Challenges of Nation Building Today I call Waris Shah Amrita Pritam Today, I call Waris Shah, “Speak from your grave” And turn, today, the book of love’s next affectionate page Once, a daughter of Punjab cried and you wrote a wailing saga Today, a million daughters, cry to you, Waris Shah Rise! O’ narrator of the grieving; rise! look at your Punjab Today, fields are lined with corpses, and blood fills the Chenab Someone has mixed poison in the five rivers’ flow Their deadly water is, now, irrigating our lands galore This fertile land is sprouting, venom from every pore The sky is turning red from endless cries of gore The toxic forest wind, screams from inside its wake Turning each flute’s bamboo-shoot, into a deadly snake … Translation of an extract from a Punjabi poem “Aaj Akhan Waris Shah Nun” We have a Muslim minority who are so large in numbers that they cannot, even if they want, go anywhere else. That is a basic fact about which there can be no argument.
Whatever the provocation from Pakistan and whatever the indignities and horrors inflicted on non-Muslims there, we have got to deal with this minority in a civilised manner. We must give them security and the rights of citizens in a democratic State. If we fail to do so, we shall have a festering sore which will eventually poison the whole body politic and probably destroy it. Jawaharlal Nehru, Letter to Chief Ministers, October .
Amrita Pritam ( – ): A prominent Punjabi poet and fiction writer. Recipient of Sahitya Akademi Award, Padma Shree and Jnanapeeth Award. After partition she made Delhi her second home. She was active in writing and editing ‘Nagmani’ a Punjabi monthly magazine till her last.
The Times of India, Bombay, August