Sumitranandan Pant Biography: Birthday, Early Life, Career, Awards, Family, Death

Sumitranandan Pant Biography: Sumitranandan Pant (20 May 1900 – 28 December 1977)[1] was an Indian poet. He was one of the most renowned Hindi poets of the 20th century and was known for his romantic poems inspired by nature, people, and the beauty within.

Sumitranandan Pant Biography

Name	Sumitranandan Pant
Date of Birth	20 May 1900
Birth Place	Kausani, North-Western Provinces, British India
Date of death	28 December 1977
Monther & Father Name	Saraswati Devi / Ganga Dutt Pant

Early years

His father was the superintendent of a local tea garden and a landowner, so Pant never experienced financial hardship as a child. His love for the beauty and flavour of rural India is evident in all of his main works, as he grew up in the same Indian village.

In 1918, Pant enrolled at Queens College in Banaras. There, he began perusing the works of Rabindranath Tagore, Sarojini Naidu, and English Romantic poets. These figures would have a significant impact on his writing. He moved to Allahabad in 1919 to attend Muir College. As an act of anti-British sentiment, he attended for only two years. He then shifted his focus to poetry and published Pallav in 1926. This compendium established him as a literary giant of the Jaishankar Prasad-led Hindi Renaissance. Pant expressed displeasure in the book’s introduction that Hindi speakers “think in one language and express themselves in another.” He wished to herald in a new national language because he believed Braj to be outmoded.

Pant relocated to Kalakankar in 1931. He lived a secluded existence close to nature for nine years. Concurrently, he became enamoured with the works and ideas of Karl Marx and Mahatma Gandhi, devoting several verses of the poetry he produced during this period to them. In 1941, upon his return to Almora, Pant attended drama classes at the Uday Shankar Cultural Centre. He also read The Life Divine by Aurobindo, which had a profound effect on him. Three years later, he moved to Madras and then Pondicherry to attend the ashram of Aurobindo. 1946 marked his return to Allahabad, where he resumed his position among the country’s prominent authors.

Sumitranandan Pant Career

Sumitranandan Pant began writing poetry when he was seven years old and in the fourth grade. Having spent his infancy surrounded by the natural beauty of the mountains, flora, and fauna, it was only natural that this is where he drew his inspiration, as his earlier works displayed a sublime touch of the tranquilly of the landscape. Sumitranandan himself acknowledged the years 1907 to 1918 as the beginning of his distinguished writing career. The poems he composed during this period were collected and published in “Veena” (1927). Pant continued to study English, Sanskrit, and Bengali literature at home, despite having bowed out of high school to support the Satyagraha Movement of Mahatma Gandhi. This fueled his writing enthusiasm even further.

Pant arrived at Sri Aurobindo’s Ashram in Pondicherry shortly after the Satyagraha Movement. From that point on, he broadened his perspective and began writing in broader contexts. After his visit to Sri Aurobindo, there was an undeniable influence, and the result was evident in the poems he was writing at the time. However, the inspiration from Aurobindo’s philosophy was eerie. Pant shifted from mysticism to Marxism and began incorporating a more humane theme into his writings. Progressive, philosophical, socialist, and humanistic compositions were gradually added to his repertoire. Pant received a Sahitya Academy Award in 1960 for “Kala and Burha Chand” (a collection of all the poems he wrote in 1958). “Chidambara” was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1961 and the Jnanpith Award in 1968. Even the Soviet Union awarded him the Nehru Peace Prize for “Lokayasan.”

Awards

In 1960, India’s Academy of Letters presented Pant with the Sahitya Academy award for Kala Aur Budhdha Chand.

In 1969, Pant received India’s highest literary honour, the Jnanpith Award, becoming the first Hindi poet to do so. This was bestowed to him for his Chidambara collection of his most renowned poems.

In 1961, the Indian government awarded him the Padma Bhushan.

Sumitra Nandan Pant composed the Kulgeet for the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.

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Family

His father, Ganga Dutt Pant, was the superintendent of a local tea garden and a landowner in the North-Western Provinces of Kausani-Almora.

Saraswati Devi was his mother, but she passed away shortly after his birth. He had four siblings and three sisters named Raghubar Dutt Pant, Devidutt Pant, Hari Nandan Pant, and Hari Dutt Pant.

Death of Sumitranandan Pant

Sumitranandan passed away in 1977. The house in which he grew up in Kausani has been converted into a museum where original manuscripts, poems, photographs, correspondence, and his awards are on display.