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Mohinder Pratap Chand is a Urdu writer and poet of India who has promoted Urdu language and literature in India. In Kurukshetra University (India), he initiated the Bazm-e-Adab (a literary body) and introduced the study of Urdu in the University Curriculum where he taught Urdu as Teacher In-charge for 26 years. He is the author of over a dozen Urdu and Hindi books both in poetry and prose including children literatures in Urdu.
Mohinder Pratap Chand was born on August 1, 1935, in Karor Lal Esan, Layyah District (at the time a tehsil of Muzaffargarh District) in the Punjab state of pre-independence India (now Pakistan). At the time of the partition of the country he alongside his parents migrated to India when he was 12 years old and studying in his 7th class. There he studied at Govt. College Ludhiana and then at the University of Delhi and completed his degrees for Honors and Masters in Urdu and also Masters in Library Science all in the first class.
In the year 1959, Chand married Nirmala and they had a daughter and two sons. Nirmala died of massive cardiac arrest on 12 November 2009 at the age of 73 years. The elder son Vivek had two children Swati and Siddharth. Vivek died in a road accident in May 1997. The daughter, Sangeeta, is a senior lecturer in English literature in a Post Graduate college in Haryana. She is married to Dr Ashwani Bahl, a Senior Medical Officer of the Punjab Government and they have two children Prashant & Mehak. Chand's youngest son Manoj has been in the United States for the last 20 years and is Vice President of operations with a Health Care company. He is married to Nancy and has three children Shubhda,Yeshda Suzanne & Visheshwar.
From 1964 to 1995, Chand had been associated with the Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra(Haryana, India) where he taught Library Science for 3 years, Urdulanguage for 26 years and ultimately retired as University Librarian. In 1980-81, Chand had been on a foreign assignment as a library expert to the Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.
Chand wrote his first poem when he was in his 7th class at Zira (Punjab, India). There-after the able guidance of his mentor Hazrat Qais Jalandhari acted as a stimulus and Chand has written 13 books in Urdu, English and Hindi. In the year 2007, he submitted a 665-paged report on the 'Role of Haryana in the evolution of Urdu language and literature' to Akademi.
Chand has been broadcasting his poems and other writings from various stations of the All India Radio and also from Doordarshan - the national TV network. He was twice nominated as a member of the Audition committee by the Director General of Broadcasting in India. He was also nominated twice by the Haryana Chief Minister as a special invitee to the Haryana Urdu Akademi and is a member.
During his visit to USA in 1998, he was interviewed by the 'Voice of America', Washington DC, which was broadcast in two-parts under their weekly program 'Adab Aur Abeeb'.
For over 4 years he has been on the Editorial Board of the Hindi Quarterly 'Punjabi Sanskriti' published from Hissar (Haryana, India).
Publications
'Harf-e-Raaz', 'Harf-e-Aashna' and 'Aazar-e-Gham-e-Ishq' (Anthologies of Urdu poems)
'Zakhm Aarzoo-on ke' (Anthology of Urdu poems in Devnagri script)
Urdu Text Book (Prescribed since 1986, in the school curriculum of the 7th grade students of the Haryana state, India)
'Hali Panipati ki Ghazlen' (Devnagri script), Ed.
'Laava' (A long Urdu poem by Qais Jalandhari'), Ed.
'Colon Classification; a programmed text' (2 Editions in English and one in Hindi) -
'Desh Videsh Ki Kahaniyan'(in Hindi), 'Doodh Ka Mulaya' (in Hindi), 'Doodh ki Qimat' (in Urdu) - Folktales of the world;
'Ujalon Ke Safeer' (a collection of research and critical articles)
Awards and honors
- Honored by 'Adabi Sangam' (Kurukshetra, 1986) and 'Akhil Bharti Tarun Sangam' (Kurukshetra, 1997) for his overall contribution to Urdu and Hindi literature.
- Conferred with the prestigious 'SMH Burney Award' by Haryana Urdu Akademi (1995) for his overall contribution to the promotion of Urdu language and literature
- Honored with 'Naseem-e-Layyah Award' (2004) by the International Bazm-e-Ilm-o-fun, Layyah, Pakistan, for his contribution to Urdu Language and learning
- Conferred with 'Khwaja Altaf Hussain Hali Award' (2006) by the Haryana Waqf Board for promoting the cause of Urdu in the state of Haryana
- Honored with the Title of 'Mahtab-e-Sukhan' (2006) by Navrang Adabi Idara, Ludhiana, Punjab
- Conferred with the 'Bharat Excellence Award' for the year 2009 by the Friendship Forum of India, New Delhi, for his over all contribution to the fields of Education & Literature.
- Conferred with 'Abr Seemabi Award' for the year 2010, by Sahitya Sabha, Kaithal, Haryana, India, for his over all achievements in Urdu Language & Literature.
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