Josh Malihabadi: The Poet of Revolution

Josh was born Shabbir Hasan Khan in 1898 in Malihabad, near Lucknow, into an aristocratic Pathan family of poets. He worked in Hyderabad, edited the magazine Kaleem in Delhi, wrote for films, and later edited the government journal Aaj Kal in India. He received the Padma Bhushan in 1954. In 1958 he moved to Pakistan, where he worked on Urdu lexicography. He died in Islamabad in 1982.

His poems against colonial rule and on the hardships of peasants and workers made him a hero of the independence era. His language is grand and musical, with a wealth of Persian and Arabic vocabulary. His autobiography, Yaadon ki Baraat (The Procession of Memories, 1970), is famous for its candour and its portrait of a vanished aristocratic world. His works are still in copyright, so we describe rather than quote them here.