Chaman Lal Sapru

Chaman Lal Sapru was an author and educationist who spent his life promoting Hindi, women’s education and India’s cultural traditions among students in Jammu and Kashmir. He was named for the Padma Shri posthumously in 2021 in the field of literature and education, from Jammu and Kashmir ^[1].

A family of teachers

Sapru was born on 22 January 1935 ^[2]. His father, Pandit Tarachand Sapru, was a pioneer of girls’ education who helped start the first girls’ high school in Doda district ^[2]. Sapru took his BA from the University of Jammu and Kashmir and an MA in Hindi from Panjab University, and was among the first graduates of what is now the Central Hindi Institute in Agra ^[2].

The first Hindi lecturer

At 21 he argued the case for teaching Hindi before the official language commission set up by the Government of India ^[2]. A few years later he became the first Hindi lecturer in Jammu and Kashmir, where the subject had been optional and taught by Sanskrit teachers ^[2]. In 1959 he was elected to the senate of the University of Jammu and Kashmir, the youngest person to hold the post ^[2].

He taught at SP College and Amar Singh College, at government degree colleges in Sopore, Baramulla, Anantnag and Poonch, and at the girls’ degree college in Nawa Kadal, Srinagar ^[2].

Hindi in the valley

Sapru was a founding member of the Jammu and Kashmir chapter of the Rashtra Bhasha Prachar Samiti, Wardha, and founder and secretary general of the Kashmir Hindi Sahitya Sammelan ^[2]. He founded the Hindi Kashmiri Sangam, ran its quarterly Kashmir Sandesh and organised its yearly conferences in Srinagar ^[2]. In 1959 he started the Hindi monthly Kashyap ^[2].

He wrote 18 books, including Santoor ke Swar, and translated works such as the Ramakrishna Kathamrit into Kashmiri ^[2]. He was founding secretary of the Ramakrishna Ashram at Shivalaya in Srinagar, helped organise Swami Vivekananda’s birth centenary there in 1963, and in 2018 went to Mauritius with India’s delegation to the World Hindi Conference ^[2].