Editorial
Sunday, December 7, 1958               25 Jamadi-ul-Awwal, 1378

Prof. Bokhari

For Pakistan, the untimely death of Prof. Bokhari is a national loss.  But the loss is more than Pakistan’s.  While the Chairman of the General Assembly’s Main Political Committee called it “a great loss for the United Nations”, the Bharati delegate found the world “the poorer for his death.”  To the U.N. Secretary-General, Prof. Bokhari was a “unique personality” carrying “the dual heritage of Eastern and Western civilisations” and reflecting “the possibility of a synthesis of great traditions on which it is the task of our generation to build one world.”  These and the other tributes paid by the heads of various delegations to the United Nations mingle Pakistan’s grief with a genuine sense of pride in the outstanding role played by one her most gifted sons, who, as her Permanent Delegate to the United Nations and later as a senior official of its Secretariat, has brought such signal honour to his motherland.  While we offer our heartfelt condolences to the members of the bereaved family, we are sure that their grief, like the nation’s will be assuaged by the undying memory of Prof. Bokhari’s eminent role in the United Nations.

What Prof. Bokhari achieved in the World Organisation was, however, but a fulfillment of the promise and hope provided by his earlier life.  As a Cambridge student, he won the enviable distinction of being elected Senior Scholar of the Emmanuel College.  For six years, he was Director-General of All India Radio and, for seven, Principal of the Government College in Lahore – the oldest and largest college in Pakistan.  He led the Indian Delegations to Afghanistan and the Commonwealth Broadcasting Conference, and Pakistan’s Delegations to the India Office Partition Negotiations in London, the International High Frequency Broadcasting Conference in Mexico and the Commonwealth Relations Conference in Canada.  An acknowledged master of the English and Urdu languages he translated into Urdu the works of Shakespeare, Shaw, Galsworthy, Wilde and Bergson.  His creative art found abiding manifestation in Urdu short stories written in a new style which, with its penetrating insight and dulcet humour, has been both the envy and despair of his compeers.  Had he been spared by the Angel of Death to join the Columbia University as Professor of Political Science after his retirement from the U.N. service world literature would have been enriched by some scintillating product or products of an opulent intellect which “carried the dual heritage of Eastern and Western civilizations.”  However, this long and brilliant record of service, both at home and abroad, should induce a grateful nation to perpetuate in a fitting manner, the memory of a life so full of achievement and inspiration.