About Yavar Abbas

Yavar Abbas, reading the news for BBC.
Yavar Abbas anchoring a programme on BBC Urdu Radio

Yavar Abbas , writer, broadcaster, journalist, film-maker comes from the home of Urdu- Lucknow in U.P. India. A love of classical Urdu literature was second nature to him, having been exposed to the poetry of one of one of the greatest practitioners of that art, Meer Babar Ali Anees, whose epic Marsiyas were part of his staple diet from a very early age. Brought up in adevout and cultured Shia family Yavar heard his father recite ANEES with passion and panache every year during the month of Moharram. Having learnt to appreciate and recite ANEES as part of his inheritance, Yavar has augmented and fine-tuned his own practice of the art of Taht-ul-lafz over the years with his skills as a broadcaster and film-maker.

Equipped with a liberal education from Allahabad University in India where his main subjects were English and Persian Literature, Yavar moved freely between making films, broadcasting, and translating from English into Urdu plays and features he produced and directed for the BBC. Shakespeare, Shaw,Wilde, Wells, Coward, Stoppard, Chekov, Isben, Burke, Gibbon. Jhonson, Macaulay, Hazlitt, lamb, Dickens, kipling are just some of the playwrights and writers he has translated into Urdu.

A full length OTHELLO, a full length MACBETH, an eighteen part series MASTERPIECES OF ENGLISH PROSE, a thirteen part series HISTORIC ENGLISH SPEECHES (Abraham Lincoln, John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohammed Ali Jinnah et al), an eight part series EUROPEAN POETS WORLD SERVICE) which he also produced and directed, will give some ide of the range of his work. He is now in the process of collating and editing this body of work together with his original articles and commentaries both in English and Urdu for publication in the form of books.

Yavar Abbas
BBC URDU SERVICE – Yavar Abbas, writer and producer of the BBC Urdu Service Series ‘European Poets of Urdu’ pictured in the India Office Library in London. (1980s)

His films INDIA! MY INDIA! (a series of 4), FACES OF INDIA (a series of 7), INDIA CALLED THEM (a series of 6), MOTHER GANGES, CRICKET IN INDIA, THE KHANS OF PAKISTAN (many of which he wrote and all of which he narrated, produced and directed) have been shown on national TV networks in Britain,USA,CANADA,GERMANY,FRANCE,HOLLAND, SWEDEN,POLAND,INDIA,PAKISTAN etc. And have won top awards at International FILM and TV Festivals of New York, Milan and Hollywood.

Bombay, Delhi and London have shown his films to packed houses at specially organised YAVAR ABBAS FILM FESTIVALS. CINEMATHEQUE FRANCAISE in Paris has honoured Abbas with a Retrospect season of his films. Abbas has been Films Consultant to the United Nations and chief of Films and Television at Third World media. His first love Urdu, however, remains his abiding passion with ANEES occupying pride of place in his pantheon of poets. He is much in demand for his recitations of ANEES in Britain, America, the gulf countries and, of course, India.