Amrita Pritam was born in 1919 in Gujranwala in a part of India which later became Pakistan. She was the only child of a school teacher and a poet. Her mother died when she was eleven and she grew up with adult responsibilities. She began to write at an early age, and her first collection was published when she was only sixteen years old, the year she married an editor to whom she was engaged in early childhood. In 1947 at the time of the partition she moved to New Delhi, where she began to write in Hindi as opposed to Punjabi, her mother tongue. She worked until 1961 for All India Radio. She was divorced in 1960 and since then her work has become more explicitly feminist, drawing on her unhappy marriage in many of her stories and poems. A number of her works have been translated into English, including her autobiographical works Black Rose and Revenue Stamp.
Amrita Pritam is still a household name in the Punjab, being the first most prominent woman Punjabi poet and fiction writer. After partition she made Delhi her second home. She was the first woman recipient of th Sahitya Akademi Award, the first Punjabi woman to receive the Padma Shri from the President of India in 1969. Though critical of the socialist camp, her works were translated in all the east European languages including French, Japanese and Danish. Mehfil, a quarterly from Michigan State University published an issue on her works. She got Jananpith award in 1982 for her lifetime contribution to Punjabi literature. She received three D. Lit. degrees from Delhi, Jabalpur and Vishva Bharti Universities in 1973 and 1983 respectively.
She carved a niche for herself as the first most prominent woman Punjabi poet and fiction writer. A witness to the gory events that marked partition, Amrita Pritam captured in her writing the pain and grief that the people of the two nations underwent.
Author of over a 100 books, some of which have been translated into several languages, including French, Japanese and Danish. Pritam’s accounts of partition became the theme for the Hindi film ‘Pinjar’.
The robust Punjabi language and its literature have been under great pressure in recent years from Hindi in India and Urdu in Pakistan; the most insidious threat comes from the language of Bollywood films. But the genius of Pritam, which reinstated respect for the literature of her mother tongue, was recognised by the honours heaped upon her.
A former member of the Rajya Sabha and recipient of the Padma Shri in 1969, she was awarded Sahitya Akademi award for her book ‘Sunedeh’ and Jnanpith Award for her contribution to Punjabi literature.
The death of Amrita Pritam removes from the national scene a writer and poet known for her poignant stories dealing with the throes of Partition. An icon of our age, she will be remembered with awe and respect for her achievements in life. She passed away on October 31, 2005.
