Jafri, Ali Sardar

Born Nov. 29, 1913, in Balrampur near Gonda. Indian writer and public figure. Writes in Urdu. Graduated from the university in New Delhi. Member of the Indian Communist Party since 1936. One of the founders of the Association of Indian Folk Theaters.

Jafri is the author of the collections of poetry and narrative poems Greetings to the New World (1947), Torch of Peace (1950), Asia Has Awakened (1950), and The Stone Wall (1953) and poems about Moscow. The antifascist play Whose Blood Is This? (1943) enjoyed great success. The basic feature of Jafriïs innovative style is the extensive use of blank verse and other meters previously unknown in Urdu poetry. In the book Progressive Literature (1951), Jafri shed light on the history of Indian literature from a progressive social and aesthetic point of view. He prepared and published classic Urdu writings by Ghalib and Mir Taki Mir.