events and the life around him. The folk tales, hymns and classical stories of his upbringing gave him a storyteller's ear, and he taught himself the craft of narrative through sheer persistence. His early poems and songs already showed the sympathy for ordinary people that would mark all his later work.

The novelist is born

Nanak Singh's writing in support of India's independence movement brought him to the attention of the British authorities, who banned his book and arrested him. It was in jail that he began writing novels in earnest, turning confinement into a literary apprenticeship. His first major success came with Chitta Lahu, meaning White Blood, published in 1932, a novel whose moral intensity and vivid picture of rural Punjab made him a household name.

Before Nanak Singh, Punjabi prose was dominated by religious texts and poetry; the modern novel barely existed in the language. He changed that almost single-handedly, introducing contemporary storytelling about common people's struggles, social injustice and the fight against oppression. His work is often described as the secularisation of Punjabi fiction, and he is widely honoured as the father of the Punjabi novel.

Major works and recognition

Over a long career Nanak Singh wrote more than fifty novels, eleven collections of short stories, an autobiography, and volumes of poems and songs. Among his best-known novels are Pavitra Papi, the Saintly Sinner, published in 1945, which was translated into several languages and adapted into a successful Hindi film in 1968 by his admirer Balraj Sahni, and Ikk Mian Do Talwaran, Two Swords in One Sheath, which won him the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1962. He was also honoured with Punjab's highest literary award in 1960.

For some thirty to forty years he was among the best-selling novelists in India, and his books were translated into Hindi, English, Russian and other languages. Critics noted his gift for character: for him, character determined incident and incident illustrated character, and his stories moved with the confidence of a born narrator. His novels took up caste discrimination, poverty, and the need for education, always on the side of the downtrodden.

Legacy

Nanak Singh died on 28 December 1971. His centenary was celebrated in 1997, and in 1998 the Government of India issued a postage stamp in his honour, a rare tribute for a writer. His novels remain in print and widely read, and his grandson Navdeep Singh Suri has carried his work to English readers through fresh translations. In the history of Punjabi letters, he stands as the writer who proved that the language could carry the modern novel, and carry it magnificently.