QUAID-I-AZAM Mohammad Ali Jinnah was a firm believer in the freedom of expression.

After having taken upon himself the cudgels for fighting for the rights of the Muslims of India as their sole spokesman, Jinnah always wanted English and Urdu newspapers as competitive media organs of the All-India Muslim League (AIML) to counter the Congress press and to correct perceptions in the British media.

Dawn in English and Manshoor in Urdu were his brainchild.

Weekly Manshoor was launched in 1938 followed by weekly Dawn in 1941, with Pothan Joseph as editor. My father, Syed Shamsul Hasan, was printer/publisher of both the weeklies. AIML secretary Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan was the man in charge, aided by my father who was AIML assistant secretary for more than three decades from 1914 to 1947.

Aware of the difficulties AIML organs and literature faced, he set up a small printing press on the ground noor of his house,Al-Shams, in Darya Ganj, Delhi, and with the Quaid`s permission, named it `Muslim League Printing Press`. Weekly Dawn was first published there.

Subsequently, when it gained circulation, its printing was shifted to a bigger plant, Latifi Press. However, Syed sahib continued as its printer and publisher till Dawn`s last edition from Delhi in September 1947.

Funded by the Quaid, Dawn had among its trustees his lieutenant, Liaquat Ali Khan. Liaquat, editor Altaf Husain and my father then worked closely to establish Dawn as the Muslim League`s mouthpiece.

In 1947 I was about seven years old when I saw Liaquat and the person I used to call`Altaf Uncle` working together with my father.

I remember frequent travels to other cities by Altaf Uncle and my father for court appearances, (because Dawn was being sued frequently). Every time they would return, they would bring sweets and delicacies for us children.

In the National Archives one can find more than 72 volumes ofcorrespondence the Quaid had with various Muslim leaders.

Before leaving Delhi, he handed these over to my father for safe custody until such time as `I retire to Malabar Hills, Bombay, and write my autobiography`.

Those documents were so valuable that my father brought trunkloads of them to Pakistan at the risk of his life after the attack on Al-Shams. The first thing Jinnah asked him when he met him in Lahore was about the safety of hispapers. He was overwhelmed when he learnt that nothing has been left behind in Delhi.

The National Archives also have hundreds of books and pamphlets printed at my father`s Muslim League Printing Press with the printline, `Printed and published by Syed Shamsul Hasan`. How close my father was to Liaquat could be imagined by the fact that, when our family arrived in Karachi and he came to know Syed sahib had no placeto live, he had us shifted from Karachi Cantonment Station to the Annexe of Prime Minister House at 10 Victoria Road, where we enjoyed his hospitality until we were provided an alternative accommodation at 7-Kutchery Road opposite to the Sindh Chief Minister`s House.

As a boy I saw Altaf Uncle visit our house in Delhi and in Karachi. As I did my MA in international relations in 1962, my father wanted me to be a lawyer, while I wanted to be a journalist. He could have got me a job in Dawn but he refused.

One evening I ventured to barge into Altaf Uncle`s Bhurgari Road bungalow.

He was surprised to see me alone. He asked me why I was not with my father. I told him that I wanted to be a journalist and he wanted me to be a lawyer. He tried to dissuade me and instead advised me to take the Central Superior Services exam and offered to groom me for it. That is when I learnt that he had been an educationist and civil servant too.

When I insisted on becoming a journalist, Altaf Unclereluctantly conceded and asked me to see him the next morning in Dawn`s office in New Chali, and, lo and behold, my appointment letter as an apprentice sub-editor was ready with his secretary with a salary of Rs 250 per month. I was just 21 and all those in Dawn were silver-haired seniors, minding their own business.

Meanwhile, as the Jang group was launching an evening paper, Daily News, I was advised by my friends that I would have better opportunities to learn and progress there. So I opted for Daily News, the editor being Shamim Ahmed. Others included, besides present editor S.M. Fazal, legendary fighter for press freedom Zamir Niazi, Suleman Meenai, Khawja Ibtisam Ahmed and journalist and author Muhammad Ali Siddiqi. And as my good fortune would have it, I became the youngest editor of a newspaper at age 28 and never looked back.• The writer is a journalist and was Pakistan`s High Commissioner in Britain.