Akhtar Husain

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Akhtar Husain
Born1912
British India
Died1992
Alma materUniversity of Paris (PhD)
Part of a series on
Progressive Writers' Movement
Members
Urdu writers

English writers

Bengali writers

Punjabi writers

Hindi writers

Kashmiri writers

Marathi writers

Notable works
Related Organisations

Dr Akhtar Husain (1912-1992,

lexicographer.[1] He is also the author of the book The Dust of the Road: A Translation of Gard-e-Raah that was translated into English many years after his death.[3][4]

Early life

Akhtar Husain was born in the district of

Republic of India. He was born to Saiyyed Akbar Husain, an engineer stationed in Raipur. His mother Mumtazunnisa was a publisher in women's journals. She died at age twenty-six when Akhtar was just three.[1]

As a child, Akhtar became fond of reading and saved money to buy books in

Perso-Arabic script) as fluently. At age twelve, his school teacher asked him to help organize the school library, and his command over Hindi was so strong that, apart from reading it, he began writing in the language, and "his first story “Parajit” (Defeated) was published in Madhuri, a reputed literary journal, when he was only 16 years old."[1]

Outside Urdu and Hindi, other languages he'd master are Sanskrit, Bengali, Persian, English and French.[6] Later in his life he'll have a command over Spanish as well.[7]

Education and career

Husain moved to

Qazi Nazrul Islam into Urdu. According to Husain, Babu Moolchand and Maulvi Abdul Huq as his two major life influences.[1]

He also became acquainted with friends with the poets

Aurangabad where they started Anjuman-i Taraqqi-i Urdu and worked for about two years. During that time, Husain also reviewed Urdu books under the pseudonym "Nakhuda". Over this time bonds between Husain and Abdul Haq.[1]

By 1935, Husain married Hamida, daughter of police officer and crime fiction novelist Zafar Omar.[8] Akhtar Husain witnessed the historic 1936 meeting of Sahitya Parishad in which Mahatma Gandhi declared that Hindi rather than Hindustani (which includes Urdu and technically Caribbean Hindustani as well) be the national language of India upon independence.[1]

Upon this, Haq stopped all his works in Hindi, including the development of the English-Hindi dictionary, and Husain left Aurangabad for Delhi where he had difficulty settling for a career as a result of his application being rejected.[1]

He then applied to Sorbonne where he pursued a PhD in ancient life in the Indian subcontinent based on Sanskrit texts. His thesis adviser was Marc Bloch. He also briefly worked as a translator to support himself financially. He also later worked in news bulletins to write news analysis. He also worked with the Radio's Dictionary Committee.[9]

By 1942, Husain became

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.[9]

Independence and the end of British Rule

Two years within the end of the

Second World War and the end of the British Raj, Husain and his family relocated to Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. It was around this time it was reported that violence between Brahmans and Muslims intensified.[10]

In Pakistan, Husain continued working in the educational fields, where he worked as secretary. Dissatisfied with the political direction Pakistani society had headed for, he took up a job at UNESCO where he retired from in 1972.[1]

Bibliography

Some of his major works include:

  • La société dans le drame sanscrit. PhD thesis written in French for the
    Sanskrit drama
    '.
  • Adab aur inqilāb. A critical study on prominent Urdu authors and their works.
  • Ḥabash aur At̤āliyah. History of Italy and Ethiopia.
  • Payām-i shabāb. Translation of Bengali poetry from Kazi Nazrul Islam.
  • Roshan mīnār : tanqīdī maẓāmīn kā majmūʻah. Essays on Urdu literature.
  • Tāsh ke patte. Urdu translation from the English of James Hadley Chase's The Joker in the Pack.
  • Śakuntalā. Urdu translation from the Sanskrit of Kālidāsa's Śakuntalā.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Dawn Books And Authors (9 December 2012). "COLUMN: Stars from the past: Akhtar Husain Raipuri (1912–1992) by Mehr Afshan Farooqi".
  2. ^ "Raipuri's life and times". TNS - The News on Sunday. Archived from the original on 2 October 2018. Retrieved 16 March 2016.
  3. ^ "The Dust of the Road".
  4. ^ "The Dust of the Road A Translation of Gard-e-Raah". Archived from the original on 28 May 2016. Retrieved 16 March 2016.
  5. ^ Coppola, Carlo. "Iqbal and the Progressive Movement." Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 1.2 (1977): 49.
  6. ^ ʻAlī Javād Zaidī, A History of Urdu literature, Sahitya Akademi (1993), p. 404
  7. ^ Saadia Salahuddin, "Search for truth", Jang. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
  8. ISBN 978-0393338607
    .
  9. ^ a b Dawn Books And Authors (9 December 2012). "COLUMN: Stars from the past: Akhtar Husain Raipuri (1912–1992) by Mehr Afshan Farooqi".
  10. ISBN 978-0-231-50739-4
    .

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Akhtar_Husain&oldid=1208722507"