Yashpal

Born Dec. 3, 1903, in Firozpur, East Punjab; died Dec. 26, 1976, in Lucknow. Indian writer. Wrote in Hindi.

Yashpal graduated from Punjab National College in Lahore in 1925. A participant in the national liberation movement, he spent the period from 1932 to 1938 in prison. In 1939 he published the collection of short stories Flight From the Coop, which contained elements of romanticism. The sociopolitical novels Comrade Dada (1941) and Party Comrade (1946) portrayed the activities of Indian Communists in the 1940’s. Also noteworthy are the historical novels Divia (1945; Russian translation, 1959) and Amita (1956) and the antibourgeois novel Human Faces (1949).

In a series of short stories, Yashpal depicted the awakening of a person’s class consciousnesss and exposed religious hypocrisy and caste prejudice. The two-part novel False Truth (1958–60; Russian translation, 1963), which dealt with the effect on the Indian people of the division of the country and India’s achievement of independence, was distinguished by traits of socialist realism. As a journalist, Yashpal interpreted problems of contemporary Indian life from a Marxist standpoint. He also published plays, critical articles, and translations.

Yashpal received the Nehru Prize in 1969.