Tariq Rahman

Tariq Rahman is a Pakistani academic scholar, researcher, and newspaper columnist. He currently resides in Lahore and focuses his scholarly work on the field of linguistics.

Early life and education

He was born in Bareilly, India, on 4 February 1949. His family moved to Pakistan in 1951 to settle in the new country. His father, Sami Ullah Khan, held a position as the head of the mathematics department at the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul. Rahman attended Burn Hall School before he joined the army as an officer in the armoured corps in 1971.

He later decided to leave the military because he was a conscientious objector regarding the actions in East Pakistan. He resigned his commission in 1978. The Government of Bangladesh recognized this decision by conferring a civil award upon him in Dhaka on 1 October 2013. During his early years, he obtained three master's degrees as a private candidate.

In 1979, a British Council scholarship allowed him to study in England. He earned both a master's and a doctoral degree from the University of Sheffield in 1985. Although his first PhD was in literature, he eventually shifted his primary interest toward the social sciences.

Career

Rahman began his academic career as an associate professor in the English Department at Peshawar University in 1985. He moved to the University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir in 1987, where he served as a professor and head of the department. During this time, he introduced linguistics as a subject of study. He later obtained an M.Litt. in linguistics from the University of Strathclyde in 1989.

In 1990, he joined the National Institute of Pakistan Studies. He was designated a distinguished national professor for life in 2004 and became a tenured professor in 2007. He later served as the director of the National Institute of Pakistan Studies at Quaid-e-Azam University. After his directorship ended, he was named a professor emeritus at the same institution in 2010.

He joined the Beaconhouse National University in Lahore in 2011 to serve as the Dean of the School of Education. In September 2014, he took on the additional role of Dean of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. He retired from his position as Dean of the School of Education on 1 September 2024.

His academic reach extends to the University of Oxford. He has served as an Academic Visitor at Wolfson College and worked as a visiting research fellow at the Centre of Islamic Studies. In 2018, he became an Ordinary Member of the Common Room at Wolfson College.

Awards and recognition

Rahman has received numerous honors for his extensive research. He was a Fulbright fellow in the USA during the 1995–96 period. In 2004, the president of Pakistan awarded him the Pride of Performance Award for his research efforts. He also served as the first incumbent of the Pakistan Chair at the University of California, Berkeley, during 2004-5.

The Higher Education Commission of Pakistan granted him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. In November 2011, he became the first Pakistani to receive the Humboldt Research Award. This distinction recognized his various publications, including Language and Politics in Pakistan (1996) and From Hindi to Urdu: A Social and Political History (2011).

He received a higher doctorate from the University of Sheffield in 2014. The president of Pakistan also conferred the Sitara-i-Imtiaz Award upon him in 2014. His book Names: A Study of Personal Names, Identity and Power in Pakistan won the 2018 Higher Education Commission award for Best Book in the Social Sciences.

In 2020, he won the Best Book of the Year prize at the Karachi Literary Festival for his work on Interpretations of Jihad in South Asia. He secured another Best Book of the Year prize from UBL Bank on 25 May 2024 for Pakistan's Wars. On 7 January 2021, he was elected as a Fellow of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences.