Surender Mohan Pathak: Sole Bestselling Hindi Mystery Writer

When Edgar Allan Poe’s short story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue” was published on April 20, 1841, which turned out to be the first detective story, it was never thought that it would start a new genre of storytelling. However, within a century, mystery/crime fiction turned out to be one of the popular genres of literature.

In Indian languages, it seems to have first begun in Urdu followed by Hindi, but it did not achieve the status in comparison to the European languages and was excluded from the mainstream literary writings.  Still there have been some popular Urdu/Hindi mystery/crime writers, the prominent among them were Ibn-e-Safi and Om Prakash Sharma, to name the two most widely read writers.

Among the next generation of writers, three turned out to be the most popular and they dominated the scene till 2010. They were Ved Prakash Kamboj, Ved Prakash Sharma and Surendra Mohan Pathak. Whereas Sharma moved to Mumbai to write for Hindi movies, the other two remained in Delhi and continued to write. Pathak rose to fame and recognition that no other Hindi mystery writer achieved.

Born in February 1941 in Punjab, Pathak is still writing novels. After retiring from the telephone department in 1997, he has devoted most of his time to writing. He started writing quite early, sometimes in the 1960s which was temporarily interrupted due to Covid infection in 2020-2021. His parental family originally belongs to Batala, Gurdaspur district, but he spent his childhood in Lahore, where his father was a steno-typist in a British company.

After Partition, the Pathak family moved to Jalandhar, but shortly afterward, his father could retain his job in the Delhi office of the same company. Pathak did his BSc from DAV College, Jalandhar, and was a contemporary of Jagjit Singh – the great singer. After shifting to Delhi, he completed his MSc in Mathematics, but owing to the conditions of the family having suffered owing to the Partition, he was able to get a job in the telephone department.

In terms of linguistic abilities, Pathak, in various interviews he had given after his rise to fame and also a grudging recognition as a crime fiction novelist, informed his interviewers that he did not know Hindi well and it could be made out from his works. He studied Urdu during his early schooling and his knowledge of Punjabi is limited to its being his mother tongue. He learnt Hindi when he went to Delhi and as everyone knows, English learning is linked with schooling and one’s level of education.

In one his interviews, Pathak said that in the Punjab of the 1940s, everyone used to speak Punjabi but could not write it, whereas Urdu was written but not spoken. With the baggage of four languages, Pathak began his writing career and at present, he has completed more than 60 years as a fiction writer.

So far, Pathak has authored more than 300 books covering novels, short stories, joke books, children’s books and a five-part autobiography. He has been published by major publishers, such as Harper Collins, Penguin, Raj Kamal Prakashan, etc. He is now the only best-selling writer in Hindi and each of his books is published in lakhs and sold within the shortest period of time. As a result, he receives royalty which no Hindi author can imagine. He has created certain iconic characters, namely Sunil Chakraverty, Vimal, Sudhir Kohli and Jeet Singh.

Though Pathak is a Hindi writer, his works combine three languages that are generally used by most of the educated people. knowingly or unknowingly, namely, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu and English. Whereas Hindi and Urdu remain the major languages in his writings, Punjabi comes third because various characters depicted in his novels are from Punjab.

The use of English words in everyday interaction of people in India is frequently found in his works. As a result, his books are highly readable. Moreover, there is something radically different in the characters he has created in comparison to other crime fiction writers. In most cases, starting from Ibn-e-Safi to Om Prakash Sharma, and Ved Prakash Kamboj, having police officers, secret agents, etc. remained the dominant trend. Pathak’s characters are diverse. For example, his major character in most of the novels is Sunil Chakraverty, an investigative journalist-- a term coined by him. The the second character, Vimal is a jailed convict who escaped from prison, the third is Sudhir Kohli,  a private detective and the fourth is Jeet Singh, a lock repairer. Creating such characters could not be imagined when he started writing novels.

What contributed to Pathak's rise as a mystery writer was the enigmatic character, Vimal, who seemed improbable as the protagonist in any mystery novel. His original name is Surinder Singh Sohal, who has been shown to be educated, married and employed in a company in Allahabad. He is wrongly implicated in a case and imprisoned, but as his release was a month or so away, there is a prison break and he also escapes. From then on, his ordeal begins, as he is consistently recognised by criminals and blackmailed into helping them in one or the other crime. In the process criminal cases pile up against him and a reward for his arrest is announced. He is extremely religious, but has to change his identity and take up the name of Vimal.

It was Pathak’s novel, The 65 Lakh Heist, in 1977 that turned out to be the bestseller in every sense of the term. From then on, the Vimal series with 48 novels can be regarded as a major milestone in the career of Surender Mohan Pathak. However, over a hundred novels featuring Sunil as the main protagonist, an upright, honest and committed journalist, remained the major contribution to the genre of crime/mystery novels.

Pathak’s first novel was published in 1963 with the title, Purane Gunah Nai Gunahgaar, in which he started his Sunil series. Of all these novels, two, namely, Meena Murder Case (1979) and Jadugarni (1983) may not only be regarded as his best, but also contribute to the area of crime/mystery literature.

It is also interesting to note that Pathak has been deeply connected with Punjabi language and culture. There has been a consistent touch of Punjabi words, phrases, sentences, including the Gurbani in his novels. Vimal and Sudhir Kohli are Punjabis and Jeet Singh has been shown to be from Himachal Pradesh. Whereas Sunil is a Bengali, the receptionist in the office of the newspaper and his friend, Ramakant are Punjabis. The linguistic hybridity of his novels in which Hindi, Urdu, English and Punjabi are used, has not only made his novels interesting to read, but it has provided him the stature no other mystery/crime novelist in Hindi could achieve.

Unfortunately, crime/mystery novels are not regarded as mainstream literature and one may not find his writings in libraries. However, Surender Mohan Pathak remains the most read Hindi writer with a large fan following.      

The author is a former professor of sociology at the Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, and president of the Indian Sociological Society, New Delhi. The views are personal.