ਜਸਵੰਤ ਸਿੰਘ ਕੰਵਲਜਸਵੰਤ ਸਿੰਘ ਕੰਵਲ

Jaswant Singh Kanwal (27 June 1919 – 1 February 2020) was one of the best-loved Punjabi novelists of the twentieth century. Born and rooted in Dhudike village in Moga district, he wrote the Naxalite-era novel Lahu Di Lo and won the Sahitya Akademi Award for Taushali Di Hanso. Indian Express and The Tribune credit him with around a hundred books.

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Kanwal was born in Dhudike into a landowning family, as Hindustan Times describes it. He left school before finishing matriculation and in 1935 travelled to Malaya, where, according to The Indian Express, he worked for two years as a guard. Away from home, he started reading, and he came back in 1937 to the village where he would spend the rest of his life.

He made regular trips to Lahore to buy books and took formal lessons in Vedant Shastra, which is where the title Gyani, used with his name, is said to have come from. He drafted his first book, Jeevan Kaniyan, in 1940; his first novel, Sach Nu Phansi, appeared in 1944.

Career

Over the next seven decades he wrote novels, stories, essays and political commentary rooted in village life. The Indian Express lists the agrarian crisis, caste barriers, women's rights and youth among his themes, and quotes his grandson saying each work has a strong woman character. Among his better-known titles are Haani, Raat Baaki Hai, Pali, Mittar Pyare Nu, Barf Di Agg, Roopmati and Gawachi Pag. His novel Puranmashi is praised for its prose; its character Gyani was based on him, and its village on Dhudike.

His most famous and most controversial book is Lahu Di Lo, written around the Naxalite movement in Punjab in 1975, during the Emergency. No publisher in India would take it. It was printed abroad (Singapore per The Tribune and Hindustan Times, Malaysia per The Indian Express and Times of India) and copies were smuggled into Punjab to be read.

Taushali Di Hanso retells the people's resistance in the Battle of Kalinga through the courtesan dancer Hanso, after Kanwal visited the site to research it. It won him the Sahitya Akademi Award; The Tribune, PTI and Hindustan Times give the year as 1998, The Indian Express as 1997. He received the Punjab government's Sahit Shiromani Award in 2007 and an honorary Doctor of Literature from Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, in 2008. His last book on the Indian Express list, Dhur Dargah (2017), is a set of essays on present-day Punjab.

Kanwal's politics were never settled. Hindustan Times describes him as swinging from the extreme Left to the Right, and The Tribune notes that he drew criticism in political and literary circles for sympathising with the Khalistan movement. Times of India adds that a case was filed against him under the Rajiv Gandhi government over one of his writings.

Writing and themes

Kanwal wrote from inside the life he described. The Sikh Encyclopedia notes that after returning from Malaya he took up his family's work of farming at Dhudike, and his fiction is rooted in that experience. His novels depict rural Malwa in its own speech, with generous use of the Malwai dialect, and they return again and again to the village economy: land, debt, caste and the standing of women. The same reference work calls him, in many respects, the successor of Nanak Singh, the founder of the modern Punjabi novel.

His standpoint was progressive. The Sikh Encyclopedia describes a committed writer who satirised the misdeeds of the wealthy and urged the downtrodden to rise together, while Wikipedia summarises his themes as challenges to settled social customs and a championship of social and gender equality. That is why IANS called him the 'writer of movements' when he died: his books were tied to the struggles of their time, from the agrarian questions of Malwa to the Naxalite years behind Lahu Di Lo.

Legacy

He was close to the actor Balraj Sahni and the poet Baba Balwant, and after both died he started prose and poetry awards in their names. In June 2019 his hundredth year was celebrated with a literary festival named Puranmashi. Poet Surjit Patar told The Indian Express that after Nanak Singh, Kanwal was the only writer who ruled the hearts of Punjabis, and that while others moved to cities, he lived his whole life in his village.

His honours went beyond the Sahitya Akademi Award for Taushali Di Hanso. PTI reported a Sahitya Akademi Fellowship honour linked to his 1996 short-story collection Pakhi (Hand Fan), and Wikipedia lists further recognition late in life, including the Tagore Literature Award in 2009 and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Punjab Kala Parishad in 2018. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, condoling his death, described a versatile writer of nearly 80 books whose writings gave a voice to the common man grappling with socio-economic hardship.

Kanwal died at home in Dhudike on 1 February 2020, aged 100 (PTI reported 101). He was cremated in the village the same day, wrapped in a cloth that read Shah Ranjha, a nod to his love for Waris Shah's Heer.

Where is Jaswant Singh Kanwal from?

He was born in 1919 in Dhudike village in Moga district, Punjab, and lived there for nearly all his life after returning from Malaya in 1937.

What is Jaswant Singh Kanwal's best-known book?

Lahu Di Lo, his Emergency-era novel about the Naxalite movement, which had to be printed abroad and smuggled into Punjab. His Sahitya Akademi Award came for Taushali Di Hanso.

How many books did Jaswant Singh Kanwal write?

Outlets disagree: roughly 50 to 102, with The Tribune and The Indian Express saying 102 novels and other works.