NAROWAL: The Pakistani nation is remembering the prolific poet of his time Faiz Ahmed Ahmed on his 110th birth anniversary today. His work remains influential in Pakistan’s literature and arts.
Faiz was a Pakistani leftist poet and author. Not only he was one of the most celebrated writers of the Urdu language, but among his other accolades, Faiz was nominated for Nobel Prize in Literature and won the Lenin Peace Prize.
Faiz Ahmad Faiz was born into a Tataley Jat family on 13 February 1911, in Kala Qader (Faiz Nagar), District Narowal, Punjab, British India. 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.
Born in Punjab, British India, Faiz went on to study at Government College and Oriental College. He went on to serve in the British Indian Army and was awarded in the British Empire Medal.
After Pakistan’s independence, Faiz became the editor to The Pakistan Times and a leading member of the Communist Party before being arrested in 1951 as an alleged part of a conspiracy to overthrow the Liaquat administration and replace it with a left-wing government.
Faiz was released after four years in prison and went on to become a notable member of the Progressive Writers’ Movement and eventually an aide to Bhutto administration, before being self-exiled to Beirut.
Faiz’s literary work was posthumously publicly honoured when the Pakistan Government conferred upon him the nation’s highest civil award, Nishan-e-Imtiaz, in 1990.
A collection of some of Faiz’s celebrated poetry was published in 2011, under the name of “Celebrating Faiz” edited by D P Tripathi. The book also included tributes by his family, by contemporaries and by scholars who knew of him through his poetry.
The book was released on the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary in the Punjab province in Pakistan.
