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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Punjab to honour 'Naxal' poet Udasi

Punjab to honour 'Naxal' poet Udasi

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published Published on Nov 5, 2011   modified Modified on Nov 5, 2011

-The Times of India

 

The compulsions of electoral politics makes political dispensations forget the past, and set out to 'right' the 'wrongs'.

Punjab's SAD-BJP government has announced plans to observe the death anniversary of revolutionary poet Sant Ram Udasi at state level, who during his lifetime was subjected to brutal state repression, branded a Naxalite and slapped with cases of sedition.

But, now 25 years after his passed away, the state is changing tack by paying him tributes on his death anniversary at Barnala on November 8 and naming the Raisar village school after him.

Udasi's daughter, Iqbal Kaur Udasi, who is also a writer, has, however, termed the step ''a political stunt and opportunism just ahead of elections''.

Punjab language and education minister Sewa Singh Sekhwan told TOI over phone,''I can't comment on what happened in the past. We are now trying to initiate a new beginning by recognizing his contribution in uplifting Punjabi. The state will observe anniversaries of gazal singer Jagjit Singh and eminent playwright Gursharan Singh.

''Despite being a government teacher, my father wrote and sang for oppressed classes, when Punjab was rocked by Naxalite movement in early seventies. Because of his writings, he had to face police repression and serious cases of waging war against the nation were registered against him. During one of torture sessions at Amritsar, he had almost lost his eyesight,'' recollects his daughter.

''Once during a torture session, a policeman told my father 'tere vicho Mao kadna hai' (we would get Mao out of you),'' said Iqbal, recalling all this happened during the Parkash Singh Badal government of the seventies.

Udasi died on November 6, 1986, at the Nanded railway station in Maharastra, and despite repeated requests by family and social organisations, the state government did nothing to get his body back.

Accompanied by Mazdoor Mukti Morcha secretary Bhagwant Samao and labourer leader Gurpreet Singh, Iqbal told TOI, ''the state is now trying to purchase the Udasi family as it had tried to do with legendary martyr Bhagat Singh's mother.

If the state is serious about paying tributes to him, then it must come to the rescue of poor and downtrodden sections of society,'' they said.

People's poet

Moved by Udasi's writings, legendary playwright late Gursharan Singh often used to say that he had not come across any other poet of his stature in decades. ''The popularity of this people's poet' can be gauged from the fact that even after 25 years of his demise no revolutionary gathering is considered complete without his poems,'' said writer Ajmer Sidhu.

The Times of India, 6 November, 2011, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Punjab-to-honour-Naxal-poet-Udasi/articleshow/10626690.cms


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