Punjabi language in the United Kingdom

Shivcharan Jaggi Kussa

Shivcharan Jaggi Kussa was born in the village of KUSSA, within the district of MOGA city. He immigrated to Austria in 1986 where he served with the German and Austrian border Police. Since 2006 he has been living in the east end of London and over the years has produced a plethora of Punjabi novels. He is the most prolific and successful Punjabi writer, Roop Dhillon being his protégé. He writes realistic satirical novels about corruption in the Indian Police force and Punjabi society in general. He has won many awards, including 7 gold medals and a further 17 literary awards, including the Nanak Singh Novelist Award from Punjabi Satth Lambra. His books regularly appear on online magazines, like Roop Dhillon and he has embraced this medium. He is currently working on THE LOST FOOTPRINTS novel. He is writing since 2012 for Bollywood Punjabi and Hindi films.

Amarjit Chandan

Amarjit Chandan

Amarjit Chandan was born in Nairobi in November 1946. After graduating from Panjab University in India, he joined the Maoist Naxalite movement, and subsequently spent two years in solitary confinement. Later he worked for various Punjabi literary and political magazines, including the Bombay-based Economic and Political Weekly before migrating to England in 1980, where he lives with his radio-broadcaster wife and two sons.

He has published eight collections of poetry and two books of essays in Punjabi in the Gurmukhi script and two in the Persian script in Lahore and one in English translation titled Being Here.

He has edited many anthologies of world poetry and fiction, including two collections of British Punjabi poetry and short stories. His work is included in many anthologies in Punjabi, Hindi and English published in India and abroad. His poetry has been published in Greek, Turkish, Hungarian and Romanian and Indian languages. He has participated in many poetry readings in England, Hungary and at Columbia University. He has translated work by, among others, Brecht, Neruda, Ritsos, Hikmet and Cardenal into Punjabi.

He worked as a creative writer with the Punjab Drama Repertory Co., Chandigarh in the late 1970s and adapted Brecht's play The Caucasian Chalk Circle and Tagore's Mukatdhara in Punjabi. He was awarded Young Writer Fellowship by the Lalit Kala [Fine Arts] Akademi, India in 1980.

He is currently working on a Punjabi translation of Cervantes' Don Quixote. His own works include Jarhan, Beejak, Chhanna, and Guthali. He is a regular contributor to apnaorg.com and Sanjh magazine. His profile and work is listed on Danka - Pakistan's Cultural Guide.^[1]

He resides in London, U.K with his family.

Chaudhry Afzal Haq

Chaudhry Afzal Haq (died 8 January 1942) was a Writer,^[2]

Humanitarian, Leader of Majlis-e-Ahrar-e-Islam and a senior political figure in the history of Sub-Continent India. He Worked to help the poor and unrepresented in The Punjab. He was also a founder of Majlis-e-Ahrar-e-Islam.^[3] He founded Ahrar with Syed Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari. He was elected for three times in Punjab Assembly. He was also a Member of the Legislative Assembly of India. He was known as Mufakkir-e-Ahrar. He wrote many books such as Zindagi, Mehbub-e-Khuda, Deen-e-Islam, Azadi-e-Hind, Mera Afsanah, Jawahraat, Mashooqa-e-Punjab, Shaoor, Dehati rooman, Pakistan and untouchability, Taareekh-e-Ahrar, Dunya may dozakh, Islam and Socialism etc. He died on January 8, 1942, in Lahore.

Rupinderpal Singh Dhillon

Rupinderpal Singh Dhillon is from West London and writes novels, short stories and poetry in a British form of Punjabi which he taught himself to write. He has also published poetry in English.

Harjeet Atwal

Harjeet Atwal is a very famous Punjabi writer mainly known as a novelist and story-teller. His books are part of the regular courses of Indian Universities. Among his novels these are main ones; One Way, Ret, Sawari, Southall, British Born Desi, Das Saal Das Yug, Early Birds, Geet. He has written seven short stories books, one poetry collection, one travelogue, one biography and many more articles for different news papers and magazines. He is editor of a literary magazine as well named Shabad. He is an organizer of a literary institute named 'Adara Shabad'. His work is available many different Indian languages. He is a law graduate and has honed legal practice for few years before he migrated to UK in 1977. He lives in London since he moved to UK. He was born on 8 September 1952 and married with three children.

All three of these writers represent wildly different schools of thought. Atwal is a traditional Punjabi writer well known in East Punjab. Chandan experiments with the language and has a more international approach. Some do not understand his work, but he too is firmly established now in a traditional Punjabi upbringing. He is equally well known in West Punjab. Of the three, Dhillon represents a totally new breed. His style is very anglicised, reflecting his upbringing in the west. In some eyes this has meant his Punjabi is not "proper". However, it is true reflection of the way English-bred second-generation Punjabis use it. But it is not only his grammar that irks traditionalists. His writing can be heavy and surreal, and hard to comprehend by those used to stories about village life. He is urban and better known in the Greater Punjab (Europe and America) then in the east.