Vandalistan

It is a small hillock, just a few acres wide, that overlooks the most hallowed street in the whole republic. To use the biological cliché, the road below is the jugular vein of the country that houses the most important institutions of the three pillars of the state – parliament, Supreme Court, Prime Minister’s Secretariat, the Election Commission and the Presidency.

What would you like to do with this secular-sacred space that bears the address 1-Constitution Avenue? Only the guardians of the Islamic Republic, with their symbolic blindness and insatiable greed, can think of allotting it to some pot-bellied seth to construct a five-star hotel and luxury apartments to house second secretaries from the embassies located nearby.

And what are we, one-eyed subjects of the Islamic republic, debating? The rock bottom price of the plot and the concessions after concessions heaped upon the beloved corporation like garlands around the neck of a bridegroom. Welcome to Vandalistan.

Now let us turn to 620 acres of land, located one thousand kilometres from the epicentre of democratic governance. This insignificant real estate where no grass grows and no five-star hotel could be built is amongst the most precious addresses for the whole human race. This is where wild animals were turned into domestic cattle, wild grasses were turned into crops, wild birds were turned into chicken and a magnificent city was built that was superior to most contemporary Pakistani cities, built five thousand years later– and it all happened at a time when much of humanity was residing in caves.

The name of this place reflects our attitude to heritage and archaeology – Mohenjo Daro, the dune of the dead. How did we treat this place which, unfortunately, is not worth any allotment? We left it to Unesco to beg the whole world for a paltry eight million dollars to save Mohenjo Daro from floods. Had it not been for Unesco, Mohenjo Daro might have been wiped out completely in the 1992 floods.

Mohenjo Daro is seriously threatened by natural elements and official neglect. Can we have any expectations from the good for nothing Sindh government that took control of the site after passage of the 18th Constitutional Amendment?

I once met Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, an American archaeologist and one of the world’s leading experts on the ancient Indus valley civilisation, while he was carrying out excavations at Harappa. He told me that his team used to bury back the area they meticulously excavated over a period of six months because it was the best way to protect the precious site. Perhaps, we should bury back Mohenjo Daro as well, till a more civilised generation and a sighted ruling class replaces the present lot.

While places like Mohenjo Daro are turning to dust due to elements and neglect, other archaeological sites are losing their treasures to spades of robbers of antiquity. According to Professor Robin Coningham, a British archaeologist who surveyed sites in Pakistan, 90 percent of the major archaeological sites in the country have been looted and the spoils are flooding into London.

Unfortunately, it is not only artefacts that are lost. With them, we lose the chance to reconstruct our past because, as an archaeologist explained, “without context, it is virtually impossible to reconstruct any useful understanding of the cultures from which the looted objects have come.”

While the nation is being robbed of its history and thus becoming poorer, many of the robbers have become millionaires by stealing and smuggling artefacts from archaeological sites from all over the country, mostly with the connivance of government officials. These robbers are most active in the heritage-rich Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which has turned into a paradise on earth under the PTI’s revolutionary government.

It is not only heritage sites where robbers are active. Our most precious artefacts are stolen right from our museums. In 1999, 81 rare antiquities, including the priceless statues of Greek god and goddess, were ‘stolen’ from the Taxila Museum. Officials of the federal department of archaeology and museums are still clueless about the theft.

In other museums, thieves are doing us a favour by replacing artefacts with their replicas that leaves us with something to look at. This according to reports has happened at the Peshawar museum and some other museums as well. Who can be responsible for such elaborate theft other than those paid to protect these treasures?

Here is a lesson from history for these guardians of antiquity holding degrees in Archaeology. When the Japanese army conquered Manchuria in 1933 and was threatening North China, the directors of the museum in Beijing’s Forbidden City, catalogued millions of artefacts, put them in 19,600 crates and sent them on a long train journey to protect them from attackers.

After four years in a train that kept moving from one place to another, the artefacts were hidden in caves in South West China. When the war ended and the artefacts were shipped back to Beijing and Taiwan, every artefact was found in order – thanks to those who were given the responsibility to protect national treasures.

The Forbidden City Palace Museum in Beijing boasts 1.8 million pieces, including 53,482 paintings, 75,031 works of calligraphy and 159,734 items of copper, as well as 603,000 ancient books and documents, 367,000 pieces of porcelain and 11,000 sculptures. The museum in Taiwan possesses 696,000 pieces.

Now let’s turn to Beijing’s twin city – Lahore. When I visited Lahore’s Mughal fort recently, I was pained to see Lahore’s most famous horse – stuffed mare Laila, favourite horse of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. It’s multi-million-rupee (priceless in terms of heritage) trappings that were cast in gold and studded with precious stones were stolen in 1996 from the Sikh gallery in the fort. No one was apprehended, and the police closed the case after the archaeology department dismissed the two watchmen who had stood guard at the gallery at the time of the theft.

Lahore itself is facing the destiny of the Maharaja’s horse due to Khadam-e-Ala’s warped ideas of development. The Orange Train route, built with the money borrowed from China (unfortunately wisdom can’t be borrowed from neighbours), is believed to be threatening some of the most precious heritage sites of the country.

Khabaristan Times, a parody newspaper, satirised the chief minister of Punjab as saying: “We have told the respected high court that with China’s help we can always construct new historic buildings that are hundreds of years old. Because with Chinese money and Punjabi speed, anything can be constructed, anywhere and anytime.”

Painful and ironic though it may seem, it makes complete sense to me that we would be better off if we auctioned our heritage sites to international firms dealing in antiquities.

At least our children will know what was taken from where and it may help them understand the heritage and history of the land. They may also be able to see some of our treasures at international museums or at some private collections. What else can we do to avoid the fate of Laila – Ranjit Singh’s naked horse?

The writer is a social anthropologist and development professional.

Email: zaighamkhan@yahoo.com

Twitter: @zaighamkhan