Hanif Soldier
Pakistani politician

Muhammad Hanif Fareed Soldier (August 1936 - 4 July 1994) was a Pakistani politician and a founding member of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP).
Biography
Born in Hyderabad, Sindh, Soldier belonged to the Silawata Rajputana family. Due to financial constraints, he had to discontinue his education early in life. He initially ran a pan shop in Kotri before working at his uncle's cement shop in Karachi, where he got a contract with Valika Agency.
Soldier began his political career with his election as a Basic Democracy member in Ayub Khan's Convention Muslim League in 1960 and 1964. After aligning with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1967, Soldier became a prominent leader in the PPP, earning the nickname "chhota (little) Bhutto" due to his active participation in party meetings and rallies.
Despite losing the 1970 provincial elections, Soldier was elected as an MPA in 1977 from the same constituency amid a boycott by the Pakistan National Alliance. Following the imposition of martial law by General Zia-ul-Haq in 1977, Soldier was imprisoned.
In 1990, he was awarded a PPP ticket for the 1990 elections from Lyari, which he won. He served as the Minister for Haj-o-Auqaf in 1992 under Muzaffar Ali Shah's cabinet.
“Hanif Soldier” enters the record as pakistani politician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hanif, Soldier and Pakistani can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Hanif Soldier” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Hanif, Soldier and Pakistani provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q126179568. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1936, 1994, 1960 and 1964.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hanif Soldier” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.