A conversation with Asma Jahangir

Asma Jahangir, lawyer, human-rights advocate and activist in the women's movement in Pakistan, passed away on 11 February 2018 at the age of 66, following a cardiac arrest. 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 became an active figure in Pakistani public life. A founder of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (1989), she was also a founder member of the Women's Action Forum (Lahore) and served as the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Killings. Awarded the Magsaysay (1995), Asma was the author of Divine Sanction and Children of a Lesser God.

In May 2001, Jahangir was interviewed by the New Delhi-based author Ritu Menon. Following are the excerpts from the long conversation.

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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. Dalmia, and we always stopped at Mr. Dalmia's place for lunch or tea. So one has been exposed in some ways to Hindu culture.