A conversation with Asma Jehangir

Meet Asma Jehangir, lawyer, human rights advocate and activist in the women's movement in Pakistan. Her first tilt at officialdom was at 18 when she filed a writ of habeas corpus for her father who had been arrested by General Yahya Khan in 1971, for being a member of the Awami League. Since then, Asma has been an active figure in Pakistani public life. A founder of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (1989), she is a partner in AGHS Legal Aid Cell in Lahore, which runs a shelter for women, called Dastak. She is also a founder member of the Women's Action Forum (Lahore) and serves as the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Extra- Judicial Killings. Awarded the Magsaysay (1995), Asma is the author of Divine Sanction and Children of a Lesser God. Following are the excerpts from a long conversation with New Delhi-based author Ritu Menon.

Ritu Menon: Asma, was yours a family that moved to Pakistan in 1947 or have you always lived in Lahore?

Asma Jahangir: My parents have always lived in Lahore, and I spent my childhood there. My mother's grandparents moved from Gaya, in UP, to Punjab. I lived in Lahore for most of my life. The first four years I lived in a city called Montgomery at that time, and now Sahiwal, and therefore my early memories are from there. If you want to connect how I think of India and Pakistan, my early memories are that we used to come every Sunday to Lahore. I must have been four or five years old–we moved from there when I was seven— and on the way there was a place called Lokada which had a textile mill owned by somebody called Mr. Da1mia, and we always stopped at Mr. Dalmia's place for lunch or tea. So one has been exposed in some ways to Hindu culture.