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Dreaming Karachi

Last Sunday a day long festival was held at the recently renovated Khalikdina Hall in the heart of the old city of Karachi. While Karachi’s public spaces are coming back to life as seen with the attendances at the Arts Council’s World Culture Festival, the performances at the National Academy of Performing Arts and the All Pakistan Music Conference, and new fringe cultural spaces like Nani Ghar, Meher Ghar and Kitab Ghar, seeing an abandoned heritage building once again milling with people of all ages from across Karachi, is a moving experience. The handsome portals of the Palladium building, for many years dark and silent, were filled with light and life as in the past.

Arif Hasan, in his article, The Changing Face of Karachi, explains in great detail the circumstances that ‘orphaned’ the inner city. Karachi has awakened after three decades of fear. Much has changed in these decades. The culture of cinema which started with the Star Cinema on Bunder Road in 1917, has vanished as one by one the 136 cinema houses in Karachi have been converted to shopping malls or offices, and the once bustling Irani tea shops, have dwindled to a mere handful.

The Municipal Commissioner Afzal Zaidi, a historian of Karachi, on a panel at Khalikdina Hall, responded to a question from the audience, suggesting that when there was a surge of interest by citizens, change becomes possible. Is it so unthinkable that Karachi could once again bring cultural life back to its inner city?

After the Warsaw uprising against German occupation, 85% of the city was strategically destroyed. The brain child of an architect, Professor Jan Zachwatowicz, an office for the reconstruction of the city was established from1945-1951. The sole source of financing was the donations made by the people. Citizens stepped up with funds, labour and passion. The city’s Old Town was reconstructed from data provided by old documents, memories, and paintings earning it a place on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage list.

Like so many heritage cities, Warsaw too faced resistance. To the Communist regime, the old architecture represented bourgeois values. Modernist architects felt the need for modern infrastructure, and of course developers only saw land value. This is true of many heritage cities, including Karachi.

Can developers be convinced of the economic and cultural value of historic buildings? Would planners engage with local communities to understand the economic and cultural dynamics of city precincts? In many cities, tax incentives encourage developers to restore older buildings rather than tear down and build new. Can the municipality spearhead the change?

The first person to dream of what Karachi could be was Sir Charles Napier, whom history remembers as the conqueror of Sindh. Despite finding “miserable mud villages with a population of robbers, all filth and poverty and misery”, he visualized Karachi as the Star of the East.  On the advice of Richard Burton, he moved the capital of Sindh from Hyderabad to Karachi, becoming its first city planner. He wanted to “show government how very important a place it may become and how to make it so.” Interestingly all this was against the wishes of his employers, the East India Company. His sole supporter, Lord Ellensborough, advised him to work on his plans without alerting anyone in the cantonment. Eventually Karachi did become a gracious, clean, lively city attracting people and businesses from across the world. His successors, both British and native, implemented his vision. At the time of his departure in 1847, his love for Karachi was evident: “thou shall be the glory of the East, would that I could come again in seeing you, Kurrachee, in your grandeur.”

182 years later, Karachi is once again grappling with the indifference of government that Napier faced, and common citizens are once more surrounded with “all filth and poverty and misery”, his dream all but undone. However, Karachi has a spirit that is difficult to subdue.

Jamshed Nusserwanji Mehta, Karachi’s most caring mayor, in 1942 suggested a daily oath for citizens: "Each morning, every person should take an oath with himself that this is his city, and even if fifty people could honestly keep this oath, then everything would become all right".

 

Durriya Kazi

December 1, 2025

Karachi

durriyakazi1918@gmail.com

 

 

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