On a glorious winter’s day — January 9, 1984 — a man stepped into his garden in an elite residential enclave in Gulberg 5, Lahore. Clad in a white lattha pajama and khaddar kurta in deference to the weather, he was puffing and inhaling the cigarette that had long become an extension of his being.

Perhaps, he was contemplating the party to celebrate his 54th birthday, still a few days away on January 13. It was going to be an elaborate affair, presided over by Syeda Hima Akhlaque, his mother; Naseem, his wife at the time, and their three children, as well as his four from his first marriage to Kishwar, who had the looks of an Indian film heroine and the ability to carry a tune. Perhaps, he thought the party could be shot by his photography student, Rashida — whom he would later marry.

The above-mentioned birthday party was not to be. The man saw a car drive through the gate, and a few men in plain clothes stepped out; they bundled the man into the car and drove away.

The man so blood-chillingly whisked away was Raza Kazim, a lawyer by profession. Yet, much to the amusement of his lawyer grandson Usman Jamil, Raza claimed with gleeful irreverence that the law was like a beneficent mistress, who provided funds for his ever-expanding household and more maverick pursuits.

Raza Kazim, who passed away at the age of 96 on April 16 in Lahore, was a lawyer, philosopher, musician, educator and photographer, but defied every label attached to him. Nasreen Rehman pens a personal tribute to a man whose restless search for beauty left its mark on everyone who knew him

Dismissive of hierarchy, Raza (as he preferred to be called by everyone, including his offspring) disappeared from the world for months — his whereabouts unknown. His family, friends and lawyers got into action, mounting a campaign for his release. On the international front, people such as his close friend Dr Eqbal Ahmad, Edward Said and Ramsey Clark, the former US attorney general, wrote letters and op-eds.

While Raza had publicly renounced Marxism — considered the ‘big evil’ by Pakistan’s pro-US establishment — in the 1950s, his renunciation did not wash. He was labelled a ‘commie’ and, later, charged with sedition, linked specifically to a ‘foreign’-planned coup to overthrow the government of Gen Ziaul Haq. Raza was ‘disappeared’ with no official organisation claiming knowledge of him.

THE DISAPPEARED

In a compelling conversation with Saroop Ijaz, published in Herald magazine in September 2014, Raza talks about himself, and his disappointments and hopes for Pakistan. He describes his time of incarceration in the dreaded Attock Fort, with its torture chambers reserved for those who dared to dissent and those who were earmarked for the gallows. He thought his head would roll.

With time to think, no books and pen and paper to hand, his imagination turned, with characteristic restlessness, to philosophy. It was here that he developed a school of thought that he called “Mentology”.

The arrest, and the international response it drew, brought Raza to a wider audience. He was tried in the Attock Fort and eventually freed after more than 18 months because of a lack of evidence. By the 1980s, Raza was a well-known and controversial figure — equally loved, admired and disparaged by those who knew and did not know him. The incarceration expanded his international acclaim. In the words of his longstanding and trusted friend Ehsan Mani, “Raza left his mark on all those who met him.”

Raza had a multi-sensory awareness of beauty. His sharp eyes, shaded by distinctive upturned eyebrows, evinced an imagination in flight. He was a photographer of exceptional talent. The keepers of his archives would do well to organise an exhibition of his photographic oeuvre.

A LIFE IN MUSIC

More than half a century ago, I met Raza through my friend Bibli, or Noor Zehra Kazim, his firstborn. Through Bibli — and through Raza and Bibli’s mother, Kishwar Aapa — music became a deeper presence in my life. From 1970 onwards, we spent long hours making music together.

I witnessed Raza working fiendishly on the javaari — the part of a South Asian string instrument that supports and enhances the microtonal quality of the sound. Raza was determined to find and create a sound — and for Bibli to play it.

As Bibli’s self-righteous friend, I witnessed the frustration of her riyaz [practice]; of her agony, when Raza was not satisfied — and the sagar veena was opened up again — the meends (glissandos) not ‘quite right’; the kharaj (the Sa tonic), not as ‘meaningful’ as Raza’s ears wanted it to be.

Today, my friend Bibli is a maestro, and the only person in the world who plays the instrument with the sound of Raza’s imagination: his search for beauty realised in Noor Zehra’s haunting sound on the sagar veena.

Raza’s obsessive belief that music was essential to fully realised human life resonates in his grandsons — Ali Hamza and Ali Noor’s songs, and the sound of Rakae Jamil’s sitar. Raza’s other two daughters, Beena and Baela, are not bad amateur sitarists themselves — and life without music would be unimaginable to both.

Importantly, Raza saw the gaps in the provision of musical education in Pakistan. He founded the Department of Musicology at the National College of Arts, Lahore, in 2002 — and was the departmental head.

THE WORLD HE CARRIED

When I heard that Raza had journeyed from this world, my first instinct was to turn to his daughters — my friends Bibli, Baela and Beena; and to my family and mutual friends. We discussed the passing away of an entire culture, of embedded connected knowledge.

What did we mean? Perhaps, it is important to remember the moment when many Muslims from undivided India’s United Province (UP) responded to the Quaid-i-Azam’s call to come to Pakistan. Most of them were not from princely states or even large taluqadari [leased landholding] estates, but many, like Raza’s family, were from qasbas [townships] and small towns — the ‘khatay peetay loag’ [well-off people], in short the ashraaf, whose transition to the middle class foregrounds a local modernity.

These were people equally at ease in inhabiting Western milieus, some educated abroad. They entered the professions — law, like Raza’s father and grandfather, medicine, engineering and the civil service, like his many uncles and cousins. They were from the service gentry, but grounded in their local tehzeeb [culture]. Yet they also included distinguished Marxist intellectuals and card-carrying members of the Communist Party — in India and in Pakistan.

Theirs was a way of life that was built on politesse and sartorial care, with an emphasis on education, literature and music as performative, leisure and recreational practices.

These were multi-lingual cosmopolitans. At home, they did not speak Urdu but Awadhi; and if counted among the educated, they had gone through Persian poet Saadi’s Gulistan and Bustan — a requirement shared by educated Muslims and Hindus in Punjab, and elsewhere.

Qasba, tehzeeb and the need for education had a powerful hold on Raza. In 1994, through an endowment, Raza founded the Sanjan Nagar School and Trust, for girls from less-privileged backgrounds. Ever the pragmatist, he asked the seasoned former civil servant Mueen Afzal to chair the trust. More than a year ago, when I visited Raza, he told me that the School Trust was “in Ehsan’s [Mani] safe hands.”

To date, 1,500 girls have graduated from the school — the alumni include medical doctors, of whom some have worked for the National Health Service in England, and a PhD in plant biology from Rutgers University in the USA.

Rest in peace Raza — heaven help the angels who try to fit you into any niche in the hereafter.

In memory of Hima Raza, born in 1975 to Naseem and Raza, who in 2004 predeceased both her parents and all her siblings

The writer is a historian, musicologist, screenwriter and translator

Published in Dawn, EOS, April 26th, 2026