Kartar Singh Duggal

Kartar Singh Duggal
Born 1 March 1917
Dhamal, Rawalpindi District, British India
Language Punjabi, English
Nationality Indian
Ethnicity Sikh

Kartar Singh Duggal (born 1 March 1917) is a noted Indian writer who writes with ease in Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi, and English. His works include short stories, novels, dramas and plays. His works have been translated into Indian and foreign languages. He has served as Director, All India Radio.[1][2]

He was awarded the Padma Bhushan by Government of India in 1988.[3] In 2007, he was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, the highest honour given by Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters.[2][4]

Contents

Early life and education

He was born in Dhamal, Rawalpindi District, (now in Pakistan) to Mr. Jiwan Singh Duggal and Mrs. Satwant Kaur. He is married to Ayesha Duggal (formerly Ayesha Jaffri), a medical doctor. He received his M.A. Honours in English at Forman Christian College, Lahore.

Career

Duggal started his professional career with All India Radio (AIR). He worked there from 1942-66 in various jobs including Station Director. For the AIR, he wrote and produced programmes in Punjabi and other languages. In addition, he authored a large number of plays and dramas. He was the Secretary/Director, National Book Trust, India from 1966-73. From 1973 to 1976, he served as an Information Advisor at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (Planning Commission).[5]

He has founded many institutions, including:

Duggal had been a member of many literary and cultural centers including being the President of Punjabi Sahitya Sabha (Punjabi Literary Society), Delhi. He was nominated Fellow of the Punjabi University in 1984. He was also honoured with nomination to the Rajya Sabha (Indian Parliament Upper House) in August, 1997.

Work

Duggal has authored twenty four collections of short stories, ten novels, seven plays, seven works of literary criticism, two poetry collections and an autobiography. Many of his books have been adopted by various universities for graduate studies. Among his works are:

Short stories

Poetry

Novels

Other works

Awards

Kartar Singh Duggal has been bestowed by many awards throughout his career, including:

He is well traveled. He has visited Bulgaria, North Korea, Russia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, the UK and U.S.A.. He resides in New Delhi and spends his retirement reading.

The Library of Congress has 118 of his works.[1]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Kartar Singh Duggal, 1917-". Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/acq/ovop/delhi/salrp/kartarsinghduggal.html. 
  2. ^ a b Anita Desai among Sahitya Akademi Fellows The Hindu, Feb 23, 2007.
  3. ^ "Padma Bhushan Awardees". Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. http://india.gov.in/myindia/padmabhushan_awards_list1.php. 
  4. ^ Kartar Singh Duggal gets Sahitya Akademi Fellowship 06 May 2007.
  5. ^ Singh, Ranjit; Kripa Shankar (2008). Sikh achievers. Hemkunt Press. p. 100. ISBN 8170103657. http://books.google.com/books?id=qfuDnpVlmlcC&pg=PA100&dq=%22Kartar+Singh+Duggal%22+-inpublisher:icon&cd=10#v=onepage&q=%22Kartar%20Singh%20Duggal%22%20-inpublisher%3Aicon&f=false. 

External links

1968-2000

S. Radhakrishnan (1968) · C. Rajagopalachari, Tarashankar Bandopadhyay, Sumitranandan Pant, D. R. Bendre (1969) · Viswanadha Satyanarayana, Raghupati Sahay Firaq Gorakhpuri, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar (1970) · Gopinath Kaviraj, Dattatreya Balkrushna (Kaka) Kalelkar, Gurbaksh Singh Preetlari, Kalindi Charan Panigrahi (1971) · M. U. Malkani, Nilamani Phookan, Vasudev Vishnu Mirashi, V. R. Trivedi, Sukumar Sen, Masti Venkatesa Iyengar (1973) · T. P. Meenakshisundaran (1975) · Atmaram Ravaji Deshpande, Jainendra Kumar, K. V. Puttappa Kuvempu, V. Raghavan, Mahadevi Verma (1979) · K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Umashankar Joshi, K. Shivarama Karanth (1985) · Laxmanshastri Joshi, Annada Shankar Ray, Mulk Raj Anand, Vinayak Krishna Gokak, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, Amritlal Nagar (1989) · Ashapurna Devi, R. K. Narayan, P. T. Narasimhachar, N. Balamani Amma, Vishnu Bhikaji Kolte, Qurratulain Hyder, Kanhu Charan Mohanty, Harbhajan Singh, Nagarjun (1994) · Sachidananda Raut-Roy, Krishna Sobti, Vidya Niwas Mishra, Vinda Karandikar, Subhas Mukhopadhyay, D. Jayakanthan, Raja Rao (1996) · Ram Vilas Sharma, Rajendra Shah, Gunturu Seshendra Sharma, Syed Abdul Malik, N. Khelchandra Singh, K. S. Narasimhaswamy (1999) · Ramchandra Narayan Dandekar, Rahman Rahi (2000)
2001-present
Honorary Fellows

Leopold Sedar Senghor (1974)  · Edward C. Dimock, Jr., Daniel H. H. Ingalls, Kamil V. Zvelebil Ji Xianlin (1996)  · Vassilis Vitsaxis, E. P. Chelyshev (2002)  · R. E. Asher (2007)  ·