Habib Jalib recited “Dastoor” for the first time in 1962, at a public gathering in Lahore, as a direct response to General Ayub Khan’s new constitution. The Radio Pakistan authorities removed his voice from the airwaves. PTV, whose predecessor Pakistan Television launched in 1964, placed him on a blacklist that remained operative into the Zia era. Under General Zia ul-Haq, Jalib was detained multiple times: in 1976, three days after the death of his twelve-year-old son, law enforcement surrounded his house in Hyderabad and arrested him in what became known as the Hyderabad Conspiracy Case, alongside Khan Abdul Wali Khan, Mir Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo, Attaullah Mengal, and Khair Bakhsh Marri. He was held without trial. He died on March 13, 1993, in Lahore, without regular income, without a pension, without a permanent address he owned. He was buried in Shah Fareed Graveyard, Sabzazar. The state that imprisoned him gave him the Nishan-e-Imtiaz posthumously in 2009.
