Prof. Mangharam Malkani (1896 – 1980)
While speaking to Sindhi writers of the first generation post Partition, a name that frequently crops up is that of Prof. Mangharam Malkani. Credited with having groomed a crop of new budding writers at the time, Prof Malkani presided over literary classes run by the Sindhi Sahit Mandal for fourteen years (1949 – 1962). Here, poets and short story writers would gather to present their writings for evaluation, and the constructive criticism, it is said, led to a new lease of life for the Sindhi language and literature, helping the young writers to come to grips with the changed situation after Partition.
Prof Malkani also led a delegation of Sindhi writers to Asian Writers’ Conference in 1956, in New Delhi. On this occasion, he impressed upon Dr Rajendra Prasad, the first President of India, that Sindhi Language should be recognized in the VIIIth Schedule of the Constitution, to be ranked equally among the other fourteen languages of India. This pioneering effort culminated into the Sindhi language getting its due recognition on April 10, 1967.
In 1923, Prof. Malkani and his friend Khanchand Daryani had established the Rabindra Literary and Dramatic Club in Sindh, inaugurated by the Great Poet himself. Prof. Malkani’s own writing included 34 one-act plays and four full-length plays, leading to the appellation ‘The Grand Old Man of Sindhi Plays”. He also directed them, and acted on stage. In 1933, he played the lead role in a Hindi film, Insan Ya Shaitan opposite Jadan Bai, mother of the well-known actress Nargis.
His profession was that of a teacher; in Karachi, he was professor of English and Sindhi in D.J. Sindh College and after Partition, he continued teaching at Jai Hind College till 1962, when he retired.
Prof Malkani received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1969 for his Sindhi Nasar Ji Tarikh (History of Sindhi Prose). He was also nominated ‘Fellow’ of Sahitya Akademi in 1972, the only Sindhi writer thus honoured so far. Twenty-three of his one-act plays have been published by Sahib Bijani through Usat Sahit Malha, in 1996.
Prof. Malkani passed away on December 1, 1980 in Mumbai.
Ram Panjwani (1911-1987)
Ram Panjwani was a multi-faceted man – a linguist and orator, who took his music to Sindhi refugee camps in India, exhorting them not to lose their language and culture post Partition. Panjwani, who completed his schooling in Larkana and college in Karachi, later taught at Jai Hind College in Mumbai till 1974. He later became the first Reader in the newly opened Sindhi Department of the Bombay University.
Panjwani was a popular figure in college; “at Jai Hind, Ram Panjwani was famous for singing during his lectures, sometimes drumming along on his matka,” writes Nandita Bhavnani, in her newly released book, I Will and I Can: The Story of Jai Hind College (Roli Books, 2011). Students from other sections would stand outside his classroom just to hear him sing, Nandita says.
Panjwani founded the Sita Sindhu Bhavan, a Sindhi cultural centre, in Bombay in 1963. He wrote, directed and acted in several Sindhi plays, using theatre as a means of social reform; he also acted in Sindhi films, and wrote twenty-eight books – short stories, novels, poetry, translations, literary criticism and essays. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1964, for his book Anokha Azmooda (Unusual Experiences). Panjwani died in Bombay on March 31, 1987.
Narayan Shyam (1922 – 1989)
Narayan Gokaldas Nagwani ‘Shyam’, born on July 25, 1922 at Khahi Qasim, a village in central Sindh, was considered a ‘master-poet’ among Sindhis. He did B.A. (Hons.) in Persian from the Bombay University in 1945 and after Partition, migrated to Delhi and joined secretarial service in the Posts and Telegraphs Department.
Narayan Shyam’s eleven collections include Maakphura (1953), in collaboration with Hari Dilgir; Maakbhina Raabela (1964), Acchendi Laja Maraan (1972) and Daati Ain Hayaat (1988), a selection of 315 ghazals composed by the poet from 1940 to 1987.
“There was no duality in Shyam,” writes Param Abichandani in his book Makers of Indian Literature: Narayan Shyam (Sahitya Akademi, 2001). “His personality was all of a piece…. His Sindhism was an efflorescence of his natural self… All his themes are mostly Sindhi and derived from well known sources”. Explaining this further, Abichandani notes that these sources are to be found in traditional Sindhi legends and literary works. According to Abichandani, the ghazal was Shyam’s forte; however he experimented with various Indian, Persian, English, French and Japanese forms as well, with an indigenous touch.
Narayan Shyam passed away on January 10, 1989.
Shaik Ayaz (1923- 1997)
Shaikh Ayaz, born in Shikarpur on March 23, 1923, was sometimes known as the Pablo Neruda of Sindh, and is considered one of the major Sindhi poets of Pakistan. By profession he was a lawyer but he also served as the Vice Chancellor of Sindh University. Among his many works are short stories, novels, essays, poetry, travelogues, an autobiography and a translation of Shah Jo Risalo in Urdu. His anthologies Booye Gul, Nala-i-dil and Neel Kanth Aur Neem Ke Pate were highly acclaimed.
Through his poetry, Ayaz campaigned against military dictatorship and his outspokenness led him and his work to be banned several times. He was also sentenced to death but escaped the gallows owing to a sudden change in government.
“The injustice to which Sindh was subjected after the dissolution of four provinces into the single province of West Pakistan (popularly known as ‘One Unit’ in 1956 was resisted by Sindhians on the same scale of rebellion as had arisen against the British imperialism throughout the sub-continent,” writes Mohammed Ibrahim Joyo in the Preface of Shaikh Ayaz: Songs of Freedom, translated from the Sindhi originals by Saleem Noorhusain (Zindagi Publications, Hyderabad – Sindh, 2003). “The language and culture of Sindh seemed to have come under the shadow of an evil star. The portents were that the poets and writers of Sindhi would soon become third-rate imitators of some other language and culture. It was right at this testing time that the poetry of Shaikh Ayaz came along and gave back to Sindhi poesy its own language, its own traditions, awareness of its own ethos, its own earth and its own sky”.
Experts point out that while Shaikh Ayaz’s work was revolutionary, it was art first and not propaganda. When he died at the age of 74, on December 28, 1997 progressive Sindhi literature lost a towering figure.
Popati Hiranandani (1924-2005)
Popati Hiranandani was a versatile and formidable Sindhi writer of the 20th century. Author of over sixty books, she wrote novels, short fiction, poetry and biography, as well as literary criticism. Among the several awards she won were the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Gaurav Puraskar from the Maharashtra Government.
She was born in Hyderabad in Sindh in 1924 and migrated to Mumbai after Partition and led a life of a refugee. In an engaging in-depth interview (link given at the end) with poet Menka Shivdasani (conducted six years before her death and published in Poetry International Web in 2010), she spoke of her life, the trauma of Partition and her writing.
She breathed her last in 2005. “Although a refugee for the greater part of her life, there is little doubt that she finds a secure resting-place in the annals of Sindhi literature,” is how PIW concludes.
For the complete interview published in PIW, you may click on the link
http://www.poetryinternational.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=18463
