Agha Shaukat Ali

Agha Shaukat Ali was born in the aristocratic Zaffar Afghan Agha Qızılbash family with Turkic origins in Srinagar in 1919. The family belonged to the military Qizilbash aristocracy which had migrated from Kandahar, Afghanistan in the early 19th century and since then held offices of Royal Physicians, Ministers and Courtiers to the Dogra dynasty. His mother Begum Zaffar Ali, an educationist and legislator, was the first woman matriculate of Kashmir. His maternal grandfather, Khan Bahadur Aga Syed Hussain, then Governor and later Home and Judicial Minister in the princely state, was the first matriculate of Kashmir. Shaukat Ali's eldest brother was Agha Nasir Ali, a civil servant and his youngest brother Agha Ashraf Ali. His brother Agha Nasir Ali was the first Kashmiri to enter the civil services through competition and was already serving as Wazir-e-Wazarat. ==Early life and education==

Shaukat Ali was educated at the Mission School at Fateh Kadal (later renamed as Tyndale Biscoe School) in Srinagar. He passed his matriculation in 1936. He graduated in Arts from Sri Pratap College. He attended the Aligarh University in 1930s with an LLB degree. He later married Mussarat Nizamuddin of the Mian family of Baghbanpura, custodians of the Shalimar Gardens, Lahore. The newlyweds lived in Kashmir where Shaukat Ali joined the Kashmir Civil Services. He served as the tehsildar in Akhnoor. == Political career in British India ==

During the end of British colonial rule in India, Shaukat Ali joined the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference as its general secretary, after resigning from the civil services as a Tehsildar in 1946, at the request of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. Agha Shaukat Ali played an important role in the changing politics of Kashmir from 1946 to 1948. == Civil service in Pakistan ==

After Jinnah's death, Shaukat Ali was expelled from the Muslim Conference. He later received assignments in the Central Services of Pakistan. In that capacity he also served as the Information Secretary to President Ayub Khan. Shaukat Ali attended the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University as a Fulbright Scholar. He enjoyed his time in the United States in the 1950s and returned to his alma mater on many occasions. He also received diplomatic assignments in various missions, including one in London. == Later years ==

Author He authored the book The Modernization of Soviet Central Asia and was invited by the government of China to share his assessment of the implications of lifting the Red Curtain in 1979. Iqbal-Shariati Foundation He founded the Iqbal-Shariati Foundation in Lahore which funded the translation and publication of the works of Muhammad Iqbal and Ali Shariati, two poet-philosophers whom he admired. His wife Mussarat Nizamuddin died in the 1990s. His son Agha Shehryar had died earlier. He was survived by three other children: son Agha Azhar Ali and two daughters Tehmina Khan and Rabia Ali. They reside in the United States. ==Works==

• Modernization of Soviet Central Asia, 1964. • The New Wave: A Muslim Reply to the New World Order, 1992. ==References==