Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah

Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah (22 July 1915 – 11 December 2000) was a Pakistani politician, diplomat and author of the Suhrawardy family of Calcutta, the daughter of Hassan Suhrawardy and a niece of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy. ^{1 2} She was the first Muslim woman to earn a PhD from the University of London; she joined the Pakistani foreign service in 1948 as the country's first female civil servant of its senior service, represented Pakistan at the United Nations, where she worked on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and was Pakistan's ambassador to Morocco from 1964 to 1967. ¹ Her best-known book is her autobiography, From Purdah to Parliament (1963). ¹

Shaista was born as Shaista Akhtar Banu Suhrawardy at Calcutta on 22 July 1915, to Hassan Suhrawardy and Sahibzadi Shah Banu Begum. ¹ Her uncle Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy was her father's younger brother, and she published his biography in 1991; the museum's predicate set has no niece or avuncular predicate, so the kinship is told here and in her record rather than drawn as an edge, and her uncle's record is not edited. ¹ She studied at Loreto College, Kolkata, and took her PhD at SOAS, University of London, with a thesis on the development of the Urdu novel and short story — the first Muslim woman to earn a PhD from that university. ^{1 2} No consulted source names a school for her: the English article calls her a Muslim woman as an identity framing, the Urdu article gives her religion in its infobox as Islam, and Wikidata gives Islam only — one structured family at most, not two independent attestations of a school. ^{1 2 3}

Shaista married Mohammed Ikramullah in 1933; he became Pakistan's first foreign secretary after independence, and they had four children, among them Salma Sobhan and Princess Sarvath El Hassan of Jordan. ^{1 2} After her marriage she was one of the first Indian Muslim women of her generation to leave purdah. ¹ She had written short stories before her marriage under the name Shaista Akhtar Suhrawardy for journals such as Humayun and Tehzeeb-e-Niswan, and she led the Muslim Women Students' Federation and the All-India Muslim League's Women's Sub-Committee; Muhammad Ali Jinnah inspired her to enter politics. ^{2 1}

Shaista was elected to the Constituent Assembly of India in 1946 but never took the seat, as Muslim League politicians boycotted it, and she was one of two women in the first Constituent Assembly of Pakistan in 1947. ¹ She joined the foreign service in 1948 and served as a delegate to the United Nations, working on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) — where she called for more gender-inclusive language — and on the Convention against Genocide (1951). ¹ She was Pakistan's ambassador to Morocco from 1964 to 1967. ¹

Shaista wrote for the Urdu women's magazines Tehzeeb-e-Niswan and Ismat and later for English-language newspapers; her books include the short-story collection Koshish-e-Natamaam (1950), Letters to Neena (1951), Beyond the Veil (1953), essays on Islam written for the government after Partition, her autobiography From Purdah to Parliament (1963), which she herself translated into Urdu, and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy: A Biography (1991), about her uncle. ¹

Shaista died at Karachi on 11 December 2000, as the English article and Wikidata give it; the Urdu article gives 10 December 2000 in the United Arab Emirates, with her resting place at Karachi, and the discrepancy is preserved in her record. ^{1 2 3} In 2002 the President of Pakistan posthumously awarded her the Nishan-i-Imtiaz, the country's highest civil award. ¹

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