Ramdhari Singh "Dinkar"

Ramdhari Singh “Dinkar” (“the sun”) was the most popular Hindi poet of the twentieth century and is remembered as the Rāṣṭrakavi, the national poet of India. His poetry of heroism and revolt (vīr rasa) — Hunkār (“The Roar”), Reṇukā, Rashmirathī, Parashurām kī Pratīkṣā — roused a generation during the freedom struggle and after, and his lines are still shouted at political rallies. But he was also a philosophical poet who meditated on war and peace in Kurukṣetra (1946), a poet of love and sensuality in Urvashī (1961), and a historian of Indian civilisation in Sanskṛti ke Cār Adhyāy (“Four Chapters of Culture”, 1956).

Life

Dinkar was born on 23 September 1908 in Simariya, a village in Begusarai district, Bihar, into a poor farming family of Bhumihar caste; his father died when he was two. He studied at Patna College, graduating in history, political science and philosophy in 1932, and became a schoolteacher, then a sub-registrar in the colonial government — an uncomfortable position for a poet whose nationalist verse drew warnings and transfers. After independence he became a professor of Hindi at Muzaffarpur, was nominated to the Rajya Sabha (1952–64), served as vice-chancellor of Bhagalpur University and as Hindi adviser to the Government of India. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award (1959), the Padma Bhushan (1959) and the Jnanpith Award (1972). He died in Madras on 24 April 1974.

Works

Reṇukā (1935) and Hunkār (1938) established him as the poet of nationalist fire, addressing the youth of India, invoking past glories and calling for revolt. Rasavantī (1940) showed his lyric side.

Kurukṣetra (1946), written in the shadow of the Second World War and the Gandhian debate on non-violence, is a long poem in the form of a dialogue between Yudhiṣṭhira, tormented by guilt after the slaughter of the Mahābhārata war, and the dying Bhīṣma on his bed of arrows. Yudhiṣṭhira wishes to renounce the throne; Bhīṣma argues that war is evil but sometimes necessary, that the guilt lies with those who provoke it by injustice, and that forgiveness is a virtue only in the strong: “Kṣamā śobhatī us bhujaṅg ko, jiske pās garal ho” (“Forgiveness befits the serpent that has venom; what use is it to the toothless, venomless, gentle one?”).

Rashmirathī (“The Charioteer of Light”, 1952) — his most beloved work — retells the life of Karṇa from the Mahābhārata: the son of Kuntī and the Sun-god, abandoned at birth, raised by a charioteer, humiliated for his low caste despite his skill, befriended by Duryodhana, who makes him a king, and loyal to Duryodhana even when Kṛṣṇa and Kuntī reveal his true birth and offer him the throne. The poem makes Karṇa a hero of merit against caste prejudice (“Jāti-jāti raṭte, jinkī pūñjī keval pākhaṇḍ” — those who chant caste, caste, whose only capital is hypocrisy). Its scene of Kṛṣṇa’s embassy to the Kauravas — “Jab nāś manuj par chhātā hai, pahle vivek mar jātā hai” (“When destruction looms over a man, first his judgement dies”) — is recited across north India.

Urvashī (1961), a verse drama of the love of King Purūravā and the celestial nymph Urvashī from the Ṛgveda and Kālidāsa, explores love, desire and the spiritual meaning of the erotic; it won the Jnanpith.

Parashurām kī Pratīkṣā (“Waiting for Parashurāma”, 1963), written after India’s defeat in the war with China in 1962, is a furious call to national strength and an attack on complacency.

His prose masterpiece, Sanskṛti ke Cār Adhyāy (1956), with a foreword by Nehru, describes Indian culture as a synthesis built in four great encounters — of the Aryans with the earlier peoples of India, of Vedic religion with Buddhism and Jainism, of Hinduism with Islam, and of India with the modern West.

His poem “Janatantra kā Janm” (“The Birth of Democracy”), written for the first Republic Day in 1950, ends “Singhāsan khālī karo ki janatā ātī hai” — “Vacate the throne, for the people are coming” — which became the slogan of Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement against the Emergency in 1975.

Legacy

Dinkar remains the most widely recited Hindi poet; his lines are quoted by politicians of every party, recited in schools, and performed on stage and online. Rashmirathī has been performed as a dramatic recitation across India. His vision combined fierce nationalism with a humane belief in India as a synthesis of cultures.

In conversation

• “Singhāsan khālī karo ki janatā ātī hai” — the people’s claim to power.
• “Kṣamā śobhatī us bhujaṅg ko jiske pās garal ho” — forgiveness is a virtue only of the strong.
• “Jab nāś manuj par chhātā hai, pahle vivek mar jātā hai” — before ruin, reason dies.