Sukhpal Vir Singh Hasrat (1938 – ) was an Indian poet in the

Punjabi language Punjabi (; ; , ), sometimes spelled Panjabi, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Punjab region of Pakistan and India. It has approximately 113 million native speakers. Punjabi is the most widely-spoken first language in Pakistan, with 80.5 m ...

Early life

Hasrat was born in 1938 in

Khanewal Khanewal () is a city and the capital of Khanewal District in the Punjab province of Pakistan. It is the 36th largest city of Pakistan by population. Khanewal is named after the earliest settlers here who belonged to the caste ‘Daha’ (A Sub ...

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

. Hasrat and his family, however, moved to India after the

partition of India The Partition of British India in 1947 was the Partition (politics), change of political borders and the division of other assets that accompanied the dissolution of the British Raj in South Asia and the creation of two independent dominions: ...

in 1947. He attended and graduated from the

Panjab University Panjab University (PU) is a Collegiate university, collegiate public state university located in Chandigarh, Punjab. Funded through both Punjab, India, State and Government of India, Union governments, it is considered a state university (Indi ...

Chandigarh Chandigarh () is a planned city in India. Chandigarh is bordered by the state of Punjab to the west and the south, and by the state of Haryana to the east. It constitutes the bulk of the Chandigarh Capital Region or Greater Chandigarh, which al ...

Career

After completing his education Hasrat joined the Public Relation Department of the Punjab Government. Following which he started serving as an editor of the Punjab Government's monthly journal, ''

Jagriti ''Jagriti'' () is a 1954 Indian Hindi-language film directed by Satyen Bose. It was based on the 1949 Bengali film ''Paribartan'' that Bose had also directed. The film stars Rajkumar Gupta, Abhi Bhattacharya, and Ratan Kumar in the lead roles. T ...

''. Hasrat's career as a poet started in 1966, when he published his poem collection — ''Sarsabaz Patjharhan''. Throughout his career as a poet, Hasrat has published as many as twelve collections of his work. ''Hussan Kinare'', ''Hayati de somme'', ''Van kambia'', ''Shakti naad'', ''Hasrat kavya'', ''Shakti da darya'' being among his most significant collections. Other than being a poet he has written a novel, a biography and few books on applied criticism.

Awards

Hasrat received the

Sahitya Akademi The Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, is an organisation dedicated to the promotion of literature in the languages of India. Founded on 12 March 1954, it is supported by, though independent of, the Indian government. Its of ...

award for his book, ''Suraj te kahkashan'' in 1980. Two of his collections, ''Shakti naad'' and ''Suraj da kafla'' were awarded by the Government of Punjab. The books were marked as the best collections in Punjab for the years 1967–68 and 1971–72.

References

1938 births 2000s deaths Punjab University Law College alumni Punjabi-language poets Indian male poets Recipients of the Sahitya Akademi Award in Punjabi 20th-century Indian poets 20th-century Indian male writers {{India-poet-stub