Raj Sadosh
(MOREPIC1) Abohar :Eminent Urdu Scholar Prof Gopi Chand Narang, former chairman of Sahitya Academy, passed awayin Charlotte, North Carolina, after a brief illness. Lekhak Parishad has deeply mourned the demise of the scholar who was equally respected in India and Pakistan. He is survived by his wife, Manorama Narang, and his sons Arun Narang and Tarun Narang, and grandchildren.
Narang was born on 11 February 1931 in Dukki, a small village in Baluchistan and later moved to Delhi after the partition. He was introduced to literature by his father, who himself was a scholar of Baluchi, Pashto, Sanskrit and Persian. Gopi Chand Narang joined the Masters in Urdu programme at Delhi University under Professor Khwaja Ahmad Faruqi.
Later, he received a research fellowship, to complete his PhD, from the Ministry of Education. While doing his PhD he received guidance from Dr. Zakir Husain (who later became the President of India), Dr. Tara Chand and Dr. Syed Abid Husain. He began his teaching career at St. Stephen’s College in 1958. He also travelled the world and taught Urdu.
Prof. Narang inherited the love for Urdu literature from his father.
He devoted his entire life in extricating Urdu from the confines of orthodoxy and communalisation. He would always say that language will adjust and survive, like a river, it keeps changing its bank.
He was the first Urdu scholar who received the Padma Bhushan and Pakistan’s Sitara-e-Imtiaz.
He denounced efforts to equate Urdu with a particular religion and said language does not belong to a religion.
