If I ask you about the most important and popular revolutionary poets the Indian subcontinent has produced in the last 200 years, you will certainly name Subramania Bharati, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Mohd. Iqbal, Rabindranath Tagore and several others, but it is quite improbable that the name of Baba Kanshiram will be taken in the same breath.
Baba Kanshi Ram, the man who was called Bulbul-i-Pahar (Nightingale of the mountains) by Sarojini Naidu, Pahari Gandhi (Gandhi of the mountains) by Jawaharlal Nehru, was popularly known as Siyahposh Jarnail (General wearing black clothes), was jailed 11 times between 1920 and 1942, still remains unknown in the popular imagination among Indians outside Himachal Pradesh.
Prof. Narain Chand Parashar, his biographer, writes, “It is decidedly too difficult to pronounce any judgement at the present juncture whether Pahari Gandhi’s stature was higher as a freedom fighter or as a poet.”
Jwalamukhi on 23 April 1984. Prof. Narain Chand Parashar, M.P.
Born on 11 July 1882 to Pt. Lakhnoo Ram Pahda, a local priest, and Rewati Devi in Kangra, Kanshiram’s first brush with the nationalists came in 1905. A powerful earthquake wreaked havoc in Kangra. Lala Lajpat Rai, Sardar Ajit Singh and several other prominent nationalist leaders came to survey the destruction caused. Kanshiram accompanied them and a political ideological alliance took shape.
In next few years Kanshiram would work closely with Ghadar Party leaders like Lala Hardayal, Sufi Amba Prasad, Maulvi Barkatullah and Lal Chand Falak. He was one of the wanted in connection to the Lord Hardinge bomb case of 1912, in which Master Amir Chand, Awadh Bihari, Bal Mukund and Basant Kumar were hanged. At that time he went underground and avoided the arrest.
Meanwhile, Kanshiram had already become a poet of the Pahari language. The first influence on him was Persian poet Sheikh Sadi’s Gulistan-e-Sadi and Bostan-e-Sadi. Initially, he wrote about nature and human emotions but later he became a poet against tyranny of colonisers, of nationalist sentiments, and of poor and destitute.
With his Pahari poems, he popularised the nationalist sentiments in Himachal Pradesh (then the part of Punjab). Parashar writes, “He was thus a great traveller who walked on foot from Dehra to Mandi, Simla, Dalhousie, Dharamsala, Hamirpur, Nodaun and other places, time and again. These unending travels enriched his experiences of men and matters on one hand and also emboldened him in his crusade for making Pahari popular, whereas the rulers of the day spoke and wrote in chaste Urdu and high flown English and the friends admired Sanskrit. Baba Ji. employed his mother tongue, Pahari for public meetings, writing poems and songs and thus arousing the masses. The script that he used for this purpose was Persian as he had studied Urdu at the school. Though he also could read and write Hindi in Devnagri script and was conversant with Tankri script as it was used for Pahari in those days, yet the medium of communication for him with the masses was Pahari in the Kangri dialect. Needless to say that the employment of Pahari as the medium of public speeches was the cause of his popularity and endeared aim to the masses. Whereas the other leaders employed Urdu, Persian and English to impress their audiences in public speeches, he in his turn utilised the rhythm and sweetness of Pahari idiom and utilised the music of this beautiful language of the hill and valleys in arousing the masses to a tough struggle against the foreigners.”
Kanshiram’s poems were calls to rise up against the foreign rule. Like he wrote,
“Azadi mangdi e Qurbanian Jo
Kya Karna e Zindgaman jo?”
(Freedom calls for sacrifice. What else is life worth?)
In 1920, after the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre when the non-Cooperation and Khilafat were at their peak, Kanshiram was first arrested for organising people against British rule. He was jailed 11 times and the total span of over 13 years. Jailed in Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Atak, Multan, Lahore and Ferozepur in addition to Dharamsala, he shared prison with Lala Lajpat Rai and came to friendly terms with him. His largest single tenure in jail was for 730 days which he has celebrated in a poem in Pahari entitled “730 days imprisonment with rigour”.
At Gurdaspur jail, Kanshiram was tortured so inhumanly that he had to be admitted to a hospital. He was tied to a tree and was beaten mercilessly. Later, he recorded the incident in a poem:
“Kanshi-eh-Kehnda
Je Gurdaspur Tela che rehnda
Kagaz Kutai Kan Deohri che behnda
Yahda-Suraj Mili Tan Janda”
(Kanshi says that he lives in Gurdaspur Jail, he beats pulp for paper and sits in the corridor. He promises that he will leave the jail only when Swaraj comes)
On 23 April, 1931, Kanshiram took a pledge to wear only black clothes to mourn the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev until India gained freedom. He kept the promise till his death in 1943. On this occasion he said, “Friends! no country has gained independence without sacrifice. India has offered many sacrifices so far and will do so in future and shall not lag behind any country. Now we are on the threshold of the dawn of freedom. Success shapes the man’s destiny. In case of failure, the same man is doubted as a dacoit, thief, rebel, tyrant and King’s enemy. Success transforms the same man as a kind hearted person giving justice to all the subjects and a saint.”
Popularity of Kanshiram in the Himachal region forced Jawaharlal Nehru to acknowledge him as Gandhi of this region during a meeting at Hoshiarpur in 1937. People would demand him to speak instead of famous national leaders like Sarojini Naidu. Today, the man is almost unknown outside Himachal Pradesh.
Parashar writes, “His crowning and lasting achievement perhaps, would lie in enriching and strengthening Pahari Language and literature by writing over 500 poems and songs on a variety of themes ranging from historical events like the blinding of Ashoka’s son Kunal to the current issues like freedom struggle, starvation and poverty. He would dominate the pages of history like a prophet who led a whole generation through a period of struggle and crisis and inspired them as much by his powerful personality as by his eloquent speech and melodious voice. Who would determine where exactly did the magnetism of his personality lie? Whether in the prophetic and melodious voice or in his striding tones and their strong content?”
(The views expressed are author’s personal)
