A Printer’s Mark on History

Pritam Singh (1914-2005) was a first rate Punjabi publisher. His life is arguably the history of Punjabi printing, literary journalism and publishing in the twentieth century.

Known in Punjabi circles as Bhapaji, Dear Elder Brother, Pritam Singh was born in 1914 in Talwandi Bhindran in Sialkot district in western Punjab. After primary education in Arya School in Ganji Bar, he at the behest of his halvai, the sweet meat maker, father started working as a muneem, accountant and later as a granthi, Sikh priest. For a while he was attracted to the Namdhari sect of Sikhs. At the age of 18 he was earning Rs 8 a month as a printing press compositor in Guru Khalsa Press Amritsar run by SS Charan Singh Shaheed, who edited a popular satirical Punjabi weekly Mauji (The Joker) and printed gutkas, pocket size Sikh prayer books. The treadle machine run on steam had just taken over the litho press and lead type had replaced Punjabi calligraphy.

Then he moved to Lahore to work in daily Akali Patrika edited by Sajjan Singh Margindpuri. After working with Hira Singh Dard in his Phulwari Press, who edited and produced a Sikh-Marxist literary monthly Phulwari (The Flower Garden), he moved to Preet Lari Press run by Michigan-educated Gurbakhsh Singh, father of modern Punjabi prose and editor of Preet Lari. Apart from the magazine Gurbakhsh Singh published books as well. Their collaboration went through ups and downs starting with a happy and creative life in Preet Nagar and having to go through the turbulent time of Partition in 1947, when they were displaced to Delhi. Under the patronisation of Mohinder Singh Randhawa, the then Commissioner of Delhi, who provided them resources to resettle, they took root again. In 1949 Gurbakhsh Singh moved back to Preet Nagar, a model town he had built on the Indo-Pak border, but Pritam Singh stayed behind in Delhi and started his own printing press and publishing house, Navyug, which flourished in no time through his hard work.

Then for four decades onwards Pritam Singh published all the leading Punjabi authors. He produced books with a passion and taste still unmatched in Punjabi publishing. He started a top class Punjabi literary magazine Arsee (The Mirror) in April 1958. It ceased publication in 1995 because of Pritam Singh’s age and poor health. All the Russian literary classics and  crude Soviet propaganda in Punjabi translation was printed at Navyug Press situated in the heart of old Delhi.

Soft spoken and khadi-clad Pritam Singh epitomised the best traits of Sikhi including the Namdhari and Communist movements in the Punjab. Balwant Gargi, who wrote pen sketches of his contemporaries, said that Bhapaji was too gentle to be written on. 

His wife Daljit and their youngest daughter Ashma predeceased him in 1992 and 1998 respectively.

Daljit had collected the maximum number of signatures for World Peace Appeal in 1952 and won Golden Dove trophy though it was never delivered to her by the Russians. Pritam Singh’s other two daughters survive him including the Delhi-based academic sociologist Renuka Singh, a disciple of the Dalai Lama.

Pritam Singh Punjabi publisher; born Talwandi Bhinder Sialkot Punjab 14 July 1914;  died New Delhi 31 March 2005

[Courtesy: Journal of Punjab Studies. University of California at Santa Barbara.  Spring 2005)