Josh Malihabadi was a great champion of the Urdu language and it was a perceived threat to his mother tongue that prompted his migration from India to Pakistan in 1958. The prime minister of India at that time, Jawaharlal Nehru, tried to insist that he stayed but Malihabadi would have none of it. The Hindu majority in India spoke Hindi and Urdu speakers probably felt that their language might not have a future in the country. He wrote forcefully and his outspoken support for the Indian revolution against the ruling British Raj gained him the unofficial title Shaair-e-Inquilaab which translates as “Poet of the Revolution”.