Tariq Rahman (born 4 February 1949) is a Pakistani academic scholar, newspaper columnist, researcher, and a writer.[3]
Currently based in Lahore, he is author of many books and other publications, mainly in the field of linguistics. He has been awarded several national and international awards to recognise his research and scholarly work.[2]
Early life and education
He was born in Bareilly (U.P.) in India on 4 February 1949. The family moved to Pakistan in 1951. His father, Sami Ullah Khan, served as the head of the mathematics department at the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul, near Abbottabad. Educated at Burn Hall School (now Army Burn Hall College), he joined the army as an armoured corps officer in 1971. However, he decided to leave the army—on the grounds of being a conscientious objector to the military action in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. He finally resigned his commission in 1978. This was recognised by the Government of Bangladesh which conferred upon him a civil award on 1 October 2013 in Dhaka.[4] Meanwhile, he had obtained three master's degrees as a private candidate. In 1979, he won a British Council scholarship, which later enabled him to obtain master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Sheffield in England in 1985. His first PhD was in literature. Later he left the path of literature as his main interest was in social sciences.[2]
Career
Tariq Rahman joined the academia as an associate professor in the English Department of Peshawar University in 1985. In 1987, he became professor and head of the English Department in the University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir in Muzaffarabad where he introduced the subject of linguistics. In 1989, he also got an M.Litt in linguistics from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. In 1990, he joined the National Institute of Pakistan Studies. Dr. Rahman was made distinguished national professor for life in 2004 and a tenured professor in 2007. He joined the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore, Pakistan in 2011 as Dean of the School of Education.[5] In September 2014 he was appointed as the Dean of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences in the same university and he continues to serve at this position to date. He has been Academic Visitor at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, and is Ordinary Member of Common Room (subject to rules) at the same college. He has also been Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford.[5]
Research and publications
To write his book From Hindi to Urdu: A Social and Political History,[6] Dr. Rahman travelled to some of the major cities in Pakistan and to four other countries: England, France, Germany and India. He studied sources in Urdu, Persian, and Hindi. He also got works in Chaghtai Turkish, French and German translated for himself. He learned the Devanagari script on his own and Persian at the Khana-e-Farhang in Rawalpindi at the age of 58.
He has also published three collections of short stories and has edited two books. His research-based published work is mostly on sociolinguistic history, language and politics and educational linguistics with focus on the Muslims of north India and Pakistan but he has also published on onomastics (Names OUP, 2015) and intellectual history. He has also written more than 107 articles in scholarly journals, 24 entries in reference books, 10 encyclopaedia articles, 45 chapters in books and many book reviews. In addition to Oxford University Press, Karachi, his books have been published by Orient Blackswan in India. His last book Interpretations of Jihad in South Asia: an Intellectual History was published by Walter de Gruyter from Berlin and Boston in 2018 and a paperback edition was published by Oxford University Press in Pakistan in 2019. In 2022 his book Pakistan's Wars: an Alternative History was published by Routledge, Francis and Taylor from London and New York. The South Asia edition was published by Routledge India (New Delhi).
