Nissar Ahmed ‘Kaleem’, Urdu poet and Gandhian thinker, died in Bidar early on Wednesday. He was 83. He was the recipient of the Karnataka Urdu Academy award this year.

The retired teacher wrote under the pen name of ‘Kaleem’ and produced thousands of couplets and hundreds of songs. They were compiled in around two dozen books in Urdu and Hindi. He also served as the head of the examination committee for the Hindi Rashtra Bhasha courses for decades.

He wrote poetry on a variety of subjects, but romance remained close to his heart. “That is the one thing that keeps me young,” he would say with a smile.

“There is no way ahead for this country other than Gandhiism,” he would announce during his numerous speeches. He would speak of Gandhian ideas and practices like communal harmony and tolerance, home industries and handicrafts and simple living with a global outlook. He would always quote paragraphs from the Hindi books and letters of Gandhiji.

He was fascinated with the deeply religious outlook of Gandhiji that remained tolerant of other religions. “Gandhiji led by example and showed us that religion and secularism are not contradictory,” he said in a meeting of heads of various religions in Bidar during Ramzan this year. However, the biggest contribution of this Kannada-speaking Urdu writer was that he acted as the bridge between writers and poets of various languages.

He would attend programmes organised by the Kannada Sahitya Parishat and invite Kannada writers to the multi-lingual poetry recitals that he and his friends organised regularly in Bidar. His last rites were conducted in the old city on Wednesday.

source: http://www.thehindu.com  / The Hindu / Home> National> Karnataka / by Special Correspondent / Bidar – August 20th, 2015