Learning to value our priceless heritage

Karachi
History is the soul of a nation. Treasures may be looted, lost, or obliterated but history is the priceless treasure that can never be lost. It is the past and none can undo the past – provided, of course, we take pains to preserve it, as has been done by Peerzada Salman in his comprehensive photo-book, “Karachi: Legacies of Empires”.
If not, then it just fades into memory with the passage of time, and the arrival and departure of generations. It is heritage that endows us with an identity, tells us who we are; without it we’d be just groping to locate our moorings. It is heritage that gives us a sense of identity and pride; it remains the life-blood of a nation, of a society.
Yet in today’s world, with crass materialism springing from the most laissez-faire of capitalism which has caught the world in its vicious tentacles since the dawn of the 90s decade, mammon seems to have become the all-pervading deity and all the things that make life beautiful are sacrificed at its altar.
We don’t have to go outside Karachi to observe this phenomenon and see the way the face of the city is being radically altered. Be it tangibles, like structures, or intangibles, like names, they are being obliterated, with the result that another two decades and the coming generations would not have the foggiest notion of their city’s rich historical and cultural past.
The excuse offered most often is that we have to eliminate the vestiges of our colonial past, of the era of slavery. One suspects that at the back of this is the urge to reap the quick buck at any cost for, were it a matter of merely doing away with the remnants of the colonial past, the biggest vestige of the colonial era is the English language that we, as a society, are becoming more and more fascinated with each passing day.
It is taken to be the surest way to upward social mobility. ‘Elite’ families in our social setup profess with pride that English has become their “adopted mother tongue”. They have no qualms in giving up their own most sweet-sounding mother tongue, Urdu, in favour of English, just to assert their ‘superiority’ over their less fortunate kindred folk.
A lot of buildings that took us on a nostalgic journey into the non-linear dimension, the past, have been or are being consigned to eternity to make room for high-rises, shopping plazas, and apartment blocks that are beyond the reach of the common folk, but line the pockets of those in the business.
However, it is happy augury that among us we have many who really value our golden heritage and would like to acquaint posterity with it; people who are imbued with the aesthetic sense to realise the extreme worth of our heritage. And, there’s a whole lot of them.
Ironically enough, they are to be found in the much-maligned media community. It is through them that we get an insight into our past.
One of these is noted city journalist Peerzada Salman. In his “Karachi: Legacies of Empires”, Salman digs into the foggy yet beautiful past of the city and points out a number of its facets in a whole lot of fields, buildings, health and recreation facilities, and places of worship.
His book on the city comprises 562 pages within which he deals with almost 150 architectural features of the city, features which, fortunately, are still there. For each structure, there is a comprehensive historical note and a colour transparency.
He starts with Merewether Tower, in the parlance of bus conductors and rickshaw drivers. The tower, designed by a Scottish architect, James Strachan, was built in 1884 as a memorial to General Merewether.
Salman, in the most depressing of terms, describes the state of disrepair and negligence the monument has fallen into. He takes us on a jaunt through the Karachi of yesteryear and just a little further up, there’s the Karachi Port Trust (KPT) building, built 99 years ago, with its impressive façade and its wide expanse.
There are accounts, complete with colour photographs, of the buildings that have been spared demolition to make room for lucrative real estate business.
There are views of the Saint Andrews Church in Saddar, a garrison church built in the latter half of the 19th century for men of the British garrison who belonged to the Church of Scotland.
The photographs depict the architectural grandeur of both the exterior and the interior, a mix of the Gothic and renaissance style architecture.
There are the photographs of the Empress Market, a monument going through a constant decaying environment with undisciplined, uncontrolled vehicular traffic burgeoning with the passage of each day.
The book also mentions the contributions of Muslim architects of pre-partition Karachi, such as Ahmed Hassan Agha, who gave us buildings which, till today, remain pivotal in the functioning of the city as a commercial and artistic hub of the country.
The volume is a valuable source for knowledge regarding the Karachi of yore and would make an ideal compendium for not only history buffs and architects, but all those who value their heritage.