Fierce, Fearless, Free: There Will Never Be Another Asma Jahangir

Asma Jilani was all of just 19, when her country’s then-eastern wing declared independence in 1971, and then fought a nine-month war that ended with an affirmation of the new, and a severe indictment of the old. She was the daughter of Malik Ghulam Jilani, a civil servant-turned-politician whose political career was defined by unflinching opposition to martial law, first under Ayub Khan and then more famously the regime of Yahya Khan, reaching a crescendo with the commencement of Operation Searchlight on the night of March 25.

- Shayan S. Khan

Ghulam Jilani’s open condemnation of the military’s handling of matters as they related to quelling the crisis engulfing East Pakistan assuredly placed him in a small minority of West Pakistanis who weren’t taken in by the populist wave of support for the military sweeping over the rest of the population. His open letter to Yahya dated April 7, 1971 -within the first fortnight of hostilities - was written while under house arrest, and contains what has to be the earliest broaching of possible genocide being perpetrated by the Pakistani occupation forces.

His continued defiance would eventually force Yahya’s hand to harden, and following his arrest on December 22nd, 1971 he was sent to jail in Multan after his detention, leading to the chapter in which Asma is propelled onto the stage, a “teenaged thin thing” standing up to dictatorship in the words of Maniza Naqvi, one of many who felt compelled to He sent his family a letter through a jail employee, listing possible grounds on which a petition could be filed for his release. Then only 18 years old, Asma Jahangir filed the petition at the Lahore High Court.

Asma v the Government

“Courts were not new to me. Even before his detention, my father was fighting many cases. He remained in jail in Bannu. He remained in jail in Multan. But we were not allowed to go see him there. He did not want us to go there and see him. We always saw him in courts. So, for me, the court was a place where you dressed up to meet your father. It had a very nice feeling to it,” Asma Jahangir would explain, accounting for her poise and mature bearing.