Sant Ram Udasi
The Dalit revolutionary poet of Barnala, who sang of the landless labourer and was tortured for it.
Sant Ram Udasi was born into a Dalit family at Raisar in Barnala district. He worked as a schoolteacher and became, with Pash and Lal Singh Dil, one of the three great poets of the Naxalite moment in Punjab. Unlike them he was above all a singer: he composed his poems to be sung aloud at rallies and village gatherings, and he sang them himself in a powerful voice.
His songs are about the landless farm worker, the seeri who toils for the Jat landlord, the child sent to the fields instead of school, and about the day the poor would rise. Arrested in the police crackdown on the movement, he was tortured in custody and never fully recovered his health.
He died in 1986 on a train journey home from Hazur Sahib at Nanded. His songs remain part of the repertoire of every left-wing and Dalit gathering in Punjab, and his lines on the labourer's hunger are still sung at farmers' and workers' protests, including the farmers' movement of 2020.
More poets and writers
The Sufi poet of Mirpur whose Saif ul Malook is recited across the Pothohar and Kashmir.
▶ Watch
The Sufi poet of the Cholistan desert, whose Saraiki kafis sing of rain, camels and the Beloved.
▶ Watch
Chemist, mystic and the poet of free verse who wrote 'Punjab lives on the name of the Gurus'.
▶ Watch
The poet of the village fair and the season, who also designed the Gurmukhi type that printed Punjabi.
▶ Watch
Professor Mohan Singh, the lyric poet of Saave Patte, who made Punjabi poetry modern and romantic.
▶ Watch
The father of the Punjabi novel, who survived Jallianwala Bagh and wrote a poem about it that the British banned.
▶ Watch
Avtar Singh Sandhu, the revolutionary poet of the Naxalite years, killed at 37.
▶ Watch
The novelist of Jaitu and the Malwa poor, whose Marhi da Deeva is the great Punjabi village novel.
▶ Watch
Bhai Vir Singh's epic in blank verse of a widowed queen's search for her dead husband and for God.
▶ Watch
Poet, playwright and critic who led the revival of Punjabi writing in Shahmukhi in Pakistani Punjab.
▶ Watch
Master of the Punjabi short story, whose quiet tales of village life and Partition won the Sahitya Akademi award.
▶ Watch
Punjabi novelist and poet from Gujrat whose books were banned under General Zia, and founder of the World Punjabi Congress.
▶ WatchAhmad Rahi1923 – 2002Poet from Amritsar whose Trinjan (1953) gave voice to the women of the Punjab after Partition, and who wrote Lahore's film songs.
▶ Watch
Poet and scholar from Kunjah near Gujrat, who translated the Quran into Punjabi and taught Punjabi at university.
▶ Watch
Poet of wit and tenderness from Gujrat, whose Punjabi poems about ordinary life are recited by heart across Pakistan.
▶ Watch
Novelist, poet and politician from Faisalabad, one of the leading writers of modern Punjabi in Shahmukhi.
▶ Watch
Modernist Punjabi poet and critic of Delhi, who renewed Punjabi verse after Partition.
▶ Watch
Dalit revolutionary poet from Samrala whose angry, plain poems spoke for the landless.
▶ WatchHafiz Barkhurdar17th centuryPoet of the Mughal age whose Mirza Sahiban is one of the oldest written tellings of the tale.
▶ Watch
Sufi poet of Multan, master of the siharfi, the alphabet poem in which each verse begins with a new letter.