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REVIEW BY MUHAMMAD ALI SIDDIQI
Karachi and its charisma
AAJ (Karachi ki Kahani); In Urdu; Vol 1 439 pages; Vol II 412 pages, price Rs 100 each; compiled by Ajmal Kamal; Editor Zeenat Hissam, published by Aaj ki Kitabain; A-16, Safari Heights, Block 15, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Karachi 75290; phone 811 3474; e-mail aaj@biruni.erum.com.pk
T told this is the story of Karachi in all its comprehensiveness from every possible angle. The tellers are many, some of them luminaries, and represent the type that has, or ever had, a stake in this city. That means the tellers, actually scribes, are Sindhis Hindu and Muslim, Parsis and Britons, and, yes, Mohajirs, and their cultural allies, Punjabis. Karachi would not be what it is without all of them.
To those tales richness and substance come from a carefully worked-out scheme that ensures adequate representation to all races, cultures, languages and reli gions that have ve left left an an im imprint on Karachi. The credit The credit for this narratory bal ance goes to the husband-wife team of Ajmal Kamal and Zeenat Hissam, whose choice of subjects covers virtually every phase of Karachi’s history.
There is neither too much of history, nor too much of the immediate past, nor too much of the present. There is, instead, a remarkable blend of the three.
That equidistance in time holds good for the narrators, too, for you have nei ther too many historians, nor too many politicians, nor too many social workers a very proportioned selection of memoirs, arti-cles, narratives, interviews, etc. from dead or alive, to give the reader as complete a picture as possible of the city’s evolution from its humble origin to its present status as one of the world’s biggest cities.
In the process, the reader stumbles. upon the writings of, or about those who have dwelled in Karachi in the three cen-turies that matter from eighteenth-cen tury Hindu merchants, 19th century British freebooters, 20th century civic managers, pre-partition and post-ind post-indepen dence politicians and men of letters, to sociologists and technocrats that belong in the 21st.
The result is a compendium on Karachi and Sindh on Karachi at least if not on Sindh. Hundred years hence, when all of of would long dead, this two-volume compilation would be be a much sought-after source of basic information about this city.
The book shames us, for how little we know about Karachi. Non-Sindhis, espe cially, have very wrong notions, based mostly on prejudice, about the nature of the Hindu Muslim relationship in Sindh.
Contrary to popular beliefs, the Sindhi Hindus were a downtrodden lot: they were not allowed to ride a horse, could not own land, sound bells in their tem ples, or keep idols. A century of British rule had transformed the situation, for at the time of partition the Hindus were owners of 40 per cent of Sindh’s agricul-tural land, and another 40 per cent was mortgaged to them.
Brutalisation of society, nov iety, now in ample evidence, was perhaps begun by the British when they made a public demon stration of executions, for the “rebels” of the 1857 “mutiny” were cannon-mouthed in Aram Bagh.
But let us not jump time, lest we escape the saga involved in the city’s evolution from Kolachi and Kurrachee to the pre sent-day megalopolis that is modern Karachi,
Those who tell us about Karachi’s ori gin in the eighteenth century and its
expansion in the nineteenth are Naomal Hotchand, John Brunton, K. R. Malkani, Abdul Hameed Sheikh (in the context of the goths), and Arif Hasan. But the treat ment of the subject in each case differs.
All except Naomal Hotchand wrote in English, and seem to be more or less unanimous on Karachi’s origin near Kharak in (circa) 1729; the extension of the Talpur rule to the fishing village; how Meethadar and Kharadar came into being (the former had a well with fresh water, the other one, close to the sea, had brack ish water); the enclosing of the city within a wall; the bombardment of the city by the British in 1839, its surrender by the Talpurs, Napier’s “sin” in 1843, the devel opment of harbour and railway, the Parsi contribution to its civic refinement, and the social consequences of Sindh’s admin-istrative control from Bombay.
Hotchand’s story, translated from Sindhi into Urdu by Ajmal Kamal, is revealing. More or less, it conforms to the standard Hindu role during the British advance in South Asia. He makes no attempt to hide his hatred for Muslim rule, nor does he try to conceal his role as a British agent. But the British do stand out as great scoundrels a point ham-mered by Malkani, whose book The Story of Sindh was written after he migrated to India from Pakistan (he is now a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party).
A compendium on Karachi: a hundred years hence, this two-volume compila-tion will serve as a source of basic information about this megapolis
Napier, he says, was essentially a looter and had come to Sindh to amass one hun-dred thousand rupees so that he could marry his daughters off (p 77).
The most fascinating part of the first volume concerns “middle Karachi” if that is how we choose to describe the peri od between the late 19th and the early 20th century on the one hand and the emergence of Pakistan on the other. This it taken care of by Pir Ali Mohammad Räshdi, Nagindarnath Gupta, Lokram Dodija and Sohrab Katrak all translat ed from English, except the one by Rashdi, which was in Sindhi.
It is all about an idyll that has disap peared into history. While Katrak dwells more on the city’s civic development and captures some of life’s easy rhythm in a cosy, little Karachi, Rashdi’s work is more lively and many-faceted because of his insight into the social side of life in the well-organised and humane city that Karachi was.
The first car was owned by a Memon seth. When he drove it, pedestrians stopped and stood by in respect; feudal lords came to Karachi from the interior of Sindh to escape the summer’s heat and often caught cold; what is now PECHS was a hunting ground; with the exception of a few shops owned by Memons, the entire commercial activity in Saddar was in the hands of Britons, Hindus and Parsis (Pp 102-112).
A galaxy of writers gives political and historical sweep, besides literary flavour, to the two volumes: Sheikh Ayaz (extracts from his jail diary), Dr. Feroz Ahmad (a) research piece on Makranis, translated by Fahmida Riaz), Hatim Alvi and A.K. Brohi (both of whom contribute two of the four
pieces on the maker of modern Karachi, Jamshed Nusserwanjee), Mir Imdad Ali (who tells the truth while lampooning “Miss Karachi,” translated from Sindhi by Fahmida Riaz), Akhtar Hameed Khan, Asif Farrukhi, and Anita Ghulam Ali, who reminisces about the Karachi of her child-hood.
Before turn to Arif Hasan and Fahmida Riaz, let us note two remarkable pieces focusing on two localities: that by Hasan Manzar (25 North, 67 East) about the transformation Mauripur underwent between the late fifties, when he first experienced it, and when he returned 37 years later, and Toojan kay markaz mayn by Asad Mohammad Khan about Saddar. He speaks of a Saddar that was only a remnant of what Rashdi sawa Saddar of hookshops, India Coffee House, Georgе Cafe, and cinema houses, and that fast-vanishing breed that was an intrinsic part of Karachu’s cultural scene, the Goans.
Fahmida Riaz’s short story Karachi captures the city’s modern history and ethnic violence through uninhibited lan-guage and dialogue. Where needed, uman anatomy would find a mention. The characters belong to all communities and vomit prejudices. “When he said ‘the Pathans are the noblest people in the world, he actually meant the Pathans of Agra” (p 56 Volume II).
There is irony, bitterness and sarcasm
which all ethnic and religious chauvinists would find hard to swallow because of the blunt truth they contain. Language is beyond translation but here are central ideas of four sentences:
“…and an old prayer rug, on which our parents had prayed rayed without raising (the) blood-curdling slogans (now commonly heard in our society)” (p 26 Volume II).
“Mohajir lads born and bred in Karachi did not know that the th (Urdu-speaking) feudal lords and nawabs (in pre-partition India) had the same arrogance and man-nerism as Sindhi waderas” (p 36).
“By the time this God-gifted land had completed nearly half a century of exis tence, every nationality, except Punjabi, had been branded traitor and Indian agent. However, if a list is made of Punjabis declared traitors and Indian agents Faiz, Habib Jalib, Mazhar Ali Khan and Mian Iftikharuddin – it will be longer than the combined list of traitors and Indian agents from other nationali
ties” (p 45). And the earth split asunder, and four imps came out.
“What are you doing, old woman, in this spray of blood?” they asked. “Looking for a needle in this spray of blood.”
“What will you do with the needle – in this spray of blood?”
“I will sew a bag in this spray of blood!” “What will you do with the hag in this spray of blood?”
“I will keep money in this spray of blood, in this spray of blood, in this spray of blood” (p 62, Vol II).
Arif Hasan’s contribution consists of four pieces, all except one translated into Urdu by Ajmal. An architect with an
DAWN MAGAZINE Friday June 7, 1996
interest in sociology, Arif examines the issue from many angles. Also, he is the only one who dwells on the impact of the geographical changes in the Indus delta on the demographic and ethnic history of Sindh and Karachi, and deals at length. with the changes in architecture since the colonial days, the abandonment of “wind catchers,” the city’s semi-planned growth, the gross violation of basic norms of plan ning in the construction of highrise build-ings, the uncontrolled spread of squatters’ slums, and the disappearance of some of old Karachi’s humane traits, like water troughs for animals.
He laments Karachi’s environmental degradation and notes anomalies border-ing on the grotesque hospitals on thor oughfares, unauthorised warehouses and truck stands, powerful lobbies and mafia, and land price manipulation. “If the drug lobby does not control civic development directly, it indirectly finances develop-ment activities” (p 415). “Traders and shopkeepers sabotaged many vehicles-free zones and traffic schemes if they did not suit them” (p 414).
Packed with demographic data is his piece on the destruction of a small Baloch village that grew to become Sohrab Goth. Koochis also called Pavindas began its expansion, followed by Persian-speak-ing Afghan refugees, in whose wake came Pakhtoons, mostly Mahsuds and. Mohmonds. They were all peaceful people seeking an honourable living in Karachi but who suffered because of a small num ber of drug smugglers. He blames the fed-eral and Sindh administrations for thor oughly bungling the job, and pulling down. an illegal settlement in a way that evoked the residents’ anger and resulted in the Aligarh and Qasbah Colony massacre of 1986.
About kachchi abadis, Tasneem Siddiqi comes up with an entirely new theory: contrary to popular beliefs, they do not harbour criminals, terrorists, drug push-ers, illegal immigrants, or leftist revolu tionaries; instead, they keep the city going by providing skilled and semi-skilled workers: “drivers for sahebs, ayas for begum sahebs,” typists for companies, and workers for public transport, besides electricians, plumbers, masons and fore-men. There may be truth in this, but it seems a bit of an exaggeration when he says, “virtually every home is a workshop that sustains a family. He calls the kachchi abadis “the jugular vein of Karachi’s economic activity” (p 232, Vol II).
Asif Farrukhi and Mark Tully con-tribute readable pieces, while a sampling of Eeesa Nagri’s young men, mostly Punjabi Christians, in the form of inter-views throws light on the evolution of this slum in the heart of Karachi.
Ajmal and Zeenat contribute to the book in three ways: visualisation of the format; translations, and original writings. To Ajmal goes the credit of translating from Sindhi and English twenty pieces, while Zeenat’s account of a quiet and green Malir is full of biographical nostal gia. She presents Malir for what it is: an overgrown, partly prosperous slum caught between terrorists and the state’s coer-cive apparatus.
There is very little that one can say by way of a criticism of the book, except that, at places, the quality of translation leaves much to be desired. Also, there is need for including some historic pho tographs in the next edition. To enhance the book’s life, the publishers should think of coming out with a bound volume, with better quality paper.
Period maps and sociological data enhance the book’s value