Firaq Gorakhpuri

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Raghupati Sahay, born on 28 August 1896 in Banwarpar village of Gorakhpur, was better known by his pen name Firaq Gorakhpuri. He was an Indian Urdu poet, writer, critic, and scholar who became one of the most noted Urdu poets from India.

He came from a well‑to‑do Hindu Kayastha family and studied at Lucknow University and Allahabad University, earning a master’s degree in Urdu, Persian, and English literature. He showed a talent for poetry early on and wrote in Urdu, while also working in other languages.

Firaq briefly joined the civil service but left to support Mahatma Gandhi’s non‑cooperation movement, for which he was jailed for 18 months. Afterward, he became a lecturer in English literature at Allahabad University, where he wrote much of his Urdu poetry. His best‑known work is Gul-e‑Naghma.

A master of traditional Urdu forms, he wrote ghazals, nazms, rubaiyat, and qat’ah. He published more than a dozen volumes of Urdu poetry, several volumes of Urdu prose, some works in Hindi on literary topics, and four volumes of English prose.

Awards and honors include the Padma Bhushan (1968), the Jnanpith Award (1969) for Gul-e‑Naghma, and the Sahitya Akademi Award in Urdu (1960). He was also named a Sahitya Akademi Fellow (1970) and served as a research professor at the University Grants Commission and as Producer Emeritus for All India Radio.

Firaq was a staunch defender of secularism and worked to keep Urdu alive as a language of India and the subcontinent, not the property of any single community. He famously said, “Language is not the monopoly of any nation; whoever learns it, speaks it.” He died on 3 March 1982 in New Delhi at age 85.