Muhammad Usman Diplai

Muhammad Usman Diplai, popularly known as Diplai (13 June 1908 – 8 February 1981), was a figure of Sindhi literature and journalism.^[1] He was awarded Pride of Performance for his works by President of Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf on 23 March 2004.

He was born at Diplo (Tharparkar District) to a middle-class family. As per family traditions, he had to engage himself in business. Due to unfavourable circumstances, however, he could not complete his formal education. In early life, he worked with some landlords (zamindars) of the area as a clerk, but continued reading newspapers and magazines. He also acquired proficiency in Gujrati, Hindi, Gurmukhi, Urdu and working knowledge in English and Persian.

He founded Islamia Press, Quran Press and the Islami Dar-ul-Ishaat, the Adar-i-Insanyat, and the Diplai Academy one after another shortly before the Second World War, at the historic town of Mirpurkhas, and then moved to Hyderabad in 1942^[2] where he founded the monthly magazine Ibrat, which he sold in 1946, when it then changed to publishing weekly and eventually daily.^[3] He was an essayist, journalist, publisher, distributor, and printer of the Sindhi language.

Literary career

In 1923, he came across an issue of the Urdu weekly Munadi, published in Delhi by Khwaja Hassan Nizamani, which carried an article about the conquest of Sindh by the young warrior Muhammad Bin Qasim. Diplai wrote a letter in Urdu to the editor pinpointing certain historical inaccuracies in the write-up. Hassan Nizami was so much impressed by the letter that he published it as an article. It proved a source of inspiration to Diplai and he started contributing to Munadi and Deen-o-Duniya (Urdu) journals regularly. Later, his Sindhi stories appeared in Sindhi monthlies such as Taraqqi and Ilm Dunya.

Bibliography

• Qazi, Surriya Nasim, Muhammad Usman Diplai-His Personality and Impact of His Writings on the Social, Political and Literary Conditions of Sindh (2002, University of Sindh)

References