Ibn Abdur Rehman
Pakistani activist (1930-2021)
Ibn Abdur Rehman, also known as I.A. Rehman (1 September 1930– 12 April 2021) was a Pakistani peace and human rights advocate, and a veteran communist. A protégé of the great Urdu poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz, he became chief editor of the Pakistan Times newspaper in 1989. He was the founding chair of the Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy. He was also a director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) since 1990, and a prominent human rights activist.
Quotes
edit- The greatest irony about (the Quid's August 11 Speech) is that it is generally believed to have addressed only the minorities' rights. This is only partly true. The Quaid's words were directed at all citizens of Pakistan; the progress of the entire population depended on burying the past (communal politics). What he clearly meant was that discrimination against the minorities would impede Pakistan's progress. Thus, in Jinnah's Pakistan, the rights and interests of the minorties will be protected by the constitution and the law, not only as something due to them, but also as an insurance of the state's integrity.
- It should be interesting to find out why the Pakistani film industry has shown little interest in celebrating 100 years of filmmaking – 2013 marks the centenary of film production in Subcontinent and not of film exhibition that had started earlier. And this despite being invited by Indian filmmakers to partake of shared glory. One reason could be the muddled thinking about the Pakistani people's cultural heritage. If they reject the arts and literature produced in the Subcontinent before it was partitioned, they repudiate not only the legacy of the great Indo-Islamic culture, that grew over centuries, but also the poetry of Mir, Ghalib and Iqbal (who spent all his life as a citizen of India). If the cultural history of our people is supposed to have begun in 1947, then we have no cultural heritage worth the name.
