Sirajul Haq Memon

Sirajul Haq Memon (Sindhi: سراج الحق ميمڻ), (24 October 1933 – 2 February 2013) was a Pakistani Sindhi language novelist, journalist, historian, scholar, linguist, story-writer, and advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. He was born in Tando Jam town, Hyderabad District to school-teacher and poet Mohammad Yaqub Niaz in a house that would eventually have ten siblings, including renowned Sindhi scholar Dr Fahmida Hussain. After completion of his early education, his family shifted from his native town to Hyderabad where he completed his matriculation examinations in 1950, after which he moved to Karachi. After his B.A. (Hons), he pursued the study of Law at Karachi's S.M. Law College; he also started working as a part-time sub-editor at the weekly Sindh Observer to meet the expenses of education and boarding at the Jinnah Courts. After graduating, he moved back to his hometown Hyderabad, where he worked with Mohammad Usman Diplai at his printing press, and then as an assistant in the Sindhi Adabi Board, where he along with Mohammad Ibrahim Joyo and Ghulam Rabbani Agro translated classical works from English to Sindhi so that wider Sindhi audiences could read them. In 1957, he passed the Civil Services examination and was appointed in the Income Tax department. During his government job, he continued to write and meet politicians at will which angered the government. In 1969, after Yahya Khan’s takeover as Chief Martial Law Administrator, Memon became one of the 303 officials summarily dismissed from service. After his forced retirement, he picked up the profession of legal consultancy and began building his legal practice as an income tax lawyer, going on to become an advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Memon knew Zulfikar Ali Bhutto personally before he joined the government. When Bhutto formed the Pakistan People’s Party, he bought Hilal-i-Pakistan, a Sindhi daily, but shifted its place of publication from Hyderabad to Karachi. In a retired Siraj, he found an editor who could frame its policy and run the newspaper on healthy grounds. As Editor-in-Chief, Siraj laid some very bold lines for a newspaper by objective reporting and healthy criticism. He also set the gossip column in Sindhi journalism on modern lines. Memon introduced new trends into Sindhi-language journalism and his time there was widely regarded the golden period of the paper as well as the start of modern Sindhi journalism.