New Delhi: Renowned academic, writer, columnist and dramatist Prof. Shamim Hanafi has passed away in Delhi on Thursday (May 6). He fell victim to the dreaded wave of coronavirus.
Prof. Hanafi had been admitted to a hospital following the attack of COVID-19 a few days ago.
According to noted columnist Masoom Muradabadi Prof Hanafi had recently shifted from Zakir Bagh to a house which he had constructed in Jasola.
“I had known him for about three decades. About 25 years ago he had started writing a back page column for my newspaper Khabardar which became as popular as the column of Khwaja Ahmad Abbas in Urdu Blitz in the past,” Muradabadi wrote in an obituary.
Muradabadi described him as “an original thinker and intellectual.”
Prof Hanafi was born in Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh, in 1938 and studied at Allahbad University and Aligarh Muslim University. Later he taught at AMU and Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi.
He had written about 10 books and numerous articles and came to be known as one of the top literary critics, playwrights and poets of the Indian subcontinent. One of his collection of poetry, Aakhri Pahar ki Dastak, was published in 2015 by Rekhta, a Delhi based organisation working for the promotion of Urdu.