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Qudrat Ullah Shahab

Qudrat Ullah Shahab was an eminent Urdu writer and civil servant from Pakistan. He is best known for his autobiography, Shahab Nama. He is the motivational source for many of the other writers of Pakistan and his piece of writings are studied by students in their school/ college life as reference. He has a family link to the literature. He was born in 1912 to a student of MAO College being supervised by sir syed Ahmad khan. He later immigrated from Aligarh and settled down in Gilgit. Shahab started writing in his early days both in Urdu and English languages. At the age of 16, he won an international essay competition organized by the Readers Digest, London. He graduated from Prince of Wales College, Jammu, and later from Government College Lahore. According to his autobiography, he spent his childhood in Eastern Punjab near Chamkor Sahib, Ropar (Rupnagar) District.
Besides being a successful writer, he was a very kind person. He was selected for Indian Civil Service in 1940 and later volunteered to serve in Bengal during the famine of 1943, where he served as magistrate at Nandigram. He came under heavy fire from the authorities when he distributed part of the strategic rice reserves to the starving local community. After the sufferings, he migrated to Pakistan where he started his career once again.
After coming to Pakistan he was first posted in the Ministry of Commerce as a Deputy Secretary and then as Chief Secretary of the new state of Azad Kashmir at Muzaffarabad. Thereafter, he became Deputy Commissioner of Jhang, Punjab. He also served as Director of Industries of Punjab and dealt mostly with settlement issues concerning migration. He was appointed by Governor General Ghulam Muhammad his Principal Secretary and remained on this post during Iskander Mirza’s and Ayub Khan’s regimes. He served as Ambassador of Pakistan to Netherlands in 1962 and later as Secretary of Information and Education. He resigned after a clash with the new regime of Yahya Khan and opted for a self-imposed exile at UK. Shahab was elected a member of the executive board of UNESCO in 1968.
Shahab had published in English and Urdu languages for contemporary newspapers and magazines of Pakistan Writers' Guild, founded at Karachi in January 1959.
He is best known for his autobiography Shahab Nama. In the first chapter, Shahab mentioned how the idea of writing a memoir occurred to him when he paid a visit to Ibn-e-Insha in London. Citation needed While they were discussing the philosophy of life, it inspired him to pen his own experiences. The complete work was published after his death in 1986.