નર્મદ

Narmad — born Narmadashankar Lalshankar Dave in Surat — was the poet, essayist, orator, and lexicographer who single-handedly dragged Gujarati literature out of its courtly and devotional past and into the modern age. He compiled Narmakosh, the first Gujarati dictionary, wrote Mari Hakikat (the language’s first autobiography), and used his pen against caste orthodoxy and religious fanaticism with a fearlessness that earned him the permanent epithet Veer — the brave — a title no other Gujarati writer has carried. His rallying cry “યા હોમ કરીને પડો, ફતેહ છે આગે” (Leap in with resolve — victory lies ahead) still circulates as a Gujarati proverb for taking the plunge. Narmad died in Bombay in 1886, having spent barely two decades of writing to lay the foundations — language, literary form, and public voice — that every Gujarati poet after him would build on.