Fahmida Riaz

Fahmida Riaz was a Pakistani poet, writer and feminist who was born in Meerut, British India, in 1946. She was the daughter of Riaz-ud-Din Ahmed, an educationist who was involved in developing the modern education system for Sindh province. She moved to Hyderabad, Sindh, with her family after the partition of India in 1947. She studied at the Government College for Women in Hyderabad, and later at the University of Sindh in Jamshoro. She began writing poetry at a young age, and published her first collection of verses, Patthar ki Zuban, in 1967. She married Zafar Ali Ujan, a leftist political activist, in 1971, and moved to Karachi, where she worked as a newscaster for Radio Pakistan. She also started her own Urdu publication, Awaz, which was known for its liberal and progressive content. She faced censorship and persecution from the military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq, who imposed martial law and Islamic laws in Pakistan in 1977. She and her husband were charged with sedition and imprisoned for a year. They fled to India in 1981, where they lived in exile for seven years. During this time, she wrote her second collection of poetry, Badan Dareeda, which was considered controversial and obscene for its erotic and sensual expressions. She also wrote her first novel, Zinda Bahar, which depicted the lives of women in a patriarchal society. She returned to Pakistan in 1988, after the death of Zia-ul-Haq and the restoration of democracy. She continued to write and publish poetry, fiction, and essays, and also translated works from Sindhi, Persian, and English into Urdu. She was influenced by the writings of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Jalaluddin Rumi, Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, and Shaikh Ayaz. She was also an avid reader of English literature and translated some works of Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, and Adrienne Rich into Urdu. She was a prominent voice of the progressive writers' movement and the women's rights movement in Pakistan. She was also a critic of religious extremism, nationalism, and patriarchy. She received several awards and honors for her literary contributions, including the Pride of Performance in 2010, the Kamal-e-Fun Award in 2013, and the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Karachi Literature Festival in 2017. She died of cardiac arrest in Lahore on 21 November 2018, at the age of 72.