Opinion - Letters to the Editor   

Amrita Pritam

The death of Amrita Pritam removes from the national scene a writer and poet known for her poignant stories dealing with the throes of Partition. An icon of our age, she will be remembered with awe and respect for her achievements in life.

She wrote with courage and honesty and distinctly captured the pains of Partition with sensitivity in her novel Pinjar. Indeed, her death marks the end of an era.

Ram Gurbaxani,
Hopkins, Minnesota

* * *

The report "A doyen of Punjabi literature" (Nov. 1) on Amrita Pritam's life says "she got divorced in 1960, roughly the time when her writings started becoming more and more feminist, a reflection of her unhappy marriage." The sentence was shocking and disturbing for many of us. The account seems to assume that feminism is the result of unhappy marriages, a view that is all the more damaging when written in relation to someone like Amrita Pritam.

Her feminist views were those of an independent thinker. She was a pioneer of such thought for many of us women who grew up in post-Partition India.

Such accounts only damage the tradition of a larger social responsibility that The Hindu is known for.

Pusapati Teja Varma,
New Delhi

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