Kanwal: The proud patriarch of Punjabi letters
CHANDIGARH: The celebrated Dhudike writer, Jaswant Singh Kanwal, lived a 100 years, wrote some 50 books, won many awards, led life on his own terms, swaying from extreme Left to the Right but left behind a rich legacy of fiction rooted in the rural landscape of Punjab and still popular with the readers for his inimitable style and memorable prose.
Born in a family of landowners in Dhudike village of Moga district of Punjab and leaving school, he went as a teen to British Malaya and it was there that he started developing a taste for literature. He returned after a few years to his village and decided that his would be the vocation of a writer and not a tiller of the soil. Yet he was to reap a rich harvest of words of the nurtured in the ethos of the life around him.
INIMITABLE STYLE
Just a year ago, functions were organised to celebrate his completing 99 years. One remembers him stepping in style with his well-tied turban, black robes and a sword handing down his waist as one proud of his Punjabi Sikh origins which remained his hallmark even though he was given to ideological swings.
The most celebrated novel from his vast literature was Lahu Di Lao, a novel written on the brief Naxalite uprising that followed in Punjab in the footsteps of Bengal. The novel got a huge response from readers as the vision of the uprising lived long after the movement had been suppressed. Interestingly, this novel was published in Singapore during the Emergency and the copies were smuggled here. The other novel, Puranmashi, is also lauded for his prose.
COURTING ROW
He had the gall to court controversy with the pride of a feudal lord. His sympathising with the separatist Khalistan movement caused a stir in the literary world but Kanwal ignored the criticism and saw nothing amiss in swinging from the extreme Left to the Right, taking them as movements with their aim being to end the miseries of the struggling masses.
AWARDS, ACCOLADES
Among the many honours awarded to Kanwal were the Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel Taushali di Hansi in 1998 and Guru Nanak Dev University conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Literature.