Taufiq Rafat was born in 1927 in Sialkot, where his family had its ancestral home. His father, Khwaja Ghulam Muhammed Hazir, was a trans-India supply contractor for the British Indian army during the Second World War and moved to Dehra Dun. At Partition in 1947 Sialkot became a part of Pakistan and the family returned to it. Taufiq Rafat was educated in the English colonial system at Dehra Dun, Aligarh and Lahore. He graduated from the Hailey College of Commerce, Lahore, and became a company executive. He married into the same community of Kashmiris in Sialkot to which he belonged. His wife, Rehana Rafat, became a social worker and women's rights activist.
Taufiq Rafat started writing poetry when he was 12. In the early years of Pakistan there was little concept of a sub-continental
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Citation: Shamsie, Muneeza. "Taufiq Rafat". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 July 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5132, accessed 22 November 2024.]
