Fatima Sughra Begum


Fatima Sughra Begum, garnered fame as a teenager, when at age 14 in 1947, she ripped down the Union Jack from the Shikarpur, Sindh Civil Secretariat and replaced it with the All-India [Muslim League] flag. 
According to her own account, "When I took down the British flag and replaced it with our Muslim League one, I don't think I really knew what I was doing. It wasn't planned. I was rebellious at that age, 14, and it seemed like a good idea. I was not prepared for it to become such a big symbol of independence. They even gave me a Gold Medal for Services to Pakistan. I was the first ever to receive one.".
She received a gold medal and a Life Achievement Award, from, respectively, the Pakistan Movements Workers Trust and the Government of Pakistan.

Death

Fatima Sughra Begum died on 25 September 2017 and was laid to rest at Miani Sahib graveyard in her native Lahore.

Conflation

Due to the similarity of her name to that of Sughra Begum, Lady Hidayatullah,—the wife of diplomat and activist Sir Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah, a prominent Sindhi political leader—the latter woman, who was almost thirty years older than Fatima, and presumably present at the same event, was conflated in certain elements of the media as the author of the Union Jack removal from the Civil Secretariat Lahore in 1947.