Ardeshir Cowasjee

Ardeshir Cowasjee (born 1926) () is a renowned newspaper columnist from Karachi, Sindh in Pakistan. His columns regularly appear in the country's oldest English newspaper Dawn. Recently a new blog (ardeshircowasjee.blogspot.com) has been started with the view of accumulating the bulk of ardeshir's articles. His work is translated and published in Urdu press.

He is also Chairman of the Cowasjee Group and is engaged in philanthropic activities apart from being regarded as an old 'guardian' of the city of Karachi.

Biography

Ardeshir Cowasjee was born in 1926 at Karachi and hails from the well-known Cowasjee Parsi (Zoroastrian ) family. His father Rustom Fakirjee Cowasjee was a businessman in merchant shipping. Ardeshir attended the Bai Virbaiji Soparivala Parsi High School (BVS) and graduated from DJ Science College, Karachi. Later, he joined his father's business, the Cowasjee Group, and married Nancy Dinshaw in 1953. He has two children, Ava (daughter) and Rustom (son).

Career

Cowasjee was appointed by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as Managing Director of Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) in 1973 but was jailed for 72 days in 1976 by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto for which no explanation has been given to date; it is said that Prime Minister Bhutto did that to rein Cowasjee because the latter was becoming increasingly vocal about Bhutto's authoritarian ways. Cowasjee subsequently started writing letters to the editor of Dawn Newspaper, which led him to become...
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