Pran Sabharwal: A short profile by Qurban Ali
Pran Sabharwal, a veteran journalist and freedom fighter, was born on 15th October 1929 at Mawlaik, Burma. His family originated from Serai Alamgir (Punjab), now in Pakistan.
Pran Sabharwal joined the Congress Socialist Party as a student in 1945 and became President of the Students’ Congress in Lahore in the same year. He was arrested several times during India’s Freedom Struggle and later joined the Socialist Party and Praja Socialist Party and was a member of its Delhi State Executive Committee during 1948-57.
He was General Secretary of the National Union of Students and President of Delhi University Students Union in 1953-54. He led the Indian Delegation to
the Afro-Asian Students Conference at Bandung, Indonesia in 1956. He was closely associated with Asoka Mehta and Chandra Shekhar and was a prominent figure in Delhi’s socialist circle.
In the late 1950s, Pran Sabharwal started writing for various newspapers and journals, such as US News and World Report, Business Week, Wall Street Journal and The South Foundation. In January 1960, he joined the US Newspaper Baltimore Sun as its correspondent in Delhi and later became its Chief of Bureau for the South Asia region.
Pran Sabharwal wrote more than four thousand articles on politics, economics, anthropology and foreign relations and also contributed to the books Communism in India, Sense of Asia and Ugly Russian. He also wrote an essay titled Delhi During Emergency for Khushwant Singh’s book, Delhi : City improbable. He also covered the Indo-China War of 1962, the Indo-Pak War of 1965 and the Liberation of Bangladesh War of 1971. He passed away in February 2006.