The Fading Footsteps of History

Solomon David Road, Ali Budha Street and Shivadas Street lie parallel to each other off Barnes Street in Ranchore Line, Karachi. More than street names, they offer a glimpse into Karachi’s history – a religiously and ethnically diverse community. The inner city of Karachi is filled with intriguing street names – Hindu, Jewish, Goanese, Parsi, Muslim, or British – and streets with trade names such as Tailor Street, Chaba Gali and Weaver Lane.  

Today, while postal addresses carry the names of streets, most people are oblivious of who these streets were named after. Pre-partition directories, the ghosts of Raj-era buildings, now hidden by a tangle of wires and shop signs, old photographs of the city and accounts of Partition migrants sleeping on the pavements of Bunder Road are emblems of an erased and disintegrating past.

Architect Yasmin Lari placed heritage plaques on some key buildings of Karachi. A list of 426 heritage buildings has been identified by the government of Sindh. Scholars such as Arif Hasan and Kaleemullah Lashari, blogger Farooq Soomro (Karachiwalla), the Sunday Super Savari heritage tour and the many Facebook pages, where old photographs are shared, honour the heritage buildings but, beyond a few anecdotes, little is known about the people who lived in them.

Even the buildings from early years after independence, the Irani cafes, coffee houses, the old bookshops, the many cinema houses and restaurants are fading from memory. Stories of Peshawer’s Qissa Khwani Bazaar, Shikarpur’s Dhak Bazaar, Lahore’s Walled City and Multan’s Hussain Agahi are rarely heard of. What was Karachi like when Abdullah Shah Ghazi arrived in the eighth century? What did he experience when the Arab governor of Sindh hid him for four years in a Raja’s coastal riyasat (estate) to protect him from being arrested by the Khalifa Mansur?

Old maps of the Indus region made by the Greeks and the Arabs have strange unfamiliar names, as do accounts of travellers such as Ibn Batuta, Xuanzang, Hiuen Tsang, Fa Hien and Al Beruni. Augustine Monks, from the time of Shah Jehan, described an exotic Mughal Lahore and a thriving cosmopolitan Thatta. Bhambhore, Debal, Patala, Lahori Bandar were once key ports, stand now in ruins or are completely obliterated.  Barbarikon, at or near Karachi, was the trading port of the Indus branch of the Silk Route. One wonders what treasures marine archaeology would reveal.   

Most of Mohenjodaro, Harappa and Mehrgarh lie buried under millennia of soil. An incongruous hillock at Sehwan turns out to be a Greek Fort, which even had skeletons of fallen soldiers. Gul Hasan Kalmati, a researcher, historian and anthropologist, discovered a number of dolmens or stone pillars and stone circles just outside Karachi and in interior Sindh, that are still revered by locals. Paleolithic implements were discovered in the Murli Hills near University of Karachi. Dinosaur bones were discovered in Makran. Taxila, once a flourishing university in the10th century BC, is reduced to a grassy mound.

The northern and western mountain passes were doorways to India for Aryans, White Huns, Persians, Central Asians, Chinese and Greeks, each of whom must have left their genetic legacy.

This region is a paradise for archaeologists and historians, yet Pakistan has no dedicated archaeology training facilities, with modern labs and new technology such as remote sensing and terrestrial laser scanners. There is so little interest in the past that most schools do not even offer history as a subject.

Many countries keep their history alive through art, historical novels, films and immersive theatre. Reenactments of battles and historical events are popular activities. Imagine reenactments of the battle of Alexander and Raja Porus, the Mughal Darbar at Lahore Fort, the 1940 Pakistan Resolution in Lahore, Napier’s conquest of Karachi at Manora, the blowing up of mutineers in 1857 from canon at the site where Karachi’s Empress Market was subsequently built, or the famous Khaliqdina Hall trial of the Ali brothers and their associates. The past is always present, even if we do not acknowledge it.

Durriya Kazi

January 26, 2020