Excelsior Correspondent
NEW DELHI, Oct 9: Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha today unveiled former Group Captain Randhir Singh’s Hindi translation of Sahitya Akademi award winning book ‘Ghar’, at Akash Air Force Officers Mess, Zakir Hussain Marg, here today.
While paying tribute to the Dogri writer, Raha said that it’s an honour for the Indian Air Force that former Group Captain Singh is the first and only air warrior till date to have received the national literary honour. During a media interaction, Raha congratulated Singh’s family members on the occasion and expressed hope that the Dogri poet’s work could be translated in more languages so that it reaches a wider audience.
Singh’s daughter and founder of Kunwar Viyogi Memorial Trust Poonam Singh Jamwal, thanked the Indian Air Force for honouring Kunwar Viyogi and said that the occasion was very special and relevant, especially because it was the Air Force week and the sons of India are at the border, fighting to protect their country.
“We all know what our soldiers are going through and the nation has to stand by them all the moral support possible. For Mr Raha to come forward and put works of Kunwar Viyogi- the soldier and poet at centre stage is commendable.”
Group Captain Randhir Singh, who wrote under the pen name of Kunwar Viyogi, is the only Air-warrior in the history of Air Force and Sahitya Akademi to be bestowed with most prestigious national literary honour in 1980. He wrote prolifically in English and Urdu, but his best works are in Dogri.
He was an experimentalist poet and had also written sonnets – a first in Dogri literature and claimed to be the only writer to have largest body of work in Indian literary scene with 200 published and 600 unpublished sonnets. This earned him the sobriquet – ‘Father of Dogri sonnets’.
Singh was commissioned in the IAF in flying branch as a navigator. Having served in various transport squadrons, in 1990, he took premature retirement upon the untimely demise of his wife. At the time, he was serving as the TAC Commander at Jodhpur.
Upon retirement, he worked as the editor of an English Daily newspaper in Jammu. As the president of Dogri Sanstha, Kunwar Viyogi, also worked actively to promote Dogri literature.
‘Kunwar Viyogi’ received Sahitya Akademi Award in 1980 at the age of 40 for his book of long Dogri Poem titled ‘Ghar’. He used ‘Ghar’ (Home) as a peg and stringed together 238 four lines verses embracing a wide variety of subjects and ideas and feelings into a long poem. It was quite a unique composition that managed to weave all the nuances of our worldly existence and its context and axis being the Home (Ghar). It presented something new to literature not only in Dogri but in Indian literary horizon, a fresh deep thought was introduced and in such lyrical precision and balance. ‘Ghar’ is used as a symbol of the centre of life, our hopes and fears, anxieties, achievements and failures, dreams and also a symphony of love.
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