PLACES
City on the edge
|
NANDITA BHAVNANI looks at Karachi, a metro that has its own distinctive spirit of explosive growth.
|
The Frere Hall ...
AROUND the year 1729, at Kharakbunder, where the Baluchi river Habb meets the Arabian Sea, the local traders found their port was silting up, threatening their business with the Persian Gulf and the Malabar coast. So they relocated 16 miles to the east, to a tiny fishing hamlet called Kalachi-jo-Kun, the Whirlpool of Kalachi. By 1815, the village of Kalachi-jo-Goth was home to around 8,000 people, most of them Hindus. Its mud fort had two gates — the Kharo Dar, facing the sea, and the Mitho Dar, facing the Lyari river which watered the town. It stood on the border between Sindh and Baluchistan, bouncing back and forth between the two, now seized in war, and now conceded as payment for a blood-feud.
In the early 19th Century, the British, nervous about Russian designs on Afghanistan, began to establish themselves in Sindh. The firangis disembarked at Currachee, en route to the capital at Hyderabad, piggybacking on fishermen across the marshes till they reached solid land. The neatly laid out Cantonment came first, and the gridlines of Saddar Bazaar, and the city became divided into Kumpani Bahadur and native.
Today, Karachi is like an inverted triangle: starting with the docks at its foot, it opens its arms northwards. Bunder Road, one of its major arteries, starts here, to run past the Merewether Clock Tower and the imposing Karachi Municipal Office. To the west is the old crowded town of Lyari, where the Mitho Dar and the Kharo Dar are now only names of localities. To the east are the palatial D.J. Sind College, erstwhile mecca of learning for the Sindhis, and Frere Hall, an Indo-Gothic jewel, built in the yellow stone that is the trademark of Karachi's colonial architecture. Nearby, Frere Road and Burns Road are still lined with apartment blocks built by Shikarpuri bankers. Past the clothes-lines and the signboards I can spy antique name-plates: Wassoomull Mansions 1922, Basantani Terraces 1930; and balconies, originally open but now enclosed, with oms and swastiks on their railings.
When the Suez Canal opened in 1869, Karachi became the westernmost port in British India, and the fallout of the American Civil War on the Indian cotton industry only fuelled the city's growth. Karachi's population had swelled to over a lakh by 1900. Over the next half-century, with the building of the Sukkur Barrage, and the greening of Sindh, Karachi blossomed further and by 1947, it was home to 4.5 lakh people: Hindus, Parsis, Muslims and Christians; Sindhi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Kutchi, Baluchi, Maharashtrian and British.
Partition irrevocably altered the city. Karachi became the first capital of Pakistan, struggling to find its feet and to accommodate the incoming streams of refugees. As months passed, the Muhajirs found themselves still in refugee camps while the Hindus, who had always been in a majority, saw no reason to leave. This led to the premeditated riots of January 1948 resulting in a haemorrhage of Hindus from Sindh, many leaving from the Keamari docks, once the entrance for the British, and now also for the Muhajirs.
... and the Teen Talwar at Clifton.
Bunder Road runs further on, past the Swaminarayan Mandir, which became a refugee camp in 1948, past Amil Colony and Bunder Road Extension, fashionable Sindhi Hindu neighbourhoods before Partition, the handsome bungalows now devoid of the people who built this city. At some point it was officially renamed Jinnah Road, but the old name persists. It skirts Jinnah's own mausoleum in the city of his birth, till it becomes University Road and goes on to the end of Karachi.
Sindhi Muslims soon came to resent the influx of over eight lakh Muhajirs into Karachi and, soon after, its temporary separation from Sindh. This, together with Pathan migration into the city, and Punjabi domination, only deepened ethnic cleavages, resulting in the riot-torn 1980s. This in turn has metamorphosed into Shia-Sunni violence and widespread crime — muggings, robberies, car thefts, kidnappings — in today's Karachi of 15 million people.
But here, walking on the streets, it feels quite normal, and in fact, reminds me of Bombay. There is a paanwala amid the hustle and bustle on the corner, and the Suzuki cars that zip past are just the same, albeit with changed names. It is only the preponderance of men in white salwar-kameez that signals the difference, and the technicolour buses that zoom and screech their way around.
The road names reflect Pakistan's history: the generously wide Shahrah-e-Faisal named after the Saudi ruler who came here for shikar; roads named for Iqbal, Nishtar, Ispahani.
But there are also Napier Road and Merewether Road, Agra Colony and Bihar Colony, and a neighbourhood that continues to be called Gurmandir even though the temple is long gone.
Unlike Bombay, Karachi is not an island, and has unfolded into the desert of Sindh at will. The elite live in heavily guarded mansions in Defence and Clifton; the katchi abadis of Orangi and Korangi are far away, out of sight.
Its broad roads remind me of Delhi, while the desert look and the Urdu signs bring back memories of West Asia. But these comparisons are only in my own mind: Karachi has its own distinctive spirit of explosive growth, always living on the edge.
Nandita Bhavnani is a researcher of Sindhi history and culture.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
