Amrit Rai (3 September 1921 – 14 August 1996) was an Indian writer, poet and biographer in both the
Hindi
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...
Munshi Premchand
Dhanpat Rai Srivastava (31 July 1880 – 8 October 1936), better known by his pen name Premchand (), was an Indian writer famous for his modern Hindustani literature. Premchand was a pioneer of Hindi and Urdu social fiction. He was one of ...
, a pioneer of modern
Urdu literature
Urdu literature ( ur, , ) is literature in the Urdu language. While it tends to be dominated by poetry, especially the verse forms of the ''ghazal '' غزل and ''nazm '' نظم, it has expanded into other styles of writing, including that of t ...
and of
Hindi literature
Hindi literature ( hi, हिन्दी साहित्य, translit=hindī sāhitya) includes literature in the various Hindi language which have writing systems. Earliest forms of Hindi literature are attested in poetry of Apabhraṃ ...
. A prolific writer, Rai made his literary debut with novel ''Beej'' in 1952 and went on to write an acclaimed biography of his father, Premchand, ''Kalam ka Sipahi'' (1970), which later won him the
Sahitya Akademi award
The Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary honour in India, which the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the 22 languages of the ...
for 1963.
He also co-edited ''Chitthi Patri'' (1962), a two-volume book on the letters of Premchand along with his biographer, Madan Gopal. In 1982, he donated a collection of his father's 236 letters to the
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library
The Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML) is a museum and library in New Delhi, India, which aims to preserve and reconstruct the history of the Indian independence movement. Housed within the Teen Murti House complex, it is an autonomous ins ...
(NMML) at
Teen Murti House
The Teen Murti Bhavan (''Teen Murti House''; formerly known as Flagstaff House) was built by British as the residence New Delhi of the Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. However, He stayed there for 16 years until his death on 27 May 1 ...
,
Delhi
Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...
. His ''A House Divided'' is an influential account of how the shared Hindi/Hindavī linguistic tradition became differentiated into Modern Standard Hindi and Urdu.
Rai died in
Allahabad
Allahabad (), officially known as Prayagraj, also known as Ilahabad, is a metropolis in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.The other five cities were: Agra, Kanpur (Cawnpore), Lucknow, Meerut, and Varanasi (Benares). It is the administrat ...
, in August 1996 at the age of 75. He had suffered a paralytic stroke earlier in March.
Bibliography
* Rai, Amrit. ''Premchand: A Life''. Harish Trivedi, translator. New Delhi: People's Publishing House, 1982.
* Rai, Amrit. ''A House Divided: The Origin and Development of Hindi/Hindavi''. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984.