From poverty to poetry,he set an example

Surve sought to instill confidence among the poor to battle the odds.

As an orphan,he was adopted by Gangaram Surve,who found him,impoverished,on a pavement in Lalbaug. His exact date of birth is not known,though in records it is October 15,1926. Gangaram Surve and his wife Kashibai were both millworkers living at Bogda Chawl in Parel. They sent him to school till Class IV,but in 1936 Gangaram retired and went to his village in Konkan,leaving the boy to face the city.

The boy took up job after job,eventually joined a mill and revived his schooling. After studying till Class VII,he became a primary teacher in a municipal school.

He married Krishna Salunke in 1948 and lived in a slum in Khar. He was influenced by leftist leaders like S A Dange and drawn into the trade union movement in Mumbai’s mills.

What differentiated him from his peers was that he turned to poetry,initially to express the pangs of poverty and then to inspire the underprivileged to overcome it through hard work.

Through his poetry he glorified labour and challenged the established literary norms in Marathi literature,which had been monopolised by upper caste and upper class writers who mainly wrote to entertain.

Throughout his poetry,he campaigned against inequality based on caste and religion,the tendency among the poor to accept their fate,and blind religious faith.

His work showed the influence of social reformers like Babasaheb Ambedkar,Annabhau Sathe and bard Shahir Amar Shaikh,though he was more a Communist than an Ambedkarite.

His first volume of poems,Aisa Ga Me Brahma,was published in 1962,followed by Majhe Vidyapeeth in 1996 and Jahirnama in 1978.

“Kamgar Ahe Me,Talapti Talwar Ahe/Saraswatanno! Thodasa Gunha Karnar Ahe” (I am a worker,like a flashing sword/(You) Saraswat (the literary community),I am going to commit a bit of a crime,” he wrote,taking on the literary trends that ignored the plight of the masses.

Surve received several awards and was conferred the Padmashree in 1998. He went on to become the chairperson of the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan in 1995.