Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan, where it is also an official language alongside English. In India, Urdu is an Eighth Schedule language whose status and cultural heritage is recognized by the Constitution of India; it also has an official status in several Indian states. In Nepal, Urdu is a registered regional dialect and in South Africa it is a protected language in the constitution. It is also spoken as a minority language in Afghanistan and Bangladesh, with no official status.
Urdu poetry is a tradition of poetry and has many different forms. Today, it is an important part of the culture of India and Pakistan. According to Naseer Turabi there are five major poets of Urdu which are Mir Taqi Mir (d.1810), Mirza Ghalib, Mir Anees (d.1874), Allama Iqbal and Josh Malihabadi (d.1982). The language of Urdu reached its pinnacle under the British Raj, and it received official status. All famous writers of Urdu language including Ghalib and Iqbal were given British scholarships. Following the Partition of India in 1947, it found major poets and scholars were divided along the nationalistic lines. However, Urdu poetry is cherished in both the nations. Both the Muslims and Hindus from across the border continue the tradition.
Urdu literature refers to the literature in the Urdu standard of the Hindostani language. While it tends to be dominated by poetry, especially the verse forms of the ghazal غزل and nazm نظم, it has expanded into other styles of writing, including that of the short story, or afsana افسانہ. Urdu literature is mostly popular in Pakistan, where Urdu is the national language and India, where it is a recognized language.
Hindustani is one of the predominant languages of South Asia, with federal status in the republics of India and Pakistan in its standardized forms of Hindi and Urdu respectively. It is widely spoken and understood as a second language in Nepal, Bangladesh, and the Persian Gulf and as such is considered a lingua franca in the northern Indian subcontinent. It is also one of the most widely spoken languages in the world by total number of speakers. It developed in north India, principally during the Mughal Empire, when the Persian language exerted a strong influence on the Western Hindi languages of central India; this contact between the Hindu and Muslim cultures resulted in the core Indo-Aryan vocabulary of the Indian dialect of Hindi spoken in Delhi, whose earliest form is known as Old Hindi, being enriched with Persian loanwords. Rekhta, or "mixed" speech, which came to be known as Hindustani, Hindi, Hindavi, and Urdu, also locally known as Lashkari or Lashkari Zaban in long form, was thus created. This form was elevated to the status of a literary language, and after the partition of colonial India and independence this collection of dialects became the basis for modern standard Hindi and Urdu. Although these official languages are distinct registers with regards to their formal aspects, such as modern technical vocabulary, they continue to be all but indistinguishable in their vernacular form.
Kaifi Azmi was an Indian Urdu poet. He is remembered as the one who brought Urdu literature to Indian motion pictures. Together with Pirzada Qasim, Jaun Elia and others he participated in many memorable Mushaira gatherings of the twentieth century. His wife was theatre and film actress Shaukat Kaifi.
Jan Nisar Akhtar was an Indian poet of Urdu ghazals and nazms, and a part of the Progressive Writers' Movement, who was also a lyricist for Bollywood.
Rekhta was the Hindustani language as its dialectal basis shifted to the Delhi dialect. This style evolved in both the Perso-Arabic and Devanagari scripts and is considered an early form of Urdu and Hindi.
Gopaldas Saxena was an Indian poet and author of Hindi literature. He was also a poet of Hindi Kavi sammelan. He wrote under the pen name "Neeraj".
Bashir Badr is an Indian poet. He was teaching Urdu in Aligarh Muslim University. He primarily writes in Urdu language particularly ghazals. He also wrote a couplet titled Dushmani Jam Kar Karo in 1972 during Shimla Agreement that revolves around the partition of India. Badr's most of unpublished literary work, including uncertain poems was lost during the 1987 Meerut communal riots, and later he moved to Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.
Muqtida Hasan Nida Fazli, known as Nida Fazli, was a prominent Indian Hindi and Urdu poet, lyricist and dialogue writer. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2013 by the government of India for his contribution to literature.
The Satasai (Satsai) or Bihari Satsai (Seven Hundred Verses of Bihari) is a famous work of the early 17th century by the Hindi poet Bihārī, in the Braj Bhasha dialect of Hindi spoken in the Braj region of northern India. It contains Dohas, or couplets, on Bhakti (devotion), Neeti (Moral policies) and Shringara (love).
Rahi Masoom Reza was an Indian Urdu and Hindi poet and writer and a Bollywood lyricist. He won the Filmfare Best Dialogue Award for the film Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki in 1979, followed by Mili and Lamhe.
Akhlaq Mohammad Khan, better known by his takhallusShahryar, was an Indian academician, and a doyen of Urdu poetry in India. As a Hindi film lyricist, he is best known for his lyrics in Gaman (1978) and Umrao Jaan (1981) directed by Muzaffar Ali. He retired as the head of the Urdu Department at the Aligarh Muslim University, and thereafter he remained sought after name in mushairas or poetic gatherings, and also co-edited the literary magazine Sher-o-Hikmat.
Muhammad Abdul-Hayy Siddiqui (1857–1912), writing under the pen-name Bekhud Badayuni, was one of the leading Urdu poets of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in India. It is customary for Urdu poets to assume a pen-name (takhallus) that can be employed as a pun in the final couplet of every ghazal, often combined with a second name that denotes the poet's place of origin. In this case, "Bekhud", the pen-name means beside oneself, out of one's mind; in ecstasy, transported, enraptured, intoxicated; senseless, delirious, commonly used in the context of spiritual ecstasy, and is paired with "Badayuni", which indicates ties to the city of Badayun.
Syed Amin Ashraf was an Urdu Ghazal poet and critic. He earned his PhD in English Literature from Aligarh Muslim University on the topic Major Themes and Imagery in Sarogini Naidu's Poetry, and later served the same department. He produced three poetic collections and a critical compendium of essays in the form of a book. Several academic awards were conferred on his poetic anthologies, and numerous critical articles and books praised his poetic artistry.
Masud Husain Khan was an Indian linguist, the first Professor Emeritus in Social Sciences at Aligarh Muslim University and the fifth Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, a Central University in New Delhi.
Vellayani Arjunan was an Indian writer, scholar, and linguist from Kerala. He served two terms at the State Institute of Encyclopaedic Publications as chief editor from 1975 to 1988 and as director from 2001 to 2004. During his tenure at the institute, seven volumes of the 12-volume Malayalam encyclopedia Viswasahityavijnanakosam were published. He is credited with several publications, including children's literature and critical studies. His book Gaveshana Mekhala has been a prescribed text for the post graduate course M.A. Malayalam at the Aligarh Muslim University. A recipient of the Paramacharya Award from Sarojini Bhaskaran Memorial Charitable Public Trust, he was honored by the Government of India in 2008 with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri.
Anand Mohan Zutshi Gulzar Dehlavi was an Indian Urdu poet, scholar, and journalist. Born in old Delhi's Gali Kashmeerian.
Rekhta is an Indian literary web portal owned by the Rekhta Foundation, a nonprofit and non-governmental organization dedicated to the promotion of the Urdu literature in South Asia. It has digitalized about ninety thousand books during the period of six years since it began publishing Urdu, Hindi and Persian literature, containing biographies of poets, Urdu poetry, fiction and nonfiction writings that originally belongs to public and research libraries in the Indian subcontinent. It serves content in multiple scripts such as Devanagari, Roman and, primarily, Nastaliq. It also includes religious texts, including the Quran and the Mahabharata, a Sanskrit epic of ancient India. It hosts books from centuries earlier and is recognized the largest web portal in the world for the preservation of Urdu literature.
Mohammad Nawaz Khan is an Indian Urdu language poet. He is also a Ghazal writer some of them are sung by famous Ghazal singer Jagjit Singh.
