Renowned Sindhi linguist-litterateur Parasram Hardwani passes away

Renowned Sindhi- linguist, translator, lexicographer, writer, theatre artist and intellectual, Lacchman Parasram Hardwani, 81, passed away due to old age at his Yerawada residence on Wednesday. His last rites were held at the Yerawada Crematorium. He is survived by three sons.

Born on May 3, 1942, in Sevan Sindh, Dr Hardwani and his family migrated to India and settled in Ahmednagar. Dr Hardwani completed his MA (Hindi) and started working as a professor of the Hindi language at Ahmednagar College. Having taught for 35 long years at the college, he retired in 2002 and settled down in Viman Nagar after retirement.

A strong supporter and promoter of the Sindhi Devanagari script, Dr Hardwani has to his credit nearly 100 books which include dictionaries. He is well known for his translations of literary works such as Dasbodh and Dnyaneshwari in the Sindhi language. He believed that akin to Hindi and Urdu, Arabic Sindhi and Devanagari Sindhi are two different languages from the point of view of scripts, grammar, vocabulary and linguistics. He wrote with equal felicity in Sindhi, Hindi and Marathi and popularised Sindhi Haiku, a unique style of literature. He was also a founding member of the Ahmednagar Sindhi Education Society.

When contacted by Hindustan Times, Dr Richa Sharma, head of the Hindi department of Ahmednagar College, fondly recalled her association with Dr Hardwani. “I came to Ahmednagar from Pune in 1999 when I joined the Hindi department. Dr Hardwani was a father figure to me and took great care of me. All the necessary help was provided to me by him. We were together for only three years but it has been a lifelong association with him. He did his work of translation silently and did not believe in publicity. Whenever I called him to enquire about his wellbeing, he would always discuss his work instead. His insistence was to write Sindhi in the Devanagari script and later, he learned to use social media to make people aware of his point of view. He was a good person and he was a doyen in his field. His death is a great loss to the world of Hindi language and literature,” Dr Sharma said.

BSNL state language officer Vijay Prabhakar Nagarkar paid a glowing tribute to Dr Hardwani. “Dr Hardwani translated the Dnyaneshwari and Dasbodh, both Marathi literary works, in the Sindhi language. I used to meet him at his Ahmednagar residence. He had a great passion for Indian culture and traditions. He always championed the cause of writing the Sindhi language in the Devanagari script. He was punished by the Sahitya Akademi and Bal Bharti for not giving bursaries to Sindhi books written in the Devanagari script. He took a stand against the wrong usage of Hindi both in written and spoken form. His three sons gave him full support in his writing and publication of books,” Nagarkar said.

Dr Hardwani’s Dictionary of Sindhi Synonyms, which he co-authored with Dr Vinita Basantani, is available on Amazon.