This paper tries to interrogate Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s progressive ideas and their transformation into new poetic idioms. The poems chosen in this study—some for close reading and some for reference—come from his many collections of poems written at different times in his career. Faiz’s voice of protest against capitalism, imperialism, and authoritarianism, audible in all his collections, is closely analysed in the paper. The paper also investigates some unconvincing attempts of Muslim fundamentalists and Hindu rightists to question Faiz’s progressive ideology and their efforts to impose a narrow religious identity on Faiz. An important thread in the paper is Faiz’s engagement in his poetry with Partition, Indo-Pak wars, and the creation of Bangladesh.