Senior Hindi poet and writer Manglesh Dabral passed away due to COVID-19 related complications in Delhi on Wednesday. He was admitted to All India Institute of Medical Sciences after his condition deteriorated in a private hospital in Ghaziabad.
Returned Sahitya award
Committed to secular and socialist values both in his writing and life, the Sahitya Akademi Award winner returned the coveted award in 2015 as a protest against the killing of scholar M.M. Kalburgi and the increasing instances of violence against public intellectuals.
Born on May 14, 1948, in Kafalpani village of Tehri Garhwal in Uttarakhand, Dabral’s poetry captured the pain of the soul that is uprooted from the hills. He penned five anthologies of poetry. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award for Hum Jo Dekhte Hain.
Dabral edited several literary and cultural pages of newspapers but he is best remembered for nurturing Jansatta’s Sunday magazine.
“A gentle soul, he was a staunch critic of fascist forces. He was gentler than a flower but hard like a thunderbolt when it came to his commitment,” said fellow poet and critic Pankaj Chaturvedi, describing Dabral as the poet of the tradition of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh and Raghuvir Sahay. “It is interesting to note that he passed away on the birthday of Sahay,” said Mr. Chaturvedi.
He is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter.
