Chaman Lal Kantroo
Tribute to a Great Kashmiri
Scholar, Educationist & Freedom Fighter
Chaman Lal Kantroo
With deep sorrow and grief, we wish to inform
the untimely and sudden demise of one the
great souls of Kashmir Mr. Chaman Lal Kantroo
who hailed from Kha Bazaar Anantnag, Kashmir,
to all the members of Kashmiri community. He is
survived by his wife and daughter who are
presently staying at Jammu. The last rituals
have been performed at Jammu on 26th
Nov 2009.
This note is sent to one all from all
communities and castes of Mother Kashmir who
really love, respect and wanted to give back to
mother Kashmir. Here is one such hero who has
laid his life towards the upliftment of the
common man who has never come in front of
scenes. Only those who have met him, interacted
with him or have been associated with him know
his real worth.
Mr. Chaman Lal Kantroo, Kantroo Sir as he was
popularly called, was born and brought up in a
middle class family at Anantnag, Kashmir, but
his exceptionally high levels of IQ, born talent
and a good aptitude for sharing the knowledge
made him a hero at school and college very
quickly and this spread across the masses in
the entire district as well as in the entire
Kashmir Valley. In his early days he questioned
and reasoned every tradition and custom and read
almost all the religious book from Bahagwat Gita,
Ramayana, Mahabharata, Bible, Holy Quran and
Guru Granth Sahib. He had answer to all the
questions and read number of novels,
autobiographies, fiction and non fiction book.
While he graduated from Degree College Anantnag
in science subjects, he was all together a very
different student , full of knowledge and
information and more importantly the icon for
most of his fellow students for the moral and
ethical values which he demonstrated during
every interactions of the life. I have heard
people saying “I trust more Kantroo Sahab than
my self”. Very soon he was influenced by
various ideologies and read the socialism,
capitalism and communism. His joined the
prevailing freedom movement which raised the
slogan of “ justice and equality for every one".
This very soon reached the masses and turned
into a mass movement and very soon he was made
to go the jail during the emergency days in
India.
I have heard from many of his colleagues that
even in jail he was not only respected by the
jail authorities for his discipline, honesty and
the dissemination of knowledge but also by all
the fellow jailers for his principles, eagerness
to bring light to each and every individual
around him by sharing his heap of information
to the requirements of the individual with
appropriate reasoning and logic.
He published a journal “Umeed” as a student
during those days. He completed his Post
Graduation in English from University of
Kashmir.
As usual in INDIA, most of such true Hero’s do
not get recognition in public life and to make
the mission successful one needs to have a
large gathering of dedicated people who are
ready to leave aside the physical comforts of
this materialistic life, he too was not
supported till end by the fellow colleagues and
was thus left alone in the struggle of justice
and equality for one and all. True to his
profession, conscious and self , he fought this
battle alone till death and today every
associate remembers him as a symbol for REAL
VALUES, MAN OF PRINCIPLES AND MORAL VALUES . He
was able to guide, educate and bring new life to
all those who go in touch with him in one way or
other!
We all must
salute such a great hero!!!
In this time he was offered many materialistic
things by the then authorities in the form of
money, position and materialistic things which
could make his life luxurious, but he denied to
one and all preferred to live his own way.
In the year 1975, he started another chapter of
his life which was so noble and sacred that many
people who for their pretty vested interests
created lot of hurdles in this journey of Mr.
Kantroo but who could come in the way once Mr.
Kantroo is convinced and decided to undertake
any activity and mission. He opened an English
Medium School at Martand Mattan Anantang. The
LYCEUM PUBLIC SCHOOL – was a great institution
spreading the message of unity, diversity,
morality and laying the foundation for the
great future of an individual, a family, a
Society , a Sect, a Nation irrespective of cast,
creed and race. Any one who has studied at
Lyceum public school will appreciate and
understand what Mr Kantroo was all about and his
institution of LYCEUM PUBLIC SCHOOL MATTAN.
His passion and curiosity towards
understanding and reasoning the cultures,
history, customs, traditions and nature, was
fulfilled by his quest towards “ books” , he
was a voracious reader and would understand each
and every sentence and word of the book and
would quote it very aptly at an appropriate
instance.
In this Endeavour, he also authored a few
books on Literature, Mythology and collection
of Poems . His famous collection of Poem
Eternal Sin- A Collection of Poems by Chaman Lal
... to the surprise of one a
all, only few individuals could understand the
meaning of his books and those who did it
started getting to his fold and called him as
GURU. He also completed his PGJMC (Post
Graduate Diploma in Journalism and Mass
Communication) and started a free lancer life
at Jammu.
His novel in English "Crumbling Stands"
depicting an individual's struggle against his
shortcomings, an exposition of psyche of a
person- caught between his aspirations and his
limitations- written in the genre of stream of
consciousness; was very soon to be published
??? Who know now !
He also wrote A collection of Urdu Poems "Kaheen
Miley…" and A collection of Kashmiri Poems "Zuweh
wuzin" which are in an advanced stage of
publication. WHO KNOWS NOW???
All the above was possible by the command he
had on the English, Kashmiri, Urdu and Hindi.
Off late lot people used to interact with him to
get the real translation from any language to
any language (from the above four languages).
While there is so much to talk and write about
this great Hero, Let us prey for the noble soul
and share among ourselves what all we know
about this great personality. This will help us
to understand this great personality in more
better way and all the associated facets.
Compiled by
IK Pandit from Krangsoo, Anantang, Kashmir.
| 
