Asma, votary of peace

Asma Jehangir, who kicked the bucket recently, was a popular human rights lawyer and social activist. Although her work was confined to Pakistan, her example was followed throughout the subcontinent. The place from where she announced the foundation of the Human Rights Commission, an organisation to protect individual rights, also became the venue for meetings to normalise relations between India and Pakistan.

Asma would get girls and boys from India and Pakistan together at the house which was allotted to me as a Member of Parliament. I watched Asma put in much effort to change the influence of religion on society. The mixing of religion with politics is our bane.

Only days before she died did she ring me up from Lahore to say that she would now have more time to work for the normalisation of relations between India and Pakistan after marrying off her daughter. Maybe this was her way of telling that she had miles to go to change a religion-oriented society into a secular one.

Asma can have the satisfaction of having had India and Pakistan on the same page even though their reluctance to come closer to each other was apparent. Asma made Islamabad and New Delhi realise that they had no alternative except to sit across the table and discuss the reasons why the two could not bury the hatchet. Although New Delhi had decided that it would have no talks with Pakistan until it stopped giving shelter to terrorists, Asma believed that there was still some room for a patch-up.

However, foreign minister Sushma Swaraj was unequivocal in her statement that New Delhi would have no discussion with Islamabad until it realised that terrorism and talks did not go together. Asma felt that Islamabad faced certain problems with the military which had to be sorted out before any meaningful meeting could take place. She was very positive about the possibility of such a meeting and that she could somehow persuade the powers-that-be to see reason.

But my disappointment is that there was little response in India on the death of Asma, even though she had dared her country's military, the sworn enemy of India. It was heartening to see her devotion to the cause of improving relations between India and Pakistan. I always supported her efforts.

I was allotted a bungalow as a member of the Rajya Sabha in Lodhi Estate where Asma would bring girls and boys from Pakistan to meet their counterparts in India. Asma named that place 'Pakistan House'. The boys and girls from Pakistan would shed tears as they bid farewell to their new friends in India.

Categorising them as Pakistanis would be unfair, because they looked very much a part of secular society in India. She would also take Indian youth to Pakistan to learn from the society which was tilting towards a particular religion.

Symbol of resistance

Asma, a symbol of Pakistan's human rights and resistance, was a fierce opponent of military dictators for over four decades. She was a strong advocate of India-Pakistan peace and was part of several Track 2 delegations to India. Not only that, she has also had a prominent career both as a lawyer. She was also the chief of the Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan, which indicated her popularity.

Even today, the Pakistani judiciary remembers her fight for the restoration of honour to Iftikhar Chaudhry, who was the Chief Justice of Pakistan. The lawyers' movement ultimately achieved its goal and even led to the ultimate downfall of Pervez Musharraf. That unpreceded movement, which saw the lawyers marching on the streets in 2007, had given a glimmer of hope that Pakistan had indeed understood the importance of returning to democracy.

I remember Asma taking on the might of martial law administrator Zia-ul-Haq in the early eighties when she was in the thick of the movement to restore democracy. She was imprisoned for leading the protest movement, but that only made her even more of a champion activist. There were occasions when her life was under threat but she braved them undeterred and continued to stand up against dictators.

In the process, she helped establish the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, which she also chaired later. She would often say that it was the commission's duty to defend all religious minorities. The commission during her chairmanship also tackled successfully highly charged blasphemy accusations as well as cases of honour killings.

Asma also pioneered the women's rights movement in her country at a time when human rights were not considered an issue in Pakistan. Thanks to her, today people, particularly women, talk about their rights and even political parties, including religious parties, realise the importance of women's rights.

One particular group that Asma stoutly defended were the Christians charged with blasphemy. Several people from the minority community faced death penalty as blasphemy is an offence that attracted the severest punishment. She was also instrumental in fighting cases relating to the recovery of missing persons free of cost. A kind-hearted person, Asma would nonetheless not yield to any kind of pressure, including threats from fanatic groups.

Asma, who was a popular activist around the world, won several awards, including the Ramon Magsaysay and the Peace Prize from the United Nations Development Fund. But for Asma, the awards hardly meant anything. Her sole aim was to restore democracy in her country, because of her unwavering belief in democracy.

Similarly, Asma fought not just for the people of Pakistan but also for people from all over the world, including from Palestine and elsewhere. No doubt, she made a lot of enemies at home because of the battles she chose, but she that would not cause her to ignore any cause worth fighting for. That speaks volumes of Asma.