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Pakistan
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The great progressive poet of Urdu, who joined romance and revolution
Bol, ke lab azaad hain tere / Bol, zubaan ab tak teri hai
"Speak, for your lips are free; speak, your tongue is still your own."
Faiz was born near Sialkot and studied Arabic and English literature in Lahore. He taught at colleges in Amritsar and Lahore, joined the Progressive Writers' Movement, and served in the British Indian Army during the Second World War.
After independence he became editor of the newspaper Pakistan Times. In 1951 he was arrested in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case and spent about four years in prison, where he wrote some of his finest poetry.
He later worked in arts and culture, lived in exile in Beirut during the Zia years, and returned to Lahore, where he died in 1984. His wife was the British-born Alys Faiz.
He used the traditional language of love in the ghazal to speak about justice, freedom and the suffering of ordinary people, so that the beloved could also mean the homeland or revolution.
Faiz is one of the most widely read and sung Urdu poets of the 20th century. He received the Lenin Peace Prize in 1962 and the Nishan-e-Imtiaz posthumously in 1990. Singers such as Noor Jehan and Iqbal Bano made his poems famous.