Chaman Nahal commonly known as C Nahal, also known as ''Chaman Nahal Azadi'', was an Indian born writer of English literature. He was widely considered one of the best exponents of Indian writing in English and is known for his work, ''Azadi'', which is set on India's Independence and her partition. He is also known for his depiction of Mahatma Gandhi as a complex character with human failings.

Life and career

Chaman Nahal was born in

Sialkot Sialkot ( ur, ) is a city located in Punjab, Pakistan. It is the capital of Sialkot District and the 13th most populous city in Pakistan. The boundaries of Sialkot are joined with Jammu (the winter capital of Indian administered Jammu and Ka ...

, in pre-Independence India, a province in the present day

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

, in 1927. After having his school education locally, he did his master's in English at

University of Delhi Delhi University (DU), formally the University of Delhi, is a collegiate university, collegiate Central university (India), central university located in New Delhi, India. It was founded in 1922 by an Act of the Central Legislative Assembly and ...

in 1948. He continued his education as a British Council Scholar at

University of Nottingham , mottoeng = A city is built on wisdom , established = 1798 – teacher training college1881 – University College Nottingham1948 – university status , type = Public , chancellor ...

(1959–61) and obtained a PhD in English in 1961. During his education, he worked as a lecturer (1949–1962). In 1962, he joined

Rajasthan University University of Rajasthan is a public and state university in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India and is one of the oldest universities in the state. It was set up on 8 January 1947 as the University of Rajputana and was given its current name in 1956. ...

, Jaipur as

reader A reader is a person who reads. It may also refer to: Computing and technology * Adobe Reader (now Adobe Acrobat), a PDF reader * Bible Reader for Palm, a discontinued PDA application * A card reader, for extracting data from various forms of ...

in English. The next year, he moved to New Delhi as professor of English at the University of New Delhi. He was a

Fulbright fellow The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

and served as a visiting professor at various universities in the United States,

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

, Japan, Singapore, Canada and

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. He was also a fellow at

Cambridge College Cambridge College is a private college based in Boston, Massachusetts. It also operates regional centers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Springfield, Massachusetts, Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, and Rancho Cucamonga, California. History Founding Cam ...

in 1991 and worked as columnist for the ''

Indian Express ''The Indian Express'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932. It is published in Mumbai by the Indian Express Group. In 1999, eight years after the group's founder Ramnath Goenka's death in 1991, the group was split be ...

'', writing a column talking about books from 1966 to 1973. He died on 29 November 2013 in New Delhi, India.

List of works

Novels Short story collection Uncollected short stories Others Bibliography In The New Literatures in English, 1985 Critical Studies on Chaman Nahal Memoir Children's novels

Literary review

Chaman Nahal's writings are known to talk about India without any touch of exoticism. ''Azadi'', his novel on the partition of India, is widely considered to be the best of the Indian-English novels written about the traumatic partition which accompanied Indian Independence in 1947 (Quoted from '’Train to Pakistan – Azadi : Vice-versa Journey'’ by Dr. Mangalkumar R. Patil). An autobiographical book, ''Silent Life'', was originally written in English and later translated into 12 languages, including Russian, Hungarian and Sinhalese.

Awards and honours

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nahal, Chaman 1927 births Indian male novelists Indian male short story writers English-language writers from India Recipients of the Sahitya Akademi Award in English 2013 deaths 20th-century Indian novelists 20th-century Indian short story writers People from Sialkot District 20th-century Indian male writers