1. Amarjit Chandan is a Punjabi writer, editor, translator and activist.
26 Facts About Amarjit Chandan
1. 2.
Amarjit Chandan has written eight collections of poetry and five collections of essays in Punjabi.
3.
Amarjit Chandan has been called "the global face of modern Punjabi poetry".
4.
Amarjit Chandan has published over 25 books of poetry and essays and has edited over 15 books of poetry and prose.
5.
Amarjit Chandan's work has been translated into many languages including Arabic, Brazilian-Portuguese, Catalan, Greek, Italian, Slovene, Spanish and Turkish.
6.
Amarjit Chandan 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.
7.
Amarjit Chandan was 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.
8.
Amarjit Chandan facilitated the travel of quite a few Ghadris through Kenya en route Moscow where they studied in the Communist University of the Toilers of the East known as the Far East University.
9.
Amarjit Chandan edited a special issue of Bharat Sewak on Indian national freedom fighters and actively assisted with the publications of Yuvak Kender.
10.
Amarjit Chandan joined the Maoist movement in Punjab in 1969 and started Dastavez, the first ever revolutionary underground literary magazine in Punjabi.
11.
Amarjit Chandan was given three years sentence and he underwent solitary confinement in Jalandhar and Amritsar jails.
12.
Amarjit Chandan found and translated Bhagat Singh's famous article Why I am an Atheist.
13.
Amarjit Chandan edited Hem Jyoti when it was relaunched in 1974 under the Punjabi Sahit Sabhyachar Manch.
14.
Amarjit Chandan was one of the founders of Jamhuri Adhikar Sabha Punjab.
15.
In 1980, Amarjit Chandan moved to the UK where he has been living ever since.
16.
Amarjit Chandan completed post-graduate Diploma in Translation with distinction from the Institute of Linguists in 1991.
17.
Amarjit Chandan was language consultant to the National Community Folklore Centre based at Middlesex Polytechnic.
18.
Amarjit Chandan translated for several publishing concerns, including the Indian Council of Historical Research, National Book Trust India, books of history, economics, fiction, non-fiction, children's literature, drama and poetry.
19.
Amarjit Chandan has translated works of Bertolt Brecht, Pablo Neruda, Yiannis Ritsos, Nazim Hikmet, John Berger and others into Punjabi.
20.
Amarjit Chandan was one of ten British poets selected by Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate, on BBC Radio 3 on National Poetry Day, 2001.
21.
Amarjit Chandan has participated in the Alderburgh, Ledbury, King's Lynn, Winchester, O Bheal poetry festivals and Poetry Parnassus in London in 2012.
22.
Amarjit Chandan participated in the Bradford Literature Festival speaking on 'WW1 and the Punjab' and Partition respectively.
23.
Amarjit Chandan worked on a British Library Sound Archive Project Between Two Worlds: Non-Anglophone Poets in England: Readings and Histories recording more than 30 poets.
24.
Amarjit Chandan is known as the bridge between East and West Punjabi literature.
25.
Amarjit Chandan has donated much rare material and many sound recordings of his interviews with eminent writers, artists and activists including his correspondence with John Berger to the British Library, Wikimedia Commons, Panjab Digital Library, Chandigarh and Desh Bhagat Yadgar, Jalandhar.
26.
In 1998 Amarjit Chandan did oral history recordings of 12 early Punjabi immigrant workers in London for the Museum of London.