Written by: Express News Service
3 min readNew DelhiMar 11, 2011 12:57 AM IST
First published on: Mar 11, 2011 at 12:57 AM IST
Professor Sajida Zaidi,noted educationist and celebrated Urdu writer,passed away in Dubai on March 9 after a brief bout of illness. She was 84.
The recipient of the 2008 Bahadur Shah Zafar Award of the Delhi Urdu Academy for her overall contribution to Urdu literature,Professor Zaidi was also given the Urdu Academy Award for her overall contribution to the Urdu language and literature in 2009.
Professor Zaidi,who got her M Phil degree from the Institute of Education,University of London,had a long career at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). Before retiring as the Head of Department of Education in 1986,she had served as a member of the University Grants Commission (UGC) educational panel,National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) organising committee as well as the Technical Terminology Committee of the Bureau for Promotion of Urdu,and the textbook panel of the National Council for Promotion of Urdu language,besides a host of other eminent national service positions.
Her published works include five Urdu poem collections as well as poetic dramas and works of literary criticism,with translations in English,Russian,Oriya,Marathi and Hindi. Her autobiography would be published posthumously.
Professor Zaidi has also been recipient of the Imtiaz-e-Mir Award for poetry and literary achievement,the Ghalib ‘Ham Sab’ Award for Drama,four Uttar Pradesh Urdu Academy Awards,the All-India Bihar Urdu Academy Award for ‘Sarhad Koi Naheen’,the Sydney Literary Society Award for poetic excellence as well as the Canberra Literary Society Award for outstanding contribution to the Urdu language.
She was predeceased by two months by her younger sister,Zahida Zaidi,a celebrated poet and professor of English Literature at the Aligarh Muslim University.
The two,great granddaughters of pioneering 19th Century educationist Maulana Altaf Husain Hali,were well known in literary circles as the Zaidi Sisters. They had begun their careers as progressive intellectuals while at the women’s college in AMU. Notably,way back in the 1940s,they had become one of the first women in the deeply conservative Muslim society to discard the burqa and ride bicycles to college.
Professor Zaidi is survived by two sons and two daughters,eleven grandchildren and one great-grandson. Her body would be flown into Delhi late on Thursday night,to be taken to Aligarh for burial on Friday.
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