Famous Hindi story, Novel and non-Fiction writer Yashpal was born on 3 December 1903 in Ferozepur (Punjab). His ancestors were from Bhumpal village in Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh. Grandfather Garduram did business in various places and was a resident of Tikkar Bhariya and Kharwariya in Bhoranj tehsil. Father Hiralal was a shopkeeper and tehsil clerk. He had moved to Hamirpur from Chandpur village in Arki state under Mahasu district. His mother was teaching at an orphanage in Ferozepur cantonment at that time. Yashpal’s ancestors were residents of Kangra district and his father Hiralal did not inherit anything except a small piece of land and a mud house. His mother Premdevi sent him for education at ‘Gurukul Kangri’ with the aim of making him a brilliant preacher of the Arya Samaj.
Yashpal’s childhood was spent in a time when no Indian in his Ferozepur Cantonment town could carry an umbrella in front of the British to protect himself from the rain or sun. The pain of poverty, humiliation and British oppression filled his mind. From childhood, a spark of hatred for the British started burning in his heart and mind. He first jumped into Mahatma Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement. In 1921, when the Non-Cooperation Movement was going on in the country, Yashpal was in his teens. The feeling of sacrifice for patriotism also started growing in him. He joined the Congress campaign. He felt that such movements had no meaning for the poor and common people of India. Also, this Non-Cooperation Movement would not have any effect on the British government.
He joined the National College in Lahore, founded by Lala Lajpat Rai, which was a centre of nationalist thought. There he came in contact with Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Bhagwati Charan Vohra. Later, he became active in the work of Bhagat Singh’s Naujawan Bharat Sabha to fight against British rule. He began to dream of changing the country and take an active part in the armed revolution movement. He was further angered by the lathicharge and death of Lala Lajpat Rai by the British during the anti-Simon Commission movement and took an active part in planning the Saunders massacre. In 1929, he bombed the train of the British Viceroy Lord Irwin, participated in the attempt to free Bhagat Singh from Borstal Jail in Lahore, and killed two constables of the police force who had come to arrest his associates in Kanpur. It was during this period that he met his future wife, 17-year-old Prakashwati, who had left her family and joined his revolutionary movement. She was trained to use a gun by Chandrashekhar Azad.
Chandrashekhar Azad was martyred in an armed encounter with the police in Allahabad in 1931. The revolutionaries had so much faith in him that after Chandrashekhar Azad’s martyrdom, Yashpal was appointed as the commander of the ‘Hindustan Socialist Republican Army’ (HSRA). At the same time, the Delhi and Lahore conspiracy cases were going on. Yashpal was the main accused in these cases, and the British had announced a reward of Rs 3000 for anyone who gave information about him. But he absconded and was not caught by the police. In the next two years, Yashpal secretly prepared explosives to make bombs in many places. In 1932, while he was taking refuge in a house in Allahabad (now Prayagraj), the British police surrounded him. He was arrested after running out of bullets in the encounter. He was the main accused in the Lahore conspiracy case. However, due to the lengthy court proceedings and pressure from the public movement, the government did not pursue these cases further. Several other cases against him were also dismissed due to lack of sufficient evidence and witnesses. He was finally sentenced to fourteen years of rigorous imprisonment or life imprisonment as punishment for armed conflict, at the age of just 28.
While he was in jail, an important event occurred in his life. The jail officer gave a government letter to Yashpal, in which his colleague Prakashwati Kapoor, who worked with him in the movement, expressed her desire to marry Yashpal and sought Yashpal’s consent for the same. Prakashwati had been impressed by Yashpal’s work since long and had also left her home for the freedom movement. Since there was no rule in the jail manual regarding the marriage of prisoners, the British superintendent allowed the marriage. The police were not ready to take such a dangerous prisoner to court for marriage without handcuffs. And Yashpal was not ready to get married while tied up. Finally, a compromise was reached when the commissioner himself came and agreed to the marriage in prison. The marriage took place in Bareilly Jail in August 1936 with only one witness. After the wedding, the groom was again kept in his barracks and the bride later went to Karachi to complete her education as a dental surgeon. The marriage of Yashpal-Prakashwati in prison was the only such incident in the history of India. The news was widely publicized in the newspapers. As a result of this uproar, the government later added a special clause to the prison manual, which prohibits future convicted prisoners from getting married in prison. After Yashpal agreed, the case became very public after the marriage was allowed in prison, and after that, restrictions were imposed on prisoners from getting married in prison.
During his free time in prison, he got to study and write different books, he studied many writers from home and abroad with great interest. During his imprisonment, Yashpal learned French, Russian and Italian and mastered reading the classic original languages of the world. He wrote the collections of stories ‘Pinjre Ki Udan’ and ‘Woh Duniya’ in prison. The book ‘Meri Jail Diary’, based on his prison experiences, shows Yashpal’s concern to reach, see and understand contradictory ideologies like Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violence and Satyagraha, Lenin’s political method and Freud’s psychoanalysis. It is a testament to his creative restlessness, which he overcame to shape himself as a journalist and writer.
In the elections held after India got political home rule in 1937, the Congress party had promised to release all political prisoners. When the first Swadeshi government was formed in 1938, it was releasing all political prisoners. The prisoners who were imprisoned during Gandhiji’s Satyagraha were released, but the government made revolutionaries like Yashpal renounce armed and violent activities in order to release them. Yashpal refused to accept this government condition. Finally, he was released on 02 March 1938. He was banned from entering the Punjab province. After his release from Lucknow Jail, Yashpal decided to settle in Lucknow, the capital of the United Provinces. At that time, food, clothing and shelter were the problems facing him. Yashpal and his wife had no place to live. After his release from prison, he did not go to the court of any big man, as some of them had expected. Together, his wife and Yashpal made clay and paper toys, sold them, collected twine lying on the streets, made bags from it, made and sold shoe polish, and then rented a house with their meager resources.
After spending a few months in difficult circumstances, in November 1938, he borrowed some money from his mother and converted the rented house into an office. While working in the revolutionary movement, Yashpal already had a hand-operated machine for printing leaflets. He started publishing the magazine ‘Viplav’. This magazine became famous. Along with this, Prakashwati, who had now become Dr. Prakashwati Pal, started practicing dentistry from the ‘Viplav Office’. Since the number of women doctors was very less at that time, Prakashwati achieved great success in her field, but after some time she stopped practicing in order to devote her full time to her husband. The slogan on the cover of the magazine was: ‘You preach peace and equality, Viplav sings your own song.’
‘Viplav’ played an unprecedented and remarkable role in the history of Hindi political journalism. Due to its immense popularity, this magazine became an open platform where staunch Gandhians, Marxists and supporters of socio-political revolution could all express their views in one place. By 1939, Viplav had become so popular that its Urdu edition, Baaghi, also started coming out. While taking a stand on the economic issue, his wife Prakashwati Pal pursued her medical studies and when Yashpal fell ill in 1940, Prakashwati took over the responsibility of editing the magazine. In the meantime, he had started writing stories and novels. Considering the difficulties of printing and publishing, and the restrictions imposed by the British, he thought, why not publish his own writings himself? He and Prakashwati started ‘Viplav Prakashan’. Yashpal started writing more and more seriously as a writer. A revolutionary had now become a full-fledged writer.
Direct challenge was part of his nature. His article ‘Sevagram Ke Darshan’ is proof of this, in which he goes to Sevagram Ashram to meet Mahatma Gandhi, who demanded that the two mandatory conditions for participating in the Non-Cooperation Movement during World War II, namely personal Satyagraha and faith in God as inspiration, be removed and that the condition of public Satyagraha and faith in God be removed so that even those who do not believe in God can participate. Yashpal argued with Gandhiji that the condition of having faith in God meant destroying the democratic base of the Congress and driving away the revolutionaries who were fighting for a change in the system. After an argument, Gandhiji did not agree. Yashpal walked out. Later, Yashpal published his experience and inconveniences at Sevagram Ashram in ‘Viplav’.
To quell the anti-British rebellious sentiments of Dr. Prakashwati and Yashpal, the British District Magistrate issued a notice against ‘Viplav’. Yashpal was asked to give an explanation within thirty-six hours or stop publication. The very next day, Yashpal went to meet him and when he was sitting on the chair opposite, the British officer placed both his legs on the table towards Yashpal as an insult. Yashpal could not bear it. Immediately, he also spread both his legs on the same table. The officer said very patiently, “Thank you Mr. Yashpal! We have received your explanation, now you can go.” And Yashpal left. A government order demanded a guarantee of 12,000 rupees from the magazine. The publication of Viplav stopped. Then both of them closed ‘Viplav’ and started publishing a magazine under the name ‘Viplav Tract’. Due to arrests, prison rounds and frequent police raids, the publication of this magazine, which had set new records, had to be stopped in 1941. After independence, the publication of ‘Viplav’ resumed in 1947, but due to the Press Censorship Act of independent India, it stopped permanently after a few issues.
After being imprisoned by the British for 6 years, he published a collection of 21 stories, ‘Pinjre Ki Udan’, from his Viplav office in 1939. At that time, ‘Viplav’ was about to take shape as a publishing house. It received a good response. In the same year, a collection of 12 stories, ‘Woh Duniya’ Viplav’, written with a dream of a world free from exploitation, was published. In his 1941 novel ‘Dada Comrade’, he showed the reality-based mental and moral confusion of a young man working in the revolutionary movement, which made the novel very popular. Revolutionaries also criticized it. It is still discussed today. He has strongly criticized Gandhianism and Congress and has insisted on a socialist system.
During this period, since there was a lot of Marxist literature in English, he wrote a simple book, ‘Marxism’, based on the theories of Karl Marx, to make it understandable to people who were interested in socialism and hostile to it. This book is still read today as an introduction to Marxism. His writing was sharp and bold.
On 8 June 1941, he was arrested again under Section 38 of the Defence of India Act, but his friends somehow got him out on bail. Fearing that he would soon be imprisoned again, he wrote and published the book ‘Gandhivad Ki Shav Pariksha’ in August 1941. In it, he, as a young left-wing revolutionary activist, clearly presented the limitations and shortcomings of the Gandhian movement. This book is still read today. Dr. Bhadanta Anand Kausalyayan, a Buddhist monk, a renowned scholar of Pali language and writer, called this book, which was a criticism of Gandhianism, the best all-purpose book of that year. This was followed by the book ‘Chakkar Club’ (1942), which satirized the people of the Bolbachchan Club culture. ‘Tarka Ka Toofan’, a collection of 16 stories based on human conscience and logical ability-efforts, was also released. Yashpal wrote many novels like ‘Dada Kamrad’ (1941), ‘Deshdrohi’ (1943), ‘Divya’ (1945), ‘Party Kamrad’ (1946), ‘Manushya Ke Roop’ (1949), ‘Amita’ (1956), ‘Jhutha Sach’ (1958), ‘Barah Ghant’ (1962), ‘Apsara Ka Shaap’ (1965), ‘Kyon Phanse’ (1968), ‘Teri Meri Uski Baat’ (1974) etc.
Published in 1945, the novel Divya added a new rebellious touch to Hindi literature. While Divya, who lives a happy life within the secure walls of the palace, struggles with caste politics and religious conflict in the world outside, she becomes pregnant by her lover, but he rejects her. To save the name of her high family, she abandons her secure existence and begins to make a living for herself, first as a maid and then as a court dancer. Adversity finally opens her eyes – a woman of high birth is not free. Only a prostitute is free. Divya decides that by enslaving her body, she will accept a man who will preserve the freedom of her mind. Set against the backdrop of the struggle for supremacy between Hindu and Buddhist ideologies in the first century BC, Divya is a poignant novel of imagination and rich historical detail.
‘Party Comrade’, full of incidents of the struggle of the sailors’ rebellion, was published in 1946. Later, this novel was published under the name ‘Geeta’. At its center is a communist girl named Geeta who sells her newspaper on the streets of Mumbai to promote the party and collect funds for the party. Geeta, who is loyal to the party, comes in contact with many people for the party’s work. One of them is Padmalal Bhavariya, who deceives girls with the power of money. Bhavariya finally changes due to the long contact between Geeta and Bhavariya. The story collection ‘Phulo Ka Kurta’ was also published in the same year. His story collections include Phulo Ka Kurta, Dharam Yudh, Gyandan, Bhasmavrut Chingari etc. are rich in narrative interest. Class struggle, psychoanalysis and sharp satire are the features of his stories. Apart from writing novels like Divya, Deshdrohi, Jhootha Sach, Dada Comrade, Amita, Manush Ke Roop, Meri Teri Uski Baat, etc., he also wrote ‘Sinhavalkon’ and. These stories deeply explore the ambitions and desires of humans. 13 stories created in the light of knowledge gained through human curiosity are found in his collection of stories ‘Gynandaan’ (1944).
The stories Dasdharma, Shambuk and Aadmi Ka Bachcha in the collection of stories ‘Abhisapta’ were based on the issues of the Dalit class. Despite disagreeing with some points of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s national policies, he dedicated his novel ‘Amita’ to the readers in 1956, respecting and thanking him for his sincere efforts for world peace. At that time, he translated the important book ‘Labor in America’ written by Foster Dulles in 1946 on the working class of America, which was taking a leap towards a capitalist economy, into Hindi under the name ‘America Ke Mazdoor’. He wrote the collection of stories ‘Uttami Ki Maa’, which discusses the beliefs, superstitions and beliefs of the people. In 1951, he wrote the important book ‘Sinhalakan’ in three parts. While writing it between 1951 and 1955, he provided invaluable information about his colleagues rather than himself. He revealed the ups and downs of the lives of revolutionaries, many mysteries, theoretical and psychological aspects in it. Yashpal was an active leader of India’s revolutionary movement. He wrote the story collection ‘O Bhairavi’, which was aimed at the people who had forgotten the reality of the present and were clinging to the past, the new story collection ‘Aadmi Aur Khachchar’ written between 1962 and 64, the story collection Chitra Ka Tittle of 14 problematic stories, ‘Jag Ka Mujra’, which reviewed personal and family issues from a social perspective, and he translated Askad Mukhtar’s social novel ‘Julekha’ from Urdu into Hindi. In his novel ‘Jo Dekha Socha Samza’, written on his experiences, and ‘Teri Meri Uski Baat’, written in 1974 against the backdrop of the 1942 Quit India movement, he has highlighted that the meaning of revolution is not just about changing the ruler but a radical change in society and its outlook.
There was a special kind of originality in his thoughts, writings and methods that provoked opposition. Around 1951-52, the arrests and detentions of communists who were protesting against the government began. Yashpal was also thrown in jail. Yashpal’s wife met the then Chief Minister of the United Provinces (Uttar Pradesh) Govind Vallabh Pant and asked the reason for the arrest – why was Yashpal arrested? He was not even a member of the Communist Party of India. Then Pant said, – “He is not a member of the Communist Party, so what, he was arrested because his writing makes people communists and recruits them to the party.” Yashpal had to face opposition until the end of his life. Yashpal faced these oppositions and conflicts with complete fearlessness. He wrote a political book ‘Ram Rajya Ki Katha’ on the growing inequality in the country and the government’s policies in the post-independence period.
The 1962 novel ‘Barah Ghantey’ challenges social hypocrisy by depicting the traditional emotional relationship between the widow Vinny and the widower Phantom of a Christian society in a particular situation where they decide to stigmatize Vinny for not being able to maintain love or marital fidelity, making a bold insistence on looking at his behavior not only from the perspective of traditional beliefs and values but also as a problem of the need and fulfillment of the personal life of a man and a woman. He sees love as a natural and necessary need prevalent in humans. He asks the question whether mutual attraction or marital relationship between a man and a woman should be seen as a mere social duty. Yashpal’s novel is a thought-provoking novel that logically criticizes the Arya Samaj taboos and views that he was born into.
Yashpal was a very sweet and cheerful person. He loved gossip and good communication. The atmosphere at home was very loving and orderly. Yashpalji sometimes used to say in a very humorous mood – we were not accepted by the fanatics of any religion. That is why we do not know what our caste and religion are? Yes, but whenever my Arya Samaj mother tells me – Yash, you are of Arya blood, then I definitely think – is the blood flowing in my veins not mine, and I feel like laughing at myself.
Once, one of his colleagues asked him, Yashpalji, you are a writer of sensible and progressive thoughts, then why did you start this profit-making publishing house?” He said with a smile, “Today’s education is also for profit, so why did you accept such an education when you were progressive? I have not accepted any kind of exploitation, be it political, social, economic or religious. You are talking about business. If I have earned something for my ideological freedom, why do you look at it with a wrong eye? I have not gone to anyone to ask for freedom… Your freedom is always earned – be it economic, social or ideological, no one comes to give you your freedom, you have to take it. The question of facilities is, writers die of hunger, die of madness – why are you a victim of this romanticism? If I have written wrongly and collected facilities, call me a fool. Destroy my novels and stories“.
Then another question came – ‘You had written a long story on ‘Family Planning’, it was published in ‘Sarika’. You do not have any problem in writing such propaganda. Yashpal was saying – ‘I will not defend this story by saying that every literary work is propaganda, but I will definitely say that if your writing does not introspect on the choices that are worth making and does not show the terrible conditions of society. If one does not warn, then the human psyche can only be entertained by the creation of beauty. Literature that does not have a purpose is heavy. Even if we rely on the pride that our culture has everything we need and keep away from new ideas and new lifestyles, this pride can take us to the past – it cannot determine our future. I do not write for fun.’
Yashpal’s novel ‘Jhutha-Sach’ paints a colorful picture of truth and untruth on the vast canvas of the bloodshed and chaos that took place in the country during the Partition. It is a heart-warming story of the ups and downs in the lives of two families in pre-Partition Punjab and post-Partition India. It has two parts – Motherland and Country and the future of the country. In the first part, people lost their homeland due to Partition, and in the second part, the solutions to many problems are depicted. The contemporary environment of the country is kept as historical as possible. Along with various problems, the new moral values established in this novel give a strong blow to conventional thinking. Yashpal’s best work and one of the most important Hindi novels, “Jhutha Sach” (1958 and 1960), is compared to Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace”. The world’s leading magazine of America, “The New Yorker”, has called this book “…perhaps the greatest novel about India”. While critics praised it for its balanced portrayal of both Hindu and Muslim viewpoints, readers found it unforgettable for its intimate and nuanced depiction of socio-political conditions and its ruthless portrayal of ambitious but destitute Congress leaders in the post-independence era.
After Yashpal was nominated for the National Award, criticism of the novel against the Congress government resumed a decade later. It is said that the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi herself, after reading the relevant pages of Damn the Congress government’, found nothing objectionable in it. Finally, the government and the established opposition awarded Yashpal the Padma Bhushan in 1970. Impressed by his literary service and talent, the Soviet Land Information Department awarded him the ‘Soviet Land Nehru Award’ (1970), and the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan Prayag gave him the ‘Mangala Prasad Award’ (1971). To make up for the mistake of ignoring the “false truth” in 1960, the Sahitya Akademi announced the ‘Meri Teri Uski Baat’ award for Yashpal’s last novel in 1976. Yashpal gained full recognition in the last two decades of Yashpal’s 73-year-old struggling life. He had a place of honor among the best storytellers.
Yashpal died on 26 December 1976 in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. He was working on the fourth volume of his book ‘Sinhavalokan’, which was written on the memories of his revolutionary movement. With his passing, a modern Marxist, a very conscious writer, was lost, which Hindi produced in those difficult days, he was the only writer who picked up the pen in the difficult times when there was a wave of individualism and alienation everywhere. As the writer and editor of ‘Viplav’, Yashpal gave Hindi literature a strong supporter towards social and political reforms. Since his approach towards women was progressive and modern, his stories and novels featured women characters fighting and finding a way out. He was known as a champion of the deprived, Dalit and marginalized classes. From the beginning of his writing, he fought strongly against the archaic and rigid ideas of Indian society. He strongly criticized the traditional and ancient customs of all religions. He was even threatened with death for his criticism. Seeing the futility of the thoughts and programs of Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party, Yashpal clearly acknowledged the influence of Marxism on his literature and ideology.
Yashpal’s father had a house in Tikkar Khatriyan in Bhoranj subdivision of Hamirpur. Today, the situation is such that there is a red line in his revenue records as he has not lived here for many years. It is being said that someone else has encroached on his land. The state government, which organizes state-level programs calling Yashpal a Himachali, does not know where his house was today. This is an example of apathy towards the revolutionaries who fought for the country with their lives.
Yashpal was a revolutionary in both political and literary fields. For him, politics and literature were both mediums and helped in achieving the same goal. Yashpal’s 60 books, including stories, novels, socio-political essays, one-act plays, travelogues and memoirs of his revolutionary life, had a profound impact on Hindi literature and political thought. Yashpal’s writings, full of revolutionary and social consciousness, are still relevant today. Whatever he wrote on the freedom movement and the situation in post-independence India, is important as a document and ideological literature.
