 Tahira was the daughter of Punjabi feudal landlord and Unionist Party (Punjab) politician Sikander Hayat Khan who had also served as provincial prime minister of Punjab in British India from 1937 to 1942.After their marriage, Tahira stayed active socially and politically and was publicly known as Tahira Mazhar Ali.In the 1960s and 1970s, their son Tariq Ali (born in 1943) also became well- known as a British-Pakistani writer and a political activist with a socialist and communist viewpoint.