For once the barons of print media have decided to recognize the role of Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, a man who stood up to pressures of the Unionist Party that was dominated by feudals of Punjab, the might of the British Raj and the intrigues of the Congress Party. He projected the cause of the Muslims of undivided India, when no one dared to do so. Maulana Zafar Alis contribution is immense because unlike those who filled the vacuum after partition, he had no financial incentives to pursue in his journalism career, but only sacrifices to offer. He waged a jihad through his pen when we were under occupation, but the same cannot be said about others who also played a vital role in pursuing journalism in the post-independence period. There were no assets left behind by Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, because the path that he chose to follow was not an easy one, where financers like Mohd Amin Piracha or Nawab Mamdot were not there to offer financial backing in the post-1947 era. Journalists like Hameed Nizami, Mir Khalil ur Rehman, the Haroon family could not have played their role, because they were not at the physical age at the time when Maulana Zafar Ali Khan stood up like a rock, in spite of the difficulties that he had to encounter. This recognition of the Maulana by APNS does not in any way belittle the role of those stalwarts whose contribution is immense in the road to what we can now claim to be an independent press, which has yet not come out of pressures of its commercial interests. For instance, Mr Majeed Nizami has played the role of an ideological heir of Hameed Nizami. TAHIR HASSAN, Lahore, May 1.