[Photograph of Riasat Ali Khan at a SANSAD event]

Photograph of Riasat Ali Khan addressing the audience at an event organized by the South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD). The event was called The 50th Year: Looking Back; Looking Forward, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the independence of India from colonial rule.

Riasat Ali Khan was born in India, but his family shifted to Pakistan after independence. Khan immigrated to Canada in 1959, working in the correctional services. Khan was a prominent leader of the Pakistani-Canadian community in Vancouver, British Columbia (B.C.). Khan was the founder of the Pakistan-Canada Association, which opened the first mosque in 1963, the Al Jamia Masjid in Vancouver, B.C. He served as the head of the B.C. Immigrant Services Society. Khan was also a board member of the B.C. Cancer Society and a delegate to the Committee for Racial Justice.

The South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD) is an organization of the South Asian diaspora based in British Columbia, Canada. It comprises people with origin in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The mission of SANSAD is to develop a secular democratic South Asian diaspora in Canada. SANSAD has grown out of a North American organization, called Non-Resident Indians for Secularism and Democracy (NRISAD) that was established in 1993. The Vancouver branch of the organization recognized through its practice that the concerns of NRISAD in regard to minorities and human rights were not specifically Indian but South Asian and had to be reformulated for the South Asian diaspora as a whole. This was realized with the formation of SANSAD in Vancouver in 2000.