He was born to Mirza Shukarullah Khan and Rehmat Bano on Feb 6, 1932, and named Shafqatullah Khan at birth. He later on chose the name Shafqat Tanvir Mirza for himself. Over time his signature initials ‘STM’ became a seal of approval from a widely respected intellectual for various progressive and popular causes.

The early years took STM on a tour of Punjab, the land close to his heart, whose culture and politics he was to specialise in as he grew up. According to an interview he gave to Dawn in 2011, he began his schooling in Chakwal and then went on to study in Khushab, Wazirabad – where his extended family had settled after migrating from Rajauri a few generations back-- Bahawalnagar and Campbellpur (now Attock).

He eventually landed in the Gordon College in Rawalpindi. The college was a nursery for all kinds of talent and helped shape STM’s ideology and encouraged his search for a course to pursue this ideology. Hectic years in journalism followed, until an abrupt, forced ending in early 2012 on account of his failing health.

STM, who would liven up conversations and debates in print with his informed contribution, was an asthmatic for long and a heavy office smoker. In early 2012, he suffered a stroke and was some time later diagnosed with lung cancer. His health deteriorated fast over the following months.

STM worked with a series of newspapers. He took up a job with Urdu-language paper ‘Tameer’ in 1949 while he was still a student and with ‘Hilal’ in 1955. In 1956, he moved over to Radio Pakistan, getting fired from it when Gen Ayub Khan took over in 1958. A stint with the Civil & Military Gazette followed and upon the closure of ‘C&G’, in 1964, he joined ‘Imroze’ – a sister organisation of ‘The Pakistan Times’ run by the National Press Trust since Ayub’s takeover of the Progressive Papers Ltd half a decade earlier.

Along with Munnoo Bhai and Hanif Ramay, STM was in the team which launched PPP-mouthpiece ‘Musawat’ at the start of the 1970s. He remained with the paper for a few years before rejoining ‘Imroze’. In 1983, he was fired from ‘Imroze’ for opposing Gen Ziaul Haq and jailed. He remained in Central Jail Karachi, Kot Lakhpat Jail Lahore and Central Jail Bahawalpur. Many years after his release, as the democracy was restored in Pakistan, he returned to ‘Imroze’, and was the editor of the paper when it was closed down in 1993.

STM also worked with ‘Nawa-i-Waqt’ for some time and wrote regularly for the left-leaning weekly ‘Viewpoint’ during the Zia days. For the last two decades of his life, he was a regular ‘Dawn’ columnist.

He was in the forefront of the struggle for freedom of expression, for workers’ rights and stood steadfastly with his former colleagues in the struggle to secure the dues for ex-workers of the NPT papers. As he fought multiple ailments, in early 2012, STM moved court for payment of what he said NPT owed him, refusing charity and instead demanding what was his right. The court took a favourable view of his petition but the dues claimed by STM could not be paid to him – probably because the NPT did not want to set a precedent.

The case for ‘Imroze’ dues had its dark aspects but it was also a fitting finale for a man who chose to take on a few in his lifetime – his voice toned down by age but his argument remaining as strong as ever. He always pounced on a chance to hit out at the feudal, the mafia, the usurper of people’s rights with great relish, firing from a post deeply entrenched in the left-right politics as it was practised in Pakistan and the world at large until the onset of the 1990s.

The fights he picked, long list of newspapers where STM worked, often in trying conditions, was a struggle that could have weakened the resolve of a less committed soul.Instead, it added to STM’s determination to fight on, whatever the odds. He proudly wore his dismissals from various newspapers as medals from wars – just as he was proud of time spent in prison.

At one time during Zia’s period, both he and his wife and comrade, Tamkanat Ara, were in jail – leaving their only child, a daughter, in the care of relatives. Years later, STM would reminisce fondly about that altogether different world of dreams that existed in the 1970s and 1980s.

He had plenty to lament about but far from being reduced into a now irrelevant crusader from another age, STM found new causes to pursue in the new era. He was passionate about Punjabi language and was fully and proudly immersed in raising his three young champions: his granddaughters. Also, early 1990s onwards his desk in Dawn’s Lahore offices attracted a stream of people looking for answers to all kinds of questions through debate with him and with his guidance. These visitors included researchers young and established, poets, journalists and politicians and trade union activists.

STM wrote two weekly columns for ‘Dawn’ – Punjabi Themes and Punjabi Books. He discussed topics with a force and facility rooted in his first-hand knowledge of many momentous issues and his gift for reading. His knowledge of the politics and culture of Punjab was encyclopaedic.

Besides producing a large body of newspaper articles, both in English and Urdu, the very prolific STM wrote a number of books in Urdu such as the ones on Shah Husain and Sachal Sarmast and a 50-episode Punjabi serial Lok Reet, documenting different cities of Punjab and their culture. He was close to the Sufis and to the soil and its sons and not partial to pomp and ceremony, and not always too comfortable with the Pride of Performance he received in 2006 for his incomparable services to journalism and Punjabi language.

In frank conversations with friends and fellow travellers, he would often speak of the Punjabi generosity that accommodated leaders – political and in other fields – at the Punjabis’ own expense. Not exactly biased towards the subtle and the overtly circumspect, much of this bold thinking would find its way into STM’s candid pieces about the treatment meted out to Punjabi.

Among the fiercest battles that Shafqat Tanvir Mirza was involved in, he controversially refused to recognise Seraiki as a language separate from Punjabi. And as a new province in southern Punjab beckoned in his latter years his argument against a breakup of Punjab intensified. He held fast to his views, using references from classical literature to question Seraiki’s status as a separate language and fought for north-south linguistic unity.

He was the staunchest and a most vocal supporter of teaching in the mother tongue and was vociferous in his demand for an equal status for Punjabi language. But his was a long, hard and unrewarded struggle. His comparisons with the recognition given to Sindhi in Sindh and Pashto in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as well as his oft-cited example of the state’s belittling of the Bengali language in former East Pakistan, made a lot of sense. Yet these examples failed to move the decision-makers in favour of a language STM was so expressive about.