Tarlochan Singh Bedi, a veteran academician who translated Tirukkural into Punjabi, died at a private hospital in Ludhiana on Friday. He was 95. He is survived by his wife and two sons including Gagandeep Singh Bedi, Additional Chief Secretary (Rural Development and Panchayat Raj) in the Tamil Nadu government.
Tarlochan Singh Bedi, who served as principal of the Government College of Education, Faridkot in Punjab, took to translation post-retirement and his work on Tirukkural was published by the Central Institute of Classical Tamil, Chennai in 2012. In the book, he recalled that when he attended a seminar on the classic Tamil work organised by the Madurai-Kamaraj University in 2000, it was pointed out that the work had been translated into most of the Indian languages except Punjabi. It was then that he began working on the translation. In 2017, the Tamil Nadu government honoured him for the translation.
