Agyeya

Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan (7 March 1911 – 4 April 1987), popularly known by his pen name Agyeya (also transliterated Ajneya, meaning 'the unknowable'), was an Indian writer, poet, novelist, literary critic, journalist, translator and revolutionary in Hindi language.

He pioneered modern trends in Hindi poetry, as well as in fiction, criticism and journalism.

He is regarded as the pioneer of the Prayogavaad (experimentalism) movement in modern Hindi literature.

Son of a renowned archaeologist Hiranand Sastri, Agyeya was born in Kasia, a small town near Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh.

He took active part in the Indian freedom struggle and spent several years in prison for his revolutionary activities against British colonial rule.

He edited the Saptak series which gave rise a new trends in Hindi poetry, known as Nayi Kavita.

He edited several literary journals, and launched his own Hindi language weekly Dinaman, which set new standard and trends in Hindi journalism.

Agyeya translated some of his own works, as well as works of some other Indian authors to English.

He also translated some books of world literature into Hindi.

Agyeya was born as Sachchidananda Vatsyayan in Punjabi Brahmin family on 7 March 1911 in an archaeological camp near Kasia, Kushinagar district of Uttar Pradesh, where his father, Hiranand Sastri, an archaeologist, was positioned for an excavation.

Agyeya spent his early childhood in Lucknow (1911–1915).

Due to his father's professional appointment at various places, he had to shift to various places including Srinagar and Jammu (1915–1919), Patna (1920), Nalanda (1921) and the Ootacamund and Kotagiri (1921–1925).

Due to this peripatetic lifestyle, Agyeya came into contact with different Indian languages and cultures.

His father, and who was a scholar in Sanskrit, encouraged him to study Hindi and taught him some basic English.

He was taught Sanskrit and Persian by Pandit and Maulavi in Jammu.

His mother was Vyantidevi (d. 1924) who was not much educated.

Hiranand Sastri and Vyantidevi had 10 children, of whom Agyeya was the fourth.

After passing his matriculation in 1925 from the University of Punjab, Agyeya moved to Madras, joined the Madras Christian College, and did Intermediate in Science in 1927, studying mathematics, physics and chemistry.

In the same year, he joined the Forman Christian College in Lahore, where he studied Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and English, and received a Bachelor of Science in 1929, standing first in a class.

Thereafter he enrolled for an M.A. in English, but dropped out, and joined the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA), a revolutionary organisation, with a view to fight for Indian independence movement, and participated in rebellious activities against the British colonial government.

In November 1930, he was arrested on account of his involvement in the attempt to help Bhagat Singh, a socialist revolutionary and leader of HSRA, to escape from jail in 1929.

He was then sentenced on charge of sedition against British rule in India.

He spent the next four years in jail in Lahore, Delhi and Amritsar.

During these prison days, he started writing short stories, poems and the first draft of his novel Shekhar: Ek Jivani.

After his release from jail in 1934, Agyeya worked as a journalist in Calcutta, and from 1939 for All India Radio.

Agyeya edited Sainik from Agra (1936–37), Vishal Bharat from Calcutta (1937–39), Prateek (1947) and Naya Prateek (1973) respectively from Allahabad and New Delhi.

In English.

Agyeya married Santosh Malik in 1940.

He was associated with the Progressive Writers Association (PWA) and, in 1942, he organised the All India Anti-Fascist Convention.

During World War II in 1942, he joined the Indian army and was sent to the Kohima Front as a combatant officer.

Their marriage ended in divorce in 1945.

He left the army in 1946.

He stayed at Meerut (Uttar Pradesh) for sometime and remained active in local literary groups.

During this period, he published several translations into English of other writers, and a collection of his own poems, Prison Days and Other Poems.

he edited Vak (1951).

He married Kapila Vatsyayan (née Malik) on 7 July 1956.

Agyeya was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award (1964), Jnanpith Award (1978) and the internationally reputed Golden Wreath Award for poetry.

They separated in 1969.

He died on 4 April 1987, aged 76, in New Delhi.

He was cremated at Nigambodh Ghat.