Habib Jalib
| Habib Jalib حبیب جالب |
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Portrait of Habib Jalib
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| Born | Habib Ahmad 24 March 1928 Hoshiarpur, Punjab |
| Died | 13 March 1993 (aged 64) Lahore, Pakistan |
| Occupation | Urdu poet |
| Nationality | Pakistani |
| Literary movement | Progressive Writers' Movement |
| Notable awards |
Nigar Awards Nishan-i-Imtiaz (Posthumously awarded on 23 March 2009) |
Habib Jalib (Urdu: حبیب جالب) was a Pakistani revolutionary poet, left-wing activist and politician who opposed martial law, authoritarianism and state oppression. Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz paid tributes to him by saying that he was truly the poet of the masses.
Habib Jalib was born as Habib Ahmad on 24 March 1928 in a village near Hoshiarpur, British India. He migrated to Pakistan after the partition of India due to family pressure though he wanted to live in India and defied two nation theory. Later he worked as a proofreader for Daily Imroze of Karachi. He was a progressive writer and soon started to grab the audience with his enthusiastic recitation of poetry. He wrote in plain language, adopted a simple style and addressed common people and issues. But the conviction behind his words, the music of his voice and his emotional energy coupled with the sensitivity of the socio-political context is what stirred the audience.
Criticizing those who supported Ayub Khan's regime, he wrote:
Jalib could never reconcile with the dictatorship of Ayub Khan. So when Ayub enforced his tailor-made constitution in the country in 1962, which a former prime minister Chaudhry Muhammad Ali likened to the Clock Tower of Lyallpur, Jalib wrote the following poem:
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