Saturday, January 18, 2003
M A I N   F E A T U R E


Building a bridge between Hindi & Gurmukhi
Nisha

Satya Pal Gupta
Satya Pal Gupta

THE All-India Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Paryag (Allahabad), recently conferred the honorary degree of Sahitya Mahopadhyaya to Satya Pal Gupta for his valuable research in Hindi literature written in Gurmukhi script.

Satya Pal Gupta, former Chairman of the Haryana Sahitya Academy and son of a well-known Urdu poet, writer and freedom fighter Roshan Patialivi, has rendered signal service by acting as a bridge between the literatures of Hindi and Punjabi. Hailing from Patiala, he got the opportunity to have access to the vast hidden treasures lying in the archives of Moti Bagh Palace, Patiala, and other palaces in the erstwhile PEPSU. He salvaged a total of 5,000 works of some 500 writers of repute, including the 52 poets of Guru Gobind Singh’s Court at Paonta Sahib. These literary geniuses, who were in contact with the divine Guru, had a great influence on the thinking of the people and in their own way made history. Their language was Braj Bhasha — which is more akin to Hindi — but the script used was Gurmukhi. Any scholar or researcher who wants to tap this vast storehouse of Hindi literature can enter only through the door of Gurmukhi script. To this genre belong Bhai Santokh Singh’s Suraj Parkash. Among the other obscure but worthwhile works are Balmiki Ramayana, Tulsi Ramayan, Mahabharata, Gita, Rama, Krishna, Upanishads, Puranas, Yog Vasishtha, Gulistan, Bostan, Hanuman Natak and Mudra Rakshas (a unique historical play in Sanskrit dealing with Kautilya and Chandragupt Maurya).

 


Among S.P. Gupta’s notable works are Gurmukhi Lipin Main Hindi Sahitya and Punjab ka Hindi Sahitya. The foreword of the former was written by the famous Punjabi litterateur, Dr Vishwa Nath Tiwari, and that of the latter by the doyen of the Hindi world, Hazari Prasad Dwivedi.

That this genre of Gurmukhi literature is very voluminous goes without saying. The manuscripts of the works of the 52 poets alone weighed nine maunds. Not only poets, but also the royalty tried its hand at writing Punjabi poetry. Among such noble writers of poetry were Maharaja Rajinder Singh and Maharaja Narinder Singh of Patiala, and Maharaja Vikram Singh and Kanwar Fateh Singh of Kapurthala.

During his long journey in the literary realm, both as an author and as a researcher and critic, S.P. Gupta made much name: he received the Hindi Literature Award by the Haryana Government in 1977; was honoured by the Haryana Hindi Sahitya Sammelan in 1971, by the Writer-Journalist Forum of Haryana at Hisar in 1968 and by the Haryana State Anubrata Committee in 2001. Besides his two works mentioned above, he has authored Punjab mein Hindi ki Pragati and PEPSU mein Hindi ki Pragati. He has published Haryana Ateet aur Vartman, Haryana mein Rachit Hindi Sahitya, Nayaya ka Path, Pap ka Prayaahchit (one-act plays), Natik Shikasha Kyon and Chintan Aur Vichar. Besides, he has written for many Hindi magazines of repute and given talks on AIR and TV.

Instrumental in the coming up of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan in the erstwhile state of PEPSU, Haryana and Chandigarh, Gupta says that Hindi literature has been enriched by hundreds of people who made use of the Gurmukhi script.

He is of the view that if all these manuscripts are transcribed into the Devnagri script, they will be as much admired and revered as the works of Mahakavi Surdas and Tulsi Das. He claims that these works are of very high standard and are secular in nature.