Person

Harbhajan Singh Halwarvi

Punjabi poet and journalist; editor of the Punjabi Tribune · 1943 to 2003

Punjabi poet and journalist, once part of the Naxalite movement, who edited the Punjabi Tribune and won the 2002 Sahitya Akademi Award for his collection Pullan Ton Paar.

Harbhajan Singh Halwarvi was a Punjabi poet, journalist and editor. He was born in 1943 in the village of Halwara in Ludhiana district and took postgraduate degrees in Punjabi and Mathematics. Wikipedia, citing a Times of India report, says he was part of the Naxalite movement and went to jail more than once.

Key moments

1977: he joined the Punjabi Tribune as assistant editor and went on to become its acting editor and then editor. Wikipedia says he left the paper in 1997 and returned in 2000, working there until 2002; Rekhta says he retired as its editor.
His poetry collections, as Rekhta lists them, include Paun Udas Hai, Pighle Hue Pal, Pankh Vihuna and Pulan Ton Paar. Spellings of the last title differ between sources.
2002: the Sahitya Akademi gave him its Punjabi award for the collection that its list spells Pulaan Ton Paar.
He also received the Bhai Vir Singh Award of the Punjab Languages Department and the Punjab government's Shiromani Punjabi Patrakar award.
He died in 2003. Rekhta's biography gives 9 October 2003, while its page metadata gives 22 October, so the exact day is not settled.

Remembered for: a poet who came out of the Left's Naxalite years and worked at a Punjabi daily from 1977 into the early 2000s, a span that takes in the Dharam Yudh Morcha, Operation Blue Star and the Kharku decade.

Counsel: Bhai Ajmer Singh

Bhai Ajmer Singh speaks warmly of Harbhajan Singh Halwarvi, whose clarity and honesty he admires. When Halwarvi read the letter in which Ajmer Singh's father answered the news that his son was taking the road of weapons, he was astonished and said he could not have written such a letter to his own younger brother. Taken to the fields and handed a loaded pistol, Halwarvi let it fly from his hand and said: this is not my work, I am a chess player, do not push me into a kabaddi ground. Ajmer Singh rejects the story that Halwarvi informed on a planned killing and was rewarded with the editorship of the Punjabi Tribune. He became editor much later, not during the movement, he says; his capability was no less than Barjinder Singh's, and the staff he recruited were all capable men.

ਖਾੜਕੂ ਤੇ ਨਕਸਲੀ ਲਹਿਰ ਦੀਆਂ ਵੱਡੀਆਂ ਘਟਨਾਵਾਂ 'ਤੇ Ajmer Singh ਦਾ ਅਹਿਮ Interview (Ajmer Singh on the great events of the Kharku and Naxalite movements, on his political autobiography ਖਾੜਕੂ ਲਹਿਰਾਂ ਦੇ ਅੰਗ ਸੰਗ), Pro Punjab TV

See its connections

Sources

Harbhajan Singh Halwarvi, Wikipedia (biography, Naxalite years and Punjabi Tribune career). en.wikipedia.org
Harbhajan Singh Halwarvi, profile, Rekhta. punjabi-dev.rekhta.org
Akademi Awards list, Punjabi (2002), Sahitya Akademi. sahitya-akademi.gov.in

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