Kaifi Azmi – a ‘maulvi’ who turned to music and Marx

Remembering Kaifi Azmi, the poet who wrote and recited fiery poems for the downtrodden, disadvantaged, underprivileged, dispossessed and deprived till he breathed his last 16 years ago

Kaifinama: A celebration of the art and times of Kaifi Azmi

I was born in a slave India, grew up in an independent India and would like to die in a socialist India.

This dream of eminent Urdu poet Kaifi Azmi took a serious beating, like many of his contemporary idealists, with a vision for a secular and progressive India. He was shattered by the communal disharmony that followed demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992. In his epic poem Doosra Banwaas, which was written against the backdrop of communal violence that followed the incident, Kaifi imagined the return of Lord Ram to the banks of Saryu in Ayodhya and lamented that Ram got a second exile on December 6.