He was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1946 where his father Gopal Singh Chandan, worked in the railways as a carpenter and later on took up photography as full-time profession.

[3] He was also a leader of the clandestine Kenyan Ghadar Party, he worked as the general secretary of the Labour Trade Union of East Africa from 1940 to 1947 and the local Sikh community.

Before Chandan joined the Maoist-Naxalite movement in East Punjab in 1971, he worked as a sub-editor in Nawan Zamana (New Age) daily newspaper published by the Punjabi communist party and later under Baba Gurmukh Singh of Lalton in Desh Bhagat Yadgar Jalandhar editing Yadgar's journal Desh Bhagat Yadan.

He also edited a special issue of Bharat Sewak on Indian national freedom fighters and actively assisted with the publications of Yuvak Kender.

He joined the Maoist movement in Punjab in 1969 and started Dastavez (The Document), the first ever revolutionary underground literary magazine in Punjabi.

[4][5] Later on he edited Lokyudh (People's War) and Baghawat (Revolt) political and literary magazines published by the CPI(ML) Punjab.

[6] After his release in August 1973 the first task he did was to collect letters of Shaheed Bhagat Singh and his comrades from National Archives New Delhi and other sources.

He has translated works of Bertolt Brecht, Pablo Neruda, Yiannis Ritsos, Nazim Hikmet, John Berger and others into Punjabi.

[3][7][8] English versions of his poems have appeared in magazines Al-Sabah (Baghdad, Iraq), Artrage, Assabah (Baghdad, Iraq), Atlas, Bazaar, Brand, Brittle Star, Critical Quarterly, The Independent, Index on Censorship, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry Review, Polichinello (Brazil), Race Today, Wasafiri (UK), Little Magazine (India), Papirus and Akköy (Turkey), Erismus, Ombrela and Odos Panos (Greece), Lettre Internationale (Romania) and Poetry International website.

Chandan’s short poem both in Punjabi and English engraved in 40-foot granite by Eric Peever is installed in a square in Slough High Street, UK.

In Edinburgh Art Festival Bani Abidi, Berlin-based acclaimed Pakistani artist, did a sound-sculpture Memorial to Lost Words on his poem on a Punjabi soldier’s letter written home set to music and sung by Ali Aftab Saeed.

Based on Chandradhar Sharma Guleri’s classic Punjabi-Hindi story Uss ne kahaa tha was staged in London, New Delhi and other Indian cities.