Teja Singhਤੇਜਾ ਸਿੰਘ

Teja Singh (2 June 1894 to 10 January 1958) was a Sikh scholar, teacher and translator who taught English at Khalsa College Amritsar for about 25 years and did more than almost anyone of his generation to explain Sikhism to the English-speaking world and to shape modern Punjabi prose. His annotated edition of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Shabdarth, and his English renderings of Japji Sahib and Sukhmani Sahib are still read today, and his Punjabi essays set the standard for clear, modern Punjabi writing.

Early life in Adiala

Teja Singh was born Tej Ram on 2 June 1894 in Adiala, a village in Rawalpindi district, in what is now Pakistan. His father was Bhalakar Singh and his mother was Sarusti. The family could not afford to send him to a regular school, so as a small boy he learned Gurmukhi at the village gurdwara and Urdu and Persian at the mosque, while grazing the family's livestock and doing household work.

While still a child he was initiated into the Khalsa by Baba Khem Singh Bedi and took the name Teja Singh. His hunger for learning was so strong that he ran away from home in search of an education, and managed to attend schools in Rawalpindi and then Sargodha, supporting himself by working as a domestic servant. Even as a schoolboy he painted and wrote in English, producing a short treatise on painting and a drama on the martyrdom of the sons of Guru Gobind Singh.

After passing his matriculation examination he entered Khalsa College Amritsar, and after his intermediate examination he returned to Rawalpindi to study at Gordon College, which gave him a concession on his fees. He took his master's degree in English literature in 1916 and a second master's, in history, in 1919.

Teacher at Khalsa College Amritsar

In March 1919 Teja Singh was appointed to the staff of Khalsa College Amritsar, where he first taught history and then, for about a quarter of a century, English literature. He became known across Punjab as a gifted teacher of English drama and prose, and his students included the novelist Mulk Raj Anand, who later described him as a teacher, educationist, scholar, publicist and critic. He was also a keen tennis player, fitting in a game whenever he could.

For close to three decades he presided over the cultural and literary life of Punjab. His judgement carried such weight that it became accepted practice for young Punjabi writers to show him their work before anyone else, and he encouraged and introduced many new writers to readers. His anti-British views were no secret. When the college principal, Mr G. A. Wathen, was asked to suggest two Sikh names for nomination to Panjab University, his superiors warned him not to mention Teja Singh and his colleague Bawa Harkishan Singh. Wathen replied that they were the only two pro-British professors on his staff, because they loved Shakespeare and Wordsworth and taught them so lovingly.

Why was Teja Singh jailed in 1923?

Teja Singh was one of 13 Sikh professors of Khalsa College who resigned in protest when the government tried to control the management of the institution. The resignation caused a widespread agitation, and the government was forced to replace the 11 official members of the college managing committee with non-official Sikhs.

He was also active in the Gurdwara Reform Movement of the 1920s, the long campaign to free Sikh shrines from the control of a priestly order that reformers saw as corrupt. In 1923 he was arrested during the campaign and spent more than a year in jail in Amritsar and Lahore. It was in jail that he began his great work on the Guru Granth Sahib, the annotated edition known as the Shabdarth. He was released in 1925 on grounds of ill health, and the same year he returned to Khalsa College and to teaching.

Translator of Gurbani and writer of Punjabi prose

After Professor Puran Singh, Teja Singh was perhaps the chief interpreter of Sikh thought in English in his time. His books Sikhism: Its Ideals and Institutions (1938) and Essays in Sikhism (1944) collected the articles through which English readers first came to understand Sikhism, and his earlier studies included Growth of Responsibility in Sikhism (1919) and Highroads of Sikh History (1935).

His translations of the sacred texts became classics. He rendered Japji Sahib into English in 1919 and Asa-di-Var in 1926, and his translation of Sukhmani Sahib, published as The Psalm of Peace in 1938 by Oxford University Press, drew praise from the English-speaking world. The Shabdarth, an annotated edition of the Guru Granth Sahib sponsored by the Gur Sevak Sabha and completed between 1936 and 1941, was primarily his work, and he gave away the royalty it earned.

One ambition remained unfinished. He wanted to render the whole of the Guru Granth Sahib into English, but by his death he had completed only the portion up to Rag Majh. That portion was published posthumously by Punjabi University in 1985 as The Holy Granth: Sri Rag to Rag Majh. He also wrote A Short History of the Sikhs (1950) with the historian Ganda Singh, compiled English-Punjabi and Punjabi-English dictionaries, and wrote a scholarly study of the vowel symbols at the ends of words in the Guru Granth Sahib.

In Punjabi he is remembered above all as an essayist. His collections Navian Sochan (1941), Sahij Subha (1942) and Sahit Darshan (1951) helped fix the form and structure of modern Punjabi idiom, and his autobiography Arsi (1952) is regarded as a model of clear, crisp Punjabi prose. He also helped to establish the MA course in Punjabi, which he taught himself, and he lent a hand to almost every important Punjabi book of his time, writing introductions and editing the work of others, including Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha's Mahan Kosh, and the writings of Nanak Singh, Ganda Singh, Mohan Singh Mahir, Sant Singh Sekhon and Balwant Gargi.

Principal, retirement and later life

In 1945 Teja Singh left Amritsar to become principal of Khalsa College Bombay, a post he held for about three years. He then returned to Punjab as secretary of the Publications Bureau of Panjab University, and in January 1949 he was appointed principal of Mohindra College Patiala, where he also held charge as secretary and director of the newly established Punjabi Department. He retired from the service of the PEPSU government in 1951.

His energy reached far beyond the classroom. In 1939 he undertook a lecture tour of Malaya and delivered nearly 300 speeches in two months. In 1956 the PEPSU government presented him with an Abhinandan Granth, a volume of tributes from a wide circle of Indian public figures, with messages from S. Radhakrishnan, then vice-president of India, Bhai Vir Singh, Master Tara Singh and others. He died after a stroke at Amritsar on 10 January 1958, aged 63.

Legacy

Teja Singh's students went on to lead Punjabi scholarship themselves. They included Dr Gopal Singh, Surjit Singh Talib, Harbans Singh, who became editor-in-chief of The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, Pritam Singh and Darshan Singh Maini, and two future vice-chancellors of Punjabi University, Inderjit Kaur Sandhu and Amrik Singh. The historian Sita Ram Kohli wrote that next to Bhai Vir Singh, the greatest contribution to the progress of the Punjabi language was that of Professor Teja Singh.

He is remembered as a great man of letters who combined deep learning with a rare personal charm and kindliness, and as a teacher who shaped a generation of Punjabi writers and scholars. Readers should not confuse him with two other men of the same name. Sant Teja Singh (1877 to 1965) was the one who served as principal of Khalsa College Amritsar, in 1905, studied at Cambridge and founded Baru Sahib. Teja Singh Samundri (1882 to 1926) was an Akali leader of the Gurdwara Reform Movement. Professor Teja Singh, the scholar of Adiala, taught at Khalsa College Amritsar but was never its principal there.