ASMA JEHANGIR'S AMEN -1

NOBEL LAUREATE PROFESSOR AMARTYA SEN made these remarks at the remembrance for  Pakistan's and the world's great daughter *Asma Jehangir*-

Organized by her friends and admirers on Feb 17, 2018 at the Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge MA.

''It is very hard to find a measure of Asma Jehangir's greatness. She was a brilliant intellectual, a  superb humanist, a great-political leader, an epitome of kindness, a personification of indomitable courage.

Asma was all these things and much more.

Professionally she excelled as a magnificent lawyer, who did more than anyone else can think to defend and save helpless people from-

The unjust wrath of authoritarians and tyrants. As one of the most distinguished human rights lawyers in the world.

Asma used her legal knowledge to protect the vulnerable and, and unimaginably strengthen people's rights.

As it happens, Asma Jehangir's first legal victory came before she became a trained lawyer.

She won a great legal victory in freeing her father, Malik Ghulam Jilani, a parliamentarian and critic of the military who had been unjustly incarcerated by the government.

At the time her victory at the Supreme Court [in a case celebrated as Miss Asma Jilani versus the  Government of Punjab']. Asma was barely twenty years old.

Later, with professional legal training and far reaching vision, combined with her exceptional intelligence, Asma became -

The leading defender of human rights in Pakistan, in the company of other great human rights activists like  I.A. Rehman and Dorab Patel.

It is extraordinary to see how much the  Pakistan Human Rights Commission has achieved in the cause of justice, without even having the firm legal   -and constitutional status that, say,  the Indian or the South African Human Rights Commission can comfortably rely on.

[Those commissions have a much easier job than the Pakistan Human Rights Commission, which   -despite the legal handicap-  has achieved no less,  particularly powerfully mobilising public opinion and involvement].

I personally think that in understanding Asma's success, it is important not only to appreciate the strength of her skilled arguments, her trained reasoning and her deep-rooted courage,  -but also-

The tremendous warmth of  her personality including her radiating friendliness.

She generated enthusiasm across the world, but particularly on the two sides of the sub-continent divide.

Asma was loved in Pakistan,  but no less in India, and whenever she gave a talk in India, the room - whatever its size - was always overfull.

She communicated an amazing closeness that was felt by all. It was her companionable personality, in addition of course-

To the force of her reasoning, which helped her bring judges, even in most difficult cases, to see her arguments with sympathetic clarity.

It is amazing how Asma won case after case against what seemed like insurmountable adversity.

I have been extraordinarily privileged to have  Asma  as a close friend for nearly two decades.

The Honor and Serving of this memorial continues to Part [2].