Harking back: Bradlaugh, Bhagat and the evil side of commerce

After last week’s walk from Regal Chowk to Lohari Gate and then on towards Delhi Gate, last Thursday I decided to walk from Iqbal Hostel towards Bradlaugh Hall and survey what remains of the old Rattigan Road to relive the memories of my youth.

After reaching Iqbal Hostel from where Bhagat Singh and his colleagues fired those fatal shots, my natural route was to reach Rattigan Road through the lane past the Tibba of Baba Farid. But that route has been closed and enveloped by the Police Office. So through a District Courts side gate and a maze of tables and food stalls, I reached the Rattigan Road crossing.

As I walked past the old Central Model School’s Principal’s house, where once stood Chief Justice Rattigan’s Sussex Cottage, I was shocked to see small printing shops. To the right of the opening of Bradlaugh Hall once stood the old house of Prof Ruchi Ram Sahni. That space has been converted into scores of small printing shops. The open space from where one could see the famous and historic Bradlaugh Hall, where Jinnah and Nehru and Gandhi spoke, is virtually shut off thanks to dozens of illegal shops and houses. Lahore’s finest residential colony has been completely eaten up by the evil of crass commercialism.

Just who allowed them to take over the land that belonged to the hall is anyone’s guess. Shocking this land grab which in today’s world is an accepted crime. The invisible writ of the law does not exist. Corrupt politicians and bureaucrats rule. Through a narrow lane to the right of the original front opening I managed to reach the imposing hall. To the left, to the right, and to the centre illegal constructions abound. I stood in shocked silence before this massive august hall as memories ran through the years that we walked and played here.

As I approached the hall its broken dilapidated doors were locked and there are holes through the crumpling bricks. Not only did I see our amazing history ignored, but actually crumbling and disintegrating. I picked up some brick earth and tasted it, and imagined the spirit of the fiery Bhagat Singh. He lived here for some time. I also thought of the fiery Yorkshire MP Bradlaugh who supported the freedom movement. No one cares any longer.

To the left side as I walked, which gave me a back view of our old house, as also the old house of my wife’s family, it was shocking that the wide public road on one side of our house had been consumed by new illegal construction. From the back of the old window where once a well-known professor Khawaja Salahuddin sat, a man threw rubbish onto the back lawns of the hall. Below him massive stinking stacks of rubbish have collected. To the back the same filth mountains exist. The back right corner has been blocked by yet another illegal construction as is the lane that once ran around it.

So back I walked peering into the old hall through holes in the crumbling back wall. The huge hall and its tin roofs rust away. To the front to the right another row of illegal houses rise. As I stood there watching in utter shock and silence, a young lawyer on a motorcycle suddenly appeared. He informed me that the land on which his new house was built is disputed and a ‘stay’ against the Evacuee Trust Board was in place for the last ten years. What can one say! Some might call it legal connivance.

So back I walked and stood in front of the magnificent crumbling empty hall. My mind raced with ideas on how to save this great historic place of Lahore by converting it into some great institution that would conserve and save the hall and use it as a functioning space. So there it stands, empty, locked and its inner empty spaces staring a great past. I remember last year at a conference in Oxford where the great grandson of Bradlaugh stood outside with a banner wanting that the hall be restored.

Now I trekked out to the main road in a sad mood and turned towards the side lane where we lived. I passed a small shop where an old shopkeeper recognised me. He told me not to fret about all the illegality all around. The ‘new times have come’, he said. I walked away and wished that I see the beautiful Parsi temple of Rattigan Road. Instead a spare parts factory emitted smoke. Opposite the beautiful house of Dr Abbasi had printed books being unloaded on a donkey cart.

To the left as I approached my wife’s old house, the balcony of old was there. Only to my shock in the middle entrance the stairs did not go up but down into a basement, where a large printing press was working away. I thought of the antics we played at this place. Opposite where one large house once stood, that of Col. Ataullah, almost 200 small two-marla shops, all with printing presses, worked away. Mind you this was once a posh residential area reduced to utter filth and congestion. The trader rules free of the law.

Finally I walked towards our old house, known since pre-Partition days as ‘Handa Building’. That had been demolished and a new building housed four printing presses and book storage halls. Where once Lahore’s finest journalists, poets like Faiz and Sufi Tabassum, musicians like Roshan Ara and Amanat Ali came visiting till late at night, now a totally different world exists.

Next to our house the lane that led to Bradlaugh Hall had disappeared and a new girls’ school stood there. Surely the lane was a public way! Opposite our house was an open space known as ‘Mai Battaan’s ground’. On it scores of printing presses and book binding shops exist.

In silence and shock I stood watching the destruction that had taken place. After marriage I had moved eastwards to Gulberg and our old Rattigan Road had been taken over by the trader-politicians who have already wreaked havoc inside the old walled city. On the way out I met some old faces of the area, including a lawyer who it seems from old progressive stances is now a Nawaz Sharif supporter. To my mind his surroundings have overwhelmed his ideas.

On the way back I peeped into GC’s New Hostel to reminisce old days. Behind the tall black gate a grumpy gunman appeared. I smiled and said that once at this gate we experienced happiness. Now guns and aggression prevail. It was a sign of the times.

Come to think of it even the place where I moved to after my marriage, namely G-Block Gulberg, is today completely commercialised. The destruction of the old Lahore is there for all to see, as also is colonial Lahore. Now the new Lahore also faces the ugly and dangerous forces of commercialisation. The blanket commercialisation of the entire Gulberg surely yielded billion to the then rulers.

To my way of thinking our political and social problems that we face today are because of these evil forces that propel such a happening. Such is their power that even the laws of the land bend. When will we learn to build institutions from what is left of our past? This is the question we must all ask ourselves.