Sumitranandan Pant is well known for his poetry in the Chhayavaad and Rahasyavaad genres. He was born and brought up in the beautiful Uttarakhand village of Kausani in the Bageshwar district. Being one of the poetic legends of the Kumaon region, Pant’s work is renowned for its romanticism and depiction of the natural aspects and beauty of nature’s mythical behavior. Sumitranandan Pant is known as the Wordsworth of Indian literature and is best known for initiating the Chhayavaad movement in India.
Pant was born into a high-class Brahmin family of the Bhardwaj gotra, hence his family was bound by many spiritualistic and social standards. Many of his close relatives were journalists, poets, and writers, allowing him the space that a young poet needs to contribute his work to Indian literature. Pant was born on May 20, 1900, and was initially named Gusain Dutt. His mother passed away during childbirth, leaving Pant as the youngest member of the family. Pant’s father, Gangadutt Pant, took care of him with utmost sensitivity; the sanctity and sensitivity of Pant’s works are gifts of the care given by the Himalayan aura and his caring father. Pant wrote in his book Saath Varsh: Ek Rekhankan, “enclosing my eyes, whenever I turn my memories to childhood, I imagine a small garden, below a tree where I read bedtime stories and grandma sings ‘Arti’ of Kuldevtas, that still echoes in the hills of Kausani.”
In “Atima, Kurmanchal ki Prati,” Sumitranandan Pant explains how he was brought up by nature rather than by any human being.
For Sumitranandan Pant, nature was like a “Dhatri” who guided him to the path of spiritualism, which was reflected in his Chhayavaadi and Rahasyavaadi poetry. Pant’s attachment to the Himalayas can be perceived in his writing in Shilpa aur Darshan, his first creation, in which he wrote that the great Himalayas and green hills filled with chids and devdars imparted these poems through his character of utmost silence and the shadows of those orchards. He wrote, “I aspire from this silent voices and soulful aura and make the chain of words out of it in the form of poems.”
In the early days of his adolescence in the local vernacular school in Kausani, Sumitranandan Pant was deeply impressed by literature like Meghdoot by Kalidas, Kautilya by Chanakya, Shakuntalam, and Amarkosh. At home, he also learned the basics of Hindustani classical music and took a keen interest in singing Khadi Holi and Baithi Holi of native Kumaon. This deep and sensitive method of education and knowledge imparted by nature made Sumitranandan Pant say in one of his AIR interviews, “In childhood, I was in love with Kausani’s greenery rather than books and literature. Kausani imparted sanctity and sensitivity in my nature. In my opinion, a child should spend his time in an open and green environment. The chapters a child can learn from nature are surely not taught in academic books.”
Another example of his affection towards the Himalayas can be clearly seen in his statement in Shilp aur Darshan: “The best efforts were reflected in poems when I visited Almora; by the end of the fifteenth year, I was able to carve words in the best possible way.” Pant completed his high school and intermediate studies in Almora, where he changed his name from Gusain Dutt to Sumitranandan. In his opinion, he wasn’t able to connect to the name, as most of the Gusains of Kumaon used to wear Rudraksha, which Pant disliked. Sumitranandan also adopted an Oscar Wilde look-alike get-up, with long hair and western suits. According to Pant, his long hair was inspired by Napoleon’s youthful look. In his secondary education, Pant wrote for the handwritten magazine of Gobind Ballabh Pant. In the eighth standard, Sumitranandan Pant was influenced by the creations of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay. He missed exams to read books like Chatrasal and Anandmath. Bengal was then the mine of all intellectuals in India, so Pant was also influenced by characters like Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Tagore, Bankimchand, and Vivekananda. This influence is clearly reflected in his prose Vani Amritika.
From 1915 to 1918, Pant published many poems in a local newspaper in Almora. His creation “Tambakhu ka Dhuan” was published in the Almora magazine, which has no existence today. “Veena” is the collection of his adolescence work. During his stay in Almora, Pant was influenced by Kalidasa, and in most of his writings, he used the word “Nandini” as a character because, in Raghuvansh, the cow named Nandini was used by Kalidas. According to Sumitranandan Pant, he came out of the comforting shell of the Himalayas in 1918 when he visited Benaras. The educational and spiritual aura of Benaras changed his perspective on writing literature. He opted for Rabindranath Tagore as a role model and was astonished to see Tagore’s creations. With Sarojini Naidu’s poems, he learned the art of perspective formation and incorporated it into his poems. He said, “Naidu’s word usage was so incredible that her poems describing natural beauty were memorized by me.” For Tagore, Pant quoted in the book Vahi that reading the poems by Tagore and Sarojini Naidu induced a sense of mysticism in his eyes. In his opinion, Tagore’s creations induced a feeling of newness in him.
After completing high school, Pant returned to Kausani, where he wrote two small novels, Veena and Granthi. These were published in 1927 after the publication of Pallav. These two publications bore the impressions of Tagore’s writing. These two initial creations were the silver lining for the Hindi poetry’s new genre of Rahasyavaad. For Sumitranandan Pant, Kausani and Almora were his “Janmabhoomi,” and Allahabad later became his “Karambhoomi.” In Benaras, Pant was influenced by Gandhism, as the Non-Cooperation Movement in the 1920s was at its peak. Sumitranandan Pant used to spend time near the ghats of the Ganges; he wrote in one of his poems, “Nauka Vihar”:
He quoted about Prayag in his book compilation Saath Varsh: Ek Rekhankan, “After I settled in Prayag, an evolution of knowledge in perspective to literature took place. Starting with the works of Kalidasa, I was influenced by how the natural beauty of this world was inscribed.” In Prayag, Sumitranandan Pant was introduced to some famous poetic works by John Keats, Wordsworth, and Tennyson. Sumitranandan Pant’s work in the genre of Chhayavaad and Rahasyavaad is usually compared with the works of William Wordsworth.
The house of Sumitranandan Pant, situated by the side of the Bageshwar-Almora highway, still has his belongings like chairs and a collection of his unpublished works. Pant’s life was simple, and he lived an unmarried life. This is why the poems written by him have a soft and sensitive side. Whereas, in Nirala’s work, this kind of sensitivity in the Chhayavaad genre is hidden behind the reality of society. Sumitranandan Pant adopted a girl child in his adulthood to experience fatherhood. Kausani still echoes in the poetry of Sumitranandan Pant. The beauty of his birthplace not only inspired Mahatma Gandhi but also continues to inspire representatives of Hindi literature to this day. Pant returned to Almora and Kumaon after winning the Gyanpeeth award for “Chidambara,” but it was a mere formality, as he acknowledged that Prayag is where his adulthood and later days belonged.
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