Harcharan Dass Chawla was an Urdu writer. Born in Mianwali (now Pakistan), he moved to Delhi, India as a refugee after 1947 partition of India. The event served as the backdrop for his first novel Darinday, and would leave a lasting impression throughout his career, with migration and cultural identity dominant themes of his work. Later on he moved to Norway where he would eventually settle. His shifting to Europe brought new dimension to his writing, addressing issues of loss of culture and identity faced by South Asians migrating to different parts of the world. In Oslo, Chawla helped creating a literary bridge between the Indian subcontinent and Norway by translating Norwegian stories into Urdu and Hindi and South Asian work into Norwegian. He was also the Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi consultant for Deichmanske Bibliotek, Oslo.