Does the ti­tle pro­duce a sense of be­wil­der­ment? The fa­mous poet and ac­tor Harindranath Chat­topad­hyay, best re­mem­bered for his role as a fam­ily pa­tri­arch in the 1972 Bol­ly­wood clas­sic Bawarchi of Hrishikesh Mukher­jee, named Bhai Vir Singh, ‘The Sixth River of Pun­jab’. The metaphor em­ployed by a poet is un­re­strained by the rigours of the rigid math­e­mat­i­cal reg­i­men. On his birth an­niver­sary, WSN colum­nist Bhupin­der Singh pays trib­ute to the cel­e­brated sa­vant au­thor and Gur­bani ex­po­nent, whose par­al­lel is dif­fi­cult to find in mod­ern times.

PUN­JAB IS THE LAND OF FIVE RIVERS, WHERE THESE WA­TER BOD­IES  orig­i­nate from the Hi­malayan peaks flow­ing into the plains and fi­nally dis­charg­ing into the Ara­bian Sea. These five rivers gave birth to the an­cient In­dus Val­ley Civ­i­liza­tion. Bhai Vir Singh’s lit­er­ary con­tri­bu­tions in terms of qual­ity and quan­tity were not less prodi­gious then these rivers and gave birth to a cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion.

This unique sixth river flowed ink on the pa­per from the pen of Bhai Sahib. This ink de­scended from the Hi­malayan heights of Bhai Sahib’s spir­i­tual realm and merged into the hearts of masses quench­ing lit­er­ary, po­etic, and spir­i­tual thirst. Even to­day this river, by the doyen of Pun­jabi lit­er­a­ture fills hearts with love, rev­er­ence and faith.

Bhai Vir Singh was born on 5 De­cem­ber 1872 to Dr Cha­ran Singh and his wife Ut­tam Kaur in Am­rit­sar. Dr Cha­ran Singh was a suc­cess­ful med­ical prac­ti­tioner, as well as a scholar of Brij Bhasha, Hindi and San­skrit. Bhai Sahib spent con­sid­er­able time of his child­hood with his Nana-ma­ter­nal grand­fa­ther Gi­ani Haz­ara Singh. Even in his child­hood, he as­sisted his Nana Ji in trans­lat­ing Sheikh Saadi’s work from Urdu and Per­sian into Pun­jabi.

One day, the child in­no­cently said to his Nana Ji that there was a need to cre­ate more books in Pun­jabi, so why was he merely trans­lat­ing in­stead of writ­ing orig­i­nal books? His grand­fa­ther Gi­ani Haz­ara Singh laughed and said, “My dear son, I could not write orig­i­nal books but you are sure to do so.” The ca­sual words of Bhai Vir Singh’s lov­ing Nana proved to be prophetic.

Bhai Vir Singh joined a school at eight. In 1891, he passed the ma­tric­u­la­tion ex­am­i­na­tion from the Church Mis­sion School, stand­ing first in the dis­trict of Am­rit­sar and was awarded a gold medal by the dis­trict ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Rev­erend McKen­zie was the Prin­ci­pal of the School then, and his wife was teach­ing Bible classes in the school. Even af­ter Bhai Sahib fin­ished stud­ies and had left the school, Prin­ci­pal McKen­zie still kept in touch with Bhai Sahib, as he was very im­pressed with him. Upon re­tire­ment at the time of his de­par­ture back to Eng­land, he asked Bhai Sahib to visit him in his bun­ga­low. McKen­zie of­fered him his per­sonal Bible af­ter au­to­graph­ing it and said to him, “I am giv­ing you this not with a mo­tive of con­vert­ing you, but that you may wish to re­fer to it oc­ca­sion­ally”. He added, “When you look at it you will re­mem­ber me. Your re­mem­brance will help me in ac­quir­ing spir­i­tual ex­cel­lence and pro­mote my re­li­gious progress.”

He had three job of­fers upon fin­ish­ing school­ing, but he had his mind on set­ting up a print­ing press. In 1892 he set up a print­ing press in part­ner­ship with Wazir Singh and it was named Wazir-e- Hind Print­ing Press. Dur­ing 1892-94 Bhai Vir Singh founded the Khalsa Tract So­ci­ety with an aim of print­ing tracts prop­a­gat­ing the phi­los­o­phy of Gu­rus and to pro­mote Pun­jabi lan­guage and lit­er­a­ture. He was in­stru­men­tal in set­ting up Chief Khalsa Di­wan in 1901.

In 1902 he was the found­ing fa­ther of Khalsa Col­lege, Am­rit­sar. In 1908 he es­tab­lished the Cen­tral Sikh Or­phan­age and was one of the pro­mot­ers of Pun­jab and Sind Bank which is still op­er­a­tional. In 1909, the Anand Mar­riage Act for Sikh wed­dings was en­acted un­der his guid­ance. In 1935 he set up a Cen­tral In­sti­tu­tion for the blind. In 1949, the Pan­jab Uni­ver­sity, Chandi­garh awarded him an hon­orary Doc­tor­ate in Lit­er­a­ture, in ap­pre­ci­a­tion of his mas­sive con­tri­bu­tions to Pun­jabi lit­er­a­ture. In 1953, the Sahitya Acad­emy awarded his book “Mere Sai­jan Jeo” the first prize. In 1954, the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia ap­pointed him as a Mem­ber of the Sahitya Acad­emy. In­1956, Bhai Sahib was ho­n­oured by the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia with Padma Bhushan.

He was so full of hu­mil­ity that he would not put his name on his writ­ings. His urge was to al­ways re­main in the back­ground, pre­fer­ring anonymity. As a con­se­quence, in spite of his first-rate writ­ings and a spate of hu­man­i­tar­ian work that he un­der­took, he was rel­a­tively un­cel­e­brated. How­ever, in his later years his ser­vices to lit­er­a­ture, arts, phi­los­o­phy, re­li­gion and hu­man­ity, shone out like a bright Sun. Thus the light of em­i­nence was show­ered on him, which proved as a dis­trac­tion to him in his writ­ing en­deav­ours, as it took away his pre­cious time.

On June 10, 1957, he bade farewell to the world with folded hands in prayer and in a farewell ges­ture.

The lit­er­ary con­tri­bu­tions of the Sixth river of Pun­jab can be di­vided into four dis­tinct pe­ri­ods as un­der:

From Child­hood to 1897
Books au­thored dur­ing this pe­riod were re­li­gious and eth­i­cal in na­ture. The short tracts that he wrote for Khalsa Tract So­ci­ety were warmly re­ceived by the masses and be­came very pop­u­lar. Even as a neo­phyte his prose re­flected a lot of nov­elty and fresh­ness. The choice of words and their artis­tic dic­tion held a promise of his grow­ing into a man of let­ters.

The Younger Days -1898 -1902
The year 1898 saw the pub­li­ca­tion of Bhai Vir Singh’s novel Sun­dari, a land­mark in mod­ern Pun­jabi lit­er­a­ture. Some crit­ics went so far as to call it the first novel of the Pun­jabi lan­guage. It is still widely read and has been trans­lated into many lan­guages and even an an­i­mated movie has also been made. With ‘Sun­dari’, Bhai Vir Singh rekin­dled the la­tent spirit to awaken the na­tion from its deep slum­ber, en­thused with new vi­tal­ity and vigour. The story in the novel de­picts in­ci­dents and events which in­cul­cate uni­ver­sal broth­er­hood and love for hu­man­ity.

A Sikh girl treats an in­jured Moghul se­poy, sav­ing his life, but when he finds out that she is a Sikh woman, he at­tacks her with his dag­ger. Surasti, the ear­lier name of Sun­dri, was forcibly taken away by the Moghul of­fi­cial, to be in­ducted into the harem of Nawab. How she es­caped, took Am­rit to be­come Sikh and re­named Sun­dri, she earns the re­spect of the mem­bers of the Sikh Jatha who treat her as their own sis­ter. Be­sides Sun­dari, his other nov­els were Bi­jay Singh, Sat­want Kaur and tracts on lives of Sikh Gu­rus that were pub­lished by the Khalsa Tract So­ci­ety, later pub­lished in book form. At the end of this pe­riod, he was just 30.

The Youth­ful Years 1903 -1928
This pe­riod of 25 years was the most pro­duc­tive pe­riod of his cre­ative out­pour­ings.

The list of ma­jor works is as be­low:
Bharthari Hari Ji­wan Tae Niti Shatak – Bi­og­ra­phy of fa­mous gram­mar­ian and poet (1916)
Rana Surat Singh – A epic novel in po­etry form (1905)
Raja Lakhdata Singh – A play (1910)
Sat Aukhian Ratan – Por­trayal of a vivid pic­ture of loss of Guru Gob­ind Singh’s dear ones, pro­vid­ing the read­ers’ suc­cour from grief (1919)
Dil Tarang – A col­lec­tion of Po­ems (1920)
Tarel Tupke – A col­lec­tion of Po­ems (1921)
Lahran De Haar – A col­lec­tion of Po­ems writ­ten dur­ing (1921)
Matak Hu­lare – An­thol­ogy of Po­ems he wrote dur­ing his visit to Kash­mir in (1922)
Bi­jlian De Haar – A col­lec­tion of Po­ems writ­ten dur­ing (1922-27)
Shub­hag Ji – A novel (1921)
Baba Naudh Singh – a novel on a wid­ow’s des­per­ate urge for a re­union with her dead hus­band (1921)
Nar­gas – Song of a Sikh (1924)
Kalgid­har Chamatkar- Bi­og­ra­phy of Guru Gob­ind Singh Ji (1925)
Sat­want Kaur Part 2 – (1927)
Leha­ran De Haar – An­thol­ogy of Po­ems (1928)
Guru Nanak Chamatkar – Bi­og­ra­phy of Guru Nanak Dev Ji (1928)

The Evening of his life 1928 -1957
Preet Veena Te Kant Ma­heli– An­thol­ogy of ro­man­tic Po­ems (1929)
Kambdi Kalai – A poem col­lec­tion [Ti­tle trans­lated: The Trem­bling Wrist] (1933)
Lehar Hu­lare – An­thol­ogy of po­ems (1946)
Kant Ma­heli – (1950)
Asht­gur Chamatkar- Bi­og­ra­phy of other 8 Gu­rus (1952)
Merae Saiyan Jeo – An­thol­ogy of po­ems (1953) – Win­ner of best book by Sahitya Acad­emy of In­dia
San­thiya (Com­men­tary on) Sri Guru Granth Sahib Seven Vol­umes 7 – Cov­er­ing 607 pages of Guru Granth Sahib. He did not live to com­plete the re­main­ing pages (work was printed posthu­mously).
The above list has just pop­u­lar ti­tles and is par­tial, in­com­plete, but it pro­vides the essence of out­put of the cre­ative gusher un­leashed in his life­time. His books on in­ter­pre­ta­tion and com­men­taries on var­i­ous sub­jects are not in­cluded above.

The 1954 Sikh Ed­u­ca­tion Con­fer­ence in Mum­bai (then Bom­bay) ho­n­oured him with a Com­mem­o­ra­tive Vol­ume as a salute to his cre­ativ­ity. There was tremen­dous ap­plause from the au­di­ence, who in­sisted that he come to the stage and say a few words. He wrote a line from Guru Granth Sahib on a piece of pa­per and handed it over to Hardit Singh Ma­lik who was pre­sid­ing over the func­tion, to read it to the au­di­ence on his be­half. The words de­picted his true hu­mil­ity and the words were:

“ਹਮ ਰੁਲਤੇ ਫਿਰਤੇ ਕੋਈ ਬਾਤ ਨ ਪੂਛਤਾ ਗੁਰ ਸਤਿਗੁਰ ਸੰਗਿ ਕੀਰੇ ਹਮ ਥਾਪੇ ॥”
Guru Granth Sahib, Page 167
Trans­la­tion: I was rolling around in the dirt, un­wanted, un­cared, and in­signif­i­cant. With the grace of the Guru, the True Guru, I, the worm, have been con­ferred great­ness and ex­alted.

His cre­ative work and po­etry made him so pop­u­lar that he was de­clared as Bhai, the brother of the Sikh or­der, very early in his life for his true con­tri­bu­tion in spread­ing Sikhism. His res­i­dence on Lawrence Road, Am­rit­sar has been con­verted to Bhai Vir Singh Mu­seum-cum-Li­brary and is keep­ing alive mem­o­ries of an all-time great of Pun­jabi lit­er­a­ture.

On his birth­day, let us also re­mem­ber him, salute the ge­nius, read and im­bibe the flavour of the Sikh way of life from his works.

Ref­er­ences:
Singh, Prof. Har­bans. Bhai Vir Singh: A Short Bi­og­ra­phy. Bhai Vir Singh Sahitya Sadan (1990)
Singh, Gi­ani Maha. Bhai Sahib Bhai Vir Singh Da Gur­mukh Ji­wan. Bhai Vir Singh Sahitya Sadan (1977)
Gu­le­ria, Lt. Col. G. S. Retd. (Ed­i­tor). Bhai Vir Singh: The Sixth River of Pun­jab. Bhai Vir Singh Sahitya Sadan (1973)
www.Sikhi­wiki.org

An en­gi­neer by pro­fes­sion, hail­ing from Myan­mar, ed­u­cated in In­dia, Bhupin­der Singh is a Hous­ton-based busi­ness­man, with a keen in­ter­est in writ­ing books and ar­ti­cles on Sikh his­tory, mo­ti­va­tion and spir­i­tu­al­ity.