Remembering Inam Aziz

here haven't been many crusading editors in the history of Pakistani journalism. The ones who stand apart from the conformists and occupy a place of honour all their own are Hamid Nizami, Mazhar Ali Khanm, I H Burney and Inam Aziz.

It was to the memory of the last name in this list that tribute was paid in London on April 22 this year, to mark the 15th anniversary of his death and the publication of the English translation of his autobiography Stop Press: a life in journalism. Inam, who began his long career with Ehsan in the early years of Pakistan, when he was not even 20, moved on to Jang where he rose to become news editor. He accepted a BBC offer to move to London in the 1960s but soon left for his first love, print journalism, to become the founding editor of Jang, London. However, he is best remembered as editor of Millat, the only newspaper that waged a brave and lonely fight against the despotic regime of Zia ul-Haq. In the end, Inam lost the fight, both in terms of his health and the savings that he had put into the paper that the regime finally managed to kill.

At the London meeting, hosted by Maleeha Lodhi at the Pakistani High Commission, a number of Inam’s friends and colleagues spoke. Among them was Hamraz Ahsan, who worked for Millat having earlier escaped from Pakistan where, after a stint in jail, he had found himself on the regime’s hit list. The London of the Zia years offered refuge to many such fugitives, because it was – and still is – a city with a big heart. But I will let Hamraz tell the story. The only liberty I have taken is that of putting it into English. “I had heard of Inam Aziz as the ‘warrior of Urdu journalism’ in Pakistan but I was not to meet him until March 1979 in London. When Bhutto was toppled in July 1977, I was a feature writer at Imroz, and the vice president of the Punjab Union of Journalists. Since Yahya’s time, I had been in and out of jail, including a six month stint in Mianwali. Those were awful times: press censorship was in effect; hundreds of journalists were jailed when they staged protests; in Lahore, some were flogged. In Karachi, journalists were taken to Malir and tortured in a military camp. I was on the run much of the time and when I was about to be arrested as a terrorist, I escaped to London.

“There were two Urdu dailies in London – one being Millat – and four weeklies. The People’s Party was holding marches and protest meetings in several major cities. After Bhutto was sentenced to death, London saw one of the largest public protests in its history. With a group of political exiles, I was living in Hendon, but without work. One evening, the phone rang. It was Inam Aziz. ‘Do you want to work for Millat?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Then come to the office tomorrow morning at 10. More when we meet.’ And he rang off. Next morning I got off at East London tube station in front of which in a set of rented rooms on two floors stood the Millat office. I pushed the door open, and found one side of the hallway lined with newsprint rolls, leaving barely space for one person to pass. To the left was a large room containing the printing machines, which could print in tabloid size only. What Inam Aziz had done, using his inventiveness, was to join the front and back pages to make a broadsheet, while the inside pages remained tabloid. This must have been the world’s only newspaper with an odd, not even, number of pages. Next to the press was the editor’s room; on the first floor sat the paper’s four or five calligraphers. Copy-pasting was also performed in this room. A small room next to it was for me, the news editor. It also served as the tea making facility, complete with a wash basin.

“I was expected and was welcomed, but when I asked where Inam Aziz was I was told that he would come in the evening. ‘What sort of a joke is this!’ I said to myself. ‘Why evening?’ I finally asked, while getting ready to leave. ‘He is in court dealing with a libel case. He has also left a message: you have to produce tomorrow’s newspaper.’ While I had done everything from reporting to feature writing, I had never worked on the desk. I only had a vague idea of how a newspaper was actually produced. I asked Mushtaq, one of the calligraphers, how it was done. After he had told me what he could, I placed the day’s issue in front of me, rolled up my sleeves, clipped items of interest from the sheaf of papers from Pakistan that were on the desk, tore off the copy that the Reuters ticker in the editor’s room had spat out, picked up a few stories from there and began to translate them into Urdu. I did not eat lunch because my hunger had flown out the window. Mushtaq kept serving me tea though. I translated more than 20 stories, placed headlines on them, chose a lead that needed some padding; and when I was sending the last copy to press, Inam Aziz arrived. He checked everything and I could see from his face that the fatigue I had noticed as he had come in was gone. ‘Hamraz sahib, aap nain tau kamal kar diya . This is exactly the paper I would have made,’ he said. It was only later that I realised that ‘ kamal kar diya ’ was Inam’s favourite phrase.

“I stayed with Millat for a year and got to know and observe Inam Aziz at work. Despite limited resources and countless problems, he always managed to bring out the paper and he truly deserves to be called the warrior of Urdu journalism. Our editorial team was three-strong: Inam, myself and the teleprinter. Inam’s translation speed was phenomenal and he would rarely cross out anything he had written, something clear-headed people are known for. If Abbas Athar was the ‘king of headlines’ in Lahore, Inam was the king in London. When the day’s work was done by about 7 pm, the evening’s work would begin as Inam’s friends would drop in. On evenings when none of them turned up, he would insist that I stay. We would divest our hearts of the burdens that we carried, curse Zia’s rule and wonder what the future held. Inam, I was delighted to discover, came from my beloved native city of Gujrat and had studied at Zamindar College. Our mission was clear and it admitted of no compromise: we were a crusading newspaper fighting the Zia regime. That was what kept us going. No matter how late Inam went home – and he lived in a faraway London suburb, not too far from Heathrow airport – he would arrive the next day full of beans and ready to take more potshots at the military regime in Pakistan.

“For reasons beyond our control, we had to move from Angel to King’s Cross to become part of Habibur Rehman’s Azad office; but things were no longer the same there and the staff was unhappy because of the behaviour of some new managers over whom Inam had little control. The calligraphers went on strike and I refused to cross the picket line. Then I was offered a job in Nottingham and I left. Two months later, my phone rang. It was Inam, who told me that he was going to have heart surgery and I should return to London to take over Millat. I said I would need to give my employers a month’s notice. His response was, ‘No, you have to come in a day,’ which was exactly what I did. I have never worked harder or felt more satisfied with my work than I did during those months. Athar Ali would drop in some days and help out with translation. His speed and command over both languages was amazing. Inam’s operation was successful but he stopped coming every day. There was a change of management and a new editor was brought in who told me on the first day that Gen Zia was to be referred to as President Zia and not as Dictator Zia. I replied, ‘In my copy he will remain Dictator Zia.’– I left Millat the same evening. That I worked under the command of the warrior called Inam Aziz is something I will always remain proud of.”