Gopaldas Neeraj

Gopaldas Neeraj

Gopaldas Saxena 'Neeraj' (popularly known as Niraj or Neeraj) is among the best-known poets and authors in Hindi literature. He is also a famous poet of Hindi Kavi Sammelan. He was born in the small village Ekdil of Etawah in Uttar Pradesh, India on 4 January 1924. He wrote under the pen name "Neeraj". His style is considered easy to understand, but has also been compared with high quality Hindi literature. He was awarded Padma Bhushan in 2007. Recently he recited some of his works at North India's premier annual cultural festival, Spoculit 2012.

Besides writing, he earned his living teaching in a college and was a Professor of Hindi Literature in Aligarh. Several of his poems and songs have been used in Hindi movies and are considered famous. He wrote songs for several Hindi Movies and attained a unique position as a songwriter who wrote with equal facility in both pure Hindi as well as Urdu as opposed to Hindi-Urdu mix, which is increasingly becoming more common. But as per the needs and requirements of the Hindi Film Industry, the majority of his songs are nonetheless, in mixed but chaste Hindi-Urdu languages.

In the television interview, Gopaldas Neeraj called himself an unlucky poet which led to his stopping himself from writing film songs and confining himself to just writing and getting his poems published. The reason for this mentioned by him was that at least two or three prominent Music Directors of the Hindi Film Industry for whom he wrote very successful and popular songs, had expired. He mentioned the death of Jaikishan of the Music Duo Shankar-Jaikishan as well as of S.D.Burman or Sachin Dev Burman, for both of whom he had written highly popular film songs. The deaths of these Music Directors when they as well as Gopaldas Neeraj were at the peak of their popularity, left him very depressed and he made a decision to quit the film industry.

His publications are first choice of poetry readers. He has so many collections i.e. "Neeraj ki Paati", "Baadlon se Salaam Letaa Hoon" and "Geet jo Gaaye Nahin" etc.

now a days he works as the chancellor of mangalayatan university ,aligarh