Rahi Masoom Reza | |
---|---|
Born | 1 September 1927 Village Gangauli, Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh, British India |
Died | March 15, 1992 Mumbai |
(aged 64)
Occupation | Novelist, Urdu poet |
Notable awards | 1979 Filmfare Best Dialogue Award:Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki |
Years active | 1945–1992 |
Rahi Masoom Raza (1 September 1927 – 15 March 1992), born in Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh, India, was an Urdu poet. He won the Filmfare Best Dialogue Award for the hit film Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki in 1979 followed by Mili and Lamhe, which he won posthumously. He also wrote in Hindustani and Hindi language and was a lyricist of Bollywood.
Rahi Masoom Raza was born in a Muslim family in a village named Gangauli, located in district of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in Northern India. Raza completed his early education in and around Ghazipur, from where he went to Aligarh Muslim University to complete higher studies. He completed a doctorate in Hindustani Literature and pursued a career in literature.
He wrote the script and dialogues for a popular TV serial, Mahabharat. The TV serial was based on the epic, the Mahabharata. The serial became one of the most popular TV serials of India, with a peak television rating around 86%.
Several of Raza's works vividly depict the agony and turmoil of the consequences of the partition of India, especially its effect on the Hindu-Muslim relationship and the social tension among different Indian social groups.
They also depict life in feudal India and the ordinary happiness, love, pain, and sadness of ordinary people. At times he is the narrator. For instance, his novel Adha Gaon ("Divided Village") narrates the story of two opposing Muslim landlord families in the village Ganguali at the time when India was gaining independence.
The central theme of Adha Gaon is that different people – regardless of class and religion – were sharing same land, water and air like brothers with all their human qualities and weaknesses but communal rivalry was not that much prominent then the mutual relationship between both the communities in United Provinces at the time of Indian Partition. In Adha Gaon, Raza paints a very colourful picture of 1940s rural India showing interdependence of Muslim & Hindus on each other be it may be in form of relationship between two landlords or relationship between master and servants (right-hand man of a Muslim Zamindar is a Hindu and best friend is also a Hindu Zamindar). Theme of novel is that before politics tore us away we (Hindu and Muslim) were one nation, Hindustan.