Firaq Gorakhpuri

Raghupati Sahay, better known under his pen name Firaq Gorakhpuri was a writer, critic, orator and one of the most noted contemporary Urdu poets from India. He established himself among peers including Muhammad Iqbal, Yagana Changezi, Jigar Moradabadi and Josh Malihabadi.

Firaq Gorakhpuri was born into a Hindu Kayasth family in Gorakhpur on 28 August 1896.

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.

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.

After a long illness, he died on 3 March 1982 in New Delhi.