Urdu poet Munawwar Rana on Sunday breathed his last at a hospital in Uttar Pradesh’s Lucknow following a cardiac arrest. He was 71 and had been battling with a prolonged illness for the past several months. Rana was undergoing treatment at the PGI hospital in Lucknow.
Born on November 26, 1952, in Uttar Pradesh’s Raebareli, Munawwar Rana is known for his Urdu literature and ghazals.
In 2014, he was honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Award for his poem, ‘Shahdaba’. However, he had returned the award, alleging ‘intolerance’ in the country.
He also received other awards, including the Ameer Khusro Award, the Mir Taqi Mir Award, the Ghalib Award, the Dr Zakir Hussain Award, and the Saraswati Samaj Award, throughout his career.
It was alleged a few years ago that one of Rana’s most highly-acclaimed poems was stolen from Hindi poet Alok Srivastava.
Rana last made headlines in 2021 when he likened Maharshi Valmiki to Taliban. The UP Police booked him for his derogatory comments against Hindus by drawing false equivalence with radical Islamic organisation Taliban that has captured Afghanistan.
Rana went ahead to make a dastardly metaphorical statement to defend the Taliban. Rana had also threatened to leave Uttar Pradesh if Yogi was reelected as CM.
In January 2021, he took to social media to poetically incite a mob to violence. In the tweet which was deleted later, Rana gave a call to demolish the Parliament building and set the godowns for grains storage on fire.
In October 2020, Rana made a condemnable remark on the brutal beheading of French History teacher Samuel Paty by an Islamist terrorist. He supported the terrorist attack saying that he would have done the same.
A year after the Ram Janmabhoomi verdict, Rana made repugnant remarks against the then Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi saying “Even a prostitute in India charges more for selling herself than Ranjan Gogoi did.”
In May 2020, an old letter penned by poet Alok Srivastava addressed to Munawwar Rana went viral on social media in which he alleges the Urdu poet of stealing his couplet and brazenly garnering accolades for it.
This came after he called 100 crore Hindus as ‘animals’ and 35 crore ‘humans’ in India.
(With inputs from agencies)