PHOTO: MERAL MURAT KHAN

Noted architect and engineer Nasreddin Murat-Khan, the chief driving force behind the Minar-e-Pakistan, originally hailed from the Russian Republic of Dagestan. A committed proponent of the struggle to emancipate the Caucus from Soviet paramountcy, Nasreddin fled to Germany in the early 1940s from where he relocated to Pakistan in 1950. His seminal contribution in the conception and execution of the Minar-e-Pakistan, a project that he refused to take any remuneration for, has never been acknowledged in a befitting manner to date. Nasreddin died in 1970.Maryam Jameelah, nee Margret Marcus, was born to a secular Jewish family in New York. Jameelah moved to Pakistan in 1962 on the invitation of Jamaat-e-Islami founder Maulana Maududi, who also became her adoptive father. She had a knotty relationship with her guardian, who had her admitted in a mental asylum in Lahore. Jameelah, a prolific writer, was characterised by academic and author Vali Nasr as being primarily responsible for furthering the divide between Islam and the West. She died in 2012.References: The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism; Maududi and Maryam Jameela Legendary vocalist Malika Pukhraj was born in Harimpur Sidhdhar, a hamlet in what was then the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. Pukhraj commenced her illustrious career as a singer at the court of Maharaja Hari Singh at the tender age of nine. She was compelled to leave the court for Lahore after some publications accused her of trying to influence Singh and attempting to poison him. Pukhraj died in 2004.References: Song Sung True: A Memoir; ‘ Unparalled queen of gayaki ,’ The HinduCelebrated Urdu short story writer Saadat Hasan Manto moved to Lahore after finding it extremely difficult to remain in Bombay following the partition of India. Writer Ismat Chughtai asserted that he had counselled her to follow suit. “The future looks beautiful in Pakistan. We’ll be able to get the houses of those who have fled from there. It’ll be just us there. We’ll progress very quickly,” he is reported to have remarked to her. The paucity of opportunities and lack of appreciation in his adopted homeland made a crestfallen Manto hit the bottle. He died in 1955.References: Manto: Selected Short Stories; The Pity of Partition*The Express Tribune does not claim any rights or ownership to the pictures that have been used in this article.