SEETAL, SOHAN SINGH (1909 -)

Seetal, Sohan Singh entered the field of literary creation after 1947. He has written over a score novels most of which are romantic and sentimental. Among these Dive di Lo (The Flame of the Earthen Lamp), Mul da Mas (Flesh at a Price) and Badia (Revenge) deal with the eternal problem of woman about which most Indian writers and artistes cannot help being sentimental. Sohan Singh Seetal has in due course travelled from sentimentality, which often becomes macabre, to competent realism, although here also the projection of problems and their solution are not without a sentimental tinge.

On the whole, Seetal has described in his novels the countryside of Central Punjab and the life of its people as a kind of parallel to Nanak Singh who deals with urban life in the same tract of land. Both are reformist and sentimental to start with and then grow into realists in their later work but while Nanak Singh tends towards a kind of Gandhian Socialism, Seetal\’s concern with the peasant\’s life takes a populist form. His novel Jug Badal Gya won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1974.

References :

1. Amarjit Singh, Punjabi sahit da ifihas ”Qissa kal, Amritsar, 1981.
2. Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature, 6 Vols., Delhi, 1995.
3. Sekhon, S.S. and K.S. Duggal, A History of Punjabi Literature, Delhi, 1992.
4. Singh, N.K., Encyclopaedia of Indian Biography, Delhi, 2000.