Mangharam Udharam Malkani (24 December 1896 – 1 December 1980) was an Indian scholar, critic, writer, playwright, literary historian and professor in the

Sindhi language Sindhi ( ; , ) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by about 30 million people in the Pakistani province of Sindh, where it has official status. It is also spoken by a further 1.7 million people in India, where it is a scheduled language, withou ...

. He was the pioneer of modern Sindhi dramas. He was recognized as the "Grand old man of

Sindhi literature Sindhi literature ( sd, سنڌي ادب), is the composition of oral and written scripts and texts in the Sindhi language in the form of prose: (romantic tales, and epic stores) and poetry: (Ghazal, Wai and Nazm). The Sindhi language of the provin ...

Early life and education

He was born on 24 December 1896 at

Hyderabad Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India ...

in the landlord family of Raisahab Udharam Malkani. Prof Malkani led a delegation of Sindhi writers for Asian Writers’ Conference held in 1956 in New Delhi.

Career

He joined D. J. Sindh College, Karachi as lecturer of English. He was the president of Sindhi Sahit Mandal (Sindhi literary Society). After the partition of India, he migrated to India where he joined

Jai Hind College Jai Hind College ( Marathi: जय हिंद कॉलेज) is an autonomous college in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, affiliated to the University of Mumbai. It was established in 1948. In 2000, ''India Today'' named Jai Hind College as o ...

, Mumbai. He wrote more than 22 books. He wrote ''Sindhi Nasar Ji Tarikh'' (''History of Sindhi Prose'') for which he received a

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 ...

in 1969. He founded Sindhi Adabi Sangat.

Death

He died on 1 December 1980 in

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second-m ...

, India.

References

{{authority control Sindhi people Sindhi-language writers 1896 births 1980 deaths Scholars from Mumbai Indian literary critics 20th-century Indian dramatists and playwrights Indian male dramatists and playwrights Indian literary historians D. J. Sindh Government Science College alumni People from Hyderabad, Sindh 20th-century Indian historians Recipients of the Sahitya Akademi Award in Sindhi 20th-century Indian male writers 20th-century Indian translators