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t was pure joy listening to Dr Arifa Syeda, who passed away last week, hold forth on anything, especially on questions of culture, history and language. She had an almost musical command over the spoken word, the kind of eloquence that drew listeners in, not through flamboyance or rhetoric, but through balance, precision and grace.
Her forte was the Urdu language. But it was not the easy play of a demagogue toying with words; it was something far more refined, the ability to find the perfect phrase for the idea, to express a sentiment with clarity and poise, and then to adorn it, gently, with the skill of a jeweller. Her style was effortless and unpretentious, never pompous or overwrought. She did not declaim or pontificate. Instead, she spoke with calm authority and intellectual ease, drawing on a lifetime of reading, reflection and education.
Her eloquence was grounded in knowledge. A keen student of literature, she also held a doctorate in history, which lent her discourse a rare depth and moral structure. She understood the hierarchy of human values and placed them in their proper order, guided not by ideology, but by compassion and reason.
As a teacher, Dr Arifa Syeda was exceptional. Once students had moved beyond the mesmerising fluency of her speech, they found a deeply humane vision at its heart. Her ideas were anchored in humanism and informed by the cultural and spiritual traditions of the land she belonged to. A native Urdu speaker who grew up in the Punjab, her sensibility blended the finesse of her linguistic heritage with the warmth and expansiveness of the Punjabi temperament.
Over the years, she held key academic and administrative positions. She headed several colleges, served as a member of the Punjab Public Service Commission and later chaired the Punjab Commission on the Status of Women. In every role, she stood for integrity, freedom of thought and inclusion.
She believed passionately in freedom of expression and in a society built on openness, not exclusion. This commitment was often tested. When the political tide turned towards greater ideological rigidity, when the idea of Pakistan risked narrowing into a straitjacket of moral and political conformity, Dr Arifa Syeda refused to bend. She faced the disapproval of those in power who sought to dictate what was right and what was wrong, but she stood her ground, articulating a vision of Pakistan that was plural, questioning and humane. To her students, she passed on the same message: that truth must never be silenced and that language, at its best, is a means of liberation.
Her influence extended beyond the classroom. When she joined the Department of Musicology at the National College of Arts, it was at the request of colleagues who wanted her to help students understand culture in its broadest sense, to see music not just as performance, but as part of the living fabric of South Asian identity. She was not a musician herself, but she understood how music, poetry and ritual shaped the soul of a people. Her perspective, coming from outside the field yet deeply attuned to its significance, was invaluable.
Later, she served on the NCA’s board and chaired several committees with characteristic wisdom and fairness. Colleagues remember her for her ability to mediate differing viewpoints, to bring clarity where others saw confusion and to remind everyone of the larger cultural purpose behind their work.
Like many gifted speakers, however, she wrote less than she might have. The demand for her to speak, to lecture, to address, to comment, was constant. Her audience wanted her voice more than her pen. Yet even in her limited writing, one finds the same precision, warmth and generosity that defined her speech.
Dr Arifa Syeda’s intellectual life was inseparable from her moral one. She believed that knowledge, like art, must serve to make us more human. Her understanding of language went beyond grammar or etymology; it was rooted in empathy, in the conviction that words carry the power to connect rather than divide.
Those who knew her recall conversations that lingered long after they ended, discussions on Ghalib and Iqbal, on Partition and the pain of displacement, on the evolving identity of Muslims in South Asia. She approached each subject with curiosity and care, weaving literary insight with historical awareness.
In her passing, Pakistan has lost a rare kind of intellectual: one who could bridge the past and present with elegance and who saw education not as a profession but as a moral calling. Her legacy lies not only in her students or her speeches but also in the values she embodied: curiosity, tolerance and a profound belief in the redemptive power of culture.
For those who heard her speak, that voice, measured, melodic and wise, will be hard to forget.
The writer is a Lahore-based culture critic.