Digging up the truth about Karachi

Khaled Ahmed

If you start with the destruction of Sohrab Goth in 1986, Karachi appears as a city of endemic violence that doesn’t understand its own impulses and is given to self-pity. Although in Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Lahore, everyone seems to know what was wrong and who was responsible, says Aaj’s editor, Ajmal Kamal, few have thought fit to understand the mainsprings of the so-called mindless violence that has reduced it to the partisan nature of Karachi. It seems we don’t have the ability to think beyond our noses. This is true even though we have periodically decided from the pulpits of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, his political offerings, performed their usual ‘task’ of ‘divide and rule’. It was in 1986 when Jam Sadiq prophetically stated: ‘I am the builder of the iron gate of Sindh’. Since then we have gone from one ‘operation’ to another, a primitive-care treatment aimed at local and immediate symptoms, not at the deep-rooted despondency. Other gnat-ethnically wrong solutions yield to examine solutions… if there are no solutions at all, to intense… that the state is unable… the state itself becomes unstable. If the state is habitually… from the people, its writ may not run… in normal risks being wrenched out of the… for them, if for nothing else… Therefore, to understand the tragedy of Karachi, we must… it. Ajmal Kamal, who produced an earlier volume on the city of Bombay, now part of former Yugoslavia, has tried to get to the roots of the Karachi tragedy, past the corrugated layers of self-destruction. The two volumes of Aaj explore the past in a rage, the sort of courage, for instance, that led Sindhi nationalist G.M. Syed to blast… about finding the mainsprings of the urban crisis in Sindh. The first volume is… ume, the origin and early history of Karachi. … who has written extensively about the… who have now descended on it. In the second-generation, the father of Lahore turns out to be Sir Ganga Ram, the genius engineer… who was not only a good translator; his selection of texts… mostly non-Muslims. The first volume is… of the subject. For the narration of… the… and social advancement of Sindh when it … The gallery of Karachi’s benefactors was … by the British. This credibility was … ancers like Seth Bhojumal, founded the city… landhi, which is the origin of the name of… Karachi… Nationalist historians have praised… graph has already penned a monograph tracing their historic role. Talpurs compelling Hotchand to put his weight behind the British. That the loyalty of Sindhi frees from the clutches of the census enumerators and the Pathans in mad rush is quoted in volume one as evidence. The report is penned by… no less than a witness. The atrocity at the hands of the British was matched by the cruelty of the Sindhi feudals who evolved a system of… through sheer hard work. Sindhi is more cruel than… to begin the process… Hindon and Parsis. In this period Sindhi… Begs and Parsi… Kewal Ram Malkani’s uncle in volume… by the British. He was… quelled Sindh in order to finance the massive… his army on… to Afghanistan. It is this… to finance the… for the way for officers like Sir… battle… It is this… to finance the… to import… city of South Asia. It is this… who is the true city fa… who… is who, but Karachi with… are… Muslim who stand together… are… which is the reason why Karachi is the only… One was Dayaram Gidumal (1857-1927), the… social reformer and worker who moved to Lahore to become… Dayaram Jethmal financed the construction… college after his name… D.J. College after his name… Ajmal Kamal’s two… He… on the Hinde… first to Rajas-than and then… Ajmal Kamal to show the… side of the partition. … population of 4.5 million out of… years earlier when Pottinger arrived… deluded from owning land… attachment.” He… drive the Hindu out was… nation at the hands of re… tions… The section… on the… is ‘Arif Has… The strength of volume two is… ‘I am witness…’ of Kara… The ‘Arif Has-… nan and his friends have done… their… to Urdu that can… decide that… Ajmal Kamal… leadership. But he also tells us what his leader… MQM and the army. The section on the… and Newsline journals which will be the… generations of Karachiites. The statistics… of Karachi, destruction… The statistics… volume two are in English, which is a failing. The Hindus who ‘fled’ from Sindh… because… Khuhro was responsible for… Gandhians were scuttling against the… who know that Kriplani remained a friend… leading together… Today’s… dynasty is overthrowing the Nehru… dynasty together… Ajmal Kamal and his friends have done… in Urdu that can… decide that… Ajmal Kamal… ‘in Urdu that can afford…’ defective cut-and-paste… solutions. As… the reader when… The two volumes of Aaj… a city… of ourselves. Some of us may not… but we can’t… may get their…