Ralph Russell

{{Infobox person

| name = Ralph Russell

| native_name = {{lang|ur|{{nq|رالف رسل}}}}

| birth_date = 21 May 1918

| birth_place = Hammerton, West Riding of Yorkshire, United Kingdom

| death_date = 14 September 2008

| education = St John's College, Cambridge
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)

| known_for = British scholar of Urdu literature
Communist activist

| party = Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB)

| awards = Sitara-i-Imtiaz

}}

Ralph Russell SI ({{Langx|ur|{{unq|رَالْف رَسَل}}}}) (21 May 1918 – 14 September 2008) was a British scholar of Urdu literature and a Communist.

Biography

Russell was born in Hammerton, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, and grew up in Loughton, Essex. He was educated at Chigwell School,{{cite book |last1=Sydenham |first1=Barrie |title=The Chigwell Register |date=2003 |page=28 }} and later at St John's College, Cambridge, where he read classics and geography, graduating in 1940 with an ordinary degree."University News", The Times, 19 June 1939, p. 8."University News", The Times, 7 June 1940, p. 3. He learnt Urdu while serving in India on attachment to the Indian Army during World War II, achieving "considerable fluency at the level of everyday communication with my sepoys."{{cite web |url=http://www.ralphrussell.co.uk/ |title=About Me and My Work for Urdu |website=ralphrussell.co.uk}} During the war he had "no opportunity of making the acquaintance of Urdu literature", but following demobilisation he was awarded a scholarship to study at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where he took a degree in Urdu (with Sanskrit as a subsidiary subject) in 1949.

Upon graduation Russell spent a year on study leave at Aligarh Muslim University in India, before returning to teach Urdu and Urdu literature at SOAS. Although he remained at SOAS for the rest of his career, he continued to lecture and conduct research at universities in both India and Pakistan. He wrote articles and essays in Urdu and English, and attended literary seminars and workshops on the subject of his specialization.{{cite web |url=http://www.ralphrussell.co.uk/ |title=Home |website=ralphrussell.co.uk}}

For much of his life Russell was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. He later explained his commitment as "want[ing] to meet the needs of the people whom the communist movement is supposed to exist to serve." The historian Eric Hobsbawm, a fellow communist who attended Cambridge at the same time as Russell, remembered him as a "working-class classics student of steely bolshevik demeanour" who had been nicknamed 'Georgi' after the then Secretary of the Comintern, Georgi Dimitrov.Eric Hobsbawm, Interesting Times: a Twentieth-Century Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002), p. 292. {{ISBN|037542234X}}

Russell was awarded the Sitara-e-Imtiaz in recognition of his services to Urdu language and literature by the Government of Pakistan. Loughton Town Council installed a blue plaque to Russell at his boyhood home on 6 Queen's Road in that town, which was inaugurated with a reception given by the present owners for family, friends and colleagues on 15 July 2013.

Books

Three Mughal Poets, 1968{{Cite web|url=https://www.rekhta.org/authors/ralph-russell/ebooks|title=Urdu Books of Ralph Russell}}
Ghalib, life and letters, 1969
New course in Urdu and spoken Hindi for learners in Britain, 1997
The pursuit of Urdu literature 1992
Selections from the Persian Ghazals of Ghalib with Translations 1997
An Anthology of Urdu Literature 1999
How not to write the history of Urdu literature 1999
The Famous Ghalib 2000
The Oxford India Ghalib: Life, Letters and Ghazals 2003
The Seeing Eye: Selection from the Urdu and Persian Ghazals of Ghalib 2003
Urdu in Britain (Ed), 1982
Ghalib: The Poet and his Age (Ed) 1997
A Thousand Yearnings: a Book of Urdu Poetry and Prose (Trans) 2017{{Cite web|url=https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/220790.Ralph_Russell|title = Books by Ralph Russell (Author of a Thousand Yearnings)}}

Autobiography

Findings, keeping: Life, Communism and everything 2001
Losses, Gains published by Three Essays, New Delhi, 2010

In Urdu

Urdu Adab ki Justuju (Urdu translation of The Pursuit of Urdu Literature/Curiosity about Urdu literature), by Muhammad Sarwar Rija (2003)
Juyinda Yabinda (Urdu translation of his autobiography, by Arjumand Ara), City Press, Karachi, 2005{{Cite web|url=https://www.amazon.com/Ralph-Russell/e/B001HP7Q9K%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share|title = Ralph Russell|publisher = Amazon}}