On March 29, 1857,
Mangal Pandey, a sepoy in the British East India Company army, set in motion the
great Indian Revolt. By the time the revolt was quelled, more than half of the
9000 strong British forces were dead or wounded and 5000 of the estimated 40,000 rebels. Members of
the Mughal royal family and the elite were hunted down and killed, while others
tried to blend in to the populace to escape.
However, the reprisals of the 1857 revolt did not just result
in the loss of life. There was a systematic effort to erase the memory of the
Mughals altogether. The crown of the
last emperor, his throne, the royal hookah, wall panels, manuscripts, jewels
and art work were looted and taken to Britain. What could not be transported
was destroyed. Eighty percent of the walled city was razed to the ground – the magnificent
palace, gardens, mosques, homes of elite residents, guards and servants. It was
only stopped from complete erasure by the intervention of Sir John Lawrence. The
Jama Masjid survived but would be used as stables and an army camp. The Diwan-e-Am
became a military hospital. The tree-lined canals were filled to build
paved military roads.
More than a palace, the fort
represented the Mughal way of life, with craft workshops, markets, kitchens and
leisure spaces for public or private use. Destroying it was a deliberate
act to humiliate, disempower and erase the culture of 600 years, to break the
spirit of the people so completely that they could never rise again.
The Egyptians and Romans struck off
the noses of statues of deceased or rejected rulers, the Spanish
Conquistadors built cathedrals on flattened temples, coins were defaced in an
act of damnatio memoriae(damnation of memory). Statues have been toppled - Lenin,
Saddam Hussain, Bamiyan Buddhas, and more recently statues of slavers and
colonialists.
Sometimes the past is erased in the name of progress as in
the remaking of Paris by the architect Haussmann, displacing the memories of
the old city. Almost every modern US
city is built on lands that belonged to Native American nations. Ironically the
United Nations headquarters in New York City was built on the site of a
slaughterhouse.
In Karachi, the past is destroyed by indifference. Heritage
buildings are pulled down, but unlike Paris, the new buildings make no aesthetic
statement. Iqbal Centre on M.A.Jinnah Road, was built upon a historic Christian
cemetery. Karachi’s beautiful Amil houses with Nusserwanji tiles are not only
being rapidly pulled down, they don’t even make it into the list of Government
of Sindh’s heritage buildings. An apartment block in Gulistan-e-Jauhar was
built over a site where prehistoric tools were found. Destruction for achieving power transforms
into destruction for profit.
Religious or ideological zeal destroyed many libraries
across the world, as an act of culturicide (killing a culture). The domes and grave markers of Jannat al-Baqi,
the oldest and one of the most sacred Islamic cemeteries in Medina, were razed
to the ground by Wahabi ideologues . The 14th century much-cherished
market, Souq Al-Qaisariya, a symbol of Gaza's history and resilience, was reduced
to rubble by Israeli strikes in 2024.
Along with physical destruction, there is also the
intentional erasure of languages, oral traditions, social rituals, music, and traditional
skills to dismantle a community's identity, history, and sense of belonging. Journalistic
iconoclasm exposes powerful figures or institutions, destroying their carefully
constructed personas. Modern day
politicians try to win over electorates by destroying an opponent’s reputation
rather than by the policies they would implement if elected. Demeaning labels,
including racial slurs, pejorative terms for women, humiliating terms for class
and caste, make individual personalities and achievements invisible.
While the public domain sways towards prescribed aspirations
and opinions, at a people level cultural memories, dyed in centuries of
tradition, refuse to be erased. Wedding clothes, family recipes, religious
festivals are celebrated as they always have been. A poet or novelist may write
in an international language, but the story told may remain deeply connected to
cultural roots.
Fez City has uniquely maintained a policy since the 9th
century of seamlessly adding to rather than removing what was built by past
rulers, honouring rather than defacing the past.
Durriya Kazi
October 16,
2026
Karachi
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