LAL DIN SHARAF SARGODHVI

Today at 1835 hours it will be exactly 48 years that my father lost his battle with a traumatic tumour in his head and braced eternal life. In educational terms, he was an illiterate man, a cattle herder and a tenant in his early life. Yet he is remembered as a romantic revolutionary, a man of many worlds, a thinker and a bold worker of the Pakistan Movement. He was an excellent grappler and kabbadi player. He was an academician, a respected Urdu and Persian poet, a self made architect, an artist and a man who could enliven any gathering with his poetry and lucid speech. A progressive visionary, he rose from Chak 100 NB Sargodha and created a strong and stable constituency of admirers worldwide.

Lal Din was born in 1919 to a peasant family of Peelowali then part of Gurdaspur and now Sialkot. His father Sohna Singh a converted Christian worked in the district courts of Gujranwala and then settled in Sargodha. With no schooling, Lal Din spent most of his childhood herding cattle of the village. He spent evenings in the village mosque madrassa studying Persian and Urdu. At the age of 12, he ran away from his home to Gujranwala to work as an errand boy with a local padre. In off hours, he studied Urdu and Persian. Still in his early teens, he started writing Urdu and Persian poetry. He attended mushairas graced by the late Amrita Pritam. His early poetic assays were devotional but he soon forayed into the most difficult parts of Ghazal and Nazam. Having earned his certification in Adeeb Fazil, he moved back to Sargodha to teach Persian at the famous Khalsa High School in Sargodha. Dr. Anwar Sadeed a renowned Urdu Scholar remembers him as an individual solely responsible for laying the seeds of Urdu literature in Sargodga. It was his seeding that this city was to later produce literary names like Dr. Anwar Sadeed, Dr. Wazir Agha, Majeed Amjad and Sheri. His full name was now Lal Din Sharaf Sargodhvi.

Sharaf’s political activism began after the 1940 Pakistan Resolution. Working in MES Rawalpindi, in 1945, he was posted to far off Quetta as punishment for his activism. In Quetta, he formed the Pakistan Masih League, the minority wing of Pakistan Muslim League. In 1947, he was dismissed from service for taking part in politics while being a government servant. He used this time to travel around undivided India and read his poems during Muslim League rallies. After the creation of Pakistan, he intercepted the cavalcade of Qaid e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah in Quetta and made him address a rally organised by Pakistan Masih League at Mission Hospital Quetta. Soon after, he was reinstated in MES and posted to a new cantonment at Wah near Rawalpindi. There he came up with the brilliant idea of copying the design of Badshahi Mosque for this new city. Though the mosque owes its design and engineering to a team, the vertical and horizontal views were the creation of Lal Din Sharaf.

The constitutional crises of the 50s shattered his dream of Jinnah’s Pakistan and he once again began to indulge in political activism. As a punishment, he was reprimanded and posted to Dacca. Many false cases of dishonesty and misappropriation were brought against him by agencies. In January 1960, he had a stroke due to blood clots created by an internal head injury he got while scuffling with agency slueths. He was shifted to CHM Lahore for surgery where he met his Almighty on 25 May 1960 at 6:35 PM.

Lal Din Sharaf left behind a widow, four sons and four daughters, eldest barely 18. However, his admirers and friends were quick to react. His three sons rose to high ranks within the government. The eldest followed in footsteps of the father and became an architect and poet. All daughters are well established. One daughter was voted the African business woman of the year in 1973. Another is an executive in Hyatt. The third is an attorney in London. The eldest remained a housewife.

One of his sons is an engineer of international repute and holder of nine patents from USA. His inventions could one day rid the world of the energy crisis. He along with his younger brother runs a global business in water treatment and magnetic engineering.

The youngest son is a security analyst and made substantial contributions to the origin of Pakistan’s nuclear policy and doctrine.

Amongst his best known pupils are men like, Bharat Boshan, Dr. Anwar Sadeed, Majeed Amjad and many more who studied Persian at Gordon College Rawalpindi in the 40s.