Keki N. Daruwalla, a celebrated poet and former police officer in India, passed away late Thursday evening at the age of 87. Daruwalla, who wrote in English, was a recipient of the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award.
Born in Lahore in 1937 to a Parsi family, Daruwalla pursued his education at Government College in Ludhiana. His family relocated to Junagarh before the Partition and later settled in Rampur. In 1958, he joined the Indian Police Service, serving in the Uttar Pradesh cadre. He eventually became a Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on International Affairs and worked with the Special Service Bureau until 1965. Daruwalla also held a position at the Cabinet Secretariat and retired in 1995 as the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. He served as a member of the National Commission of Minorities from 2011 to 2014.
Despite his notable career in law enforcement, it was his poetry that earned him widespread acclaim. His first collection, Under Orion, was published in 1970 and contained poems that explored themes of riots and mythology. His debut novel, For Pepper and Christ, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Fiction Prize in 2010. In recognition of his contributions to literature, he received the Padma Shri award in 2014. His column, “Musings & Maledictions,” in The Tribune, gained a significant following.
Daruwalla once stated, “My poetry moved with history,” acknowledging how his work reflected the times. During the Emergency period in India, he published Winter Poems, which expressed his distress over the state’s power. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1984 for his poetry collection The Keeper of the Dead.
In a significant act of protest, Daruwalla returned the Sahitya Akademi Award three decades later due to rising intolerance in society. He expressed his disappointment in a letter to the Akademi’s president, stating, “Sadly, in recent months, it has not stood up as boldly as it should for values that any literature stands for, namely freedom of expression against threat, upholding the rights of the marginalized, and speaking up against superstitions and intolerance of any kind.”
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