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Just a turn towards the study of Punjabi literature brings several crucial issues to the fore. They relate to (a) what, (b) where, (c) when, (d) who, (e) why and (f) how of its production, reception and effect. The
first issue raises the problem of its definition. What is Punjabi literature after all? This concerns the specificity of Punjabi literature that apparently looks very simple. Delving into its interstices however, raises problems, which are quite complex. Its matter of fact answer may be that whatever was written on the terrain of Punjab, the land of five rivers popularly called, comprises this corpus. Intriguingly enough, identification of the five rivers is the first problem that, at this juncture, seems to stare in the face. For commonsense, empirical in the short but incoherent in the long run, they are Satluj, Beas, Ravi, Chenab and Jehlum. However good sense, for which coherence and thinking are the essential criteria, this nomenclature is not without a fault. Beas, as its etymological derivation from the Sanskrit word vipasha suggests, stands for seasonal stream and not a river at all. Thereby, the fifth river should be Sindh, of which the popular name is Attak, symbolizing resistance to marauders from the West. Sometimes the resistance it posed was quite stiff but at other times, it was inconsequential, to the despair of the Punjabi mind as expressed in the folklore. Raised to the level of good sense, this feeling was shared by the greatest Punjabi minds of the 20th century i.e. Bhai Vir Singh, Puran Singh and Sant Singh Sekhon. Even the Russian scholar of Punjabi literature, I D Serebryakov; Punjabi Sahit 1971(Punjabi literature) has lent credence to this feeling.

So the land that formed the terrain for the origin, beginning and growth of Punjabi literature had Satluj and Attak as its boundaries on the east and the west respectively. Thus it has seemed to people in general, in particular to those attuned to literary production, reception and effect. In other words, imagination and memory have reserved this name largely to this expanse that has not remained secluded from intrusions and influences in the long course of history. So much so, its identification, if not identity, has remained problematic. Since its terrain was more a borderland than a land with immutable boundaries, so even this determination of boundaries on the east and the west was not eternally provided. It is of the tentative nature, particularly with regard to Satluj because as borderland, it extended further to the east, if not all the way up to Jamuna. Bearing this in mind, Prof. J. S. Grewal, the present-day historian of Punjab, holds in “The Historical Geography of the Punjab” (Journal of Regional History, V. One 1980) that rather than five rivers, this land comprised five doabs, each in between two rivers. Since the land between Satluj and Jamuna does not comprise a doab, it is doubtful whether the modification suggested by Prof. Grewal provides a definite resolution to the enigma. There is another intricacy as well that is usually acclaimed but not pondered over. In the ancient Sanskrit classics, the term panch-nadd is believed to stand for this region. That in the medieval Persian chronicles, panj-aab stand for the same, seems more probable. So towards the end of the 16th century when Bhai Gurdas, the greatest Sikh intellectual of the time, used the term panjab for awarding a distinctive identity to this region, it must have been with the residual terms in mind.

In a situation like this, it is fair to hold that as a borderland without immutable boundaries, it formed the terrain for the origin, beginning and growth of Punjabi literature. Holding overwhelming appeal to literary imagination, it was thus expounded by Sant Singh Sekhon in his autobiography, Jeevan da Pandh V. Two (journey of a life). In his view, on the west Indus formed its border whereas on the south it went far beyond Satluj. In the north it went right up to the hills of Jammu and on the east embraced much of the hilly area. This picture of Punjab, he contended, always lurked before the eye of his imagination. To a person believing in the immutable nature of boundaries, this evocation may seem transgressing the political identification. Even the geographical identification may to some extent seem of the same sort. Yet, it is this definition of the borderland that to literary imagination has served as a terrain for the origin, beginning and growth of Punjabi literature.

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The terrain of Punjab it was that provided Aryans the
occasion and the urge to compose the ancient Indian texts.
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The issue of when has also been variously projected. The juncture, at which Punjabi literature in its written form came into being, forms its crux, from which result the collateral issues, concerning its thrust, scope and disposition etc. Three contentions come to the fore when attention turns to this issue of the beginning of Punjabi literature in the written form. There is first the view that Principal Teja Singh sought to hold valid. It held out appeal to Sikh thinking which by reclaiming the distant past of Punjab on its own terms sought to strengthen fences against the revivalistic claims of Hinduism. Being one of the foremost Sikh intellectuals of the first half of the 20th century, Teja Singh had this thinking very much on the agenda. According to this view so feelingly put in his book, Sahit Darshan (philosophy of literature), Punjabi literature in the written form was there from the ancient times when the Aryans migrated to India. The terrain of Punjab it was that provided them the occasion and the urge to compose the ancient texts. In this regard, the Rig-Veda comes readily to mind in which oblique references are made to the rivers, flora and fauna of this region. Otherwise, it was composed in Sanskrit that preceded Punjabi by two millennia, with Prakrits of the earlier and later phases having held sway in an over-determining way. In the 15th century, Guru Nanak Dev incorporated Sanskrit words and expressions, largely in the ‘tadphav’ way. He employed the ‘tatsam’ way very sparingly indeed. No wonder, Prakrits of the earlier as well as the later era were essential sources for enriching his resources. His recourse to Braj, Arabic, Persian and other languages of the northwest India, including Sindhi, was not without a purpose. The result was that there came into being Punjabi that developed resources far richer than the sources providing material for its formation. Bearing all this in mind, it is valid, more so veritable, to hold that written Punjabi literature might have had its origin in the ancient Sanskrit texts. So far its beginning goes, it was from another juncture, altogether a different one. Whereas origin may hold out the occasion for definition, it is beginning that provides the promise for self-definition.

The second contention is of Dr Mohan Singh Dewana whose A History of Punjabi Literature(1100-1932) has so far been regarded as a path-breaking work both in the field of research and literary historiography. The result is that many historians of Punjabi literature to come after, Gopal Singh Dardi, Surinder Singh Kohli and Jeet Singh Seetal to name the famous ones, were so over-awed by his scholarship that they could not acquire the confidence to gaze critically at the nomenclature, methodology, explication and evaluation, provided by him. Dewana’s work, for which he earned the degree of Doctor of Literature and later on published it with elaboration, was beset with contentious formulations and conclusions. What impelled Teja Singh to come up with his contention about the ancientness of Punjabi literature, and much else that came to be written in Pali, Prakrit and Braj, he mentioned in a summary form to denote that it formed the background of Punjabi literature in the written form. How background may hold the vague promise of origin but not the definite and definitive sense of beginning, is not stressed any where by him. In stead, the perfunctory writings of Gorakh Nath and Charpat Nath, believed to have been composed in the 10th and 11th centuries, in his historiography, are flaunted to grab this credit. On sober consideration, not only their content seems frivolous, even their expression does not sound above the pedestrian level so characteristic of the spoken idiom.

It may not be without interest to know why he, in spite of his considerable academicism had recourse to such oddity. The blame is usually attributed to his haughty temperament that led him to deal arrogantly with his contemporaries. So much so, while dealing with the modern period, he had the audacity to ignore them altogether, and mention only those who wrote in the commonplace idiom and did not have claim to literary achievement worth the name. Ipso facto while giving credit for beginning the written form of Punjabi literature, it was natural for him to flaunt those Naths and Yogis. But there was another reason also which in this context deserve a mention. No doubt, Dr Dewana was a Sikh by faith but it was not Gurbani from which he derived impulses for replenishing his feelings and emotions, norms and values. For replenishing them, he had recourse to Yoga and Tantricism, which were related to the ancient Indian systems of thought expounded the

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A literary language gets artificial, mechanical and even
dead when it ceases to draw sustenance from the spoken language.
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Vedas and the Upanisads. At the same time, they departed from them by contending that not the mind but the body was the vehicle for salvation. In the body also, the focus was on sex, to be taken as the medium for mystical bliss and metaphysical illumination. Under the influence of studies conducted by Western scholars on oriental texts and these systems and thoughts, Indian intelligentsia, obsessed with the glory of the past, professed interest, particularly because it came as relief from ideological involvement in the present, and the issues, which either held it to ransom or promised hegemony over its labyrinth. By nature and nurture, temperament, profession and attainment, Dr Dewana belonged to such intelligentsia, so the aberration marking his historiography, was of the sort to which the epithet, “exception is the rule” applied naturally enough.

In this context for carrying the argument further, it is essential to underline the distinctiveness of literary language. Of course, distinction between literary language and the spoken idiom cannot be absolute. They are not identical either, though interplay between them cannot be discounted. Nevertheless, literary language is both distinct and distinguished from the general language of daily life by being selective, homogenous and stable. So far its being selective is concerned, apparently it may sound negative but its positive sense is no less valid. A literary language gets artificial, mechanical and even dead when it ceases to draw sustenance from the spoken language. But there is another side of the interplay between the two that makes literary language distinctive and distinguished without rendering it artificial and mechanical. It can be lofty without getting flamboyant. In other words, there is room for various levels and styles, lofty and sublime, middle and pleasing, and comic and low, in keeping with the genre the literary work may employ to acquire excellence. That Dr Dewana had scant regard for this distinctiveness of literary language, glares so sharply from his formulations, otherwise couched in academicism and verbosity.

The third view can be gathered from the three consecutive studies Baba Budh Singh forwarded of Punjabi poets in chronological order. The first Koel Koo,1949 ( koel’s song ) dealt with poets of the Mughal period with scattered attention paid to the English, more so the Urdu influences upon them. The next Banbiha Bol, 1925 ( Rainbird’s notes) took up poets of the Sikh period and awarded a similar treatment to them. He also recapitulated the contribution of the earlier period and tried to trace continuity between poets of both the periods. The last Hans Chog, 1950 (swan’s feed ) concluded with sympathetic consideration of poets during the second half of the 19th century. Again he did not fail to bring in mention of the poets of the earlier periods right from Sheikh Farid. Howsoever naïve, it was a secular and national perspective that Bawa sought to bear upon several hundred years of Punjabi poetry. Since he tried to award this poetic tradition integrity of its own, so regional awareness was not missing from it either. However, he failed to take note of poets who had by the time he came up with the third volume excelled themselves in the 20th century. His work was substantial though his strategy of inserting copious quotations was neither original nor capable to reveal the subtleties of form, technique and style in all their extent and depth. No wonder, he sought to establish the identity of Punjabi literature and to claim for it a heritage that was not in his view negligible. But he kept his scope narrow for it was only poetry that he took notice of though as a creative writer he tried his hand creditably at the writing of plays in Punjabi. No doubt, his historiography was chronological yet in visualizing periods and naming them, he avoided the beaten track as is quite evident from the titles of his volumes.

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In Bawa’s view the beginning of Punjabi literature
lay with Sheikh Farid who composed his
Slokas in the first quarter of the 13th century.
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Bawa Budh Singh did take notice of the contribution made by the Sikh Gurus and the Sikh savant Bhai Gurdas but it was perfunctory in comparison with the praise he showered on the Kissaskars of love-tales. Muslim by birth, those Kissakars were Sufis by faith. Apart from the secular temperament that Bawa came to inculcate under the influence, partly of English literature, it was his marriage with a Muslim woman that impelled him to flaunt this predilection to the chagrin of the religious custodians of his own community. Positive side of the whole thing was that literary merit, howsoever superficial, became the criteria of his appreciation and evaluation. Its negative side was that his fascination for the facile aspects led him to ignore the depth-delving, profoundly philosophical issues of the literary compositions. Popularity, rather than profundity it was, that determined for him the excellence of literature. If in the case of Dr. Dewana, the affiliative factor, like the orientalist scholarship and its fascination for Yoga and Tantaricism had a bearing on his historiography, then Bawa Budh Singh was not immune to the influence of affiliative factor such as the marital bond, matter of concern no doubt to orthodox members of his communities.

Dr Dewana found these volumes of Bawa Budh Singh “rather desultory” which from his pedantic pedestal looked likely so. What was affable in Bawa seemed desultory to Dewana for which another reason was also there on the anvil. In Bawa’s view the beginning of Punjabi literature lay with Sheikh Farid who composed his Slokas in the first quarter of the 13th century. Beyond the statement of this fact he did not go, nor could he because for substantiation, it required philosophical understanding of life, coupled with cultural and philological insights. It was left for Sant Singh Sekhon to fulfill this requirement in all its subtlety and sobriety. His was a multi-faceted genius that sought to excel in every literary field. He was a poet, novelist, short story writer and playwright of great merit. So far literary criticism goes, he was its founder in Punjabi and he brought to bear insights of past significance, present meaning and future value, on literature of the language in all genres and forms, right from Sheikh Farid up to the modern times. If there is any history of the Punjabi language with focus on the geography and culture of the region, it was also written by Sekhon.

So far him to determine the beginning of written literature and literary language on the terrain of Punjab that he visualized as borderland, was not an academic exercise, relating only to the past. It was a cultural exercise in which tradition, history, memory and imagination had a decisive role to play. Equipped with awareness in which Marxian philosophy and Freudian psychology had a central place, he felt that for literary language and written literature to grow, there was dire need of something more than the natural terrain. A social terrain, visited by cultural formation, religious conflict-cum-reconciliation and renewed civilization, was essential for the purpose. The intrusion of Islam from Arabia via Sindh, in the 8th century, coupled with invasions from Persia to continue for several centuries, turned Punjab, particularly the western part of it into such a terrain suffused with the possibilities of formation, conflict, reconciliation and renewal.

(A)

For Sekhon, this vision became a reality in the compositions of Sheikh Farid which written in a dialect “amply suggest a learned mind behind the sweet words, a mind that had steeped itself in the tradition of his age and creed and is capable of absorbing the influences of his environment as well as the deep thinking of his age.”(A H P L, p.18).At this juncture the rupture that occurred in life of the people defined by residual but local elements of Indian religions, caste-system, joint-family, must have been agonizing. The intrusion of Islam held out the prospect of conversion but the way the authoritarian custodians of Koran interpreted and preached it, sounded as the discourse of power, of the word. Along with survival, this discourse of power entailed lot of travail to the articulation of which only a person of Farid’s genius could do full justice.. As Sekhon was at pains to point out, Farid’s forefathers were from Persia but he had settled in the area where the intrusion of Islam had caused the greatest rupture from the way the people had been living from centuries. Closely related to the royal family, he chose to live like an ascetic and preach to the people the value of humility, simplicity, frugality and piety in their own dialect. Without recourse to terms from Koran, he employed the husband-wife metaphor, so universal in life to preach his teaching with all the poignancy at his command. As Prof. Attar Singh in his celebrated paper, “Farid Bani vich Dukh da Sankalp” available in Samdarshi 1982 (unbiased perspective) tried to show this poignancy resulted from his deep awareness of pain that, more than personal was universal, more than individual was existential. However, Sekhon perceived in it the element of expiation, a feeling of sharing the guilt of the rulers with whom he was identified not only by the factors of race and temporal power but also factors of religious and spiritual circumstances. Both the elements share concurrence in a far-reaching way perhaps. The existential and universal element seemed overflowing even to so pain-stricken a person as Waris Shah, the writer of the immortal Heer in the 18th century who had felt that Farid’s habitation in Punjab had obliterated all the pains and pangs of Punjab. On the other hand the expiatory element endeared him even to the people who looked with critical gaze upon this intrusion. This lay behind “the inclusion of his poetry in the scripture of the Sikh Gurus who were in their time and in their own way endeavoring to uplift the people and to give them the strength to stand up to oppression.”(AHPL, p.19)

It was after a gap of more than two centuries and a half that literary language and written literature made their presence felt on a scale far higher than the earlier one. Their absence during this period extending over two and a half centuries has been acknowledged by almost all literary historians but hardly any one has come up with convincing reasons of the historical and cultural sort to explain it convincingly. Their emergence at a scale so far unsurpassed in subtlety of thought and sobriety of feeling was such as cannot without the presumption that there had been prior to Guru Nanak a sufficiently mature literary tradition. This is what Sekhon presumed but to substantiate it he could mention only ballads meant to celebrate battles between local chiefs in Punjab. Finding in them the celebration of various facets of the feudal society, “illicit passion, famine, drought, breach of promise, treachery and clan rivalry,” he believed that on their score, “Punjabi people had found enough strength in their language to sing of their passions before Guru Nanak came upon the scene and lifted the language and culture of Punjab to a higher level.”(A H P L, p.20)

There is no reason to discount what Sekhon has claimed for folk literature, the Punjabi people had recourse to at the historical juncture. What remains unsaid is why no written literature and literary language flourished for more than two centuries. The tentative explanation for this can be that the experience of travail articulated by Farid was like a one-way street. Retreat from it was futile and could not provide subject matter for renewed truth content. To trudge along for finding some more veritable and viable opening ahead so as to equip themselves with a renewed vision of life could not be so soon on the agenda of the people. So more than two centuries were to elapse before such a possibility could arise, on the terrain of central Punjab where to accept the fate accompli was regarded below dignity and integrity of all sorts. This became the terrain for Guru Nanak Dev’s writings which became the basis for the Sikh scripture, first named Adi Granth, and then Guru Granth on the 1430 large-size pages which also incorporated the compositions of the next four Gurus, of Farid, Kabir, Ravidas and several other Bhagat-kavis from different parts of the erstwhile sub-continent.

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During the last four centuries, the scriptural side of
Guru Granth has overshadowed its literary excellence.
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During the last four centuries, the scriptural side of this magnum opus has overshadowed its literary excellence. No wonder, Sikhs in general have accepted it as dhur ki bani (revealed text) meant to put an end to all their worries, miseries and privations in this life and after. They regard it a privilege to bow before it for each recompense and reward. While listening to its compositions set to musical notations for recitation, they feel exalted and blessed in the bargain. Their exaltation is more if they themselves can read or recite them. Their anchorage to the higher purpose of life replenishes, each time they have the privilege of listening to, reciting or reading them. In the popular élan, their reading occupies a tertiary place, next to their recitation and reading. For all intents and purposes, recitation and reading are regarded as mirror images of each other. So in its study, hagiography has so far claimed a dominant place. Other studies have also appeared but they have not won general acceptance from the reading public. Partly the reason may be that they have dealt with only parts of the magnum opus. But the main reason is that their insights have yet to establish their efficacy and veracity with the thinking and feeling of the people.

Ranging from Udasis and Nirmalas in the 18th century to Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha in the first half of the 20th century and Professor Sahib and Principal Teja Singh in the second half, so many scholars have applied themselves to the hagiographical study of this magnum opus, compiled by Guru Arjan Dev with collaboration of Bhai Gurdas in 1604. Dispensing with its social, political, historical, cultural specificities, the advocates of this study read only spiritual, metaphysical, mystical message in this multiplex text. To explain the precise meaning of each word with focus upon their etymology, is the acme and essence of this study carrying around itself the aura of stupendous effort, rigor and unfailing knowledge of grammar.

Now etymology reveals only the origin of words while their semantic horizon remains outside its ken. Words also have intonations verging upon their alignment with the actualities of life. So their study has to get across hagiography if the social, political, cultural and ideological significance of this multiplex text has to be forwarded for explication, elaboration and evaluation. In this regard, first thing is to lay bare its compositional principle, the labor and ingenuity gone into it. Rather than acclaim it as revealed text and put a gloss upon the creative excellence, inter-textual acumen, auditory sensitivity and editorial skill, the compilers had recourse to ensure its originality, it is essential to reveal this originality not just in the metaphorical sense of being distinct but also in the etymological sense of going to the roots or origins of feelings, emotions, thoughts, values and visions emanating from the compositions comprising this multiplex text. Several studies are available both in Punjabi and English, concerned with the identification of the compositional principle underlying the compiling of Guru Granth. In Punjabi, Sant Kartar Singh did pioneering work though it was not marked by any systematic method. Professor Piar Singh’s work is more rigorous from this point view and due to this reason perhaps it invited the ire of the SGPC, in charge of the management of Sikh Gurdwaras. In English two works are available, of Dr Paushara Singh and Professor Gurinder Singh Mann, respectively. Pashaura Singh’s work (Guru Granth: Canon, Meaning and Authority, 2003) goes parallel with that of Piar Singh in showing the textual changes this magnum opus came to observe as distinct from the original Adi Granth. Gurinder Singh Mann’s work (The Making of Sikh Scripture, 2001) is more basic, concerned as it is with the compilation of Adi Granth itself, from the pothis in which the compositions of the first four Gurus were recorded.

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Several studies are available both in Punjabi and English,
concerned with the identification of the compositional
principle underlying the compiling of Guru Granth.
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In themselves, these works are not specimen of literary historiography or critical study meant to focus upon the past significance, present meaning and future value of Guru Granth, the repository of boundless motifs, concerns, techniques and styles. All the same, for a study of the sort, they are essential otherwise the authenticity of the text to be studied remains doubtful. Since hagiographical study has reserved disdain for compositional analysis, so to contest Ernest Trumpp’s bitter critique (Adi Granth: Scripture of the Sikhs 1886, reprint 1997) of this multiplex writing, its compositional principle, musicality, philosophy and aesthetics was never the concern of its advocates swearing by it as revealed text. So far its content went, it seemed extremely shallow to him for two reasons. One, all the categories and concepts defining it were not intrinsically its own. Derived from diverse systems of the past, their reliance upon the sources was so overwhelming that they failed to cultivate original resources of their own. Second, their presentation was too repetitive and monotonous. For contesting Trumpp’s objections, to allege that he was biased, disdainful and lacking in reverence, was not proper. The proper thing to do was to see how he measured the poetic motifs, required to be reiterative and have nuances, on the scale of narrative norms, borrowed from the Bible. Likewise, the language of Guru Granth, he felt, was labyrinthine, only of archeological importance, a real treasury of the old Hindi dialects, specimen of which have been preserved therein which are not to be found anywhere else. Sticking to the 19th century philological knowledge, this view of his only denoted the presence of other languages and dialects in this magnum opus. It failed to connote the process through which Punjabi was orientating itself in diachronic as well as synchronic affiliation with other languages of the present and past of the Indian sub-continent. Two linguistic paradigms operated to impart it distinct identity, namely Sanskrit-Pali-Prakrit-Punjabi that Guru Nanak Dev and the next three Gurus developed and consolidated and Punjabi-Prakrit-Pali-Sanskrit which Guru Arjan Dev, the compiler of the magnum opus had recourse to in his large compositions. It was a different matter that in his shorter compositions, he employed the first paradigm, and that too with great dexterity. Why the second paradigm he had recourse to, was perhaps to felicitate their reception by the people beyond Punjab, in the rest of the country, particularly the eastern part of it and enhance their effect upon the vast multitude of people, attuned to the Bhakti-Kav. Interestingly enough, Bhai Gurdas, who collaborated with the Guru in this magnificent task, stuck to the first paradigm in his own Vars, which rightly hold key to the subtleties of Adi Granth, later named Guru Granth. Rather he so refined the linguistic store of the first paradigm that his syntax came to connote the best prospect for Punjabi language in the future. That this prospect has remained unrealized is because history has played havoc with all that it stood for in terms of literary production, reception and its effect.

Without going into these subtleties and complexities, even the present-day scholars of this multiplex text have thought it better to discount its literary excellence by elevating it as Bani, distinct from Poetry. The earlier scholars, from Bhai Kahn Nabha right down to Sahib Singh would not entertain this distinction at all. However the present-day scholars, Haribhajan Singh in Mull te Mallankan (value and valuation) for his persuasive and Tarlok Singh Kanwar in Guru Nanak Dev da Kav-Shastra(poetics of Guru Nanak Dev) for his scholastic skill being the most known, have opted for hermeneutic analysis though they have not attained any results beyond what has been said in the West about the Bible as a sacred vis-à-vis Poetry as profane writing. However, Sant Singh Sekhon in Punjabi Kav Shiromini1964 (sublime poetry in Punjabi) and Kishan Singh in Guru Nanak: Sikh Inqlab da Modhi 1973(Guru Nanak: the founder of sikh inqlab) have initiated historical-cum ideological study. Whereas the latter sought to identify the cognitive perspective of Guru Nanak with the ideological framework of classical Marxism, the former employed only the categories of Dialectical and Historical Materialism to unravel the originality of Guru Nanak’s creative sensibility, its past significance, present meaning and future value. Since this study grapples with certain fond compositions of Guru Nanak and his predecessors, so with its quality it has not been able to displace the dominance, accruing to the scholastic one, largely on the basis of quantity. This is the dilemma that needs urgent resolution.

(B)

In this dispensation, Kissa-Sahit, Sufi-Shairi and Var-Kav were regarded as the essential components of Punjabi literature till the end of the 19th century. Of them, the oldest was Sufi-Shairi that had its inception with Sheikh Farid in the first quarter of the 13th century. Due to the expiatory element inherent in it, Farid’s compositions obliterated the travail caused by the intrusion of Islam, at the same time that they rendered bearable the conversion to the new faith that came in its trail. So far the next two and a half centuries, the field of literary production remained almost barren. Farid’s successors relied on his compositions to disseminate their teaching, and if at all they composed any thing that was only in imitation of him, with out any experiential awareness and excellence of its own. Since Guru Arjan Dev showed the dexterity of incorporating those compositions in the Adi Granth, so the urge to compose any thing in imitation of Farid did not remain urgent.

Thus the field of Sufi-Shairi was all the more barren till the urge to disseminate the veracity, integrity and authenticity of life that Gurbani had claimed as its own, overpowered Shah Hussain. So much so, he was supposed to have approached Guru Arjan Dev for the inclusion of his Kafis in the magnum opus. So far as his independence from Shariat went, there was no reason for the Guru declining to do so. After all, it was the individual impulse of Love, shorn of all constraints, conventions and dogmas, which impelled him to compose his intensely lyrical verses. The way the rural landscape was invoked, along with its seasonal facets, natural aspects, rivers, fields, flora, fauna, bestiary and erotic attachment was extremely charming. But the essential reason that might have motivated the Guru to decline the inclusion, so far unexplained, probably was that this Sufi saint celebrated man-woman bond of the generic sort rather than the husband-wife relationship that Gurbani upheld for its generative orientation.

His successor, Bule Shah, was to uphold this element of liberty-cum-liberation with all the more urgency. He articulated how restrictions, prescriptions and precepts might lead a person nowhere close to authentic living, even with greater vehemence and defiance. For him, only Love was there to rely upon, but not till the human being entered into a state of trance so to dance like a lunatic almost. In this state, at one moment he felt as if he had taken poison and at the other that a blessing was knocking at his door. So dilemma staring Shah Hussain, persisted all the more vehemently to drive him into a position that rendered all assurances futile which the scriptural rhetoric held essential for human salvation. Even though certain Hindu and Sikh individuals could evince interest in this discourse, it was essentially of the Muslim intelligentsia, feeling estranged from the Islamic tenets on the soil of Punjab, but unable to forge an alternative vision of life. This was evident in Ali Haidar as well who regarded all instances of sexual love between Heer and Ranjha as emanations of the Divine but at the same time was anguished over the cowardly resistance, offered by the Delhi Sultanate, against Nadar Shah’s invasion over Punjab.

Within the field of Sufi poetry, reaction against this structure of feeling and experience was natural from the Muslim intelligentsia that was conservative and reposed faith in Islam. Of course, this reaction could not be of the fanatic sort, effort to direct the spirit of Love towards devotion was the best course for it to adopt. This trend began with Sultan Bahu who was of the same Sufi order to which Shah Hussain had belonged. It was this order that subsequently claimed Bulle Shah as its own. Descended from a family of Arab origin and endowed with considerable jagir by the emperor, he was of suave temperament for whom devotion and pathos were more crucial than love and passion. Though a believer in Shariat and Kalima, he would discourse on the Divine not as a lover but as a man of deep learning. At the same time, he was opposed to the vanity and hypocrisy of formal Namaz that could take a person nowhere. In the same category figured Shah Sharaf, Shah Murad and Vajid who extolled asceticism, meditation and fatalism in the same vein.

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It goes to the credit of Haribhajan Singh in India and
Nazam Hussain Sayyad in Pakistan to judge Sufi-Shairi
in terms of its literary merit.
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Studies relating to them are variegated but not much focused on their writings or the distinctions marking them from one another.. If Lajawanti Ramakrishna (Sufi Poets of Punjab 1938) went into their lineage, family-background and orientation, Mohan Singh Dewana was concerned with their genres and the influences imbibed from the Indian sources. Kapur Singh in Paras Bhag made the startling contention that to the detriment of Koranic influence, these Sufis were far more indebted to the Indian metaphysics. More appropriate was to name them the advocates of its Islamic version. In all this there was hardly any thing of literary appreciation, analysis and evaluation. It goes to the credit of Haribhajan Singh in India and Nazam Hussain Sayyad in Pakistan to judge Sufi-Shairi in terms of its literary merit. For a comprehensive grasp, it is desirable to juxtapose the points of view of both these critics who tend to elaborate them from aesthetic and cultural stand points.

In his two articles, “Punjabi Sufi-Kav” and “Kalam Sufian” available in Mull te Mulankan, Haribhajan Singh held that Sufi-Shairi, voicing the ethos of the Muslim society come into being after conversion, was essentially at peace with the new dispensation. As a result, the poets comprising this compositional practice stood for a new structure of feeling in which an alternative philosophy of life did not have any place at all. So they were under no obligation to grapple with tradition, to deconstruct or reconstruct it for propounding a philosophy of life, capable enough to replace or displace the way of living and the ethos brought into being by conversion to Islam. To celebrate what this new phenomena ordained, the employment of imagery drawn from the folklore was enough. Likewise there was no compulsion to have recourse to new syntax and diction. New stylistic strategies were also not required. From this it is not difficult to construe that the primary concern of Sufi-Shairs was to extol the ordinariness of life, even to the extent of upholding what, in the eyes of the custodians of authority, was deserving of ignominy. In this way they were poets in the first and last instance.

Likewise, in his books jointly published in Gurmukhi script as Sedhan Saran te hore Lekh 1980(directions, intimations and other articles) to which the writer of this paper contributed a detailed preface, Nazam Hussain Sayyad contended that Sufi-Shairs were essentially revolutionary by nature. The reason was that the new dispensation come in the aftermath of conversion had got bereft of all impulse for equality and consideration for humanity. So the whole social setup was characterized by inequality, authoritarianism and oppression. Professing alignment with the suffering humanity of which it was fully aware, Sufi-Shairs forwarded critique of the authority, the dominance it exercised, and superiority it professed through overt as well as covert means. The imagery drawn from the folklore, the language shorn of all ostentation and the devices natural and spontaneous to the overwhelming extent, served their purpose extremely well. Great poets they were of course, but the urge to advocate humanity’s cause and the values cherished for its emotional and experiential richness was not lacking in them at all.

Studied together, these insights seem to form two sides of the same coin. At the same time, they seem to suffer from the same lack. Though Haribhajan Singh does not say so, his observation draws only on those compositions of the Sufi-Shairs in which Love is the dominant theme. How in Shah Hussain and Bulle Shah, it incorporates layers of social critique does not concern him. In Bulle Shah this critique is explicit enough and sometimes may be missing to become integral part of the poetic text. But in both, it is no less implicit, especially when, the identification is sought with persons representing the low, excluded and condemned sections of the society, representative then of the vast multitude of the people. The difference marking them from others, as Sultan Bahu and his ilk, is set aside by both of them. Their indifference towards tradition and the absence of subversion, celebrated by Haribhajan Singh and ignored by Nazam Hussain Sayyad, is not altogether a blessing. This is another factor that attenuates the profundity of these insights, otherwise most far-reaching among studies done of Sufi-Shairs and their compositions.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Forged into literary form during the reign of Akbar,
Kissa assumed the narration, usually of a love-tale,
the elements of which were available in the folklore.
---------------------------------------------------------------

No wonder, the affiliation that Shah Hussain was said to have sought with Gurbani could not materialize. His affinity as well as of other Sufi-Shairs with Kissa-Kav and the Kissakars, whose literary production was prolific, got not only natural but poignant as well. Forged into literary form during the reign of Akbar, Kissa assumed the narration, usually of a love-tale, the elements of which were available in the folklore wherein Vars a forming the basis of musical pattern in Gurban also had their abode. These love-tales were of two types, autochthonous as of Mirza-Sahiban and those loaded with cultural content as of Heer-Ranjha. Later on, love-tales of Sohni-Mahival and Sassi-Punnu enriched this corpus to a great extent. In the reign of Akbar, were composed the first Kissas, Pilu’s Mirza-Sahiban that was fragmentary and Damodar’s Heer which was rounded and complete. In the times to follow this trend so much flourished that till the end of the 19th century, around two hundred Kissas were composed, only a few on the autochthonous tale but very many on love-tales of cultural content. Of them no less than thirty were on the love-tale Heer-Ranjha alone.

These Kissas had their beginning in invocation expanding into allegorical framework, provided by the Sufi doctrine. It would have bearing on the birth, upbringing, nature, nurture, life-experience, bewilderment, separation and tragic death of the lover and the beloved. Become all-encompassing surrogate of life, its purpose, meaning and value, Love, as ishaq-hakiki so defined their union that all social customs, ceremonies, rituals, prescriptions and precepts, proved not only futile but totally false as well. If at all there was any impediment that the lovers had to beware of, it was sexual union i. e. ishaq-mijaji before all opposition had vanished into thin air. In Damodar’s Heer, confrontation between the two sides is not relentless to the core, showing thereby that in the rural society of the time, authoritarianism had not got so well entrenched. It went on deepening to reach a dead end in the time when confrontation between the contending forces reached its climax in the 18th century and Waris Shah composed his Heer, without doubt the greatest masterpiece in this literary form. During the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, new motifs, of travel to strange lands, across oceans, encounters with supernatural beings and destined joys and sorrows embedded themselves in the Kissas rendering them as compositions not so much of creative as professional Kissakars. In the colonial era, titillation became the norm that the Kissakars sought to achieve with eye on the vicarious tastes of readers and listeners drawn from their own communities and castes. This betokened the end of this literary form as a creative force, to be replaced by the novel with the appearance of modern writing in Punjabi literature.

This corpus of Punjabi literature has been studied from several angles but there are a couple of things common to them. These angles are of ideological, cultural, signifying and historical sort, propounded by Sant Singh Sekhon, Attar Singh, Nazam Hussain Sayyad and J. S. Grewal, respectively. In several articles from the fifties to detailed Introduction to his translation of this masterpiece into English published in the seventies as the Love-Tale of Heer Ranjha, 1976 , Sekhon held that explication of ideology was confined to the allegorical framework, suffused with categories and concepts drawn from the Sufi doctrine. Its excellence was somewhere else, in the elaborate description to which the social, historical and spiritual aspects of the life of the age were subjected in the text itself. So the masterpiece projected two structures, which were autonomous though not autarkic. Nazam Hussain Sayyad in Sedhan Saran te hore Lekh maintained that these two structures were like musical patterns voicing opposed feelings, emotions and values. The musical pattern voicing the significance of customs, rites, rituals, prescriptions and precepts was high sounding that caused more and more distraction to the readers and listeners. The musical pattern voicing the feelings of Love between the hero and the heroine, the eternal bond that they felt was divinely ordained, and their promise to fulfill it till death and even beyond was low-toned. Mysteriously enough, it went on exercising more and more sway on them as the narration of the love-tale went ahead towards its denouement. To establish the veracity of the allegorical framework by rewording it in aesthetic terms was the purpose of the scholar who in the Sufi content found no inadequacy or contradiction of the sort.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carried away by the charm of the lovers’ rendezvous
in the jungle or their dalliance by the riverbed, ishak-mijaji
would seem raison d etre for description and narration.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Responsive to the contentions of both, Attar Singh in Dristkone 1963 (point of view) sought to conclude that the two structures, comprising the masterpiece, represented the desire for limitless freedom so essential for full self-realization by the individual being and the restriction that social organization has to impose for safeguarding it from dissolution. A sort of Freudian justification was that he awarded to the descriptive structure in which Sekhon read all the excellence of the masterpiece but for Nazam was inauthentic to the core. For J. S. Grewal, if the allegorical framework expressed Waris Shah’s understanding of the depth of life, its norms and values, the elaborate description forwarded the poet’s vast knowledge of its institutions and structures. His detailed paper, “The World of Waris” 1983 sought to extol all that could be gathered in support of the poet’s deep understanding and extensive knowledge of life. The problem with all this was that subject matter got identical with the truth content.

The fact of the matter is that there is a lot of asymmetry prevailing between the two structures in the text of this masterpiece. The allegorical framework does explain the Sufi doctrine but its dissemination in the text remains problematic that gets sometimes paradoxical even. In the course of description so much stress gets laid upon immanence that the central tenet of Sufism, of remaining steadfast on ishaq-hakiki, is not observed in letter and spirit. Carried away by the charm of the lovers’ rendezvous in the jungle or their dalliance by the riverbed, that ishak-mijaji would seem raison d’etre for description and narration. This renders the text oscillating that further becomes of the overreaching type as well. As a result of them, description, more so discourse get beyond the control of the writer just as Hamlet is believed to have done with Shakespeare. Is it not due to this that this masterpiece means something to all? Whether a Muslim, Hindu or Sikh, of whichever lineage or affiliation, nothing comes in the way of reception and its effect. It is a different matter that unlike Gurbani, it does not mean every thing to some.

In counterpoint to Kissa Sahit, arose Var Sahit that also formed a trajectory. It had its origin in oral literature wherein figured fragmented narratives about battles between collaterals or Sardars of nearby states. Feelings of rivalry and jealousy locked them into internecine battles from which only death could deliver them. Remarkably enough, they suggested Raag set to which compositions of Gurbani were to be recited or sung. This led to the composition of spiritual Vars by the first five Gurus. Rather than the field outside, the terrain for fighting spiritual battles in them between the contending forces was the interior landscape. As Guru Nanak Dev’s Asa di Var made it quite clear the spiritual battles had intellectual, cultural, social and even political dimensions. To come into their own, their creators, Guru Nanak Dev to the incomparable extent, employed language pertaining to all aspects of life in a style holding background, struggle for articulation at several levels more important than foreground and rhetorical expression.

Key to Guru Granth as the oeuvre of Bhai Gurdas was believed to be, the next stage was the educative Var of which the best illustrations were his writings in this genre. Through pure and pristine expression, at the same time so supple and rich, Bhai Gurdas not only made the teaching of Gurbani easy to grasp but also put the whole diversity of life in perspective. No wonder, his Vars overflowed with references to the political, social and cultural aspects of life, to castes and sub castes, ranging from the most exalted to the most derided ones, to marital practices of polygamy, polyandry and divorce, to professions, vocations including their malpractices and the ignominy that resulted from them. Those references went across time and space, so as to be intellectual surrogates of spiritual meanings so remarkably upheld in the spiritual Vars. By asserting the interchangeable position of the Guru and the Sikh, they proved indispensable for grasping as intellectual what was essentially spiritual.

-------------------------------------------------------------
In bitter struggle against the Mughal rulers as the
Sikh community was locked, these Vars were
composed by writers belonging to it.
-------------------------------------------------------------

The next stage was of actual struggle; to cover it martial Var was written of which the best example was Chandi di Var by Guru Bobind Singh. In this type of writing, language was employed as if to wage a formidable war, so words got conspicuous for their sounds and their phonetic aspect got the better of their semantics. Related to it was Var of Martyrdom in which the steadfastness of Sikh martyrs in face of death by execution was described. As against the phonetic aspect of words, this type of writing stressed their emotional content through the abundant employment of assonance, alliteration and consonance. In bitter struggle against the Mughal rulers as the Sikh community was locked, these Vars were composed by writers belonging to it. By this time, there occurred a change in dispensation that forced the Muslims, particularly those inclined towards Sufism to reconsider their position and redefine their identity. As invasions from across the border became more current and rulers of Delhi left them to their own plight, they realized that their regional identity was primary and all else, pertaining to religion etc was secondary in comparison.

This reconsideration, coupled with redefinition, impelled them to compose patriotic Vars of which Nadar Shah di Var by Nijabat was worth mentioning. If the writer could not close his eyes to the fearlessness with which the invasion was launched, he also could not overlook the desperate resistance put up by native rulers. Its excellence was attained in Shah Mohammad’s Jangnama Singhan te Frangian that entitles the writer to be acclaimed the national poet of Punjab, not only in retrospect but prospect as well. Written in the aftermath of chaos prevailing in Punjab as a result of the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, it narrates the battles of the first Anglo Sikh War. Not only as an observer of the turmoil prevailing first in the court, then in the army and last of all in the life around, is the poet remarkably dispassionate, he is no less so of battles fought against the enemy in a spirit of oscillation and overreaching, defeat in spite of display of resistance, shameful submission of the entire population to the foreign rule and the uncertainty to prevail in Punjab for a long time to come. Going above and beyond the Var genre, what the writing of it achieved, may not be possible to specify in full. But there can be no denying of its past significance, present meaning and future value.

Except occasional articles on individual Vars, on Shah Mohammad’s Jangnama in particular, nothing perceptive has been written so far on this branch of Punjabi literature. Scattered comments made here and there by Sant Singh Sekhon, Attar Singh, Haribhajan Singh are available but they do no justice to the trajectory of this form and the acmes of its achievement. So far consideration of its trajectory goes, not more than a couple of articles are available. Even at the cost of seeming immodest, the writer of this bibliographical paper, can not do without referring to his articles to be found in his three books, Punjabi Sabhiachar: Praman te Pratiman 1986 (Punjabi culture; evidences and signs), and Punar Samvad 1994 (renewed discourse) and Madhkali Path te Samkali Chintan 2005 (medieval text, modern thinking).

Bibliography

Attar Singh, Drishtikon, Lahore Book Shop, Ludhiana, 1963.
Attar Singh, Secularization of Modern Punjabi Poetry, Punjab Prakashan, Chandigarh, 1988
Budh Singh; Bawa, Bambiha Bol, Lahore Book Shop, Ludhiana, 1950(reprint)
Budh Singh; Bawa, Koel Koo, Lahore Book Shop, Ludhiana, 1948(reprint).
Budh Singh; Bawa, Hans Chog, Lahore Book Shop, Ludhiana, 1950(reprint)
Ernest Trumpp, The Adi Granth: Sacred Scripture of the Sikhs, Munshi Ram & Manohar Lal, New Delhi 1997( reprint)
Gopal Singh, Punjabi Sahit da Itihas, Punjabi Academy, New Delhi, 2nd Ed. 1950
Gopal Singh, Punjabi Sahit da Itihas, Panjab University Publication Bureau, Chandigarh, 1962.
Gurinder Singh Mann, The Making Of Sikh Scripture, Oxford University New Delhi, 2001
Haribhajan Singh, Mull te Mullankan, Guru Nanak Dev University Amritsar, 2002(reprint)
Kishan Singh, Sikh Inqlab Da Modhi Guru Nanak, Punjabi Sahit Akademy, Ludhiana, 1973
Mohan Singh Dewana, A History of Punjabi Literature (1100-1932), Bharat Prakashan Jalandhar, 1971.
Mohan Singh Dewana, Punjabi Adab di Mukhtsar Tareekh, Part 1-From AD850 to 1708, Publisher not mentioned, 1932.
Pashaura Singh, The Guru Granth Sahib:Canon, Meaning and Authority, Oxford University, New Delhi, 2003.
Ravinder Singh Ravi, America di Navin Alochna Pranali, Sedh Prakashan, Patiala, 1982.
Sant Singh Sekhon, Punjabi Boli da Ithas, Language Department Punjab, Patiala
Sant Singh Sekhon, Bhai Veer Singh te Uhunan da Yug, , Lahore Book Shop, Ludhiana, 1964.
Sant Singh Sekhon, Punjabi Kav Shiromni, Lahore Book Shop, Ludhiana, 2nd Ed. 2001.(1964)
Sant Singh Sekhon, Bhai Gurdas, Lahore Book Shop, Ludhiana, 1993
Sant Singh Sekhon, A History of Punjabi Literature, Punjabi University, Patiala, 1993
Sant Singh Sekhon, A History of Punjabi Literature, Punjabi University, Patiala, 1995
Serebryakov. I., Punjabi Sahit, New Age Book Centre, Amritsar, 1971.
Tarlok Singh Kanwar, Guru Nanak Dev da Kav-Shastra, Gurmat Gyan Sagar, Ludhiana, 1990
Tejwant Singh Gill, Punjabi Sabhiarchar :Praman te Pratiman, Sahit Kala Parkashan, Ludhiana, 1986
Tejwant Singh Gill, Punar Samvad, Waris Shah Foundation, Amritsar1994
Tejwant Singh Gill, Region/ Country Configuration in Punjabi Literature, Echo Publishers, Ludhiana 1995
Tejwant Singh Gill, Punjabi Bhasa te Sahit, Waris Shah Foundation, Amritsar, 1997
Tejwant Singh Gill, Madhkali Path: Samkali Chintan, Chetna Parkashan, Ludhiana, 2005

Bathinda August 6:
            The problem of showing fake admissions of students in their official registers by the government schools has emerged as a major challenge for the higher authorities of the State Education Department, who were working hard to bring about educational reforms.
The Director General of School Education (DGSE), Punjab, had recently directed all district education officers (secondary education) to analyse the ratio between the number of students and the posts of teachers sanctioned for each school of their districts.
After compiling the report, the DEOs had to send their recommendations for rationalising the posts of the teachers. Following the orders, the DEOs, depending upon the data sent by the principals and school heads, prepared the reports and submitted it to the DGSE, Punjab.
However, during the inspection of the reports, some higher authorities of the Education Department observed that the reports were far removed from the actual data. Fearing the abolition of teachers’ posts in their respective schools, a number of principals and school heads were found accused of enrolling fake admissions of a large number of students.
Sources in the Education Department informed that the discrepancy came to light, when the principals of some schools, who were already on the scanner of the Education Department, tampered with the admissions and attendance records. Heads of some schools, where the number of students was negligible, instead of giving the real data, tampered with the attendance register and entered a number of fake admissions, just to avoid the declaration of a number of sanctioned posts as surplus, informed a senior Education Department official.
Taking serious notice of the irregularity, DGSE, Punjab, Krishan Kumar directed all DEOs to ask school heads and principals to immediately rectify the irregularity and resend a fresh report, which would be further submitted to the DGSE. In a communiqué, a copy of which is with media, the DGSE had termed the development as “serious in nature.” Adding further, he stated that special teams were being constituted to conduct raids in the schools and if the discrepancy was found, the school heads and principals concerned, would have to face suspension.

By Reginald Massey

The Dawn: June 7, 2009


Now in his ninth decade, writer, editor, translator, activist and bon vivant Khushwant Singh was born in Hadali, a Muslim majority village a few miles west of the river Jhelum. His was a wealthy family (his father was made a Knight of the British Empire) and with money come useful connections and a certain self confidence.


After St. Stephen’s in Delhi he decided on Government College, Lahore. Later, at King’s College, London and the Inner Temple he did not shine but managed to pass his examinations. He couldn’t get into the Indian Civil Service then the favourite destination of those destined for heaven on earth. But that was just as well.


For we would have been deprived of an enfant terrible who, even in his advanced years, continues to deflate the pompous and expose the evil doers. The statement that it is only the rich who can afford to be generous certainly rings true in his case.


But he is more than generous, especially to writers, actors and artists. I speak from personal experience; to me he has been the very soul of kindness.


In his life as an activist and journalist he has been true to himself and his belief in democracy, justice, secularism, friendship, decency and fair play has never wavered; not even in the darkest days of mutual slaughter in 1947. He is an avowed agnostic who ought really to be proclaimed an iconic Pir by his fellow agnostics the world over.

He recognises that he’s far from the first flush of youth but continues to fight the good fight for insaf and insanyat; not with the kirpan of his ancestors but with the pen. His widely syndicated column With Malice Towards One and All has for many years disturbed the slumbers of hundreds of corrupt Indian politicians, policemen, bureaucrats and others who labour under the impression that they are above the law.


The day after the old warhorse has named names, the named ones spend sleepless nights tossing and turning wondering when the fraud squad armed with arrest warrants is likely to pay them an unfriendly visit. Many catch the first plane out of the country to ‘consult medical opinion’ about some rare ailment that has suddenly afflicted them. The foolish ones threaten libel action but soon learn the error of their ways.


 It was when he edited The Illustrated Weekly of India that he really set the cat amongst the pigeons. He hired the likes of Qurratulain Hyder, already a well known Urdu novelist, and M.J. Akbar who rose to the top of the profession of journalism. They and their bloodhounds wrote investigative, highly charged pieces that lambasted hypocrisy, humbug and corruption.

The magazine was ailing when Singh took over but soon circulation soared; within five years it quadrupled. The very people who savoured the juicy, sexed up offerings each week called it a pornographic publication. Singh and his team sat back and smiled. It was, they claimed, yet another example of the hypocrisy that pervaded the country.
In May 1975 Mrs Gandhi imposed the notorious Emergency. Journalists were jailed and many went into hiding but Singh managed to survive the clampdown. Apparently he flattered, coaxed and charmed the prime minister and miraculously circumvented the draconian censorship ordinances.

Others were not so fortunate. They couldn’t take the tension. His friend Kishan Chand scribbled a short defiant note in Urdu (Zillat say maut acchi hai) and threw himself into a well. Scores of intellectuals, many upstanding men, were incarcerated. ‘One thing Mrs Gandhi did not suffer from was compassion,’ records Singh.


 Later, at the Hindustan Times which was once headed by the Mahatma’s youngest son Devdas Gandhi, he continued the crusade. He was consulted by the great, the good and the not so good and had access to Mrs Gandhi. Those who envied him started calling him ‘Khushamadi Singh’.


Conspiracy theorists claimed that he was a member of ‘Madam’s kitchen cabinet’. During this time he was also a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament, and counselled the powers in Delhi on the explosive situation in the Punjab.


At the same time he had nothing but scorn for the likes of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who demanded an independent Sikh state, and the Akali Party whom he branded ‘a bunch of narrow-minded bigots’.

The defining moment came when on June 5, 1984, ‘Madam’ ordered the army to storm the Golden Temple. Many moderate Sikhs threw up their hands in horror and lamented that even the tyrant Aurangzeb never went that far.
Singh immediately returned the state honour bestowed on him and wrote a string of tirades against the Amritsar massacre. And after Mrs Gandhi’s assassination when the Sikhs of Delhi were butchered he sought sanctuary in the Swedish Embassy.


He said that he was reduced to becoming a refugee in his own country. It is no wonder that he
is passionately in love with the poetry of Faiz.


He makes no secret of his admiration for many Islamic ideals. His translations of Urdu poetry (especially Iqbal’s Shikwa and Jawab-i-Shikwa) are widely read and his autobiography is punctuated with telling quotations from Farsi and Urdu. Always on the side of the underdog, he takes up cudgels for all minority interests.


A couple of years ago I drew his attention to the fact that though Dalits in India (formerly the Untouchables) received preferential treatment with regard to government jobs and admission to medical colleges, Christians from Dalit families were denied such treatment.


He immediately crafted a well-argued article that went thus: A man who changes his religious beliefs (purely his personal choice) does not change his socio-economic-educational status, hence the spirit of the Indian constitution expected that he be afforded as much assistance as his depressed and exploited fellow citizens.


Khushwant Singh is a notable naturalist and has often warned about environmental disaster resulting from pollution caused by massive unplanned industrial development. He has written lovingly about birds, flowers, trees and wild animals. Among his good friends were Sir Peter Scott (son of Scott of the Antarctic and founder of the Severn Wildlife Trust) and Dr Salim Ali, the celebrated ornithologist known as the ‘Birdman of India’.


His genuine friendship with Muslims on both sides of the Indo-Pakistan border is the reason why some consider him soft towards Pakistan. A few even accuse him of being a Pakistani spy living in the heart of New Delhi. He revels in these descriptions and with a glint in his eye downs another Scotch. His visits to Pakistan were reported in detail but few are aware of the critical comments about Pakistan that he made while on Pakistani soil.


He was the only Indian journalist present in Islamabad when Z.A. Bhutto was hanged. He spoke bluntly with General Tikka Khan about the core reasons why Bangladesh came into being. His meeting with General Zia, a fellow Stephenian, was frank.


It was most probably after interviewing Zia that he observed: ‘In my entire life I have never encountered another people as reckless in their generosity as Punjabi Mussalmans.


‘Their logic is simple: Punjabis are the world’s elite; Islam is the best of all religions. Put the two together and you get the best people in the world. When puritanical, they can be insufferably narrow-minded and fanatical.


‘A call to jihad brings out their macho, militant zeal to do or die. Then it is best to keep out of their way. I have a simple rule: avoid making friends with a Punjabi Pakistani who prays five times a day, fasts during Ramadan — and does not drink.’
Singh’s History of the Sikhs, in two volumes, is vastly readable, dispassionate and reliable while his novel Train to Pakistan, which was made into a film, is an honest account of the holocaust that engulfed the Punjab during the Partition.
The story is soaked in turmoil and tragedy; several passages in it are reminiscent of Manto and Amrita Pritam. The Company of Women, I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale and Delhi are his other significant contributions to literature from the subcontinent.


When he was approaching 90 he published his autobiography titled Truth, Love and a Little Malice. In it he says that when his time comes he would like to go as Iqbal exhorted strong men to go:
Nishaan-i-mard-i-Momin ba too goyam?


Choon marg aayad, tabassum bar lab-i-ost (You ask me for the signs of a man of faith? / When death comes to him he has a smile on his lips) In the meantime he holds court every evening in his flat in Sujan Singh Park, a huge complex in the centre of Delhi which is owned by his family trust.


The best minds congregate there to exchange news and views. Sujan Singh Park is, in fact, a world class think tank. And it was here that the saintly President Abdul Kalam came to invest Khushwant Singh with an award higher even than the one he had returned many years ago.

Surinder Kaur: A Life Well Sung

– Nirupama Dutt –

This story was written after a series of interviews with Surinder Kaur in April, 2000, in her North Riveira home in Delhi before she moved to Panchkula near Chandigarh to live with her daughter

 

It is clear summer night sky and the whole family has spread out their charpais on the sprawling terrace of a Chandigarh home. Lying on the cool and white sheets beneath the gentle moonlight, it is the pleasant half-hour of drinking the last tumbler of water from the earthen surahi, with its slim long neck and a mouth shapes like a lion’s head, counting the brightly shining stars and slipping into blissful sleep. Just as the eyelids are drooping, the oldest of my brothers, a college student not yet 20, gets up with a start and shouts: “Just listen, who is singing?”
Surinder Kaur.
Photo courtesy Iqbal Mahal

The attention of the whole family is drawn to the Punjabi song that is heard faintly as it is being piped from some loudspeaker far away. This summer night’s tale dates back to 40 years when the Chandigarh , the city of squares, was still being built and sound travelled from one end to another. Before the voice of the singer could be identified, my brother exclaimed, “It is Surinder Kaur. It is her voice. No one else can sing like this.” Without waiting for even a moment, he rushes into the house, changes into trousers, puts him autograph book into his pocket, takes out his bicycle and rides away after the voice.

It is past midnight when he returns humming: Lathe di chaddar utte saleti rang mahia ਲੱਠੇ ਦੀ ਚਾਦਰ ਉੱਤੇ ਸਲੇਟੀ ਰੰਗ ਮਾਹੀਆ (the cotton cloth has been coloured grey, my love). He has much to tell and it turns out to be a very exciting night. Something which I can still recall so vividly four decades later. Big brother is full of the songs he heard and he proudly shows us the autography book in which Surinder has written out a line of one of her favourite sons — Nimmi nimmi tārean di lo ਨਿੰਮੀ ਨਿੰਮੀ ਤਾਰਿਆਂ ਦੀ ਲੋਅ (Softly the stars glow) – and signed her name below. The line is from a song by the famous Punjabi poet, Amrita Pritam. This is my first introduction to a voice called Surinder Kaur who can cause such a stir that people do not mind losing a good summer night’s sleep for her music.


Prakash Kaur (left) and Surinder Kaur. In the middle is Deedar Singh Pardesi. Nairobi . 1967

Such is the magic this singer cast right from the moment she recorded her first song at the Lahore Radio Station some 57 years ago. But how did this girl from an orthodox, middle class Khatri Sikh family get to learn music and actually sing on the radio? For those were times when this art was restricted to professional singers or tawaifs of ‘ill’ fame from Hira Mandi.

Looking back at what seems long-long ago, Surinder sitting in her little lawn in her Riviera Apartments home in north Delhi says, “When I was growing up, girls from respectable families just did not sing except at family weddings and functions at home. That too only before an all-woman audience. The only other singing allowed to girls from the Guru Granth Sahib. Our mother Maya Devi would sing folk songs at home and so the first lessons in music came from her. My elder sister Prakash Kaur, who was 11 years older to me, showed a talent for singing and wished to learn music. Our father, Jiwan Singh, was a ‘professor’ of chemistry in Government College , Lahore , and a progressive person. But even he did not quite like the idea that my sister should learn music professionally. My mother, of course, was horrified. But my eldest brother Harbans Singh, a police officer, was sensitive to the arts and he took a stand that if Prakash Behanji showed a talent for music she should be allowed to get trained.”

So Prakash started taking lessons in Hindustani classical vocal music from Master Inayat Husain who was also to become Surinder’s first Guru. In Punjabi there is a boli (a short verse sung to the giddha dance) which says, nachan wale di addi nahi rehandi, Gaon wale da moohn, Hania taahli te, Ghughi kare ghoon ghoon ਨੱਚਣ ਵਾਲ਼ੇ ਦੀ ਅੱਡੀ ਨਹੀਂ ਰਹਿੰਦੀ, ਗਾਉਣ ਵਾਲ਼ੇ ਦਾ ਮੂੰਹ/ ਹਾਣੀਆਂ ਟਾਹਲੀ ‘ਤੇ ਘੁੱਗੀ ਕਰੇ ਘੂੰ ਘੂੰ (The heel of a dancer will not rest, the lips of a singer will not shut; my companion, the dove sits on the branch cooing).

So it was with these two singing sisters. Their voice just could not be silenced, even as relatives tattled and their mothers had to cut a sorry figure giving all kinds of explanations. “It was not easy to go on with our practice. The neighbourhood was scandalised that the daughters of the sardars were singing. So for our riāz, we would shut the doors, windows and even the ventilators lest the sound of music travelled outside,” says Surinder.

When Surinder went for audition to Radio Lahore way back in 1943, Prakash Kaur was already a radio singer. “My older sister made things easier for me in a way. Those were the days of Shamshad Begum, Zeenat Begum and Umraia Jaan, all very great singers in their own right but all coming from families of professional singers and thus singing was no taboo for them. Prakash Behanji was the first ‘Kaur’ to break the taboos of her community and sing on the radio. And hold her own among the abundant talent. “I went for auditioning for the children’s programme. But I was chosen for the adults’ section. I naturally felt very proud of myself. I recorded the first song with my sister. We were to sing many duets together in times to come,” recalls Surinder.

The first song they sang together on the radio was a sad soulful number sung when the bride is leaving the parent’s house to make a home with her husband and his family. It captures the tense and intense moments when the mother and daughter sit together for a while before the final parting. It goes thus: Maavan te Dhian ral baithiyan ni maye; Koi kardian galorhian; Kananka lamiyan dhinakyon jamian ni maye ਮਾਵਾਂ ਤੇ ਧੀਆਂ ਰਲ਼ ਬੈਠੀਆਂ ਨੀ ਮਾਏਂ, ਕੋਈ ਕਰਦੀਆਂ ਗੱਲੋੜੀਆਂ; ਕਣਕਾਂ ਲੰਮੀਆਂ ਧੀਆਂ ਕਿਉਂ ਜੰਮੀਆਂ ਨੀ ਮਾਏਂ (Mother and daughter sit together a while talking to each other; the wheat stalks have grown and why were daughters born, my mother).

“We had heard our mother singing this song in long plaintive tones. For the recording we gave a livelier beat while retaining its intensity. This song was on the lips of every Punjabi woman at that time and retains its popularity till date. It is my favourite song too,” says Surinder, her voice choking with emotion, “Everyone has daughters and the sad part it that daughters have to go away one day. I have myself given away three daughters in marriage. In 1993, I was invited to England and America for concerts to celebrate 50 years of my singing. For this song, the stage was shared with me by my daughter Dolly Guleria, a singer in her own right, and grand-daughter Sunaini, who has also learnt music. As we were singing, I noticed my daughter was weeping and there were tears in the eyes of all the women in the audience. Some were even sobbing aloud. Such is the cathartic power of music.”

It is known that the deepest melodies come from those who are suffering the most: the slaves in chains, martyrs going to the gallows, labourers bearing a heavy burden, fishermen braving storms in frail boats and women confined to the four walls of the home. Women’s songs in any language or culture have to them a special laxative quality.

As for the songs of the soil of Punjab , one hears of the possible and the impossible sung with a never-before gusto. All the complaints against the husband are aired, the tormenting mother-in-law is actually given a thrashing, the vicious sister-in-law is called vile names, the awful other woman is drowned in the Holy Ganga and even the God up there in the heaven is not spared and is chided for making a woman’s life so difficult. Such were the songs that the Kaur sisters took out of the domestic realm and sung them over the radio and on the stage. “I do not like to boast. Nature bestowed me with talent. But one thing I like to take pride in is that we took the women’s songs out of the confines of the home to the streets of villages and cities not just in Punjab but all over the world,” says Surinder.

How come Surinder was not offered a role in films given her good looks combined with a great voice for those were the days of singing stars and Lahore was a film city? “It did happen. One day a person approached me at the radio station and asked me to come to the Pancholi Studios. I thought that I was being called for playback singing. When I reached there. I was given a paper with some dialogues written on it and asked to read it out. I was always bold and never hesitated. When I finished reading the page, I was told that the screen test was successful and that I had been selected for the second lead in the film. At this, I started trembling with fear. For once, even I was afraid. I refused the role because in my mind there was a notion, however misplaced, that acting was something bad. Singing was my first love and so I sang and sang and hope to sing till the end of my life,” says Surinder.

Even now in the evening of her life when concerts are few and far between and the stamina is not what it once used to be, the singer still takes out her harmonium and practices every day. Or as she waters the plants in her well-tended garden, she hums to herself, Ni Main jaana rabb de kol ਨੀ ਮੈਂ ਜਾਣਾ ਰੱਬ ਦੇ ਕੋਲ਼ (I have to go to God one day). Written and composed by her in the Sufi style, it is one of the songs very dear to her. And she likes to listen to the music of bade Ghulam Ali Khan Mehdi Hasan, Nusrat Fateh Ali and Tufail Niazi.

In most cases the creative career of a woman is cut short the moment she marries. But Surinder was lucky to find a husband who not only loved her but also admired her voice. She was married at Lahore when still in her teens to Joginder Singh, a lecturer of psychology. “I couldn’t have asked for a better husband. I was a singer who had just done her Matric and not very good at her studies. He was an educated and cultured man and among his friends were people like the playwright Balwant Gargi, poet Amrita Pritam, opera director Sheela Bhatia and so many others. Not only did he allow me to continue singing but he nurtured my talent,” she says.
After the Partition, the young couple moved to Bombay . There, for the first time, Surinder sang songs in Hindi. It was a film called Shaheed with the freedom struggle in the backdrop, starring Dilip Kumar and Kamini Kaushal. Surinder sang three sons for it and one was to become an all-time hit: Badnām na ho jāye mohabbat ka fasana; Ai dard bhare ansooyon aankhon mein na aana (Please don’t come to my eyes, sorrowful tears, lest my story of love be mocked at). Go to her house and her cook Paan Dev, a Garhwali who has been with her for the past 44 years will make it a point to play this record. However, the Bombay climate did not agree with her and they moved to Delhi .

It was in Delhi that her talent took on many new dimensions. “I resumed my training in classical music with Ustad Abdul Rehman Khan for my Guru. It was here that I came into contact with music composer Panna Lal Kathak who was an exceptionally talented man and who composed many of the songs that I sang. Every other evening there would be a mehfil in our home for my husband loved music,” she recounts. It was in this period that Surinder moved from folk songs to sing literary compositions by poets like Amrita Pritam, Mohan Singh, Nand Lal Noorpuri and Shiv Kumar. She was the singing star in a number of Sheela Bhatia’s operas. In 1952, she went as a delegate to Russia . This delegation included many famous artists including Nargis, Raj Kapoor, Balraj Sahni, Nirupa Roy and singer Aasa Singh Mastana. “On returning to India , Mastana and I formed a singing pair on stage. We sang very few duets and taoppas, but we became a very popular team. I felt very sad when he died” says Surinder.

Surinder continued to remain a formidable name in the singing arena. Even though she had two sisters who sang, Prakash and Narendra, it was she who got unparalleled acclaim and overshadowed all others as far as the singing of Punjabi songs went. In the villages they would say, Ajj Surinder Kaur ne akharha lagana hai ਅੱਜ ਸੁਰਿੰਦਰ ਕੁਰ ਨੇ ‘ਖਾੜਾ ਲਾਉਣੈ. Loosely translated this would mean that “Surinder kaur is the star of the ‘wrestling ring’ today.” Remembering this Surinder laughs and says, “Yes, singing would often be equated with wrestling in Punjab . But singing does require energy. I remember Shamshad Begum, who loved me very much, would roll up her sleeves and advise me that I should take milk and almonds. Singing is like kushti (wrestling) she would say.”

The Eighties brought about a change of tastes in Punjabi music. The beat changed as did the rhythm and the beginnings of Punjabi pop were made by Gurdas Mann and Malkit Singh, who danced as they sang to elaborate electronic music. These were the days of Dil da mamla and Tutak tutak tutian. So some 20 years after I had been first introduced to Surinder on a starlit night on the terrace of our Chandigarh home, I sadly watched another spectacles during the annual Rose Garden Festival. The grand dame of Punjabi music got up onto the stage with her little bunch of bells in her hands to sing her heart out. But the crowd of young people started hooting for they wanted her off the stage and Gurdas Mann on. While this was a sacrilege to the admirers of Surinder, it was a shock to the singer too. She who had ruled the stage so that even the birds stopped chirping to listen to her, could not hold back her anger. Snatching the mike, she shouted, “Today, you are hooting me out. But mind you, one day you will remember that there used to be a Surinder Kaur.”

These were certainly prophetic words. For when in the fiftieth year of India’s Independence, HMV brought out a collector’s set of five cassettes on “50 Years of Punjabi Music,” which had old timers like Shamshad Begum, Yamla Jat, Rangila and newcomers like Gurdas Mann and Daler Mehndi, nearly two cassettes were dedicated to the songs of Prakash and Surinder. Their third sister, Narinder, too sang. “So many of my people are gone. The greatest loss was the death of my husband Joginder Singh, who was my friend, philosopher and guide. I can never recall him saying a harsh word to me. He always called me Surinderji. There was between us a complete understanding. Now when I find couples squabbling, even my own daughters and sons-in-law, I just cannot figure out what they are fighting about. Prakash Behanji’s death was a big loss to me and so also Narinder’s. But that is life,” she says.
The gate outside her home still bears a nameplate with two names – Joginder Singh and Surinder Kaur. “I moved to this house from Model Town after his death, roses just did not bloom in my garden. I kept the nameplate as it was. It pained me to remove his name. During the killings of the Sikhs in November, 1984, my neighbours got worried for me. They asked me to take off the nameplate. But I refused. If death had to come thus, let it. But they took off the nameplate without telling me. When normalcy returned, I put the nameplate right back,” she says.

Losing the strong emotional anchor she had in her husband and losing out the large masses to Punjabi pop, Surinder went through some years of depression. Her daughter Dolly recalls, “For a while Mama was very despondent. She felt that she had lost the purpose of life. But we three sisters supported her emotionally. She also turned to prayer and reading the Guru Granth Sahib. This helped her a lot. So also did her many admirers who continued to yearn for her songs.”

So Surinder turned to smaller concerts with more discerning audience. And her fans trail her still. Recently during the SAARC writers’ conference in New Delhi, Urdu poet Ahmad Faraz who was here from Pakistan made a big effort to meet her but she was away to her daughter in Panchkula near Chandigarh. “Surinder hasa great fan following on the other side of the border. Some years ago, she was there and her singing of the Batalvi song – Loki poojan rabb te main tera birharha  ਲੋਕੀਂ ਪੂਜਣ ਰੱਬ ਤੇ ਮੈਂ ਤੇਰਾ ਬ੍ਰਿਹੜਾ (People worship God but I worship your memory) was just wonderful. I want to hear the song once more from her,” said Faraz.

Surinder’s visit to Pakistan some years ago was preceded by a very interesting incident. Dolly was giving a performance in London . During the concert, she received a chit. She thought that it was a request for a song but it turned out to be a request by someone called Z.A. Chaudhri to meet her after the performance. “After the performance an ageing couple came to me and the man handed me a small packet and asked me to open it. I opened it and say that it was an album. It contained some pictures of a house that I could not recognise,” recalls Dolly. Chaudhri then told me that it was Mama’s parental house at Lahore which had been allotted to them after Partition. “After my tour of London , I went to new Jersey where Mama was staying with one of my sisters. I gave her the album. Mama, opened it and wasn’t she overjoyed? There was major excitement that night as Mama went over picture after picture recalling the old times,” says Dolly.

Surinder says that once a newspaper asked her on what her unrealised wish was. And she told him that it was to go hack once to Lahore and see the home she was born in. This happened some years ago when Surinder went with a cultural delegation to Pakistan . “I visited our house there. The street is still named after my father and called Bishan Street . And the house is still named after my mother’ it bears the plaque ‘Maya Bhawan’. What made me happier still was the fact that I met many of the old people, including my classmates. They gave me so much of love. And I sang out my heart to them as never before,” she says.

What strikes one as one visits her at her home in New Delhi is that Surinder lives with a contentment of a life well-sung. There is a library full of the books of her husband. Her own awards lie scattered around. She literary has awards by the dozens including the Sangeet Natak Akademi award, Padmashri and the Punjab Sangeet Natak Akademi award. Most of the awards are kept dusted and polished by Paan Dev and his wife in the kitchen. “My greatest award has been the appreciation that I have got from my listeners,” she says. For summers she goes to her daughters Nandini and Pramodini in New Jersey . Her family here is Paan Dev, his wife and their young son whom she is educating. Paan Dev says, “She has been my mother and she arranged and bore the expense for the marriages of my three daughters,” he says. And Surinder plans to move with them to Punjab . “After the partition, I never could live in Punjab . But now I am going to sell this house and buy myself a house in Mohali. My daughter, Dolly, is in Panchkula but that comes in Haryana. I want to breathe my last in Punjab and Mohali is the nearest place in Punjab to Panchkula,” she says. Well, the nightingale must fly home singing, as she always did, in Punjabi.

Chennai August 5:
            Is there an end to this charade? This is the poser confronting hockey community as Hockey India is set for elections on Thursday thanks to a directive from the Supreme Court.
What the equations will be are unfathomable when the three-time Olympian Pargat Singh (45) takes on veteran administrator Vidya Stokes (83) for the post of president. Given the complexities that arose while compiling the Electoral College, it is difficult to discern the voting pattern.
Sadly, a few administrators whose professionalism and personal integrity were beyond reproach have been consciously sidelined for no palpable reason. That perhaps underlines the cause for multiple court cases while framing the list of eligible voters. The fabric of hockey administration was destroyed in the haste to create a new administrative apparatus.
The initiative to this exercise emerged from the Indian Olympic Association prompted by the International Hockey Federation. The suspension of the Indian Hockey Federation in the wake of the failure of the team to make the grade to the Olympics for the first time in 80 years triggered a chain of moves from forming the ad hoc committee to setting up a new entity christened Hockey India. It is not wholly relevant to reiterate the trials and tribulations the sport had to wade through since 2008 owing to the chaos in governance.
There are four main players — IOA, Sports Ministry, HI and IHF — each with an inflexible agenda. IOA's role in the choice of members eligible to vote a favoured group is incontestable. Almost every move carried the IOA stamp. For its part the FIH needlessly poked its nose in the administration. If it had refrained from giving India a special package after the disastrous show in the World Cup at Monchengladbach, things would not have come to this pass. The programme, a brain child of the then President, Ms. Els flopped leaving many in the FIH embarrassed by the sheer scale of the futile expenditure.
The recognition to HI without proper evaluation of the ground realities accentuated the problem of forming properly constituted administration. The only concern for FIH then was to conduct the World Cup in Delhi. It even went to the point of breaching the earlier contract with IHF. The event was a triumph for FIH's marketing team. The World Cup opened a new window. Now, FIH is bending backwards to offer premier competitions.
Steadfast in its approach to implementing the guidelines, the Sports Ministry, is another significant player. The show cause notices issued to HI and the resurrected IHF have added a new dimension. While the IHF has responded favourably, the un-elected members of the HI have opted to toe the IOA line of not accepting the guidelines, even to the extent of spurning Government's assistance. On the other hand, Pargat Singh has taken a pragmatic view. He has vowed to bring all factions under one umbrella and concentrate on opening a new chapter.
The voters in Thursday's election should weigh in the advantages of having an Olympian at the helm, ready to work in step with the Government, or voting a group that will be in constant conflict with the Ministry. In the current scenario, what with the prestige of the NOC plummeting to a nadir in the wake of the accusations and revelations related to the conduct of the CWG 2010, an IOA-centric unit to govern hockey in the country is not a prescription for growth. Even the FIH, which blindly backs IOA and its creation, HI, in its present format, needs to take a realistic view over the developments here.

Chandigarh August 5:
Apparently on a collision course with the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the Punjab Public Service Commission this afternoon refused to issue roll numbers to 243 candidates for PCS (Judicial) examination on “ultra technical” grounds -- a decision reversed by a Division Bench later in the day.
Concerned over the fate of aspirants, Chief Justice Mukul Mudgal and Justice Ajay Tewari took up the matter on the judicial side after the regular court working hours for directing PPSC secretary “to immediately issue roll numbers”. The genesis of the controversy lies in the failure of some candidates to submit detailed marks certificate of matriculation examination as a proof of passing Punjabi; and submission of additional Rs 25 as cost for downloaded forms.
The “selection committee” of Justice Satish Kumar Mittal, Justice Ranjit Singh and Justice Mahesh Grover, sometimes back received a representation from a candidate. His candidature was cancelled “only on the ground that he had not deposited Rs 25, prerequisite cost for downloading the examination form, even though he had deposited the examination fee of Rs 2,000”. In all, there were 108 such candidates.
The committee found the requirement was not clearly specified, and communicated the decision to consider them eligible to the PPSC secretary. Subsequently, on another representation, the committee decided to allow applicants to collect roll numbers on producing detailed marks certificate to show that they had cleared Punjabi. But at about 1 pm, the committee was informed of the PPSC’s refusal to entertain the claims. PPSC Chairman Sanjit Sinha was telephonically contacted after the committee held an emergent meeting.
“The commission chairman apprised the committee that he did not consider the committee’s decision as binding upon him and flatly refused to entertain the claims….” Taking up the minutes of the meeting, the Bench asserted these “disclose a disturbing state of affairs with regard to the rejection of candidates to important post of PCS (Judicial), which are being rejected on untenable grounds such as mark sheets not annexed and non-payment of Rs 25…
“It appears that the PPSC chairman has not acceded to the requirements of the communication of the committee and it is told to have asserted the power vests with the PPSC. We at this juncture are not concerned with the assertion of the PPSC, but with the future of the aspirants for judicial posts, the examination for which is scheduled on August 8…. 243 candidates are being denied a right to appear on what appears to be ultra technical and untenable stance”. The Bench directed Patiala additional district judge (I), along with all authorities of Punjab and PPSC to ensure “full compliance”.

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New Delhi August 4:
            Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India has a "long way to go" in spreading literacy, adding that paucity of funds will not be allowed to hamper the spread of education in the country.
"We still have a very long way to go (in spreading education)," Manmohan Singh said, referring to "significant gains" India has made in the field. "According to UNESCO's Global Monitoring Report 2006, out of 771 million illiterates in the world, 268 million are estimated to be residing in our country, which accounts for nearly one-third of the world's non-literates," he said.
The prime minister was speaking at a lecture of his "school friend" and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen organised by Pratichi Trust, Asian Development Research Institute and the National Literacy Mission. "It is our government's commitment that paucity of funds will not be allowed to limit the spread of literacy and education in our country. It is on the foundation of this fiscal commitment and political resolve that we went to parliament and added a new fundamental right to our constitution - the Right to Education," the prime minister said.
Even though India's GDP has recorded a very high growth rate in the recent past, the inferior literacy status of the country has contributed to the lowering of its position in the UNDP's Human Development Index. Manmohan Singh said the government has taken a series of important steps in the past six years "to make the light of literacy and education shine for every child, every citizen - irrespective of gender, caste or religion".
He lamented that even at the end of the first decade of the knowledge century, "a quarter to a third of our people remain illiterate". "It is even more unfortunate that a strong gender bias against women persists in the spread of literacy," he said, adding that to make India "fully literate and to eliminate the gender bias in literacy must be our immediate priority goals".
Sen's talk focused on "The Centrality of Literacy". He said the schooling could be deeply influential in the identity of a person and the lack of school education could make a person susceptible to violence. The Nobel laureate said that basic education "plays a role in tackling health problems in general and epidemics in particular".
"Women's education helps in reducing infant mortality rate and illiteracy can muzzle political voice and ability to understand one's legal rights," he said. Sen said in rapidly changing societies like India and China, discussion on smoking could be introduced in school curriculum and added that "India can be a pioneer in this regard".

Srinagar August 4:
Violence continued to rock the Kashmir Valley, with five more civilians getting killed and scores injured in firing by the police and the CRPF to quell demonstrations.
Thousands of people defied curfew and took to the streets, challenging the security forces. The Army was deployed to protect the Srinagar-Jammu Highway, which was blocked by protesters in the past few days. Riyaz Ahmad Bhat, who was injured in police firing in Khrew two days ago, died of his injuries in hospital.
Deputy Commissioner of Srinagar Meraj Kakroo told reporters, “We are enforcing curfew in letter and spirit.” With curfew in place, people woke up to see a deathless day. But the situation took an ugly turn in the Qamarwari area, with the police and the CRPF opening fire to break protests, resulting in the death of one person. Soon, hundreds of slogan-shouting people appeared on the streets and, as they refused to disperse, the CRPF opened fire, resulting in the death of a youth, Merajuddin Lone. Several people were injured.
Another youth, Anees Ganai, was killed as the police and the CRPF opened fire in the Narwara area to disperse a similar crowd. “We are trying our best to observe restraint, but the other side is hell bent on crossing the limits. We are forced to open fire,” said a police officer, pleading anonymity. Soon after the killings, people defied curfew in the old city and came out in protest. As their number swelled, the police and the CRPF retreated and gave way to the people who were heading towards the eidgah to bury the second youth. They staged a sit-in on the road and offered prayers.
In the Shalteng area here, Suhail Ahmad Dar was critically injured in a police firing. He was taken to hospital. Kulgam district in south Kashmir continued to remain on the boil for the second day. Sources in the police said a youth, Jehangir Ahmad Bhat, was killed at Frisal in the Yaripora area and 15 were injured, two critically, in a firing by the police and the CRPF against demonstrators. Later, another youth, Bilal Ahmad Wagay, died of his injuries in hospital.
Reports said that after the incident, protesters set a police post on fire and burnt down a house and three shops. Mohammad Akbar Wani was seriously injured when the CRPF opened fire on protesters in the Rangwar area of Baramulla. He was admitted to hospital. In the nearby Ushkara village, 12 more reportedly sustained injuries in a firing. Reports said 18-year-old Muneera was injured when the police and the CRPF opened fire on protesters in Pulwama in south Kashmir.
The protesters set ablaze the office of the Social Welfare Department. A police spokesman said protesters indulged in heavy stone pelting on the security forces in Srinagar, Budgam, Bandipora, Awantipora, Kulgam and Baramulla. “The protesters attacked public and police property at a number of places. They burnt down the tehsildar office in Bomai Sopore. Several police posts and houses of policemen were also set ablaze.”

Moga August 4:
The court of Lakshman Singh at Ferozepur has reserved its decision on the application of the police seeking permission for reinvestigation into the Rs 8-crore paddy scam, which was detected in the border district in December last year.
The police had filed an application in this court on the directions of the IG Bathinda zone, which came up for hearing on Monday, but the court did not take any decision on it till evening. The court has now fixed August 6 as the next date of hearing on the application. The IG after having found in an inquiry that the investigation into the scam was full of numerous flaws took the decision to seek reinvestigation.
The Ferozepur police had failed to recover the missing 1,92,973 bags of paddy, which could have been sold in Moga, Faridkot and Ferozepur districts as suspected by some officials of the Food and Civil Supplies Department. Meanwhile, it was learnt from sources close to the Chief Minister that senior IAS officer SP Singh, a former secretary of the Food and Civil Supplies Department who retired on July 29, may be nominated as Chairman of PUNSUP, a state-owned foodgrain purchase agency.
The paddy scam took place during SP Singh’s tenure as secretary and the paddy stored in Noor Rice Mill, belonging to PUNSUP, went missing just a few days after allocation. SP Singh first recommended an inquiry by the Vigilance Bureau and then went for the crime branch of the police but none of these agencies investigated the case. The investigation remained with the Ferozepur police that failed to recover the missing paddy for reasons best known to it.
An officer of the Food and Civil Supplies Department, speaking on condition of anonymity, feared that if SP Singh was nominated as the chairman of PUNSUP, further investigation into the paddy scam could affect the recovery of paddy.