Dalip Kaur Tiwana

Dalip Kaur Tiwana Biography

Dr. Dalip Kaur Tiwana is an accomplished writer associated with Punjabi literature. She is known as a novelist and short story writer. A retired as Professor of Punjabi, and Dean, Faculty of Languages, Punjabi University, she is a recipient of Padma Shri awards in 2004. However she returned the awards in October 2015 protesting "recurrent atrocities" on Muslims in the country.

Dalip Kaur Tiwana was born on May 4, 1935 in Ludhiana of Punjab. Her native village is Rabbon. Her education was completed at Patiala, where she scored good marks with excellence. With outstanding marks in Master’s degree, she was the first lady of the residence to get a PhD. After completing PhD from Panjab Univerity, she joined there as a Punjabi lecturer. Later she was promoted to the positions – professor and Head of the department. She married Bhupinder Singh, noted writer and sociologist and the couple has one son.

As a writer she has contributed about 35 Punjabi novels apart from 14 short story collections. Apart from the biographical work of Dr Mohan singh Diwana, she also wrote 5 more autobiography works. She published her first book of short stories titled - Sadhna in 1961. The work was chosen as the best book in its genre by the Department of Languages, Government of Punjab. She published 7 more short story collections before she started writing novels.

Her second novel Eho Hamara ZeeUna won Sahitya Akademy Award in 1972. Since then her works have been regularly honoured over the years, thus adding her name to the list of great contemporary Punjabi writers of the 20^th century. "Nanak Singh Puruskar" for the novel Peele Patian di Dastan in 1980 and "Gurmukh Singh Musafir Puruskar" on her autobiography Nange parion da Safar in 1982 are among the honours received.

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Updated: January 28, 2016