About this stamp
Poet of the Navgeet
India Post issued this ₹5 stamp on 26 December 2017 for Dr Shambhunath Singh (1916–1991), the Hindi poet, critic and dramatist. He was born on 17 June 1916 at Rawatpar Amethian in the Deoria district of eastern Uttar Pradesh, the middle son of Thakur Ram Dev Singh, and began writing poetry at thirteen. When Gandhi came to Kashi in 1934, the young poet presented him with his poem “Harijan”, framed in glass; Gandhi auctioned it on the spot for ₹50 for the Harijan fund. At Allahabad University his poem “Krishak Bala” won notice, and with it the encouragement of Mahadevi Verma and Dr Ram Kumar Verma.
Fifty Years of Writing
Between 1940 and 1990 he published eleven collections of poetry, among them Roop Rashmi, Chhaya Lok, Samay Ki Shila Par (1944), Udayachal, Manvantar, Maadhyam Main and Khandit Setu. Uneasy with the imported modernity of the new Hindi poetry, he shaped the Navgeet, the new song, as a stream of its own. He also wrote criticism and research, from studies of the Hindi epic and of Tulsidas to Chhayawad Yug, and brought the theatre of the absurd into Hindi with plays such as Akela Shahar.
The stamp was designed by Alka Sharma; Security Printing Press, Hyderabad printed 5 lakh.
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