Harking Back: ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves’

The Lahore High Court on Thursday once again called on the Lahore Walled City Authority to … if the need arose … use Rangers to knock down ‘illegal’ structures built on protected sites. Over a thousand miles away a somewhat similar stricture was yet again meted out to Pakistan.

Just what has gone wrong with us when it comes to the importance to us of our ancient land? We surely must think about this proposition. Let us examine two related issues on how to tackle issues of conservation both at the micro and the macro level. The laws and the rules are all in place. Our collective ‘illiteracy’ and our lust for wealth surely seems more important than reputations. To make matters worse a third issue - our flirtation with religious extremism as a State instrument of power - makes Pakistan look like one nasty package the world is increasingly afraid to open lest you should know what happens. Bang. But in this column let us restrict ourselves to the old city of Lahore and the two major heritage sites: The Lahore Fort and the Shalimar Gardens.

The honourable court had wanted to know just how have, even as recent as last month, so many ugly concrete warehousing plazas have sprouted up in areas that have for decades been classified as ‘heritage protected’. The rich and famous have no time for the old once-walled city because they do not live there, or have not experienced living there. This is not said in jest, because our trading classes (who live in posh areas and trade in the old city) have slowly stolen all the bricks of the old walls around the city. In the empty spaces housing and rows of shopping lanes and warehouses have come up. Take the ‘Naya Bazaar’ just off Papar Mandi, the first turning on the left after entering Shahalami Gate (which was destroyed in 1947 riots) and you have a whole new 14th gateway of Lahore. Between Lohari gate and this new gateway entrance is a whole new ‘Optical Bazaar’ built on the once lush gardens. But who cares. Let us return to the walled city.

It is a fact that the Walled City of Lahore Authority, which came about in 2012, has tried its hands at conservation, more so because it was the ‘cool’ thing to do rather than a ‘passion for our past’. Even the Lahore Fort was handed over to them after a nasty tiff with the department of archaeology, who to be honest had failed at serious conservation. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture had shown the way through the ‘Gali Surjan Singh Project’, a marvel when built but only for it to start to decay and return to its old condition. The golden rule is that “conservation needs constant conservation”. How boring for the ‘posh enthusiasts.’ This is exactly what happened to Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. To ‘save’ them they are seriously thinking of covering them with dust again. To ‘dust it must return’ because there is no money to be made in conservation and archaeology. In a way history is a sin. That is the current culture.

The WCLA started off well. As it managed to get more and more power, both visual and executive, it grew in size and clout. Within the authority the fungus of ‘wonderment’ took root, and we see a few junior officials gain in immense financial strength. It should not come as a surprise that of recent the ability of the powerful trading classes of the old city have managed to knock down smaller historic building and build new concrete plazas. Is that coincidental?

It would be wonderful if the highest court of the land just walk through the old city, but without warning the WCLA? It is best to surprise the magicians who can throw not only a ‘googly’, but also bamboozle with reverse swing. Their cultural ‘doosra’ is lethal. For starters a ‘reconstructed’ wall around the old city is called for. After WW2 this is what a destroyed Italy did first. Today it lives off tourism. I am sure so can Lahore. This will restrict commercial movement considerably. There was a time when a new walled city for commercial purposes was suggested across the river. But naturally the file disappeared.

Let us now move to the ongoing 42nd session of the World Heritage Committee underway in Bahrain. Naturally, Pakistan does not take these proceedings seriously, just as they ignored FATF. For years now our two most famous monuments – the Lahore Fort and the Shalimar Gardens – have been firmly on the ‘endangered watchlist’. Now the world has decided that they are seriously endangered and at risk.

Let me explain. After facing considerable ‘deliberate’ silence from Pakistan’s concerned department, on the Ist of February, 2017, the committee formally requested the Pakistan government to invite a ‘reactive team’ to study the ‘endangered’ Lahore Fort and the Shalimar Gardens. The then government made sure that the team and its leader were refused visa. This certainly did not go down well and the committee has listed seven major areas which they seek answers to.

In the absence of any commitment from Pakistan, the Bahrain session will be seeking a report on the progress made in these seven areas. Till then Lahore’s two major monuments will remain on the ‘Endangered List of World Heritage’. Let us take a cursory look at these seven areas of concern. Mind you these areas were studied in great detail at an international conference in Cambridge University in September 2017 under the title ‘Lahore and the Future of its Monuments’, where the Unesco team leader, a professor at the University of Bath, in a keynote address dealt with the Orange Line Train threat in great technical detail. The audience were stunned.

The most serious area of concern was unplanned housing cropping up around the Shalimar Gardens. As of today 55 per cent of the outer walls have encroachments, which has seriously compromised the outer walls, as well as three major gateways on the two sides and back. In most places houses rest against the outer wall and, it seems, the occupants claim the land was allotted to them. Just how this was possible is certainly worth investigating.

The committee is also of the view that ‘inadequate’ management systems are in place and there is no viable definition of the Lahore Fort and Shalimar Gardens boundaries, with inadequate outer ‘buffer zones’. They also feel that adequate legislation does not exist to tackle the threats to these two world heritage monuments. Added to this are ‘inadequate’ financial resources allocated to tackle basic problems.

The immediate threat to the Shalimar Gardens definitely is the Orange Line Metro development as well as an underground transport plan. It goes to the credit of the Supreme Court that it took notice of this, only for it to let the ‘crazy planner’ (for want of a polite description) off the hook. This project has been a concern to experts all over the world, let alone powerless Pakistanis as our political wolves again seek votes to continue the kill.

There also was the issue of the demolition of two hydraulic water tanks by CM Nawaz Sharif in his push to build a road to India. After that sin there is the possible demolition of the third existing one. A promise not to demolish the last tank is all that could be done at this stage.