By Matthias Samuel
The 90-year-old Ikramul Haque, who remained adamant for six years holding a banner at Lahore’s Liberty Chowk seeking Jinnah’s Pakistan, breathed his last on Friday.
His funeral prayers was offered on Sunday evening at 112/5 F Model Town in Lahore. He left behind a wife and three sons.
Ikramul Haque, famously known as “The Old Jinnah Man” stood resolutely all alone at the Liberty Roundabout for six years with a poster demanding “Hamain Jinnah ka Pakistan chahiye (We want Jinnah’s Pakistan)”.
Ikramul Haque started standing at the Liberty Roundabout daily in 2013 and onwards after growing terrorism and extremism in the Country. He had a firm believe that Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan was not a theocratic state, rather it was about the Muslims, who were a minority in India, and their basic rights.
Heroes like Ikramul Haque never die, he will always be remembered as “The Old Jinnah Man”.
Even in a very young age, he associated himself with the Pakistan Movement as a student from 1944 to 1948 and remained a member of the Muslim Students Federation of Dayal Singh College.
Matthias Samuel is a student of history in Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) Islamabad, and occasionally writes blogs and articles.
