Firaq Gorakhpuri

Firaq Gorakhpuri
Born Raghupati Sahay
28 August 1896(1896-08-28)
Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India
Died 3 March 1982(1982-03-03) (aged 85)
New Delhi, India
Pen name Firaq Gorakhpuri
Occupation Poet, writer, critic, scholar, lecturer, orator
Language Urdu, English, Hindi
Nationality Indian
Education M.A. in English literature
Genres Poetry, Literary criticism
Notable work(s) Gul-e-Naghma
Notable award(s) Padma Bhushan (1968)
Jnanpith Award (1969)
Sahitya Akademi Fellowship (1970)
Literature portal

Raghupati Sahay (28 August 1896 – 3 March 1982), better known under his pen name Firaq Gorakhpuri (Urdu: فراق گورکھپوری, Hindi: फ़िराक़ गोरखपुरी), was a writer, critic, and one of the most noted[1] contemporary Urdu poets from India. He established himself as one of the greats in an era which boasted stalwarts like Iqbal, Yagana Changezi, Jigar and Josh.

Contents

Biography

Raghupati Sahay was born in 1896, in Gorakhpur, into a Hindu family. He was selected for the Provincial Civil Service (P.C.S.) and the Indian Civil Service (I.C.S.), but he resigned to follow Mahatma Gandhi's Non-cooperation movement, for which he went to jail. Later, he joined Allahabad University as a lecturer in English literature. It was there that he wrote most of his Urdu poetry, including his magnum opus Gul-e-Naghma which earned him the highest literary award of India, the Jnanpith Award, and also the 1960 Sahitya Akademi Award in Urdu. During his life, he was given the positions of Research Professor at the University Grants Commission and Producer Emeritus by All India Radio. After a long illness, he died on March 3, 1982, in New Delhi.

As a distinguished poet, Firaq Gorakhpuri was well-versed in all traditional metrical forms such as ghazal, nazm, rubaai and qat'aa. He was a prolific writer, having written more than a dozen volumes of Urdu poetry, a half dozen of Urdu prose, several volumes on literary themes in Hindi, as well as four volumes of English prose on literary and cultural subjects.

Selected works

Awards

References

  1. ^ In his autobiography Yaadon ki baraat, the poet Josh Malihabadi wrote that after Mir and Ghalib, Firaq is the greatest Urdu poet of India.
  2. ^ "Jnanpith Laureates Official listings". Jnanpith Website. http://jnanpith.net/laureates/index.html. 

External links

1968-2000

S. Radhakrishnan (1968) · C. Rajagopalachari, Tarashankar Bandopadhyay, Sumitranandan Pant, D. R. Bendre (1969) · Viswanadha Satyanarayana, Raghupati Sahay Firaq Gorakhpuri, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar (1970) · Gopinath Kaviraj, Dattatreya Balkrushna (Kaka) Kalelkar, Gurbaksh Singh Preetlari, Kalindi Charan Panigrahi (1971) · M. U. Malkani, Nilamani Phookan, Vasudev Vishnu Mirashi, V. R. Trivedi, Sukumar Sen, Masti Venkatesa Iyengar (1973) · T. P. Meenakshisundaran (1975) · Atmaram Ravaji Deshpande, Jainendra Kumar, K. V. Puttappa Kuvempu, V. Raghavan, Mahadevi Verma (1979) · K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Umashankar Joshi, K. Shivarama Karanth (1985) · Laxmanshastri Joshi, Annada Shankar Ray, Mulk Raj Anand, Vinayak Krishna Gokak, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, Amritlal Nagar (1989) · Ashapurna Devi, R. K. Narayan, P. T. Narasimhachar, N. Balamani Amma, Vishnu Bhikaji Kolte, Qurratulain Hyder, Kanhu Charan Mohanty, Harbhajan Singh, Nagarjun (1994) · Sachidananda Raut-Roy, Krishna Sobti, Vidya Niwas Mishra, Vinda Karandikar, Subhas Mukhopadhyay, D. Jayakanthan, Raja Rao (1996) · Ram Vilas Sharma, Rajendra Shah, Gunturu Seshendra Sharma, Syed Abdul Malik, N. Khelchandra Singh, K. S. Narasimhaswamy (1999) · Ramchandra Narayan Dandekar, Rahman Rahi (2000)
2001-present
Honorary Fellows

Leopold Sedar Senghor (1974)  · Edward C. Dimock, Jr., Daniel H. H. Ingalls, Kamil V. Zvelebil Ji Xianlin (1996)  · Vassilis Vitsaxis, E. P. Chelyshev (2002)  · R. E. Asher (2007)  ·
1965-1985
1986-2000

Sachidananda Rout Roy (1986) · Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar (1987) · C. Narayana Reddy (1988) · Qurratulain Hyder (1989) · V. K. Gokak (1990) · Subhas Mukhopadhyay (1991) · Naresh Mehta (1992) · Sitakant Mahapatra (1993) · U. R. Ananthamurthy (1994) · M. T. Vasudevan Nair (1995) · Mahasweta Devi (1996) · Ali Sardar Jafri (1997) · Girish Karnad (1998) · Nirmal Verma, Gurdial Singh (1999) · Indira Goswami (2000)
2001-present