Ajeet Kaur was a pioneering Punjabi poet, novelist, and revolutionary writer whose works boldly challenged patriarchal norms and celebrated women’s autonomy. A prominent figure in the Progressive Writers’ Movement, her literature intertwined Marxist ideology with feminist resistance, making her one of Punjab’s earliest and most radical female literary figures.

Her poetry collection “Tootan Wala Khooh” (The Broken Well, 1945) became a manifesto of feminist dissent, using stark imagery to expose the oppression of women in traditional Punjabi society. Novels like “Peengh” (The Swing) and “Bandiwan” (The Prisoner) depicted women’s struggles against domestic tyranny and societal constraints, often drawing from her own experiences as a woman in a male-dominated literary world.

Unlike her contemporaries, Ajeet Kaur didn’t just write about suffering—she infused her works with defiance and hope. Her autobiography, “Ik Si Anita” (An Anita Alone), revealed her tumultuous personal life, including her marriage to revolutionary poet Gurbaksh Singh Preetlari and her later ideological conflicts with him.