Lal Singh Dil (11 April 1943 – 14 August 2007) was one of the major revolutionary Punjabi poets emerging out of the Naxalite (Marxist-Leninist) Movement in the Indian Punjab towards the late 1960s.
The Movement was a political failure and died down quickly, but it brought in revolutionary changes in the subject matter, language and idiom, tone and tenor of Punjabi poetry.
Referring to the impact of the Naxalite Movement in Punjab, sociologist Paramjit S. Judge says, "The consequences of the Naxalite movement have been almost ephemeral and have hardly made an impact on the social and political spheres... Its positive contribution is that it has revolutionized Punjabi poetry which can never be traditional and romantic again.
"[1] "The prominent poets belonging to this school are: Pash, Lal Singh Dil, Harbhajan Halvarvi, Darshan Khatkar, Amarjit Chandan and Sant Ram Udasi," says Paramjit S Judge.
[2] Prof Ronki Ram called him "one of the most popular and serious poets of the Naxal Movement in Punjab of the late 1960s.
His was a family without money, without land, without education, without any financial and intellectual resources that could give Lal Singh a start for upward social or economic mobility.
He joined Junior Teachers' Training course in 1964 at SHS College in Bahilolpur, another close-by town, but gave up after two years without completing the course.
During this period Lal Singh Dil supported himself by working as a wage labourer and herder, and by giving tuitions.
This is what he writes in the opening paragraph of his autobiography, Dastaan: 'I have endured the ordeal by fire time and again in my life, and it is a miracle that I have been able to emerge unscathed.
He is pushed into this 'fire' again and again, at school, at college where he dares to fall in love with an upper caste girl, and even within the egalitarian Naxalite movement.
In his autobiography he has written freely about the prevalence of the arrogance of caste superiority in his locality, at his school, and in the Naxalite organizations and among the police,' says Amarjit Chandan.
(Punjabi text:'ਲਾਲ ਸਿੰਘ ਦਿਲ ਚਮਾਰਾਂ ਦੇ ਘਰ ਜੰਮਿਆ । ਇਹ ਗੱਲ ਇਹਦੀ ਕਵਿਤਾ ਵਿਚ ਕਈ ਥਾਈਂ ਆਈ ਹੈ । ਸਵੈਜੀਵਨੀ ਵਿਚ ਇਹਨੇ ਆਪਣੇ ਵਿਹੜੇ, ਸਕੂਲ ਤੇ ਨਕਸਲੀ ਪਾਰਟੀ ਅਤੇ ਫੇਰ ਪੁਲਸ ਦੇ ਜ਼ਾਤ ਅਭੀਮਾਨ ਬਾਰੇ ਖੁੱਲ਼ ਕੇ ਲਿਖਿਆ ਹੈ')[8] Lal Singh was introduced to the Marxist ideology by one Comrade Jagjit Singh Baghi of his own town in 1968 (Punjabi text:'ਪ੍ਰੇਰਨਾ: ਸਾਹਿਤ ਤੇ ਸਮਾਜਵਾਦੀ ਸੋਚ ਦੀ ਪਹਿਚਾਣ 1968 `ਚ ਕਾਮਰੇਡ ਜਗਜੀਤ ਸਿੰਘ ਬਾਗੀ, ਸਮਰਾਲਾ ਨੇ ਕਰਾਈ ।')[9] This is how he himself describes his enthusiasm for the Naxalite movement: 'The news of Naxalbari spread like wildfire.
After release from jail in 1971, fearing police persecution, facing neglect from family, friends and comrades, and lacking support from any quarter he fled to Uttar Pradesh, another Indian province.
The main reasons for running away from Punjab were his disillusionment with the political Movement and the fear of police persecution.'
(Punjabi text:'ਲਾਲ 1971 ਦੇ ਅਖੀਰ ਪੰਜਾਬ ਦਾ ਧੱਕਿਆ ਯੂ.ਪੀ ਚਲੇ ਗਿਆ। ਓਥੇ ਜਾਨ ਦਾ ਵਡਾ ਕਾਰਨ ਸਿਆਸੀ ਲਹਿਰ ਤੋਂ ਹੋਇਆ ਮੋਹਭੰਗ ਸੀ ਤੇ ਪੁਲਿਸ ਦਾ ਡਰ ਵੀ।' )[14] In Uttar Pradesh he moved from one town or village to another, seeking one or another kind of subsistence employment about which he talks extensively in his autobiography.
(Punjabi text:' ... ਸਭ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ ਮੈਂ ਦਸੱ ਦਿਆਂ ਕਿ ਮੈਂ ਮੁਸਲਮਾਨ ਹੋ ਗਿਆ ਹਾਂ। ਇਸ ਨੂੰ ਸਾਲ ਹੋ ਗਿਆ ... ' )[16] While he was a student at college he had become enamoured of a few girls but it all remained a one-sided affair, his caste always acting as the insurmountable barrier.
This is what Prem Parkash writes: 'Lal has not written about any love affair with a woman in his memoirs, he has only given indications of his fantasies.
Dil had his kachcha home in the run-down Kang Mohalla or Chamarian (a chamar ghetto), as some referred to it.
He published three collections of poetry: Setluj Di Hawa (Breeze from the Sutlej) 1971; Bahut Sarey Suraj (So Many Suns) 1982; and Satthar (A Sheaf) 1997.
His contemporary revolutionary poets, Pash foremost among them, sang of a revolution round the corner, using blood and thunder imagery to denounce, frighten and challenge the 'class enemies', predicting the imminent fall of the 'comprador bourgeois state'.
It focuses, for the first time in Punjabi poetry, on the lives of men and women and children who are absolutely at the lowest rungs of the Indian society, the social and economic out-castes - the Dalits, the landless labourers and farm workers, the daily wagers, and many nomadic and wandering 'non-Aryan' tribes (who he believes were the original inhabitants of India, and whom he calls the Naglok through the title of the collected work of his poems) conquered by the invading Aryans; the people to be exploited and humiliated, to be used and abused and kept at the margins of everything decent and worthwhile.
His understanding of life, of history, religion and society, has been mostly picked up from his environment and experience, which makes his poetry distinctive and different, for it has a quality of the raw, the unformed and the folk.
His poetry gives voice to the voiceless, the ignored and in their language, through their unsophisticated mixture of truth, prejudice, anger, bitterness and humour, desire for revenge, and for transcendence as in fairy tales.