Faiz Ahmed Faiz (cropped)

Chaudhry Faiz Ahmad Faiz (13 February 1911 – 20 November 1984) was a Pakistani poet and author of Punjabi and Urdu literature. Faiz was one of the most celebrated, popular, and influential Urdu writers of his time, and his works and ideas remain widely influential in Pakistan and beyond. Outside of literature, he has been described as "a man of wide experience", having worked as a teacher, military officer, journalist, trade unionist, and broadcaster.

Born in the Punjab Province, Faiz studied at Government College and Oriental College in Lahore and went on to serve in the British Indian Army. After the Partition of India, Faiz served as editor-in-chief of two major newspapers — the English language daily ''Pakistan Times'' and the Urdu daily ''Imroze.'' He was also a leading member of the Communist Party before his arrest and imprisonment in 1951 for his alleged part in a conspiracy to overthrow the Liaquat administration and replace it with a left-wing, pro-Soviet government.

Faiz was released after four years in prison and spent time in Moscow and London, becoming a notable member of the Progressive Writers' Movement. After the downfall of military dictator Ayub Khan's government, and the Independence of Bangladesh, he worked as an aide to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, but exiled himself to Beirut after Bhutto's execution at the hands of another military dictator Zia ul-Haq.

Faiz was a well-known Marxist and is said to have been "a progressive who remained faithful to Marxism." Critics have noted that Faiz took the tenets of Marxism where Muhammad Iqbal had left it, and relayed it to a younger generation of Muslims who were considered more open to change, more receptive to egalitarianism, and had a greater concern for the poor. Literary critic Fateh Muhammad Malik argues that while initially Faiz was more of a secular Marxist he eventually subscribed to Islamic socialism as his life progressed, as his poems getting more religious in tone over the years demonstrate, even suggesting that Faiz ultimately aimed for an Islamic revolution, having endorsed the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Faiz was the first Asian poet to be awarded the Lenin Peace Prize (1962) by the Soviet Union and was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature. He was posthumously honoured when the Pakistan Government conferred upon him the nation's highest civil award — the ''Nishan-e-Imtiaz —'' in 1990.

Early life

Family background

Chaudhry Faiz Ahmad Faiz was born on 13 February 1911 in Kala Qader, in the Sialkot District of the Punjab Province of British India (present-day Faiz Nagar, in the Narowal District of Punjab, Pakistan) into a Punjabi family belonging to the Tataley clan of Jats.

Faiz hailed from an academic family that was well known in literary circles. His home was often the scene of a gathering of local poets and writers who met to promote the literacy movement in his native province.

Faiz's father, Sultan Muhammad Khan, was a prominent barrister who worked for the British Government and an autodidact who wrote and published the biography of Amir Abdur Rahman, an Emir of Imperial Afghanistan. Khan was the son of a peasant whose ancestors migrated from Afghanistan to British India. Khan worked as a shepherd as a child but was ultimately able to study law at Cambridge University. Khan was a polyglot fluent in Urdu, Punjabi, Persian, Arabic, English, Pashto and Russian. Khan was also associated with Allama Mohammed Iqbal and was known to be a part of intellectual meeting of Iqbal and other prominent thinkers of that time. Khan had four children, all sons: Chaudhry Tufail Ahmed, MSc in Physics from Aligarh; Chaudhry Faiz Ahmed; Chaudhry Inayat Ahmed, a barrister, and Chaudhry Bashir Ahmed.

Education

Following the Muslim tradition, Faiz's family directed him to study Islamic studies at the local mosque to be oriented to the basics of religious studies by the Ahl-i Hadith scholar Muhammad Ibrahim Mir Sialkoti. Following the Muslim tradition, he learned Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and the Quran. Faiz was also a Pakistan nationalist, and often said, "purify your hearts, so you can save the country..." His father later pulled him from Islamic school because Faiz, who went to a madrasa for a few days found that the impoverished children there, were not comfortable having him around and ridiculed him. Faiz came to the madrasa in neat clothes, in a horse-drawn carriage, while the students of the school were from very poor backgrounds and used to sit on the floor on straw mats. Faiz's close friend, Dr. Ayub Mirza, recalls that Faiz came home and told his father he was not going to attend the madrasa anymore. His father then registered him at the Scotch Mission School which was managed and run by a local British family. Faiz almost started doing Quran hifz and then left it due to eyesight issues. He later in his life regretted leaving the hifz in between.

Faiz attended Murray College at Sialkot for intermediate studies (11th and 12th grade). In 1926, Faiz enrolled in Department of Languages and Fine Arts of the Government College, Lahore. While there, he was greatly influenced by Shams-ul-Ulema, Professor Mir Hassan who taught Arabic and Professor Pitras Bukhari . Professor Hasan had also taught Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, a philosopher, poet, and politician of South Asia. In 1926, Faiz attained his BA with Honors in Arabic, under the supervision of Professor Mir Hassan. In 1930, Faiz joined the post-graduate program of the Government College, obtaining an MA in English literature in 1932, and wrote his master's thesis on the poetry of Robert Browning. The same year, Faiz completed a first-class degree at Punjab University's Oriental College. It was during his college years that he met M. N. Roy and Muzaffar Ahmed who influenced him to become a member of the Communist Party. In addition to Urdu, English, and Arabic, Faiz was also fluent in French and Persian.

Career

Academia

In 1935 Faiz joined the faculty of Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh, serving as a lecturer in English and British literature. Later in 1937, Faiz moved to Lahore to reunite with his family after accepting the professorship at the Hailey College of Commerce

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