Asad Rahim Khan

Asad Rahim Khan (born 1990) is a Pakistani barrister, constitutional lawyer and writer. He was involved in drafting the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan, merging the Federally Administered Tribal Areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He teaches constitutional law at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, and writes columns for Dawn.

Early life

Rahim was born in Lahore, Pakistan. He graduated from the London School of Economics with a Bachelor of Laws in 2012, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn.

Career

Legal career

Rahim served as law clerk to Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah at the Lahore High Court, before joining the Office of the Attorney-General in 2016. He was part of the federation's legal team before the Supreme Court in the Panama Papers and lifetime electoral disqualification cases. In 2018, he advocated that the attorney-general's office oppose the judgment of the Sindh High Court acquitting Shahrukh Jatoi in the Shahzeb Khan murder case, in a petition moved before the Supreme Court by social activist Jibran Nasir.

Rahim returned to private practice in 2019 as a partner at Ashtar Ali LLP. He was appointed to the prime minister's working group of experts on international investment treaty reforms in 2020. He represented Punjab's restored local government before the Lahore High Court, arguing for the completion of their full tenure in Punjab.

Twenty-Fifth Amendment

Rahim was part of the Attorney-General's committee that drafted the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Supporting a full merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas with the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Rahim wrote that such a merger would extend basic citizenship rights to millions of people for the first time since decolonization, and also abolish the colonial-era Frontier Crimes Regulations that allowed for collective punishment of tribespeople. He opposed more gradual measures short of merger, including the Rewaj Act.

Views

Rahim was a weekly columnist for The Express Tribune from 2013 to 2016, before moving to Dawn in 2017. He was also cohost of current affairs programme Do Raaye on Dawn News alongside satirical commentator and columnist Fasi Zaka, which aired from 2016 to 2021. In 2020, Rahim turned down an invitation to right-wing Indian television anchor Arnab Goswami's show on Republic TV, replying, "If I wanted to hear a fascist lunatic scream for war for an hour, I would listen to Joseph Goebbels's old speeches".

Jinnah

In a long essay published in Dawn on 14 August 2023, Pakistan's 75th independence anniversary, Rahim rebutted historian Ayesha Jalal's thesis that the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, did not seek Partition or a separate state, referring to Jinnah's speeches, statements, and private correspondence, as well as the papers of colonial officials. Indian politician Shashi Tharoor critiqued Rahim's argument that Jinnah was not at fault for seeking Partition, as the telling of "Pakistani liberals" that thought that Jinnah, who had once been hailed "as the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, was blameless."