PHOTO: FILE
KARACHI: Founder of the Sakinan-e-Shehr-e-Quaid, Azhar Abbas Hashmi, passed away at the age of 75 years on Saturday.Hashmi was hit by a car in Defence Housing Authority and died.
Hashmi joined the University of Karachi (KU) in the year 1958 and completed his Master's in 1963. He was elected as the first secretary-general of Inter-Universities Literary Forum.
He was one of the founders and the real spirit behind the city's annual Aalmi Mushaira. He had retired as vice-president of United Bank Limited and also had the privileged of working with Agha Hasan Abedi, who founded the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.
Justice Haziqul Khairi, former chief justice of Federal Shariat Court, remembered him as the most 'well known person' in the city. It was impossible that any learned person of the city to not know him, he said.
Justice Khairi said, only Hashmi had the capability of keeping all Urdu writers and poets united. "His role in Karachi's literary, economic and social life cannot be ignored," he said, pointing out how Hashmi founded several organisations in the city, including Sakinan-e-Shehr-e-Quaid and Unikarian, which is the University of Karachi's Old Boys' Association. "It [Unikarian] is a cultural organisation that has members even from outside Pakistan," he said.
Former KU vice-chancellor Pirzada Qasim said that KU’s faculty of Islamic studies was built due to his efforts. It was because of Hashmi's relations that Abu Dhabi gave funds to build the Islamic studies faculty, along with Sheikh Zayed Islamic Centre and Jamiya Masjid Ibrahim, inside KU campus, he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 28th, 2016.
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