Agha Shaukat Ali

Agha Shaukat Ali (1919 – 19 March 2013) was a civil servant-turned-politician in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, British Indian Empire. He served as the General Secretary of the Muslim Conference party in the years preceding the Partition of India. Having migrated to Pakistan after the partition, he served as a civil servant, and diplomat.

Family background Agha Shaukat Ali was born in the aristocratic Zaffar Afghan Agha Qızılbash family with Turkic origins in Srinagar in 1919. The family belonged to the military Qizilbash aristocracy which had migrated from Kandahar, Afghanistan in the early 19th century and since then held offices of royal physicians, ministers and courtiers to the Dogra dynasty.

His mother, Begum Zaffar Ali, an educationist and legislator, was the first woman matriculate of Kashmir. His maternal grandfather, Khan Bahadur Aga Syed Hussain, then Governor and later Home and Judicial Minister in the princely state, was the first matriculate of Kashmir.

Civil service in Pakistan After Jinnah's death, Shaukat Ali was expelled from the Muslim Conference. He later received assignments in the Central Services of Pakistan. His wife Mussarat Nizamuddin died in the 1990s. His son Agha Shehryar had died earlier. He was survived by three other children: son Agha Azhar Ali and two daughters Tehmina Khan and Rabia Ali. They reside in the United States.

Works Modernization of Soviet Central Asia, 1964. The New Wave: A Muslim Reply to the New World Order, 1992.