Sant Singh Sekhonਸੰਤ ਸਿੰਘ ਸੇਖੋਂ

Early life

Sant Singh Sekhon was born in 1908 in Lyallpur in British Punjab, a town that now lies in Pakistan, and grew up in his father's village, Dakha, near Ludhiana, in the Malwa belt. His father was an idealist but introverted; his mother was more practical and deeply religious in the Singh Sabha mould. The marital discord between his parents colours many of his stories. He took master's degrees in Economics and in English, and in 1931 joined Khalsa College, Amritsar, as a lecturer — the start of a long teaching career that ran through Gursar Sudhar, Fatehgarh Sahib and Jandiala. A committed Marxist, he left Khalsa College in 1951 over sharp ideological differences.

Career

In the 1930s Sekhon began by writing in English — poems, some of them appearing in shared publications with W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender — but the far larger readership in Punjabi drew him to his mother tongue, and he made his first mark as a playwright. A teacher by profession and a Marxist by conviction, he belonged to the generation shaped by the Progressive Writers' Movement; he joined the Communist Party of India, though he later let his membership lapse. He contested elections four times — thrice for the Punjab legislature and once for Parliament — and never won.

Punjabi University, Patiala, made him a Professor of Eminence, and after his death set up a chair in his name. He was honoured as Shiromani Sahitkar in 1965, won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1972 for Mittarpiara, and received the Padma Shri in 1987.

Major works

His first collection of one-act plays, Chhe Ghar (Six Homes, 1941), was a critical success — the play Bhavi unfolded a tragic cross-relationship between a king and his son over a daughter-mother. Full-length plays followed: Kalakar (Artist, 1945), Narki (Denizens of Hell, 1953, originally written in English as Eve at Bay) and Nal-Damayanti (1960), probing the man–woman relationship; and five historical plays that reinterpret Sikh history — Moian Sar Na Kai (The Dead Knew It Not, 1954), Bera Bandh Na Sakio (Fleet They Could Not Harness, 1954), Waris (1955), Banda Bahadur (1985) and Vada Ghalughara (Holocaust, 1986). The Sahitya Akademi-winning Mittarpiara (Beloved Friend, 1971) imagines Indian and Sikh patriots striking an ideological affinity with Lenin to free India from British rule.

His two novels are Lahu Mitti (Blood and Soil, 1948), a realistic socio-economic account of a poor peasant family in early-twentieth-century Punjab, and Baba Asman (Grandfather Sky, 1973), about the Ghadar movement. He wrote five short-story collections, including the well-received Tija Pahar; five books of literary criticism, including Sahityarth, a theory of literature, and Punjabi boli da itihas, a pioneering history of the Punjabi language; and he translated Sufi and Kissa poetry between Punjabi and English.

Legacy

Sekhon is remembered as the 'Baba Bohar' — the giant tree — of Punjabi letters and as the father of modern Punjabi literary criticism: he introduced systematic criticism to Punjabi literature for the first time. A pillar of the progressive writing style, his work carried rural ruggedness, a commitment to the soil, and a deep understanding of the ordinary person's struggle for survival. The chair established in his name at Punjabi University continues his legacy in Punjabi scholarship.