Khalid Hasan was a Pakistani journalist and writer. He is the author and editor of various books, as well as a regular columnist for a number of English-language Pakistani newspapers. He is best known for his translations of Saadat Hasan Manto’s short stories and Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s lyrics.

Family

Khalid Hasan was born on 14th April 1934 in the Kashmiri city of Srinagar. Noor Hussain, his father, was from Jammu and worked in the Jammu and Kashmir Ministry of Health. During the 1947 communal turmoil, Khalid Hasan and the rest of his family fled to Pakistan from Jammu. His two older brothers (Brigadier General Bashir Ahmed and Saeed Ahmed) served in the Pakistan Army, while his younger brother (Masood Hasan) owned an advertising firm in Lahore. His sister Surayya married K. H. Khurshid, who worked as Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s private secretary before becoming president of Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Zohra, his second sister, lives in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Marriage

In the late 1960s, the American Political Science Association sponsored Khalid Hasan for a Congressional Fellowship. So he travelled to Washington, D.C., where he met and married Juanita.

Career

In 1967, Hasan began his long career in journalism and writing as a senior reporter and columnist for The Pakistan Times in Lahore. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto requested him to join him as his first press secretary after he took government in December 1971. He went on to serve in the country’s foreign service for five years, with postings in Paris, Ottawa, and London. He left in protest when the Bhutto government was deposed by Gen. Zia-ul-Haq and worked in London for the Third World Foundation and the Third World Media before moving to Vienna, Austria, to join the OPEC News Agency, where he stayed for ten years.

Khalid Hasan temporarily returned to Pakistan in 1991 and worked as a freelance journalist for the next two years. In 1993, he relocated to Washington, D.C., to work as the US correspondent for The Nation (Pakistan) (daily), Lahore. He was the head of the Shalimar Television Network in Pakistan from 1997 until 2000. He returned to Washington in 2000 as a special reporter for the Associated Press of Pakistan, which he resigned in 2002 to join the Daily Times and The Friday Times newspapers in Lahore. He continued to work in Washington, D.C. as a correspondent and columnist for these two publications. 

Hasan was a prolific writer and translator and had published over 40 books, in Pakistan and abroad.

Death and Survivors

Khalid Hasan died of gallbladder cancer on February 5, 2009, in Washington, D.C. At the time, it was reported that he would be buried in Vermont, where his wife Juanita is from. He and Juanita have two children, Jeffrey, a boy, and Jahan, a daughter, as well as four grandkids. When he died, his family was there in the hospital.

Tributes

Kashmiri American Council Executive Director Ghulam Nabi Fai described him as a strong and principled journalist. On his death anniversary in 2011, Radio Pakistan organised a seminar and a classical music event in which he was listed alongside renowned Pakistani journalists such as Mazhar Ali Khan and I. A. Rehman. Iftikhar Arif, a well-known Pakistani Urdu-language writer, referred to him as one of the best Urdu-to-English translators.

Awards

In 2010 Khalid Hasan received the Sitara-i-Imtiaz Award ( Star of Excellence Award ) from the President of Pakistan.