Remembering Amin Mughal;Republic of revolutionaries

A rare photograph can sometimes preserve more history than an official archive. The one below brings together six extraordinary men. In the front row, from left to right, stand Zafar Iqbal Mirza—our beloved ZIM—Shafqat Tanvir Mirza, Dada Ameer Hyder and I.A. Rehman. Behind them are Major Ishaq Muhammad, remembered for the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case, and Professor Amin Mughal. None sought celebrity. Together, they represent a moral and intellectual republic that Pakistan never formally acknowledged.

An extraordinary assembly of Pakistan’s progressive tradition. Front row, from left: Zafar Iqbal Mirza (ZIM), Shafqat Tanvir Mirza, Dada Ameer Hyder and I.A. Rehman. Second row: Major Ishaq Muhammad and Professor Amin Mughal

The photograph is remarkable not because all six belonged to a single organisation or followed an identical political line. They did not. Its power lies in the coexistence of different traditions of resistance: the revolutionary organiser, the dissident soldier, the journalist, the editor, the defender of human rights, the custodian of Punjabi language and the teacher who connected all these worlds through conversation.

Amin Mughal, standing quietly in the second row, provides the key to reading the photograph. His position is almost symbolic. He does not occupy the centre, although he belonged at the centre of the intellectual relationships represented in it. He appears as he lived: present, observant and connected to everyone, without needing to establish precedence over anyone.

Much has already been written after his passing in London on August 12, 2026. A chronological retelling of his life—his teaching, political activity, imprisonment, journalism and exile—cannot explain what made him exceptional. His real contribution lay in creating intellectual continuities. He connected the organised Left of Dada Ameer Hyder and Major Ishaq with the democratic journalism of ZIM and I.A. Rehman, the linguistic and cultural resistance of Shafqat Tanvir Mirza, and younger people like me who entered journalism without fully comprehending the inheritance placed before them.

I worked with Amin Sahib at the weekly Viewpoint between 1979 and 1984. Its modest premises at 4-Lawrence Road, Lahore, were my real university. As recalled in “Remembering Viewpoint & its stalwarts” [Minute Mirror, March 23-24, 2026], Mazhar Ali Khan had gathered people for whom journalism was an ethical commitment rather than a route to influence, wealth or political patronage. Amin Mughal belonged naturally to that environment. He did not separate editing from teaching, political analysis from literature, or intellectual disagreement from personal affection.

The men in this photograph remind us that the Left was once far more than an electoral label. Dada Ameer Hyder had travelled the world as a worker and revolutionary before most Pakistanis had encountered the language of globalisation.

Beginning as a coal-boy on a ship, Dada experienced labour, empire and racial hierarchy directly. His memoirs, Chains to Lose, reveal a world stretching from Bombay and Moscow to New York, Shanghai and Buenos Aires. He organised workers across borders long before international solidarity became the vocabulary of funded conferences.

I had the rare honour of meeting Dada at Viewpoint. He carried no theatrical aura of revolutionary greatness. His authority arose from struggle endured, not status claimed. Official histories largely excluded him because he challenged both colonial power and the class order that succeeded it. The state could accommodate elite leaders of independence; a worker who asked what independence had delivered to other workers remained dangerous.

Major Ishaq represented another uncomfortable history. A soldier capable of thinking beyond military obedience, he was implicated in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case and repeatedly imprisoned. After Hasan Nasir’s death in custody, he pursued the matter when silence would have been safer.

Major Ishaq later organised peasants and workers, treating revolution neither as romance nor slogan but as the slow construction of collective capacity. Even paralysis could not end his political work. His life contradicted the convenient division between soldier and dissident, patriot and critic.

Shafqat Tanvir Mirza—STM—resisted through language. Journalist, trade unionist, historian and scholar, he understood that the marginalisation of Punjabi was not a literary accident. It reflected the estrangement of a people from their own cultural memory.

STM’s  scholarship on Punjabi literature, history and the Sufi poets restored dignity to a language spoken by millions but frequently denied serious institutional space. His commitment earned imprisonment and professional hardship, but never displaced his willingness to engage in dialogue.

ZIM embodied another form of courage: fidelity to professional standards when both censorship and commercialisation encouraged surrender. In my tribute to him, I recalled him as my teacher and mentor. He was a master sub-editor, stylist and conversationalist.

When Mazhar Ali Khan, I.A. Rehman and Amin Mughal were arrested in 1981, ZIM helped ensure that Viewpoint appeared without interruption. His authority came from mastery of craft joined with an unshakable belief in free expression, equality and human dignity.

I.A. Rehman carried those commitments into the organised defence of human rights. His life demonstrated that opposition to injustice need not produce bitterness. He spoke softly, listened patiently and remained firm. At a PIDE memorial, I recalled that he spoke the truth although it sent him to prison twice.

Rehman sahib, as we all call him with respect and affection, suffered without complaint because, for him, sacrifice was the natural cost of professed principles. His advice that the struggle for human rights was “a marathon, not a sprint” remains essential in an age addicted to instant victories and equally instant despair.

What, then, distinguished Amin Mughal among these giants? He was the interpreter between their worlds. From Dada and Major Ishaq came the imperative of structural change; from STM, the inseparability of culture and emancipation; from ZIM, professional integrity; from I.A. Rehman, the defence of every person’s dignity. Amin Sahib absorbed these traditions without turning any of them into dogma.

Amin Mughal possessed a rare capacity to disagree without diminishing another person. His questions could dismantle a weak argument, but never the dignity of the person making it. For younger colleagues, this was an education in democratic conduct. He taught us that progressive politics without intellectual honesty becomes another orthodoxy, journalism without moral purpose becomes merchandise, and scholarship without human sympathy becomes vanity.

The photograph also records a lost sociology of ideas. These men met in newspaper offices, trade-union gatherings, study circles, modest homes and inexpensive cafés. Their institutions were materially fragile but intellectually abundant. They possessed neither research grants nor communication departments. Conversation was their medium; books, newspapers and political organisation were their instruments. Their disagreements did not require excommunication, nor did friendship require conformity.

Pakistan today has more universities, television channels, digital platforms and policy organisations than the country visible behind these men could have imagined. It has fewer spaces where knowledge, courage and humility meet. Intellectual life has become increasingly professionalised; dissent is often measured through visibility; and public causes can become carefully managed careers. The six men in this photograph belonged to a sterner tradition in which ideas were tested by the price one was prepared to pay for them.

Amin Mughal’s absence is especially painful because he was among the last living bridges to that tradition. He linked generations without demanding discipleship. He preserved memory without becoming its prisoner. His progressivism was not hostility towards faith, culture or inherited values; it was opposition to every structure that humiliated human beings.

This photograph should not invite nostalgia alone. Nostalgia can honour the dead while relieving the living of responsibility. The image poses a more difficult question: what became of the intellectual republic these men inhabited? Their Pakistan was never fully realised, but neither was it imaginary. It existed wherever truth was spoken without calculation, language rescued from erasure, workers organised, prisoners defended, censorship resisted and young minds treated with respect.

The six figures are no longer with us. The vacant space they leave is not something history will fill automatically. The photograph has preserved their assembly. Whether its moral meaning survives depends upon us.

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Dr. Ikramul Haq, Advocate Supreme Court, Adjunct Faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), member Advisory Board and Visiting Senior Fellow of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), holds an LLD in tax laws. He was full-time journalist from 1979 to 1984 with Viewpoint and Dawn. He also served Civil Services of Pakistan from 1984 to 1996. He is author of over 3500 articles on variety of subjects, and many books that included, Pakistan: From Hash to Heroin and its sequel Pakistan: From Drug-trap to Debt-trap.