Avtar Singh Sandhu (Paash)

Pash (9 September 1950 – 23 March 1988) was the pen name of Avtar Singh Sandhu, one of the major poets in the Punjabi literature of the 1970s. He was killed by extremists on 23 March 1988. His strongly left-wing views were reflected in his poetry. Pash was born as Avtar Singh Sandhu in 1950 in a small village called Talwandi Salem in Jalandhar district of Punjab, in a middle-class farmers family. His father Sohan Singh Sandhu was a soldier in the Indian army who also composed poetry as a hobby. Pash grew up in the midst of the Naxalite movement, a revolutionary movement waged in Punjab against the landlords, industrialists, traders, etc. who control the means of production. This was in the midst of the Green revolution which had addressed India's problem of famine using high yield crops, but had also unconsciously led to other forms of inequities in Punjab.