Puran Singh
Chemist, mystic and the poet of free verse who wrote 'Punjab lives on the name of the Gurus'.
Puran Singh was born at Salhad in Abbottabad district, studied chemistry in Tokyo, flirted with Buddhism and Vedanta, and came back to India as a monk before returning to Sikhism under the influence of Bhai Vir Singh. He worked as a chemist at the Forest Research Institute in Dehradun and later tried, and failed, to run a farm in the canal colonies.
He was the first great Punjabi poet of free verse. His collections Khulhe Maidan, Khulhe Ghund and Khulhe Lekh, the 'open fields' and 'open veils', broke with the old metres, influenced by Walt Whitman, and poured out a Punjabi landscape of rivers, ploughmen, young women at spinning wheels and the Gurus walking the earth. His most famous line says that Punjab lives on the name of the Gurus, not of Hindus or Muslims.
He also wrote in English, including The Spirit of the Sikh and books on the Gurus, which introduced Sikh mysticism to Western readers. He died young, poor and ill, but every modern Punjabi poet writes in the open fields he cleared.
In their words
Famous linesਪੰਜਾਬ ਨਾ ਹਿੰਦੂ ਨਾ ਮੁਸਲਮਾਨ, ਪੰਜਾਬ ਸਾਰਾ ਜੀਂਦਾ ਗੁਰਾਂ ਦੇ ਨਾਮ ਤੇ।
پنجاب نا ہندو نا مسلمان، پنجاب سارا جیندا گراں دے نام تے۔
The Punjab is neither Hindu nor Muslim; all the Punjab lives in the name of the Gurus.
Khulle Maidan (1923)
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