Jameeluddin Aali

Jameeluddin Aali (20 January 1925 – 23 November 2015) was a poet, institution-builder and public voice of Pakistan — the man who gave the nation its most sung anthem of itself and revived the doha in Urdu. Son of Nawab Sir Amiruddin Ahmed Khan of Loharu, himself a poet, and Syeda Jamila Begum, from Khwaja Mir Dard's family — his paternal grandfather was a disciple and friend of Ghalib — he took a BA in Economics from Anglo Arabic College, Delhi (1944), and migrated to Karachi on 13 August 1947. He passed the CSS examination in 1951, joined the Pakistan Taxation Service and rose to income-tax commissioner, served as Officer on Special Duty at President House (1959–1963), joined the National Bank of Pakistan in 1967 and retired as vice-president in 1988, and took an LLB/FEL from the University of Karachi (1971). Alongside that career he co-founded the Pakistan Writers' Guild, served as honorary secretary of Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu Pakistan for decades, chaired the Urdu Dictionary Board, and wrote a newspaper column for some fifty years. His long poem Insaan runs to some 4,000 verses; his travelogues are Duniya Mere Aage and Tamasha Mere Aage; his collections include Ghazlein Dohey Geet, La Hasil, Goshai-e-Bisaat, Harf-e-Chand and Aye Mere Dasht-e-Sukhan. He revived the doha in Urdu, wrote the milli naghma "Jeevay Jeevay Pakistan" (named here, never quoted), and received the Pride of Performance (1991), Hilal-e-Imtiaz (2004) and Kamal-e-Fun (2006). He served as a Senator from 1997 to 2003.