Khalil-ur-Rehman Azmi

Khalil-ur-Rehman Azmi was an Indian Urdu poet and literary critic, and one of the founding fathers of modern Urdu criticism in the subcontinent. Born on 9 August 1927 at Sedhan Sultanpur in Azamgarh district, to Maulana Muhammad Shafi, founder of Madarsatul Islah, he was educated at Aligarh Muslim University, where he stood first-class first in his M.A. in Urdu (1950), tutored the young British Urdu scholar Ralph Russell, and took his Ph.D. in 1957 on the Progressive literary movement in Urdu. He joined Aligarh's Urdu department as lecturer in 1952, became Reader in 1966, and was posthumously elevated to Professor. Imprisoned in 1949 for his political views, he remained aligned with the Progressive Writers' Movement while pioneering modernism in Urdu poetry. His collections include Kaghzi Pairahan (1953) and Naya Ahad Nama (1965), whose title nazm 'Khwabon se dar lagta hai' is among his best-known poems; Zindagi Ae Zindagi appeared posthumously in 1983. He died of leukaemia at Aligarh on 1 June 1978, the year he received the Ghalib Award for Urdu Poetry.