ISLAMABAD: At 90, celebrated Pakistani poet Anwar Masood still remembers the night his mother stitched a green-and-white flag by hand and his family raised it over their Rawalpindi home as Pakistan came into being.
He was 11 years old when British colonial rule over the Indian subcontinent ended in August 1947 and British India was partitioned into two independent states, predominantly Hindu India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.
Independence brought jubilation but also one of the largest and bloodiest migrations of the 20th century, as millions of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs crossed the newly drawn borders amid communal violence, particularly in Punjab. An estimated 14 million people were displaced during Partition, while estimates of those killed vary widely.
Against that vast upheaval, Masood’s most enduring memory of Pakistan’s birth is an intimate one: a mother, a homemade flag and a family rooftop.
“On the first August 14, I was in Rawalpindi,” Masood told Arab News. “The strongest memory that still remains vivid is that night in Rawalpindi, when my mother made a Pakistani flag. We put it on the roof. I can never forget that.”
There is another image that has survived even longer in Masood’s memory. A year before independence, at a political gathering in Lahore in 1946, he caught a glimpse of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the movement for Pakistan, who would become the new country’s founder and first governor-general.
Masood was too small to see over the crowd gathered around Jinnah, so his father hoisted him onto his shoulders.
“When Quaid-e-Azam came down from the stage, a crowd gathered to see him. My respected father was also among that crowd. He lifted me onto his shoulders, and I saw the Quaid,” Masood said, using Jinnah’s honorific, meaning “Great Leader.”
What the boy remembers most clearly are Jinnah’s eyes.
“I saw a strange sparkle in his eyes, and that sparkle was the reflection of a great purpose,” he said.
Masood also remembers Jinnah ending a speech with a message of confidence that Pakistan would soon become a reality if its people maintained their spirit and enthusiasm.
“MODEL OF STATE OF MADINAH”
Pakistan marks its Independence Day every Aug. 14, commemorating the 1947 transfer of power that created the new state as the British Raj came to an end. Jinnah addressed Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly in Karachi on Aug. 14during ceremonies marking the transfer of power, days after laying out a vision for the new country that included equal citizenship and freedom of worship.
For Masood, those events became the opening chapter of a life that would run almost alongside Pakistan’s own.
Born in Gujrat in Punjab in November 1935, he became a teacher and one of Pakistan’s best-known poets, writing in Punjabi, Urdu and Persian. Particularly celebrated for his humorous and satirical Punjabi verse, his poetry drew heavily on everyday language, ordinary characters and the contradictions of social life.
His work also carried a serious social current beneath its humor, often using ordinary life to illuminate inequality and injustice. Masood went on to receive some of Pakistan’s highest civil honors for his contribution to literature and poetry, including the Hilal-i-Imtiaz.
Nearly eight decades after the boy on his father’s shoulders glimpsed Jinnah, Masood’s judgment on whether Pakistan has become the country his generation imagined is a sobering one.
“I think they have not yet been fulfilled,” he said when asked about the dreams of the generation that witnessed independence.
His idea of what remains unfinished is less about economic or political milestones than the character of the society Pakistan has built.
Masood repeatedly returned in his conversation with Arab News to the Islamic ideal of a society organized around service to others, citing a saying of the Prophet Muhammad that the best among people are those who benefit others.
“Remember that harming others is a very bad thing,” he said. “What is theft? Harming another person. What is robbery? Harming another person. What is the deception? Harming another person.”
“I am saying that this was the state established in Madinah. We should fully follow that model, which we have not yet done.”
Masood has lived through almost the entirety of Pakistan’s history: wars and military governments, democratic transitions and political upheavals, economic crises and moments of national celebration.
Among the achievements he takes pride in is Pakistan becoming a nuclear-armed state in 1998.
“Allah has blessed Pakistan with the energy known as atomic energy. It became Pakistan’s,” he said.
He also pointed to Pakistan’s four-day military conflict with India in May 2025 as a moment of national pride.
“And recently, our enemy attacked us, and Allah granted Pakistan a great victory while inflicting a very heavy defeat on the enemy. These are moments of which we cannot be proud enough.”
But when Masood looks toward Pakistan’s future, his message is not about armies, governments or the milestones he has witnessed.
It is directed at the generations born long after the homemade flag went up over his family’s roof.
“The greatest message (for youth) is the same hadith that I mentioned: the best person is the one from whom others benefit,” he said.
“There can be no greater advice than this. And only through this can a society emerge in which the model of the State of Madinah can take shape.”
