Ali Jawad Zaidi

The historian of Urdu letters — a cup shown but never handed, and a thought the tongue never spoke. Ali Jawad Zaidi (1916–2004), born on 10 March 1916 in the village of Karhan in Azamgarh district — now Mau district — in Uttar Pradesh, was an Indian Urdu poet, critic and historian of Urdu literature. Schooled first at home and then at the Mehmoodabad state school, he passed his matriculation in 1935, his intermediate in 1937 and his B.A. from Lucknow University in 1939. The freedom struggle drew him to the Communist Party of India, and he was jailed for six months for his part in it. After independence he served in government in prominent positions, including administrative work in the commission set up for the development of Urdu. His poems, gathered in Tesha-i-Aawaaz and Rag-e-Sung, often carry his patriotic concerns, while his critical books — Do Adabi School, Qaseeda Nigaaraan-e-Uttar Pradesh, Tareekh Urdu Adab ki Tadween and Urdu Mein Qaumi Shairi ke Sau Saal — and his English history of Urdu literature made him one of the great record-keepers of the tradition. He received the Padma Shri in 1988 and died at Lucknow on 7 December 2004, aged 88.