The awards were presented here Saturday during an awards celebration celebrating the abounding heritage, traditions and enlightenment of the Sikhs with a star-studded dusk of dance, art muster and auction.
Sarna, now India’s envoy to Israel, is a author of dual novels “The Exile” (2008 ) and “We Weren’t Lovers Like That” (2003). Both the books have been translated into Hindi, while the latter has been translated into Arabic too.
His non-fiction titles embody “Folk Tales of Poland” (1993), “The Book of Nanak” (2003) and many recently “The Zafarnama” (2011), a interpretation from Persian to English of Guru Gobind Singh’s minute to Aurungzeb.
Earlier, “The Zafarnama” was featured during a duty Friday as partial of a Sikh Heritage Week, organized by a Sikh Arts and Film Foundation, a non-profit informative classification dedicated to formulating recognition of and honour in a diversity, enlightenment and story of a Sikhs, as good as a contributions of Sikhs in American society.
Besides Sarna, Heritage Awards were also presented to Jaspal Bindra, CEO Asia, Standard Chartered PLC for Leadership and filmmaker Gurinder Chadha (“Bend It Like Beckham”) for Art.
The Sikh Heritage Week celebrations enclosed a eighth annual Sikh International Film Festival and initial Leadership Summit.
The festival presented 11 documentary and brief films featuring Sikh stories from opposite a globe, from both determined and rising filmmakers. Navtej Sarna studied Commerce and Law at Delhi University and joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1980. He is presently India's Ambassador to Israel and has earlier served as a diplomat in Moscow, Warsaw, Thimphu, Geneva, Tehran and Washington DC as well as most recently at Delhi as the Foreign Office Spokesperson.
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Navtej Sarna ` Bio
Navtej Sarna studied Commerce and Law at Delhi University and joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1980. He is presently India's Ambassador to Israel and has earlier served as a diplomat in Moscow, Warsaw, Thimphu, Geneva, Tehran and Washington DC as well as most recently at Delhi as the Foreign Office Spokesperson.
Publications and writings:
"The Exile": a novel based on the life of Maharaja Duleep Singh (Penguin India,2008). Translated into Hindi (Kitabghar 2010).
"We Weren't Lovers Like That": a novel (Penguin India,2003). Translated into Hindi (Yatra) and Arabic.
"The Book of Nanak": non-fiction (Penguin India, 2003).
"Folk Tales of Poland": non-fiction (1991).
Short stories: BBC World Service,London Magazine, several Indian journals. Included in anthologies Signals/ Signals 2 (Constable,UK), First Proof (Penguin) and New Indian Writing (Harper Collins).
Regular contributer to the Times Literary Supplement and several Indian journals.A monthly literary column "Second Thoughts" in The Hindu since 2006.
Forthcoming projects: The Zafarnama (a translation from Persian to English of Guru Gobind Singh's letter to Aurungzeb) and a volume of short stories