Dr Masuma Hasan is the Chairman of The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs and President of the Board of Governors of Aurat Foundation.

He talks about his visit to Panipat with his father Khwaja Sarwar Hasan (photo) in 1965.

In 1965, I had visited Panipat with my father, when he went as a delegate to the unofficial Commonwealth relations conference in Delhi and took me along with him. Before we left for Delhi, he said to me, ‘you are my eldest child, you will understand.’ Towards the end of the conference, the smoothly arranged trip to Panipat, where his ancestors had lived for 700 years and where he had been the richest, the most educated and most influential person before Partition, was for him a journey of pain. In his house, we found a school in a state of disrepair and his former munshi, Chetan, came to meet him there, clinging to him and weeping uncontrollably. My father seemed to want to avoid further distress and took only one look at his beautiful garden house, without going in, and said, ‘let’s go.’ When we reached home in Karachi, his first words to my mother were, ‘Sughra biwi, yesterday we went to Panipat.’

Panipat house in 1990.

Commemorative stamp issued by Pakistan in recognition of the work done by Khwaja Sarwar Hasan . He was a prolific writer, academician, lawyer and founder Secretary of The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs. He was born in Panipat on 18 October 1902. Educated at the Muslim University Aligarh and the University of Cambridge.