Munawwar Rana

Munawwar Rana was born in Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh in 1952, but spent most of his life in Kolkata, West Bengal.[4]

He uses Hindi and Awadhi words and avoids Persian and Arabic. This makes his poetry accessible to Indian audiences and explains his popularity in the poetic meets held in non-Urdu areas.[5][6]

Munawwar has published several ghazals.[7] He has a distinct style of writing. Most of his shers (couplets) have Mother as the centre point of his love. He also wrote a poem praising Indian National Congress leader and politician Sonia Gandhi because she was seen as a good mother.[8]

• Sahitya Akademi Award for Urdu Literature (2014).[9] He returned the award about one year later.[10] He vowed to never again accept a government award.[11][12]
• In 2012 he was awarded Maati Ratan Samman by Shaheed Shodha Sansthan for his services to Urdu literature. [13]

Munnawar Rana is married and lives in Lucknow.[14]

In October 2020, Rana was charged by the Uttar Pradesh police with making statements to promote enmity between religious groups, after a clip from an interview he gave to a Hindi news channel was widely circulated.[15][16][17] Rana later confirmed that he stood by his statements, condemning both the murder and the caricatures in Murder of Samuel Paty incident.[17][18]

• Munawwar Rana's selected couplets
• Official site
• Books by Munawwar Rana