meethapani

Art and the Swadeshi Movement In my quest to discover the origins of the exquisite tiles in my aunts’ home in Karachi’s old Amil Colony, I stumbled upon a whole new dimension of the Swadeshi, and later Swaraj, movement, an important rallying point for the Freedom Movement. Swaraj is commonly identified with Non-cooperation, Civil Disobedience, and political rallies. Behind the public bonfires of European cloth, manufacturers, designers, artists, poets and journalists quietly built factories, established presses, redesigned art school curricula that not only spread the spirit of revolution across India but ensured there were locally produced alternatives. Jamshed Nusserwanji established Bharat Tiles with Pheroze Sidhwa in 1922 in Bombay with a manufacturing branch in Karachi, as his swadeshi contribution, saying “India needs both economic and political independence”.     Developing a new process using coloured cements, the exquisite tiles we see in all heritage bu...

Karachi City of Dreams Durriya Kazi ADA Dialogue II Do you know your city? Frere Hall Karachi May 4 2018 Karachi has been a bit like sand dunes that are constantly shifting and altering yet retaining their essence. It is difficult to define it visually by its built structures. There is no concept of the inner city spreading out to the suburbs in an orderly fashion.   There is no map book of Karachi, no history of the city for visitors, no calendar of events for its residents. It’s a city that is spread by word of mouth, a city to be experienced rather than viewed. This may be what makes Karachi feel like home. Home for those whose ancestors lived here, for those who were born here, for those who escaped the violence of partition, for those who come here for work, this city envelops and accepts all. As a Pathan labourer said we can only work in Karachi because no one asks where you are from, only what you can do. Architects and urban planners generally view a ci...

Owning and Disowning Cultural Heritage In the last chapter of William Dalrymple’s book The Last Mughal, he gives a harrowing account of a massacre parallel to the killing of supporters and family of the Mughals- the systematic erasure of Mughal architecture : havelis or homes, mosques, gardens, caravanserais, and of course the Red Fort, of whose magnificent halls, living quarters and gardens, only twenty percent could be saved by the intervention of John Lawrence, an English Officer, after whom Lahore’s   Lawrence Gardens are named   and to whom the world must be grateful   for saving whatever he could. History is filled with politically motivated destruction of art: The Egyptians destroyed statues of their predecessors, the Romans practiced   damnatio memoriae , the public destruction of statues and monuments of their predecessor. Religion was of course a major motivator for the destruction of art and heritage: the 8C Christian Emperor, Leo III, ordered i...