Acclaimed as the doyenne of Punjabi literature, Amrita Pritam received many awards, including India’s highest literary award, the Jnanpith, in 1981. Born in Gujranwala, now in Pakistan, in 1919, she came to India after the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. Her best-known work is a classic poem, addressed to the great eighteenth-century Sufi poet Waris Shah, in which she laments the carnage of Partition and calls on him to give voice from his grave. Amrita ...
