Yashpal

Born Dec. 3, 1903, in Firozpur, East Punjab; died Dec. 26, 1976, in Lucknow. Indian writer. Wrote in Hindi.
Yashpal graduated from Punjab National College in Lahore in 1925. A participant in the national liberation movement, he spent
the period from 1932 to 1938 in prison. In 1939 he published the collection of short stories Flight From the Coop, which
contained elements of romanticism. The sociopolitical novels Comrade Dada (1941) and Party Comrade (1946) portrayed the
activities of Indian Communists in the 1940s. Also noteworthy are the historical novels Divia (1945; Russian translation, 1959)
and Amita (1956) and the antibourgeois novel Human Faces (1949).
In a series of short stories, Yashpal depicted the awakening of a persons class consciousnesss and exposed religious
hypocrisy and caste prejudice. The two-part novel False Truth (195860; Russian translation, 1963), which dealt with the effect
on the Indian people of the division of the country and Indias achievement of independence, was distinguished by traits of
socialist realism. As a journalist, Yashpal interpreted problems of contemporary Indian life from a Marxist standpoint. He also
published plays, critical articles, and translations.
Yashpal received the Nehru Prize in 1969. Yashpal, a revolutionary fighting for India's freedom, was twenty-eight years old
when he was caught, tried and sentenced to fourteen years to life at hard labour. There was little expectation at the time that
he would emerge as one of India's outstanding writers of fiction.
He had led two lives, and in each of them had made important contributions to his country. His first life was dedicated to her
freedom, his later life to her literature. As India celebrates the centenary of his birth (1903), scholars and public alike are reevaluating his life and work in the light of changing social and political values.

Yashpal grew up at a time of ferment and agitation for Indian independence. In his school days he was drawn at first to
Mahatma Gandhi's non-cooperation movement, but later felt that such movements were unresponsive to the needs of the poor
and that non-cooperation with the British was ineffective. He joined National College, Lahore, a hotbed of nationalist sentiment,
which was founded by Lala Lajpat Rai, the venerable leader of pre-partition Punjab. There he met Bhagat Singh, who was
hanged for his role in the assassination of policeman J.P. Saunders in Lahore (1928), and for exploding a bomb in the Central
Legislative Assembly in New Delhi (1929).Yashpal wrote in his reminiscences Sinhavalokan, One day I and Bhagat Singh got
a chance to practice rowing in the Ravi river. Just two of us, no one else was there. I dont remember how the subject came
up, but in that solitude I said to Bhagat Singh, trusting him implicitly: Let us pledge our lives to our country.