There is a particular kind of forgetting that afflicts minority communities under pressure. It is not the forgetting of facts — dates, names, institutions can all be recovered from records. It is the forgetting of atmosphere: the texture of how a community felt its way through a crisis, the small human gestures that made survival into something more than mere endurance. I have come to believe that this second kind of forgetting is the more dangerous one, because it erases not what happened but what was possible. I write this account, in part, to resist that erasure — and because I believe the Multan Diocese’s experiment with Nazir Qaisar offers Pakistan’s Christian community, and indeed religious minorities everywhere, a model worth remembering at a moment when minority institutions across the region are once again under strain.

I first met Nazir Qaisar at a women’s rally held in Lahore to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Fellowship of the Least Coin. I remember the occasion with warmth because he made an immediate impression on me: he was courteous, gentle in manner, simple in his bearing, and refined in speech. In our brief conversation, I also sensed the grace of a true poet. I was told by the Revd. Samuel Prithvi Ram that Nazir had already received recognition for his poetry, including a distinction for his collection Zaitoon ki Patti. I congratulated him on such a fine achievement at a comparatively young age.

The Fellowship of the Least Coin itself had a special significance for Christian women across Asia. It had begun as an ecumenical movement of prayer, gratitude, and practical sharing, encouraging women to set aside a small coin in thanksgiving and to use these offerings to serve others. In 1980, when member countries of the Asian Church Women’s Conference were invited to mark the movement’s silver jubilee in their own settings, I represented Pakistan. I wanted the celebration in our country to carry something memorable, something that would not merely decorate an event but would deepen its meaning and strengthen unity among women in our churches. I therefore began looking for someone who could write a special song for the occasion, and that search led me to Nazir Qaisar.

We planned the celebration at Kot Lakhpat in Lahore. I invited the Revd. Samuel Prithvi Ram, and he in turn brought Nazir with him. The song Nazir wrote had the quality of an anthem. It spoke not only to the gathering itself, but also to women’s dignity, courage and hope in the face of oppression. Its words carried aspiration and movement — a vow to raise the banner of womanhood before the world and help bring in a new age. Even then, it was clear to me that Nazir’s poetry was not written for ornament alone. It carried moral energy.

“We shall raise the banner of our womanhood before the world, and we shall help bring a new age.” From Nazir Qaisar’s 1980 silver jubilee anthem

An Unusual Invitation

At that time, Nazir was working in Lahore as an editor at Nirali Kitabein. It was there, in his office, that Bishop John Victor Samuel of the Multan Diocese met him and invited him to come to Multan. The invitation was an unusual one. The bishop did not ask him to come as a clergyman, a teacher in the ordinary sense, or an administrator. He asked him to come as a poet.

That request reveals something important about Bishop John Victor Samuel’s imagination and his concern for the life of the Church. The period was one of change, uncertainty and loss. The Church in Pakistan, like many Christian institutions in the country, had been shaken by the nationalisation policies introduced in the early 1970s under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Mission schools, which had for decades served as centres of educational excellence and as points of daily contact between communities, were taken over by the state. The policy affected many Christian institutions and caused widespread anxiety, particularly among minority communities who feared not only the loss of jobs but also the erosion of a heritage of service and identity.

For dioceses such as Multan, this was not an abstract political matter. It changed everyday life. Bishop Samuel understood that the crisis was not only institutional. It was emotional, social and spiritual. People felt dispossessed. They feared the future. The old missionary era was fading, and the Church had to learn how to stand on national realities and national resources. The bishop seems to have felt that in such a moment, poetry might do what administration alone could not do — awaken the imagination, stir courage, restore language to the wounded, and draw young people towards hope.

I want to dwell on this insight for a moment, because I think it is too easily passed over. It is tempting, when a minority institution loses a school, a hospital, or a piece of land, to respond only in the register of policy: petitions, appeals, legal recourse, diplomatic pressure. These responses are necessary, and the Church pursued them where it could. But Bishop Samuel grasped something that policy alone cannot supply — that a community stripped of its institutions can still be rich in spirit, provided someone is willing to tend to that spirit directly. This is, I think, the most underappreciated lesson of the Multan years: that cultural and spiritual renewal is not a luxury to be addressed after material security is restored. It is often the very thing that allows a community to endure the wait for material security at all.

His experience in wider ecumenical circles, including involvement with the Christian Conference of Asia, had given him a larger horizon and shaped his conviction that the Church must respond creatively to changing times rather than merely mourn what had been lost. When the Bishop approached Nazir, the poet’s first response was direct and understandable: “I am a poet, and I write poems, so what will I do in the Diocese of Multan?” It was an honest question. A poet in a rural diocese was not a familiar role. Yet the Bishop had approached the right person.

A Difficult First Meeting

Nazir entered the diocese at precisely this point of crisis, arriving with his young family in early 1981. As far as I can recall, there had been little advanced explanation in the diocese of who he was or what exactly he had come to do. Accommodation was arranged for him within the Cathedral compound. Yet the deeper meaning of his appointment would only emerge gradually, and not without misunderstanding.

About two months after his arrival, a diocesan meeting was held. One of his earliest pieces, as I remember it, was a setting of the Lord’s Prayer in song, for which Mr. Anwar helped to create the tune. At the opening devotion of the diocesan council, Bishop Samuel concluded the prayer, and immediately a choir of young people under Nazir’s guidance began to sing. The effect was unforgettable. It felt as though the prayer had descended upon the gathering with unusual tenderness. The atmosphere grew still. For a moment, there was deep quiet and calm.

After the devotion, the bishop formally introduced Nazir and invited him to speak about how he hoped to bring awakening to the diocese. The response was not uniformly favourable. Two of the older clergy, as I remember, walked out in anger, and a few others followed. It may have been that they felt threatened in their traditional understanding of ministry, or that the bishop was moving in a direction too unfamiliar.

Nazir’s own response in that moment taught me a lot about his character. He did not react with wounded pride or argument. He quietly withdrew and sat outside. The bishop adjourned the meeting and tried to speak calmly with those who had left, although they were not ready to explain themselves fully. He then went to Nazir and asked him to return and say a few words that might reassure the gathering.

When the session resumed, Nazir spoke with remarkable grace. He made it plain that he had come not to undermine the faith or to challenge the authority of pastors, but to serve the people in the spirit of Christ, with love, understanding, respect and care. His speech was courteous, humble and deeply conciliatory. It changed the atmosphere. People began to receive him with warmth, and the younger members especially welcomed him gladly.

I have thought often, in the years since, about what that walkout represented, and I do not think it should be dismissed simply as resistance to change. The clergy who left the room were not wrong to feel that something unfamiliar was entering their world. Institutions under siege tend to close ranks around what they know; novelty can feel like one more threat in a season already full of threats. What strikes me, looking back, is not that some resisted, but that the bishop refused to let that resistance have the last word. He did not overrule his clergy by decree, nor did he abandon Nazir to placate them. He created space for both grievance and reconciliation to be spoken aloud in the same room. That, too, was a form of pastoral courage — perhaps a rarer one than the courage of bringing in the poet to begin with.

Songs for a New Age

What particularly mattered in Multan was that poetry spoke to the young. Nazir had the gift of drawing children and youth not merely to listen but to participate. His calm personality, his friendly manner, and the attractiveness of his songs and language made him accessible. Young people accepted him almost as an elder brother — no small thing in a time of fear and transition, when trust is often the true beginning of renewal.

Nazir was not writing in isolation from diocesan concerns. He told me that before composing many of his poems, he and the bishop would discuss the issues facing the diocese — despair after institutional loss, the need for education, the awakening of youth, rural poverty, injustice by landlords, exploitation of poor farmers, communal misunderstanding, and the longing for peace and reconciliation. His work tried to reach people at these points of pain and possibility.

Many activities grew out of this vision: youth camps in Khanewal where students received both academic help and talks on responsibility and social awareness; visits to rural churches; workshops and worship events; and dramatic performances such as Dharti Piasi Hai, written by Mr Qayyum Bhatti of the Rural Development Programme, which spoke so directly to village life that audiences recognised their own circumstances within it.

Among the most remarkable initiatives was a seminar at St Mary’s Cathedral in Multan on “The Face of Man in Urdu Literature,” attended by both Muslim and Christian participants, alongside an exhibition of paintings by Zawar Hussain. It created a respectful space where people from different communities could meet through literature and art — especially significant in a country where interfaith relations have often required careful, patient work.

I raise this seminar deliberately, because I think it cuts against a narrative that has, in recent years, become too comfortable in how Pakistan’s Christian minority is discussed — the narrative of a community defined solely by its vulnerability, existing only in relation to the threats arrayed against it. That narrative is not false; the dangers minority communities face in Pakistan are real and well documented, and I do not minimise them. But it is incomplete. The Multan seminar shows a different posture entirely: a minority community confident enough in its own cultural resources to host a literary conversation, to invite its Muslim neighbours into a shared room, and to let art rather than grievance set the terms of the encounter. I believe this is the posture religious minorities should aspire to wherever they can sustain it — not naive about danger, but not defined by it either.

Among the enduring outcomes of this period was the creation of songs later known as Naye Ahd ke Geet — Songs for a New Age. The title itself expresses the spirit of the time: songs for people trying to cross from fear to courage, from darkness to light, from passivity to responsible action. They did not deny suffering, but they refused to remain under it.

“These were songs for people trying to cross from fear to courage, from darkness to light, from passivity to responsible action.” On the legacy of Naye Ahd ke Geet

Light Carried in Young Hands

One Sunday at St Mary’s Cathedral in Multan, a candlelight service was arranged by the students under Nazir’s preparation. The pastors were present, and the songs, all shaped around the theme of light, were sung with deep feeling. At the close, the students came out of the Cathedral carrying candles, singing that they would light the lamps and spread light throughout the whole world.

It was a moment of symbolism, certainly, but also more than symbolism. It suggested that the young had begun to understand themselves as bearers of humility, honesty, justice, peace, love, faith, hope and courage. That image remains with me. It seems to gather into one scene the whole purpose of Nazir’s work in the Multan Diocese — helping people carry light, through song, through worship, through thought, through community, and through awakened responsibility.

His contribution also needs to be seen in the wider arc of Pakistani Christian literary history. Nazir Qaisar would later be recognised not only as a diocesan worker or lyricist, but as an important Urdu poet whose Christian voice enriched Pakistani letters. Yet what he did in Multan reveals something especially precious: here, his poetry was not only published or admired but also inhabited. It entered prayer, youth work, development, education and intercommunal encounters.

A Diocese That Learned to Imagine Itself Differently

If I were to describe his service in one phrase, I would say that he helped the diocese imagine itself differently. He helped people see that Christian witness in Pakistan could be at once faithful, culturally rooted, artistically alive and socially responsive. He helped young people believe that their voices mattered. He helped communities sing hope at a time when many could easily have settled for silence.

For that reason, I believe Bishop John Victor Samuel’s instinct was right. He saw in Nazir not merely a talented writer, but a person through whom the diocese might be stirred to renewal. And Nazir, for his part, honoured that trust.

Why This Memory Still Matters

I am aware that an account of one diocese’s response to a policy reversal more than four decades ago may seem, to some readers, a matter of antiquarian interest rather than present concern. I would argue the opposite. Minority communities across this region continue to face the same fundamental question Bishop Samuel faced in 1981: how does a community sustain its identity and its morale when the institutions that once anchored it are taken away, restricted, or placed under pressure? The instinct to retreat — to become smaller, quieter, more defensive — is understandable and, in the short term, sometimes necessary. But it is not, on its own, a strategy for survival across generations. What Multan demonstrated is that a minority community can answer institutional loss with cultural and spiritual investment, and that such investment is not a distraction from the harder work of advocacy and legal protection, but a companion to it.

This is, I recognise, a minority view even within Christian circles, where the temptation to measure a community’s health purely in terms of buildings recovered, policies changed, or seats secured is strong and not without justification. I do not dismiss that work; much of my own life has been devoted to advocacy on behalf of women and children who depend on exactly those institutional protections. But institutions, once lost, are not always quickly regained, and a community cannot simply wait in suspended animation for restitution. It needs, in the meantime, a reason to keep singing. That is what Nazir Qaisar gave to Multan, and it is what I believe deserves to be remembered and, where possible, deliberately reproduced — not as nostalgia, but as a genuine model of resilience.

Looking back now, I remain grateful that I witnessed those years — the songs, the gatherings, the youth, the discussions, the experiments, the hesitations and the joys. That light still seems to me the truest image of Nazir Qaisar’s time in the Multan Diocese. He came as a poet. He served as an awakener of hearts. And in a period when the Church might easily have turned inward in fear, he helped it sing its way towards courage. I offer this account in the hope that some other community, somewhere, facing its own version of that same fear, might find in it a usable memory.