| Amrit Rai | |
| Birth Date: | 1921 9, df=yes |
| Birth Place: | Lamhi, Banaras State, British India |
| Death Place: | Allahbad |
| Occupation: | Writer |
| Language: | Hindi, Urdu |
| Nationality: | Indian |
| Relatives: | Munshi Premchand (father) |
Amrit Rai (3 September 1921 - 14 August 1996) was an Indian writer, poet and biographer in both the Hindi and Urdu styles of the Hindustani language. He is the son of Munshi Premchand, a pioneer of modern Urdu literature and of Hindi literature. A prolific writer, Rai made his literary debut with novel Beej in 1952 and went on to write an acclaimed biography of his father, Premchand, Kalam ka Sipahi (1970),[1] which later won him the Sahitya Akademi award for 1963.
Rai co-edited Chitthi Patri (1962), a two-volume book on the letters of Premchand along with his biographer, Madan Gopal. In 1982, he donated a collection of his father's 236 letters to the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) at Teen Murti House, Delhi.[2] His A House Divided is an influential account of how the shared Hindi/Hindavī linguistic tradition became differentiated into Modern Standard Hindi and Urdu.
Rai died in Allahabad, in August 1996 at the age of 75. He had suffered a paralytic stroke earlier in March.[3]