Faiz Ahmad Faiz

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, India 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 them, and relayed them 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 some of his poems displayed a more religious tone over the years, even suggesting that Faiz ultimately aimed for an Islamic revolution, having endorsed the 1979 Iranian revolution. One of his most famous poems, "Hum Dekhenge", was a tribute to the Islamic revolution of Iran.

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.

Chaudhry Faiz Ahmad Faiz was born on 13 February 1911 in Kala Qader, in the Narowal 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, who died in infancy.