Padma Shri Muzaffar Ali, is the Executive Director and Secretary of the Rumi Foundation. A film-maker, a fashion designer, a poet, an artist, a music-lover, a revivalist, a social worker – He belongs to a royal Muslim family of Kotwara. His father was the Raja of Kotwara, an estate in Gola Gokaran Nath Sub division of the district Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh.

The main objective of the Foundation is using creative communication to achieve it vision. Muzaffar Ali, an uncompromising creative artist, a painter and filmmaker who has dedicated his life to humanitarian and cultural causes and films, with a group of like minded friends and mentor Dr Karan Singh as Chairman, set up this body as a Charitable Society.

Rumi Foundation Lucknow Chapter was instituted in 2013 to project the exquisite culture of Awadh in it’s most creative and regenerative form. The last Nawab of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah left behind a legacy of unity and coexistence in his lifetime. He continues to be remembered as an icon of harmony even now,almost a hundred and fifty years of his passing.