Amrita Pritam

Poems

Pritam’s poetry stands out for its intimate, emotionally direct voice, often resisting the social expectations placed on women. Her early anthologies of poems include Thandiyan Kirna (1935; “Cool Rays”) and Amrit Lehran (1936; “Immortal Waves”). Although love and romance were some prominent themes in her poems, her works eventually acquired social, political, and feminist dimensions. She joined the Progressive Writers’ Movement (a leftist and anti-colonial literary movement), and her 1944 collection, Lok Peed (“People’s Anguish”), boldly critiqued the British colonial economy in the wake of the 1943 Bengal famine.

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The partition of India in 1947 brought history directly into her writing, and her best-known poem, “Ajj Aakhaan Waris Shah Nu” (1948; “Today I Call unto Waris Shah”), is perhaps one of the most popular literary responses to that catastrophic event. She herself experienced firsthand the trauma and dislocation that came with partition: She was forced to leave her ancestral home and resettle in Delhi, India. In the poem, she invokes the 18th-century Punjabi Sufi poet Waris Shah, whose version of the Punjabi folktale Heer retells the tragic love story of Heer and Ranjha. Pritam urges Shah to rise from his grave and open a new page in his “book of love” and use his writing to give voice to the sorrow of countless daughters of Punjab, just as he once gave voice to Heer’s grief. The poem begins with the grief of Punjab’s women and shifts to Punjab’s collective suffering. Pritam imagines the land of Punjab not as a geographical region but as a living being—a violated body whose fields are covered with corpses. The landscape once celebrated in the story of Heer and Ranjha has become one of death, violence, separation, and abduction.

In Sunehade (1955; “Messages”), love appears as longing, memory, and vivid, sensuous imagery while suggesting a connection that transcends everyday experience. In her later collections, such as Kasturi (1959), Nagmani (1964), and Kagaz Te Canvas (1970; “The Paper and the Canvas”), Pritam explored love in conjunction with spirituality. In “Main Tenu Fer Milangi” (2004; “I Will Meet You Again”), she imagines her spiritual presence living on through Imroz’s paintings and the natural elements surrounding him. Rather than treating spiritual fulfillment as renunciation of the body, Pritam imagines it as an enlargement of human intimacy.

Pritam’s poetry ranges across many other themes, including travel and separation, political and international awareness, religious and moral challenge, everyday metaphor, urban life, and lyrical illumination. “Ve pardesiiya!” (1955; “O Traveler!”) explores travel and separation, “Ho Chi Minh” (1958) reflects a political and international consciousness, “Kufar” (1968–69; “Blasphemy”) confronts religious and moral questions, “Ateran” (1968–69; “The Spool”) turns an everyday object into a metaphor for poetic craft, “Ik Nagar” (1968–69; “A City”) captures urban experience, and “Dhupp daa ṭoṭaa” (1968–69; “A Piece of Sunlight”) offers lyrical illumination.

Novels

Although she is primarily identified with poetry, fiction formed a substantial part of Pritam’s career. She wrote 31 novels. One of her best-known novels is Pinjar (1950; The Skeleton). It explores religious differences, communal conflict, gendered violence, and women’s position in partitioned India. The novel was adapted into a motion picture with the same title in 2003. Set in the years leading up to and during the partition of India, the story follows Pooro, a Hindu woman abducted by Rashid, a Muslim man. When she escapes and returns home, her family refuses to accept her because her abduction is regarded as a stain on their communal honor. Through Pooro and other women in the novel, Pritam examines the treatment of women as the possessions of the family and community and as bearers of their honor, as well as the restrictions this places on women’s lives.

In Unninja Din (1978; 49 Days) Pritam returned to explore themes including religious difference and human relationships. Scholars have interpreted the Muslim protagonist, Sheeri, as continuing the journey begun by Pooro. Through Sheeri and the Hindu protagonist Sanjay, the novel develops an argument for coexistence across religious boundaries. The work describes a struggle between a destructive desire for death and the restorative possibilities of human faith and love. Jilawatan (1968; “Exile”) moves away from gendered violence of the partition explored in earlier novels and delves into alienation. The narrative revolves around a young man whose maturity, unusual for his age, sets him apart from those around him and results in estrangement that leads to tragedy.

In her other novels Pritam extends her inquiry into women’s independence beyond the context of the partition. In novels such as Doctor Dev (1949), Ik Si Anita (1964; “There Was an Anita”), Chak Number Chatti (1964; “Village Number 36”), and Ekta te Aerial (1969; “Aerial”), she repeatedly deals with women’s psychology, love, marriage, and the search for self-expression. For female characters in these works, marriage does not immediately become a source of intimacy. Instead, it exposes unequal obligation and loneliness.

Short stories

Pritam published about 20 collections of short stories. Many of the stories draw on her own life experiences. “Akhri Khat” (1955; “The Last Letter”), inspired by her relationship with Ludhianvi, was written in the form of a story as she could not send it to him as a letter. Her stories examine estrangement, marital loneliness, and the difficulty of separating the self from familial and societal roles. In the preface to “Aksharon ki Chhaya Mein” (1995; “In the Shadow of the Alphabet”), she acknowledges the autobiographical overtones of stories about husbands, wives, and the loneliness of married women. Some of her important short stories include Ik Shehar Di Maut (1976; “The Death of a City”), “Teesri Aurat” (1976; “The Third Woman”), and “Panj Vareh Lambi Sarak” (1976; “The Five-Year-Long Road”).