CHANCHAL CHAUHAN



CHANCHAL CHAUHAN is the nom de plume of Dr. H. S. Chauhan, who taught English literature at a college of Delhi University. He was born at an Indian village in Etah District of U.P. and got his education at the Tehsil centre known as Aliganj, and District Centre known as Etah. He graduated from a college at Etawah and finally got his M.A. (English) and M.A. (Hindi) degrees from University of Delhi. He did his PhD. on Arnold Wesker, a British playwright.

Chanchal Chauhan began to write Hindi poems when he was sixteen and recited his lyrics at Kavi Sammelans and Kavi Goshthis at different places. His first collection of Hindi poems, however, appeared in 1972 under the title, Prahaar Syaah Raat Par (प्रहार स्याह रात पर ‘An Onslaught on Dark Night’), a joint collection of poems with Rajkumar Saini. It was well received in Hindi literary circles because a new Leftist trend was emerging in Hindi poetry and this collection was a forerunner of that  trend. His independent collection of poems, Kholo Band Jharokhe (खोलो बंद झरोखे   'Open the Closed Windows') was published in 1982. He began to write articles on ideological issues of Hindi criticism and generated ideological debates on methodology of Hindi criticism that was being written by various progressive and reactionary Hindi writers. He fought ideological battle against Hindi Modernists such as Agyeya, Dharm Vir Bharati and others and also analysed critically the methodology of formalist critics since the inception of Hindi criticism. He criticised the formalist deviation in the critical works of Namwar Singh and bio-criticism of Ram Vilas Sharma. He developed a new methodology of Hindi criticism that he elaborated in his book, Janwadi Samiksha   (जनवादी समीक्षा ‘Democratic Criticism’) published in 1979 (later on, re-published with a new title, Aalochana Yatraa, आलोचना यात्रा 2010). He had applied his new methodology on the poems of Gajaanan Madhav Muktibodh, a great Marxist Hindi poet and writer of the Twentieth century. The interpretation of his poems got the shape of a critical work, Muktibodh ke Pratik aur Bimb (मुक्तिबोध के प्रतीक और बिंब The Symbolism and Imagery of Muktibodh’) first published in 1976 as Muktibodh Pratibaddh Kala ke Prateek (मुक्तिबोध : प्रतिबद्ध कला के प्रतीक) and reprinted in 2001 by Vani Prakashan. He has been writing articles on various literary issues that have been published in literary little magazines. Some of these articles were included in his book, Aalochana ki Shuruaat (आलोचना की शुरुआत 'Beginning of Criticism) published in 2008. A collection of critical articles on Hindi fiction has also been published under the title, Hindi Katha Sahitya : Vichar aur Vimarsh (हिंदी कथासाहित्य : विचार और विमर्श) by Sahitya Bhandar Allahabad in 2012.

 He established a journal in Hindi, Pralochan (प्रालोचन), to make it a journal of aesthetics and art criticism, but only one issue could be published and then he was associated with an English journal, Journal of Arts and Ideas that gained popularity among artists and art critics. He was also associated with a Hindi journal, Uttargatha (उत्तरगाथा) in the eighties of the 20th century. When Janwadi Lekhak ak Sangh, an all India association of democratic writers was formed in February 1982, he worked for making it a strong democratic organisation of Hindi and Urdu writers. He was elected its central secretary at Varanasi Conference in 1984 and since then worked as Secretary, then Additional General Secretary and then General Secretary since 2003 upto 2014. He was also the editor of Naya Path (नया पथ), the central Hindi organ of Janwadi Lekhak Sangh. Details of Janwadi Lekhak Sangh and Naya Path can be seen on the association’s website, www.jlsindia.org. Chanchal Chauhan occasionally writes articles on his blog also, http://chanchalchauhan.blogspot.in/. He often contributes articles to a reputed feature agency, INFA service.