Sohan Singh Sitalਸੋਹਣ ਸਿੰਘ ਸੀਤਲ

Early life

Sohan Singh Sital was born Sohan Singh Pannu on 7 August 1909 in the village of Qadiwind, in the Kasur tehsil of undivided Punjab (now in Pakistan), to Khushal Singh and Dyal Kaur. Before he became a writer he was a performer: he formed his own dhadi jatha and trained on the dhad and sarangi under the elderly Muslim musician Baba Charagdin at Laliani, a few miles from Qadiwind. He won a wide reputation as a dhadi balladeer, and his troupes toured Burma, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia in 1960, and England and Canada in 1977, 1980 and 1981.

Career

Sital entered the field of literary creation after Partition, in 1947. He went on to become one of the most prolific Punjabi writers of the twentieth century — a novelist, poet, lyricist and historian with more than sixty books to his name, including twenty-two novels. Critics describe him as the rural counterpart of Nanak Singh: while Nanak Singh wrote about urban life in central Punjab, Sital wrote about its countryside and its people. Like Nanak Singh he began as a reformist and sentimental writer and grew into a realist, though a sentimental tinge stayed with his work. His novels often took up the condition of women — Dive di Lo (The Flame of the Earthen Lamp), Mul da Mas (Flesh at a Price) and Badla (Revenge) — and he also wrote revolutionary novels such as Jug Badal Gaya, Tootan Wala Khooh and Jang Ya Aman, and historical fiction including Maharani Jindan. His novel Jug Badal Gaya won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1974, and was translated into English as Time Has Taken a Turn by Tejwant Singh Gill.

Major works

Jug Badal Gaya (The Age Has Changed) is his best-known novel: a typical rural drama set in the heart of Punjab that portrays Dalit life and shows how, even in a deeply patriarchal setting, strong women hold on to their agency and dignity. Its protagonist, Lakha Singh, rises to become a big zamindar by cleverly usurping the lands of small farmers, marries his wife's sister Swarni to obtain a child, and, after Swarni's death, keeps Rajo as his wife in all but name; the Partition of 1947 strips him of property and kin, leaving him with Rajo and her son Jarnail, whom he must legally accept to press his refugee claims at Jalandhar. Among his other novels, Dive di Lo, Mul da Mas and Badla deal with the position of women, the revolutionary trio of Jug Badal Gaya, Tootan Wala Khooh and Jang Ya Aman is considered especially important, and Maharani Jindan turns to the life of the last queen of the Sikh Empire.

Legacy

Sohan Singh Sital died on 23 September 1998, at the age of eighty-nine. He is remembered as a multi-faceted personality — dhadi singer, novelist, poet, lyricist and historian — who carried rural Punjabi life into modern fiction. His portrait has been installed among the Punjabi writers honoured at Punjab Bhawan in New Delhi.