{"id":17167,"date":"2026-07-09T13:49:51","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T13:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/?p=17167"},"modified":"2026-07-20T13:57:47","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T13:57:47","slug":"the-traitors-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/?p=17167","title":{"rendered":"The Traitor\u2019s Son"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(Ghaddar ka Beta) By Hamid Mir July 9, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some memories of childhood follow me to this day. Whenever I hear a naat or a hamd in praise of Allah, I am reminded of my grandfather, Mir Abdul Aziz, who was a poet of naat. Once, my grandfather came from Sialkot to Lahore to participate in a mushaira. The gathering at Barkat Ali Islamia Hall continued late into the night. When it ended, Grandfather thought it improper to come to our house at such a late hour, so along with some other poets, he placed his deewan (collected poetry) under his pillow and slept right there. At the time of Fajr, he went outside the hall to perform ablution. When he returned, his deewan had vanished. He searched extensively, but it was never found. It was a large notebook containing his poetry written in Persian, Urdu, and Punjabi.

After the loss of the deewan, he arrived at the home of his son, Professor Waris Mir, who was getting ready to leave for the university. We were delighted to see Grandfather, because he always brought sweets for us. That day his hands were empty. He was troubled too. I could not understand what precious thing of his had been stolen that my father seemed to grieve over even more than he did. I went off to school. When I returned, Grandfather had already left for Sialkot. My father was gathering some papers and preparing a file. I learned that he was going to the offices of newspapers to place advertisements about Grandfather\u2019s lost deewan.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My curiosity grew \u2014 what was in this deewan that made its recovery so urgent? I was a student of the second or third grade. I insisted on going along with my father. First, we went to a newspaper office on Sharah-e-Fatima Jinnah, opposite Charing Cross. Everyone there who heard about the loss of Mir Abdul Aziz\u2019s deewan expressed sorrow. Only then did I realize this was something truly valuable. Sheikh Abdul Rahman of Crescent Publicity Service personally took on the responsibility of placing advertisements in several newspapers, and my father took me onward to the other newspaper offices. At the office of the Pakistan Times, Muhammad Idrees sahib told my father: \u201cMir sahib, this is a case of theft, and the thief is none other than some poet who will recite Mir Abdul Aziz\u2019s poetry under his own name \u2014 therefore I am filing a report at the relevant police station.\u201d My father told Idrees sahib that most of the poetry in the lost deewan was in Persian, so the thief would be sorely disappointed. My father ran around for many days, but he could not recover Grandfather\u2019s lost poetry.

In 1978, when my father went to Britain for higher education, Grandfather came to stay withus in Lahore. He began teaching me the Quran \u2014 because I had already rebelled against the harshness of several maulvi sahibs. Grandfather never used harshness; he taught the Quran with gentleness. He also practiced hikmat (traditional medicine) purely for the sake of Allah, without charge. People would come to him for the treatment of snakebites. When he went out searching for herbs for these remedies, I would sometimes accompany him.

Once, during the summer holidays, we went to Sialkot, and my uncle Anwar Mir took me to a village called Sidhar Wali in the area of Badiana, near the Pakistan\u2013India border. Many members of our family lived in that village. There stands the shrine of a saint, Hazrat Baba Karam Ali Shah. My great-grandfather, Imam Din Mir, had come to this saint in pursuit of education from Banihal, an area of occupied Jammu and Kashmir. Banihal lies between Srinagar and Jammu, and most of its population speaks the Kashmiri language. Several members of Imam Din Mir\u2019s family were disciples of Karam Ali Shah. Most of the family remained in Banihal. Before the creation of Pakistan they used to travel back and forth to Banihal, but after Karam Ali Shah\u2019s passing in Sidhar Wali, they never returned.

mam Din Mir\u2019s father was named Karam Din Mir. Imam Din Mir was very young when Karam Din Mir passed away, and he was raised by Mir Bakhsh Mir, who was a devotee of Karam Ali Shah and entrusted the boy to the saint\u2019s care. Imam Din Mir was his father\u2019s only child, and he came to regard Karam Ali Shah as his everything \u2014 which is why he left all his property behind in Banihal. He gave all three of his sons \u2014 Abdul Aziz Mir, Feroz Din Mir, and Abdul Majeed Mir \u2014 a worldly education.

Abdul Aziz Mir was a man of many dimensions. He had great command over Persian and Arabic. Rather than becoming a madrassa teacher, he established a bakery that supplied cakes to British army officers in Sialkot Cantonment and at an English circus. He was also fond of wrestling, and from Jammu to Gujranwala he was famous as \u201cAziz Halwai Pehlwan.\u201d When the Pakistan Movement gathered momentum, he began reciting naats and poems at the rallies of the All-India Muslim League. He then shut down his business dealings with the British and started his own enterprise on Rangpura Road under the name Mir Sweet House. But he spent most of his time at mushairas, so the business never prospered. He put his elder son, Anwar Mir, to work alongside him and began providing education to his younger son, Waris Mir.

Waris Mir attended school and also received religious instruction from Hafiz Intezar sahib on Rangpura Road. He used to give the azaan at Hafiz Intezar sahib\u2019s mosque. When Waris Mir reached Murray College, Sialkot, he became the editor of the college magazine. One day he wrote an essay and sent it to Nawa-i-Waqt, whereupon Hameed Nizami personally wrote him a letter offering him a job at the newspaper. Waris Mir completed his education in Lahore while working there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waris Mir\u2019s family and Allama Iqbal\u2019s family shared a deep spiritual connection with Sheikh Nooruddin Wali (of Charar Sharif) and Sain Abdullah Qadri. The shrine of Sain AbdullahQadri is near Adda Pasrurian, Sialkot. Sain Abdullah Qadri was the first khalifa of Khawaja Muhammad Umar Bakhsh Qadri, a saint of Gujranwala. Dr. Jahangir Tamimi, in his book Iqbal, Sahib-e-Haal, has written on the authority of Professor Waris Mir that Allama Iqbal\u2019s father, Sheikh Noor Muhammad, would travel to Gujranwala in the month of Muharram to pay his respects at the shrine of Khawaja Muhammad Umar Bakhsh Qadri. Iqbal\u2019s rasm-ebismillah \u2014 the ceremony marking the beginning of his education \u2014 took place in the lap of Khawaja Muhammad Umar Bakhsh Qadri. Hazrat Karam Ali Shah was also connected to this saint. Every year on June 22, the urs of Hazrat Karam Ali Shah is held at Sardhar Wali. Besides these two saints, Waris Mir also used to pay his respects at the shrines of Hazrat Ali Hujwiri and of Hazrat Sakhi Sarwar in Mozang, Lahore.

This is the family background of Waris Mir \u2014 the soil from which grew a way of thinking that wanted to make Pakistan a true Islamic republic in the light of the teachings of Allama Iqbal and the Quaid-e-Azam. Whenever a dictator\u2019s government came to power in Pakistan, Waris Mir declared military dictatorship to be Pakistan\u2019s greatest enemy. And so the dictators tried to cover up their national crimes by branding Waris Mir \u2014 the son of Pakistan Movement worker Mir Abdul Aziz \u2014 a traitor. The campaign to declare Waris Mir a traitor has continued even after his death. In 2020, a minister of Tehreek-e-Insaf, on the orders of some general, declared Waris Mir a traitor, and Chief Minister Usman Buzdar changed the name of the Waris Mir Underpass near New Campus. Against this act, the Punjab Assembly and the Sindh Assembly, through unanimous resolutions, rejected the accusations of treason against Waris Mir and paid tribute to him for his services to democracy and freedom of expression.

Whether anyone likes it or not, I am proud to be the grandson of a Pakistan Movement worker and a poet of naat \u2014 and the son of Waris Mir, the man whom military dictators branded a traitor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Ghaddar ka Beta) By Hamid Mir July 9, 2026 Some memories of childhood follow me to this day. Whenever I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17167"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17172,"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17167\/revisions\/17172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}