Sant Ram Udasiਸੰਤ ਰਾਮ ਉਦਾਸੀ

Early life

Sant Ram was born on 20 April 1939 in Raisar, a village in the Sangrur district of Malwa (today in Barnala district), into a Dalit family. He grew up with little money but plenty of determination, working his way through school and training to become a government schoolteacher — a rare achievement for a Dalit boy in rural Punjab at the time. He began writing poetry in 1961. His earliest verses were spiritual, even devotional — he wrote about the Nirankari tradition — and in his youth he also wrote romantic poetry.

A turn toward revolution

When the Naxalite movement rose in Punjab in the late 1960s, Udasi joined it ideologically, and his poetry changed completely. Where he had once written of devotion, he now wrote of the landless, the labourer, and the anger of the poor. Sword, gun, and knife began to recur in his verses as symbols of revolt. He wrote and sang in forms ordinary people understood — songs, bolian, ghazals, and rubais — and his poems were read aloud at village gatherings and rallies. Alongside poets like Pash and Lal Singh Dil, he became one of the leading voices of the revolutionary literary movement that swept Punjabi letters in the 1970s.

The books

During the 1970s he published three collections: Lahu Bhije Bol (Blood-Soaked Words, 1971), Saintan (Gestures), and Chounukrian (The Four-Edged), followed by Lahu to Lohe Tak (From Blood to Iron, 1979). Lahu Bhije Bol made his name: blunt, angry poems about exploitation, caste, and the lives of farm labourers. His lines moved easily into song — singers took them up, and they travelled far beyond the printed page. Rajinder Rahi later compiled his complete works as Sant Ram Udasi: Jivan te Samuchi Rachna (2011).

Jail, the Emergency, and after

His politics cost him dearly. Like his fellow revolutionary writer Gursharan Singh, Udasi was jailed during the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi in 1975; he was tortured in prison and suspended from his teaching job. He met the mental and economic crisis that followed with the same stubbornness that marked his poetry. He was honoured with the Bawa Balwant Award, and travelled abroad at the invitation of the Indian People’s Association in North America (IPANA).

Death and legacy

He died on 6 November 1986, aged forty-seven. But his afterlife has been extraordinary. In the winter of 2020–21, as farmers from Punjab camped at Delhi’s Singhu and Tikri borders against the farm laws, Sant Ram Udasi became the most sung poet of the protest. Ravinder Grewal sang his songs at the border; Bant Singh carried them on the march from Joga near Mansa; and Jasbir Jassi’s recording of “Maa dharteye, teri godh nu chann hor bathere / Tu magdha rahin ve surja kammian de vehre” — the sun must keep shining on the labourers’ homes — blared from protest speakers. As the Jalandhar writer Des Raj Kali put it, the farmers’ struggle had made “the revolutionary dreams of Udasi’s poetry come alive.” The Lok Kavi Sant Ram Udasi Memorial Trust continues to research his life and work.

What is Sant Ram Udasi famous for?

He is famous for Lahu Bhije Bol (1971), a collection of revolutionary Punjabi poems, and for songs like “Maa dharteye” that became the anthems of Punjab’s protest movements.

Why is Sant Ram Udasi called the people’s poet?

Because he wrote about Dalits, farm labourers, and the poor in language ordinary people could sing and remember — and his songs are still sung at rallies and protests across Punjab.