Harking Back: Hazuri Bagh and its human and historic treasures

The fondest memories of our college days were going with friends to Hazuri Bagh to listen to traditional reciters of ‘Heer’ and other pieces of Punjabi poetry on weekends. It was a beautiful experience that still lives within me.

As old buildings of historic value in Lahore’s Walled City are being increasingly knocked down to make way for ugly concrete warehouses, in the process residential space is fast decreasing as commercial space grows. Today almost 65 per cent of the old city has been taken over by these traders, who prefer to house cheap illegal Afghan labour cramped in small houses.

This poses a very serious threat to the city’s peace given current circumstances. It is probably the highest residential-to-commercial area ratio in the world, and destined to grow further. The international standard for a ‘Historic City’ is a mere 15 per cent commercial to 85 per cent residential and cultural spaces. This was the ratio in 1947. With this ugly growth we have seen social and cultural space decrease. One aspect is official intolerance to the open space used by the ‘reciters’ of old Lahore.

The government, in its eternal wisdom, decided that such a pastime did not suit the place (imagine!) and banned this gathering, one that has very old roots in the social and cultural history of the Walled City of Lahore. These poets and reciters, a peaceful lot that they are, simply shifted to the nearby Ali Park. Hazuri Bagh lost an amazing institution.

Article continues after ad

But then over time the rare monuments around the ‘bagh’ also suffered considerably. In this piece let us examine the other material losses that Hazuri Bagh and the four monuments in and around it suffered over the last two centuries. Firstly, there is the Hazuri Bagh ‘baradari’ itself. Then there is the huge Alamgiri Gate of the Lahore Fort to the east. To the west is the Badshahi Mosque and its minarets. To the north is the entrance to the ‘Samadhi’ of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. To the south across the garden is the exquisite Roshnai Gate, which is the only untouched monument around the ‘bagh’. We will discuss each of them separately.

The Roshnai Gate was the main northern entrance to the Walled City going back in time. It is counted as one of the 13 gates of the city, though strictly it is not part of the Walled City. This gateway remains in its original condition. The name ‘Roshnai’ was given because as the River Ravi flowed next to the Lahore Fort, it was lighted up at night so that anyone going to and coming from the fort could find their way in the dark. Many consider this to be the oldest gate of Lahore, though research informs us that Lohari Gate is the original gateway to the Walled City. It depends on what came first, the city or the fort. But that is another story.

Now to the ‘baradari’ at Hazuri Bagh. This was originally called ‘Serai Alamgiri’, a small ‘baradari’ built during the reign of Aurangzeb when the Badshahi Mosque was being constructed. Once Maharajah Ranjit Singh was in power (1799-1839) and on the ‘happy’ occasion of him extracting the Koh-e-Noor diamond from the Afghan ruler Shah Shuja at the Mubarak Haveli in Mochi Gate in 1813, he decided to rebuild this ‘serai’ into a beautiful marble pavilion.

The maharajah set Jamadar Khushal Singh to vandalise every Mughal monument in and around Lahore to collect the finest marble pieces for use. In this process Jahangir’s tomb was badly affected. The garden layout was assigned to Fakir Azizuddin, who put a Mughal-style garden in place. The ‘baradari’ construction was assigned to Khalifa Nuruddin with the instruction that the maharaja would like a central structure with a ‘mirrored’ roof like the one in the Sheesh Mahal. The original design was a three-storey building which included a basement. The maharajah loved to hold court here.

The first major damage to the Hazuri Bagh Baradari and the surrounding monuments took place in the January 1841 siege of the Lahore Fort. In this fight for the Sikh throne on the outside was Sher Singh with a huge army of 28,000 soldiers and 8,000 horses and hundreds of cannons and Prince Nau Nehal Singh’s mother Maharani Chand Kaur holed up inside with 5,000 soldiers and very little gunpowder. The staircase going to the basement was blown up.

As the fighting raged for almost a week, the two huge cupolas on the Alamgiri Gate of the Lahore Fort were blown up by Sher Singh’s guns perched on the minarets of the Badshahi Mosque. Mind you in those days the mosque served as an ammunition depot and the side rooms housed the maharajah’s horses. Those two huge cupolas have never been restored, though the damaged wall and the huge gate were repaired by the British and restored to its present condition. Inside the fort the Dewan-e-Khas was also hit as were other residential areas which were completely erased. Today the foundations of those rooms remain.

The forces of Chand Kaur gunned the minaret gun positions damaging the two eastern ones. Portions of the Hazuri Bagh were also hit as Sher Singh’s troops tried to force the Alamgiri Gate open. Much later on the 19th of July, 1932, an earthquake struck Lahore and the upper storey of the Hazuri Bagh ‘baradari’ completely collapsed. The damaged upper storey was never reconstructed and what remains is what we see today. The basement, for some strange reason, remains closed.

So the January 1841 siege of Lahore Fort resulted in extensive damage to its Alamgiri Gate and destroyed its two huge cupolas. The firing damaged the Hazuri Bagh ‘baradari’ basement staircase, it also badly damaged the two minarets of the Badshahi Mosque, which were restored, initially by the British, and after 1947 by the Government of Pakistan.

Besides these three monuments, the southern gateway of the ‘Samadhi’ of Ranjit Singh fell down on the 6th of November, 1840, after the cremation of Maharajah Kharak Singh. Among the two fatalities was Nau Nihal Singh, who was to be crowned the new maharajah. According to Dr Martin Honigberger (1795-1869, Brasov, Romania) who was then the Royal Physician and lived in Tehsil Bazaar, was called to treat the injured Prince. He writes that “the Prince was taken to the fort and his head bricked in by Dhian Singh’s men”. That mysterious gateway fall was described by a British official attending the cremation as being the result of vibrations by cannon fire. Others think it was a conspiracy. Thus the mysterious death of Nau Nihal Singh, popularly known as ‘The Hotspur Prince’, led to the Sher Singh siege.

These events and the earthquake of 1932 completely changed the face of the monuments of the Hazuri Bagh and its three sides. But then conservation is all about conserving, not rebuilding. Reconstruction is only allowed by experts within internationally accepted parameters. The lost cupolas just could not be reconstructed, just as the upper storey of the ‘baradari’ could not be restored. The gateway that claimed the life of Nau Nihal Singh remains as it is.

But then what remains speaks for itself. The eviction of the ‘reciters’ to Ali Park is also a cultural loss that should be attended to. It will add immensely to the educational and cultural life of Lahore. Culture is not about monuments only. It is about a much more important element called ‘human-beings’.