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Muhammad Usman Diplai, popularly known as Diplai (13 June 1908 – 8 February 1981), was a figure of Sindhi literature and journalism. He was awarded Pride of Performance for his works by President of Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf on 23 March 2004.
He was born at Diplo (Tharparkar District) to a middle class family. As per family traditions, he had to engage himself in business. Due to unfavourable circumstances, however, he could not even complete his education. In early life, he worked with some Landlords (zamindars), of the area as a clerk, but continued reading newspapers and magazines. He also acquired proficiency in Gujrati, Hindi, Gurmukhi, Urdu and working knowledge in English and Persian languages.
He founded Islamia Press, Quran Press and the Islami Dar-ul- Ishaat, the Adar-i-Insanyat, the Diplai Academy right before the Second World War one after another, at the historic town of Mirpurkhas, and then moved to Hyderabad in 1942 to complete his mission. He was an essayist, journalist, publisher, distributor, and printer of the Sindhi language.
In 1923, it so happened that he came across an issue of the Urdu weekly Munadi published from Delhi by Khwaja Hassan Nizamani, which carried an article about the conquest of Sindh by the young warrior Muhammad Bin Qasim. Diplai wrote a letter in Urdu to the editor pinpointing certain historical inaccuracies in the write-up. Hassan Nizami was so much impressed by the letter that he published it as an article. It proved a source of inspiration to Diplai and he started contributing to 'Munadi' and Deen-o-Duniya (Urdu) journals regularly. Later, his Sindhi stories appeared in the Sindhi monthlies such as Taraqqi and Ilm Dunya.
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