Born into a royal family from Bihar in 1891, in the Sahabad district, Raja Radhika Raman Prasad Singh was one of the stalwarts of the ‘pragativaad’ or Progressive Writers’ movement in Hindi literature. He contributed profusely to the Hindi literary landscape of Patna and India at large.
Some of his trailblazing literary works include Ram-Rahim, Nava Jivan, Prem Lahari, Taranga, Gandhi Topi, Purush Nari, Purva Aur Paschim.
An ardent patriot and an insightful author, Singh’s characters emerged from the common crowds of India—the widows, the poor masses, the working class. For instance, in his Rama-Rahim, it is through the characterization of Bela that he outlines the tragic lives of widows in India. In Taranga, he delves into the minutiae of public emotions during the Civil Disobedience movement and he lauds the sea-change in social mores, wherein women too were courting arrests and taking to the streets for the freedom of India. In Surdas, He evocatively deals with the theme of poverty in India and directly links it to the conniving nature of the British statecraft in India and the class gaps it had forged.
Along with stalwarts like Premchand, he graced the literary conferences of Patna, while also heading the Bihar Prantiya Hindi-Sahitya Sammelan and the Bihar Hindi-Sahitya Sammelan across the 1930s-40s. For his indelible work, Singh was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1962.
Source: Indian Culture Portal