Shiv Kumar Batalvi
- Malkiat Singh Duhra
- Feb 15
- 2 min read
Shiv Kumar Batalvi (July 23, 1936 - May 6, 1973) was a Punjabi poet, writer, and playwright of the Punjabi language. He was 20 years old when he appeared on the scene of Punjabi poetry in Punjab. He was most known for his romantic poetry, noted for its heightened passion, pathos, separation and lover’s agony, due to that he was called 'Birha Da Sultan'. He was also called the Keats of Punjab. His poetry has a uniquely rural flavour. The main reason for Shiv Kumar's extraordinary popularity was his exceptional capability to embody the effective psyche of Punjabis and their traditional cultural identity in his poetry. He became the youngest recipient of the Sahitya Academy Award in 1967, given by the Sahitya Academy, for an epic verse play based on the ancient legend of Puran Bhagat-Loona (1955). It is now considered a masterpiece in modern Punjabi literature, and it also created a new genre of the modern Punjabi Kissa. Today his poetry stands in equal footing, amongst that by stalwarts of modern Punjabi poetry, like Professor Mohan Singh and Amrita Pritam, all of whom are popular on both sides of the Indo-Pakistan border. His poems have been sung by famous singers such as Jagjit Singh, Hans Raj, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Ghulam Ali and many others. He himself was a good singer. His songs are often sung by teenagers in India and Pakistan.
Shiv Kumar was born on July 23, 1936 in the village Bara Pind Lohtian in Gurdaspur district (Pakistan) into a Punjabi Hindu Brahmin family to father, Pandit Krishan Gupal Sharma, the village Tehsildar in the revenue department, and mother Shanti Devi, a housewife. In 1947, his family moved to the Batala Gurdaspur district after the partition of India, where he received his primary education. He completed his matriculation in 1953 in the first division, and enrolled in the F.Sc program at Baring Union Christian College Batala, though before completing his degree he moved to Sikh National College Qudian, where he joined the Arts program and left in the second year. Later, he joined a college at Baijnath Himachal Pradesh to do a diploma of Civil Engineering. Here again he left studies in the middle and studied for some time at Government Ripudaman College Nabha. His father wanted him to get higher education but he couldn’t succeed. He joined the post as Patwari and after a few years he resigned in 1961.
Soon after his marriage in 1968, he shifted to Chandigarh, where he joined the State Bank of India. In the following years, he had bad health due to a liver issue. In May 1972, he went to England and returned in September 1972. His health declined visibly and he was admitted to PGI in Chandigarh and later admitted to a hospital in Amritsar. His health did not improve and he was shifted to the village of his in-laws, Kiri Mangayal. He died on May 6, 1973. Allegedly he was a dream child, often vanishing for the duration of the day, to be found lying under trees by the riverbank close to the Hindu temple outside the village during his teenage years.
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