Waryam Singh Sandhuਵਰਿਆਮ ਸਿੰਘ ਸੰਧੂ

Waryam Singh Sandhu (born 1945) is an acclaimed Punjabi short-story writer. His collection Chauthi Koot won the 2000 Sahitya Akademi Award for Punjabi and became the 2015 film The Fourth Direction. He grew up in Sur Singh village in Tarn Taran district, taught for years at Lyallpur Khalsa College in Jalandhar, and writes about Naxalite-era unrest, militancy and the Ghadar movement.

Early life

Sandhu was born on 10 September 1945. Wikipedia names Nanke in Amritsar district as his birthplace, but The Tribune and The Indian Express place his upbringing in Sur Singh, a village then in Amritsar district and now in Tarn Taran. He was the eldest of six children. His father was a farmer who read books with deep attention; his mother could not read, so the young Waryam read stories to her and made up some of his own.

In Class VIII he sent a piece to a newspaper and forgot about it, until an elder in the village showed him his name in print as Waryam Singh Sursingh and told him to make the village famous. That year he also recited his own poem on a school stage. He read Gurbakhsh Singh's Param Manukh at the same age, and he told The Indian Express that Gurbakhsh Singh, founder of Preetlari, has had a huge impact on his writing. His first story, Akhan Vich Mar Gayi Khushi, appeared in Preetlari.

He taught in his village school, then completed a BEd, an MPhil and a PhD in philosophy at Panjab University.

Career

Sandhu's first book, the story collection Lohe De Hath, came out in 1971, at the height of the Naxalite movement. He told The Tribune that police detained him during the Emergency over his anti-establishment writing, including that book. Ang Sang followed in 1981 and Bhajian Bahin in 1987. He has said that comparing himself with poets such as Paash convinced him that his strength was the short story.

In 1987 he moved to Jalandhar, where he taught Punjabi at Lyallpur Khalsa College until 2005. He has said he left the village in the late 1980s after threatening calls during the militancy years.

Those years fed his best-known book. Chauthi Koot, published in 1998, shows ordinary villagers caught between militants at night and security forces by day. He told The Indian Express that the title story came from his brother's family and their two dogs, which militants ordered to be killed. The collection won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2000.

In 2015, director Gurvinder Singh adapted two of its stories, Chauthi Koot and Main Hun Thik Thak Haan, into The Fourth Direction. It won a National Award for best Punjabi film and reached Indian cinemas in August 2016. The Tribune also notes that his story Jamraud has been filmed, and that a Chauthi Koot story appears in Aleph's 100 Indian Stories.

After retiring he turned to non-fiction, writing several volumes on the Ghadar Party and its members. In 2025 he wrote Rang Prasang Surjit Patar De, a book on the poet Surjit Patar, and The Tribune reported that his first poetry collection, Warya Picho, was due for release. More than 30 books have now been published.

Wikipedia lists further honours, including the Sujan Singh Puraskar (1990), the Waris Shah awards from Lahore (2001) and London (2003), the Punjab Rattan (2002) and the Punjab Gaurav (2019). He was among the writers who returned awards in 2015, though the Akademi said it had no provision to take them back. The Tribune reported in 2025 that he also returned the award in 2019 over the farmers' agitation.

Where is Waryam Singh Sandhu from?

He grew up in Sur Singh village in Tarn Taran district, Punjab, and moved to Jalandhar in the late 1980s. Wikipedia gives Nanke as his birthplace.

What is Chauthi Koot about?

It is his 1998 story collection about villagers trapped between militants and security forces during the 1980s. It won the 2000 Sahitya Akademi Award.

Which film is based on Waryam Singh Sandhu's stories?

The Fourth Direction (Chauthi Koot, 2015), directed by Gurvinder Singh, adapts two stories from the collection. It won the National Award for best Punjabi film.