MUCH has been said already with due justification about the behaviour of government functionaries at the death of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of the country’s nuclear programme, but what the electronic media did on the occasion was also not worthy of praise. It was disrespectful, to say the least.
Instead of running programmes about Dr Khan, appreciating his unmatched services, it kept on showing routine news items as if nothing had happened. It preferred to run tickers about the death of Dr Khan rather than call senior people to highlight his achievements. The coverage accorded to the death of actor Umer Sharif was far greater than that for Dr Khan.
I had the honour of meeting Dr Khan on a number of occasions. In 1993, once he asked me to visit the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology (GIKI), which was his brainchild.
Many years later, I tried to contact him by email and asked him if he still recognised me. He promptly replied, saying that one of his strengths was his wonderfully good memory, and, yes, he remembered me very well. I was pleasantly surprised.
Looking at his unmatched services for Pakistan, I propose that Dr Khan should be given a perpetual title, like, say, ‘The Respectable’ or ‘The Honourable’, to be always written with his name so that the future generations may always remember his name; and remember with due respect.
Munir M. Hasan
Canada
Published in Dawn, October 25th, 2021
