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Najma Sadeque

Pakistani journalist, feminist, human rights activist

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ23563256 ↗
Source-derived summary

Najma Sadeque (1943 – 8 January 2015) from Pakistan was a leading woman journalist, author, human rights activist, particularly of women's rights, an artist, environmentalist, and painter. She also did research on socioeconomic issues and authored many books and wrote articles. She co-founded Shirkat Gah in 1975, a women's NGO to highlight human rights violations against women. She also co-founded the Women’s Action Forum (WAF), Pakistan.

Biography

Sadeque was born in 1943 in Bengal, British India and was brought up in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in an atmosphere of land farming which dictated her future thinking. She studied at the Viqarunnisa Noon School and College in Dhaka and was known for her special skill in writing in English. After her marriage she moved to Karachi where she initially worked as a copywriter for an advertising agency. When she was 19 she held her first exhibition of paintings in Karachi.

Sadeque started working as a journalist for several newspapers, initially with Dawn and then worked for The News and The News International.

In 1975, perturbed by the extent of human rights violations in her country, Sadeque, along with seven others, established an NGO called Shirkat Gah.

Editorial summary

“Najma Sadeque” enters the record as pakistani journalist, feminist, human rights activist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Najma, Sadeque and Pakistani can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1943, 2015, 1975—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1945. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Najma, Sadeque and Pakistani.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Najma Sadeque” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Najma, Sadeque and Pakistani provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q23563256. VIAF identifies the subject as 38818542. The Library of Congress control number is n2006221080. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1943, 2015 and 1975.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Najma Sadeque”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Najma Sadeque primary sources, Najma Sadeque archive and Najma research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Najma Sadeque” 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.