Anand Narain Mulla

Lucknow's judge-poet — the mother tongue he would never give up, and the voice of Lucknow's shared culture. Anand Narain Mulla (1901–1997) was a judge, parliamentarian and Urdu poet of Lucknow — a Kashmiri Brahmin who called Urdu his mother tongue. He was born in Lucknow on 24 October 1901, the son of Jagat Narain Mulla, a leading advocate. He was educated at Firangi Mahal under Barkatullah Raza Firangi Mahali, then at Government Jubilee High School and College, taking his B.A. in 1921, his M.A. in English in 1923 and his LL.B. in 1925 from Canning College, Lucknow. He first wrote poetry in English, in 1926, and then moved to Urdu, learning the craft from Barkatullah Raza and under the influence of Brij Narain Chakbast. He practised law, and from 1954 to 1961 he was a judge of the Allahabad High Court. His first collection of poems, Joo-e-Sheer, appeared in 1949; Meri Hadis-e-Umr-e-Gurezan won the Sahitya Akademi Award in Urdu in 1964, and he received the Iqbal Samman when he was 92. In 1967 he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Lucknow as an Independent, and from 1972 to 1978 he sat in the Rajya Sabha. He chaired the Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu and was the first chairman of the UP Urdu Academy, from 1972 to 1977. He also translated Iqbal's poetry into English. His saying — "Urdu is my mother tongue! I can give up my religion but not my mother tongue" — is still quoted as the voice of Lucknow's shared culture. He died in New Delhi on 12 June 1997, aged 95.