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the-south-asian.com April 2004 |
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April 2004 Wildlife
Paragpur
- India's 1st
Corporate Talk
Books Lehngas - a limited collection Books Between
Heaven and Hell
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The Dual City – Karachi – during the Raj. Author: Yasmin Lari & Mihail Lari. Published by Oxford University Press, Heritage Foundation Karachi 2001 440 Illustrations, 146 in Colour Reviewed by Salman S. Minhas, Information Engineers, Pakistan.
This is a Magnum–Opus, primarily a heavy weight reference content aggregation book on Karachi. There are 370 pages printed on high quality paper, with old pictures taken from various sources such as the British archives of India Office Library & Records and Alexander Baillee’s 1890 book " Kurrachee: Past, Present and Future" [reprint by Karachi Oxford University Press]. This book is a true labour of love, a highly professional work, dedicated to the people of Karachi. The book is organized in three parts. The author Yasmin Lari is President of the Institute of Architects Pakistan and Executive Director of the Heritage Foundation, Karachi. Her work on Karachi has enabled its citizens to save a lot of its well-known old buildings, such as the Hindu Gymkhana and about 600 other major historic buildings. Part One is titled "History" with 3 chapters. Chapter 1 is titled "Krokola to Kalachi-jo-Ghote" on the ancient 300B.C. Alexander of Greece’s visits to this area and the origin of the city’s names such as Kola chi, Kurrachee, etc. Chapter 2 is on the origins /earliest developments. British interests in Sindh, staring with the arrival of East India accompany in Surat [1612] and the British ship Discovery landing in Thatta during Shah Jehan’s [1628-58] rule. Chapter 3 is the final British gobbling up or "Annexation" of the province of Sindh and this is linked to the defeat of the British in Afghanistan and their subsequent attempts to salvage prestige & policy. Part Two called "Development" has Chapters 4 to 9 with the following titles. "Dual City, A Flourishing Entrepot, Modern Karachi, Planning & Infrastructure, City Quarters, and A Make-Believe World." Typically the British East India Company started with a strip of land bought for building its Trading warehouses, and then gradually they would carve out and build an entire city for the White British residents and troops and officials. The natives or the darki–wallahs as the British referred them to, would live in the old city section. Hence the term "Dual City. This pattern was of course repeated all over the subcontinent. Part Three is titled "Architecture" and consists of Chapters 10 to 15 with the following Headings. " Early Colonial Period. Christian Zeal & Indo–Gothic, Paper Patterns, Indigenous culture, Rise of Anglo-Mughal, and Twentieth Century Eclecticism. The dual City is not a coffee table book, but a professional architect’s work, that provides the reader with a comprehensive account of how Karachi developed during the British Colonial rule. Yasmeen Lari is currently involved in working, documenting the Lahore Fort in a similar book, funded by Norway. The Fort and the Shalimar gardens were added to the World Heritage list in 1981. Part of the exercise is trying to save the famous Shish Mahal - mirror inlaid in wooden roof - [the Hall of Mirrors] and other parts of the Lahore Fort that are now crumbling. The Fort demonstrates a continuous evolution from the time of Emperor Akbar the Great (reigned 1556–1605) to that of Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir (reigned 1658–1707).
Karachi–Mega city [Mai Kolachi]. Historical Background. Mai Kolachi is the name given to a Karachi city road bypass after the story of a fisher-woman who set out to retrieve her husband at sea. Since all the villagers refused to help her, she set out on her own and in the end found her husband waiting safely for her at home on her return. That village is now Karachi. Karachi is a city that was born out of the Great Game rivalry between Russia and Britain. Its recent 1980-2000 spate of civil violence [the city was rubbished in a one-dimensional article in Time Magazine, June 16 2003 by Tim McGirk] was again due to this great rivalry between the Imperial powers. This time the rivalry was between the old USSR and US. Karachi remains under demographic pressure, as the USSR fought the US [via the Pakistan & Afghan forces] in Afghanistan. On one side, the Russians seeking the dream of its Czars to get hold of the warm waters of the Arabian Ocean, via Afghanistan and Karachi. On the other the US objective was the break-up of USSR, which eventually happened. Afghan refugees poured into Karachi [and other cities in Pakistan] to rebuild their lives. Karachi, as a port city for landlocked Afghanistan, suffered violent social collateral damage / fall-out [see book reviews in http://www.the-south-asian.com/August2003/book_review-Pakistan.htm documenting this tragedy] from the current events in Afghanistan. There were also obvious benefits of the commercial trade, though this has to some effect moved towards Dubai as a major re-export center for Afghanistan. Karachi’s birth as a city was due to a much old rivalry, known as the "Great Game" between Colonial Britain and the Imperial Czars. Briefly, in 1805 the British Royal Navy’s Lord Nelson’s Naval defeated the combined fleets of France & Spain at the Battle of Trafalgar at Cape Trafalgar [South Spain]. The British Royal Navy’s victory ensured for the British a command of the seas that was to go unchallenged for a hundred years till the Battle of Jutland [a stalemate] in 1916 in the North Seas against the German Navy under Kaiser Wilhem II. The only place where conflicts threatened Britain’s Empire were on the Canadian border [pretty secure very long, and not well policed] with USA, China [too weak an empire] and the Russian Czarist empire’s southward and eastwards expansion towards Caspian Sea, Bokhara, Merv, Herat [via the Shah of Persia]. In Herat, Afghanistan, the British intelligence agents discovered the Czarist political agents. During the years 1838 to 1843, with Queen Victoria on the throne, Dost Mohammed, the Emir of Afghanistan flirted with the Russians against the Shah of Persia, who wanted Herat. Dost Mohammed’s brother Shah Shuja was a refugee under Ranjit Singh in Lahore and on a British pension. The British raised the so-called "army of the Indus", under Lord Auckland and directly under General Keane and installed Shah Shuja on the Kabul throne. First Anglo-Afghan War – 1839. Britain’s "Army of the Indus" : It is worth considering the structure of the British colonial army that ventured into Afghanistan. - 1 regiment's officers used 2 camels just to carry their cigars. - 1 Brigadier had sixty camels for his own personal baggage. - 1 regiment had 600 native stretcher-bearers.
- Out of a total of 16,500 fighting men , there was a vast crowd of around 38,000 camp followers. - Servants’ families, musicians, entertainers and companies of prostitutes. Note the similar effects to this day of the Pakistan and Indian army with each officer given a "Batman" for his personal [laundry, uniform, house work, etc ]. The result was a humiliating defeat for the British. One lone survivor Dr. Brydon returned [about another 100 were later exchanged as prisoners]. His body slumped over his horse [given to him by his Indian soldier] carried him back to Jalalabad. This scene is captured in a painting – "Lady Butler – Remnant of an Army." Pentagon planners please take note. First in, first out is a useful slogan for this part of the world as the British and Russians learned the hard way. It was this war and subsequent wars by the British, USSR and now the US, which reminds you of the quatrain by Rudyard Kipling. "………When you're
wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, The Empire strikes back. Sindh is taken, and Karachi is born. The British had been needling the Amirs of Sindh around these years with demands for Tolls on the Indus River, taxes, etc. When the Afghan defeat occurred, the British pride was wounded very badly. In order to salvage it, the British decided to go ahead and annex the province of Sindh. Major General Sir Charles Napier was the man sent out to do this .His words on annexing Sindh " an advantageous, useful, humane piece of rascality…" and finally the defeat of the Sindh ruling Talpur family on February 20, 1843 in Hyderabad Fort, and then at Dabo, 4 miles from Hyderabad [being the capital of Sindh], when he signaled the message "Peccavi" [Latin for " I have sinned"] marked the final chapter on British ascendancy in Sindh. Napier was given 70,000 pounds for his work. Napier also set forth to move the capital of Sindh to Karachi. Karachi was born, thus, and in the words of Napier: " You will yet be the glory of the East; would that I could come again, Karachi, to see you in your grandeur. Karachi –Future. Karachi developed first as a major port city under the British Empire [1700 -1947] and later became in 1947 the first Capital of Pakistan. It would also rapidly turn into a Mega-City with a massive population growth from almost a few hundred people in 1843 to about 16 million in 2003, much of it caused by the urban drift of the rural population and also the Afghan war refugees during 1980-2000. It currently contributes almost 60-70% of the country’s GDP. In a later article, the discussion will focus on the problems of Karachi as a Mega City, the famous Orangi Pilot Project for low-cost housing involving the local residents. Also to be discussed are the lessons from the " Khuda ki Basti " project, again a low-cost housing project. The name "Khuda ki Basti" comes from the title of book by Shaukat Siddiqi that talks about the dispossessed citizens. The ideas of major western and Sub-continents urban Planners as well as the experience from other mega-cities in the world especially South America’s Rio de Janeiro, Calcutta, Bombay, Shanghai, etc. will be used to show that these Mega cities can learn from each other’s experience in Urban growth and planning. *****
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