Kamila Shamsie chooses Asma Jahangir
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2019
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kamila Shamsie champions the life of the Pakistani human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir.
Author of award-winning novel 'Home Fire', Kamila says she was only ten years old, growing up in Karachi, when Asma became her hero even before she really knew her name. She remembers her mother and her aunts all talking about this amazing woman lawyer and social activist who was standing up against many of the laws that Pakistan's President General Zia ul Haq had introduced in the 1980s.
Jahangir was always making the news headlines or giving radio interviews. Here was a woman who was determined to speak her mind and stand up for women and the human rights of all its citizens - it seemed she feared no-one, recalls Shamsie.
Kamila Shamsie is joined by Asma's daughter Sulema Jahangir, a lawyer working in London and Pakistan who shares some personal stories and anecdotes about her mother - and Saqlain Imam, BBC Urdu journalist and broadcaster - part of the BBC World Service.
Presenter: Matthew Parris
Producer: Perminder Khatkar
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2019.
Transcript
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| 0:41.6 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:45.0 | No amount of pressure will deter me from representing women in distress. |
| 0:50.0 | It has been my life mission, till my last breath I will stand by them. |
| 0:55.0 | Those words were spoken by today's great life, a leading human rights lawyer in Pakistan. |
| 1:01.0 | For four decades she defended the most vulnerable, women, children, religious minorities |
| 1:07.2 | and the poor. |
| 1:09.1 | Described as the gutseest woman in Pakistan, just five foot tall and bespectacled, she berated barrel-chested generals |
| 1:16.7 | and criticised the mullahs of the Taliban. |
| 1:19.5 | Asma Jahan-Girf is today's great life, and she's the choice of the author |
| 1:24.4 | Carmela Shamsi who's best known for her award-winning novel Home Fire. |
| 1:28.8 | Carmela do you think that description is accurate was your great life the gutseest woman in Pakistan? |
| 1:34.8 | Certainly the courage that she had was one of the things that I remember being so struck by |
| 1:39.8 | from a very early age because you know when you grow up as I did in a military |
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