Obituary: Namwar Singh

Wagish Shukla, an eminent writer and formidable scholar of Hindi, Sanskrit and Persian, an unabashed ‘Traditionalist’ who to many of his critics is ‘actually a right-winger’, told me a decade ago, ‘Namwar Singh is the last person in Hindi who can say something well-informed, insightful and thought-provoking about writers and trends starting from Chand Bardai (a twelfth-century Apbhramsha poet) to the youngest one on contemporary literary scene.’