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.^[2]

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.^[3] His A House Divided is an influential account of how the shared Hindi/Hindavī linguistic tradition became differentiated into Modern Standard Hindi and Urdu.^{[citation needed]}

Rai died in Allahabad, in August 1996 at the age of 75. He had suffered a paralytic stroke earlier in March.^[2]

• Rai, Amrit. Premchand: A Life. Harish Trivedi, translator. New Delhi: People's Publishing House, 1982.
• Rai, Amrit. A House Divided: The Origin and Development of Hindi/Hindavi. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984.