Asma defiant in death, as in life Pak women resist tradition, attend lawyer-activist’s funeral in scores

Women attend the funeral of Pakistan’s most prominent human rights activist and lawyer Asma Jahangir in Lahore. AP/PTI

Sarika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 14

Hundreds of women joined Asma Jahangir on her last journey on Tuesday, defying the tradition that bars Pakistani women from attending funerals. This was called the ‘last subversive act’ by the activist, who fought for peace with India till the very end. She died of cardiac arrest on Sunday in Lahore at the age of 66.

The funeral was held at Gaddafi Stadium. Earlier, the procession was led by her daughters, Sulema and Munizae. In an email, journalist Ammara Ahmad, said around 1,000 women attended the funeral. Something I have never seen in Lahore, especially when someone well-known dies. There is no doubt Jahangir family planned and allowed this to happen. There was an arrangement for women on right side and it wasn’t behind men as is often the case in mosques and at Eid prayers. It was side by side.”

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She shared that many of these women were activists, lawyers, young students and even some acid burn victims.

Another journalist, Gharidah Farooqi, said this was the kind of freedom the feisty Asma Jahangir had envisaged for the women of her country. “My eyes are seeing this heart-breaking but historic scenes; funeral of #AsmaJahangir and a huge number of women at janazah-gah: This is the kind of religious and women freedom she fought for!” she tweeted.

While some called the presence of women beautiful and radical, one Twitter user called it more befitting than a 21-gun salute.

According to Daily Times, many of Asma’s female comrades, colleagues and relatives joined the prayers. It quoted a young woman lawyer, who worked with Jahangir. She said that the lawyer-activist ruled the hearts of women lawyers across the country because she always supported and protected them.

Zahra Hayat, lawyer and doctoral student in anthropology at Berkeley, California, posted on Facebook: “As I walked into the stadium, I initially couldn’t spot any women. I hesitated, and tried to remember the logistics of death: do women even attend public funeral prayers? What if they ask me to leave? Then quickly, sanity returned. Would Asma Jahangir be having these thoughts? Never, she’d charge right in. So I channelled her, then, as I know I will many many times after today, stood up a little taller, and walked in. And of course, there were so many women. Many were lawyers. A sense of solidarity. We asked each other where the women’s enclosure was, expecting any minute to be directed away from where her body was kept, to a separate female enclosure. There was none. Of course.

“As we crowded around the front, women and men, announcements began about starting the namaz, and again, we expected to finally be told to step back and form lines behind the men. But instead, the men were asked to move to the back, and the women called to the front. We prayed like that, standing next to some men, in front of others. No one objected, how dare they? It was beautiful, so fitting. I should’ve known — how could the woman who charged alone, quite literally, into all-male bar rooms, courtrooms, into all sorts of hyper male spaces, countenance that the women who came to say farewell to her, their hero, be shunted to the back? Such beautiful subversion, in death as in life. Farewell, Asma. Rest in power.”

Source: The Tribune, Chandigarh