Osman Samiuddin at Equator:
Just so we’re clear, the following is a fact. Not opinion, not a point of view, not a hot take. Fact. There is no Pakistani – male, female, dead, alive, real, imagined – as famous as Imran Khan. Every turn in a multifarious public life has abounded in fame, first as a cricket legend, then as a beloved philanthropist who built a cancer hospital for the poor, latterly as a maverick politician who swept to power promising reform, and now, as the sole occupant of a cell in Pakistan’s most notorious jail. So famous he’s been the subject of two death hoaxes – most recently in November, when he went unseen for so long that many concluded he had died.
There have been others with greater accomplishments. There may come others in the future. But in 78 years of Pakistan, in the pure currency of fame, of being known and recognised, of being talked about, of being the one Pakistani everyone can name, there is nobody beyond Imran. It holds even now, two years into the state’s attempts to erase him from public life.
More here.
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