Atiqa Bano

Atiqa Bano (Behan Ji) (1940 – 4 October 2017) was an Indian educationist and activist for the artistic and cultural heritage of Kashmir. She established and curated the Meeras Mahal, a private museum of history and art at Highland Colony, Sopore in Baramulla Kashmir.

Atiqa Bano died of cancer on 4 October 2017 in Sopore, aged 77.

Part of Bano's career as schools inspector entailed travel across the state. Encountering the diversity of material culture in Kashmir, she thought of establishing a Museum. After retirement, she began then to collect historical and cultural artefacts, especially traditional ware and old manuscripts. Initially she housed them in a derelict hostel building that was part of a college of education that her family owned. In 2001, she set up the Meeras Mahal, a heritage museum.

In the 1970s, Bano established the Majlis-un-Nisa, an organisation for women's welfare, helping them to achieve financial independence. Part of this was a centre that trained women in sewing skills, which was set up in building she owned that would later also house her museum of Kashmiri heritage. The organisation also instructed Women in Calligraphy and the teaching of the Qur'an.

Atiqa Bano started her career in 1958 as a teacher. She became a schools inspector seven years later. In 1977 she was made Chief Education Officer. In 1994, she became a joint director of school education for the state of Jammu and Kashmir. She retired as the state director of Libraries and Research in 1999.

Atiqa Bano was born in 1940 in Sopore in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. Her father, Molvi Mohammad Yasin Masoodi, was a freedom fighter. He died when she was a few months old, and she was brought up by her mother.