Ved Rahi

Ved Rahi was born in Jammu on 22 May 1933. His father, Lala Mulk Raj Saraf, started Ranbir in 1924, the first newspaper in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, and is remembered as the father of journalism in Jammu and Kashmir. Saraf received the Padma Shri in 1976. In his later years Rahi was described as Saraf's only surviving son.

Rahi started writing when he was about 12 or 13, first in Urdu and later in Hindi and Dogri.

After finishing his education, Rahi worked as a script writer for All India Radio Jammu from 1955 to 1958, when the station was in its early years. From 1958 to 1961 he edited the Hindi monthly Yojana, carrying on his father's journalistic tradition. With Madan Mohan Sharma and Narendra Khajuria he wrote the Dogri story collection Kale Hathe and the novel Haad Bedi Te Pattan, both of which became popular.

He left his job and moved to Bombay, where he became assistant writer and director to Ramanand Sagar. Over the following decades he wrote screenplays or dialogues for around 25 Hindi films, among them Yeh Raat Phir Na Aayegi (1966), Pavitra Paapi (1970), Be-Imaan (1972), Mome Ki Gudiya (1972), Sanyasi (1975), Charas (1976) and Bezubaan (1982). He directed films including Prem Parbat (1973), Darar and Andhi Surang, and made a Dogri film, Bobo. Kali Ghata (1980), starring Rekha, Shashi Kapoor and Danny Denzongpa, was his first film as producer as well as director.

On television, his serial Gul Gulshan Gulfaam, about a Kashmiri family, was broadcast on Doordarshan in 1987 and ran for 45 episodes; it won him Uptron's Best Director Award in 1992. He also made Zindagi (1987) and directed Meerabai for Doordarshan. In 2001 he wrote and directed Veer Savarkar, a biographical film about Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.

Alongside his screen work he kept writing fiction. His Dogri books include the novels Lal Ded, Aale, Garbh Joon and Andhi Surang, short story collections, and Ik Journalist di Aatamkatha, a biography of his father. His work was translated into other Indian languages, and translations of Lal Ded into Sindhi and Aale into Kashmiri won Sahitya Akademi translation prizes.

Rahi lived for many years in Thane district, Maharashtra, while remaining closely identified with Jammu and the Dogri literary world. He had two daughters, Geetanjali and Poonam.

Ved Rahi died on the morning of Sunday 1 November 2026 at his residence in Thane district, Maharashtra, aged 93. The Daily Excelsior of Jammu reported his death the same day, describing him as an eminent Dogri and Hindi writer, Sahitya Akademi Fellow and Bollywood personality. The cause of death was not made public. His last rites were performed that afternoon at the Kopari cremation ground in Thane. He was survived by his daughters, Geetanjali and Poonam, and their families.

Rahi is counted, with Narendra Khajuria, Madan Mohan Sharma and Nilamber Dev Sharma, among the noted modern writers of Dogri. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award for Dogri in 1983 for Aale, the J&K Academy of Art, Culture and Languages award in 1971, the Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan Award, the Maharashtra Gaurav Award and the Kusumagraj Rashtriya Sahitya Puraskar (2019). In 2024 the Sahitya Akademi elected him one of its Fellows for his eminence as a Dogri writer and scholar, an honour limited to a small number of living writers at any time. He was one of the rare figures whose work bridged a regional literature and mainstream Hindi cinema and television.