Amrit Rai
Amrit Rai was a writer, poet and biographer in Hindi and Urdu. He was the son of Munshi Premchand, a pioneer of modern Urdu literature and of Hindi literature. A prolific writer, Rai made his literary debut with novel Beej in 1952 and went on to write an acclaimed biography of his father, Premchand, Kalam ka Sipahi, which later won him the Sahitya Akademi award for 1963.
He also co-edited Chitthi Patri, a two-volume book on the letters of Premchand along with his biographer, Madan Gopal. In 1982, he donated a collection of his father's 236 letters to the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library at Teen Murti House, Delhi. His A House Divided is an influential account of how the shared Hindi/Hindavī linguistic tradition became differentiated into Modern Standard Hindi and Urdu.
Rai died in Allahabad, in September 1996 at the age of 75.
