Jai Bhagwan Goyal

Jai Bhagwan Goyal is a scholar of Hindi and Punjabi literature, and a former professor, head of the Hindi department and dean of arts and languages at Kurukshetra University. He was named for the Padma Shri in 2021 in the field of literature and education, from Haryana ^[1].

Scholar and teacher

Goyal was born on 30 September 1931 in Chhachhrauli, a small town in Yamunanagar district ^[2]. He took his PhD in Hindi from Panjab University in 1964 and taught postgraduate classes for more than 35 years ^[2]. Twenty-five students earned PhDs under his guidance ^[2].

After retiring he was a UGC emeritus fellow and chairman of the Haryana school education board, and he was the founding president of the Haryana Hindi Sahitya Parishad ^[2].

Hindi in Gurmukhi

His main contribution has been to bring to light a large body of medieval Hindi literature written in the Gurmukhi script and little known to Hindi readers ^[2]. He rediscovered for the Hindi world Bhai Santokh Singh, a 19th-century poet of Haryana, whose epic poems on the lives and teachings of the ten Sikh Gurus run to about sixty thousand verses ^[2]. His work gave a new reading of the history of medieval Hindi literature ^[2].

He has also studied the writings of Guru Nanak Dev, Guru Arjan Dev, Guru Tegh Bahadur and Guru Gobind Singh, and other Sikh literature up to the 19th century ^[2].

Books

Goyal has published 30 books and more than 150 research papers ^[2]. His books have been published by Panjab University, Punjabi University, Kurukshetra University, the Punjab Languages Department and the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, among others, and several are set texts for MA and MPhil courses ^[2].