My grandfather Rashid Ashraf, who has died aged 90, was an Urdu scholar and broadcaster who wrote, produced, and presented thousands of radio programmes for the BBC Urdu Service from the mid-1960s onwards.
His voice became well known to many listeners across India and Pakistan, as well as on television in the UK, where he was the regular newsreader on Nai Zindagi Naya Jeevan (A New Life, 1968-92) and then Asian Magazine (1982-87), both broadcast on the BBC.
