By Majid Sheikh

Dawn Oct 4, 2020

Often the question does prop up in the mind ‘just how much has Lahore changed over the last 70 years?’. Then comes the thought just how are we, as individuals, helping to bring about positive change.

The Partition of 1947 hit the ancient city of Lahore the hardest and changed its entire ethos beyond recognition. With the massive population numbers came a new ethos that damaged its famed factual way of thinking. In the process we have forgotten the very people who contributed to our freedom. In short we now have a distorted sense of our own history.

The people of Lahore are famed for their creative and bold way of expressing their talents, let alone having a brave political vision. The basic traits of the city today is not what it was even till the 1970s. Today it is a city without, symbolically, its beautiful green hedges, and then its legendary doubledecker buses have disappeared, what to speak of a situation where even walking on the streets is not only dangerous, but many consider it a sign of hidden poverty. Today one’s status is determined not by your intellect or that you still read books, but by your car model. Surely this reflects a society in sharp decline.

Some time back I decided to walk home just a mile and a half from my office. My driver was sent home and he told the begum that “today Sahib has gone crazy”. On the way three different friends stopped to offer me a lift home, which I refused, naturally in true Lahori fashion. They probably all pitied me. When I got home, full of dust, I realised that on the way not a single pavement existed for me to walk on. Imagine a city without pavements, except for what the British left behind.

Just what has gone wrong? Today not only have the beautiful green hedges disappeared, but in their place hideous forbidding walls with barbed wires have sprung up. Opposite my grandfather’s old house in Model Town, the walls of a neighbour are 12 feet high with double barbed wires and guards with sub-machine guns. This reflects the people we have become.

The point is that we have forgotten all those people who made Lahore what it is today. Naturally, there are reasons for all this happening. Over the last 70 years after that unstoppable tidal wave of Partition immigrants shocked Lahore and the world, the city initially held its own. One cannot deny that the numbers have multiplied to unbelievable levels: From 850,000 in 1950 to a staggering 12,642,000 in 2019. This comes to an unbelievable annual average population increase of 14.8 percent. Lahore is today the world’s 8th largest city, while Karachi is the fourth. No wonder the problems of Karachi are out of hand.

The result has been massive problems in transport, crime control, housing, food prices, the rich-poor divide and poor education, to name a few sectors. In our college days we travelled by doubledecker buses, or walked on safe pavements to save the fare. Our neighbours were like family. Today in 2020 there are no buses so people have taken to motorcycles. They had no choice. Lahore has the world’s largest motorcycle population. The Punjab police website says there are 1.7 motorcycles per household of seven.

Today even bicycles are seldom seen because of the distances involved. Just why have these symbols of a once civilised society ceased to exist in a city known for its gardens, trees, hedges, flowers, educational institutions (all with playgrounds by law), excellent public transport, friendly neighbours, a small library in every neighbourhood, scores of bookshops and what to speak of its flourishing eating houses.

Only eating houses have multiplied in line with population numbers, with food being the sole intellectual pastime. But then my effort is to search for a positive indicator that our city needs to develop. For starters we must recollect our past heroes in a non-partisan manner. We must learn what they all stood for. The history of our city and its people is important.

Today the old walled city has a population relatively low on the economic scale. The rich wholesale merchants have taken over almost 64 per cent of this space while they do not live there themselves. This has impacted on the quality of the old city’s environment. The once posh area of Rattigan Road where once stood only 18 large houses, today it has 332 houses. Even the historic Bradlaugh Hall, where the resolution for the subcontinent’s independence was passed, is crumbling and its grounds have numerous illegal houses, naturally with Evacuee Trust connivance. History be damned.

Come Pakistan and we saw the residential ‘paradise’ Gulberg spring up. Today that green peaceful residential colony has all its plots subdivided and walls and barbed wires have sprung up. Forget about pavements, for the entire area is now commercial. The traders always win. Come the DHAs and even there walls and barbed wires are increasingly to be seen. Pavements were never planned.

What has gone wrong to a society whose founder M.A. Jinnah wished (see Aug 11, 1947, speech) that 20 per cent of “our national wealth should be spent on educating the poor, otherwise each ruler will be more corrupt than the last, leading to the demise of the State”. Our education and health budget stands at 1.9pc. That is why a double narrative, call it double-speak has become our very way of thinking. We have become a people to whom reason does not appeal. Their history starts from 1947. The ‘pious’ think it started in 1021 when Mahmud flattened and burnt the city.

That this should happen to a land and people who have over 4,500 years of existence, proven by archaeological and scientific method, not by pious beliefs. That is why it is important to celebrate some of the finest pre-Partition personalities of our city. We must, all of us, recognise their contribution to Lahore the city, to Lahore of artistic fame, to Lahore of brilliant political minds. This has to be done by the people of Lahore themselves, not the government.

There is sign of hope as a group of Lahore residents have come up with the idea of exploring such people. This is a ‘Sangat’ of the best. They recognise everyone who lived and worked in our city. Their first effort has been to put up ten descriptive plaques, from Iqbal, to Rafi, Gama Pehalwan, Noor Jehan, and a long list of such celebrities. It is purely a peoples’ effort to recognise the great musicians, writers, poets, classical singers, politicians, artists, architects, journalists, soldiers, and you name them and they are on their list. All these hundreds of plaques will soon be coming up.