The fading city

It is good news that Lahore is to have a metro train. It is about time our planners and policymakers considered the needs of the majority instead of the elite land-cruiser-owning minority. An affordable and efficient transport system is an important feature of modern urban life. The metro train will ease stress and pressure on Lahore’s commuters, who include daily wage earners, office workers, schoolchildren, college students and so many others.

This is all for the good. The problem lies in the train’s route and the way the project is being implemented. Apart from political proclamations that the Punjab government will resolve the city’s transport problems with a metro train, no relevant information is available for public access. There were only rumours.  Confirmation of our worst fears came later through news of protests by Punjab University students and residents of Jain Mandir and Kapurthala House, whose homes are on the train’s route. This was followed by news reports of ‘clandestine’ area demarcations for the metro train line inside the premises of the General Post Office.  This not only causes great alarm, but also raises questions on the official modus operandi. They say democracy is the road to progress, so why this recourse to authoritarian modes of operation?  Clearly, old habits die hard.

We are anchored in time and history by Lahore's monuments and buildings. They link us to our past and give us a sense of continuity

Tracking the Orange Train route, we found that the train line will run past Shalimar at a distance of about 30 to 36 feet from its boundary wall, and only 15 feet away from the centuries-old Buddu Da Awa. This is a direct violation and blatant disregard of the Antiquities Act of 1975, (Section 22) which states unambiguously that, “…no development plan or scheme or new construction on, or within a distance of two hundred feet of a protected immovable antiquity shall be undertaken or executed”.

One is reminded of the sad remains of the Mughal waterworks destroyed during the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz’s first stint in power, which attests to the fact that the Punjab government places no value either on the country’s laws or on the city’s history and heritage.

From Shalimar, the train line cuts through the city to The Mall to run between the Lahore High Court and GPO before slicing through Kapurthala House and Jain Mandir to the 17th century Chauburji.   The High Court and GPO are part of our colonial history and are listed as sites protected by the Punjab Special Premises (Preservation Ordinance) of 1985. Chauburji, which is a heritage site, is protected by the Antiquities Act. But the heavy machinery, piles of steel rods, sand, rubble and stumps of dying trees that mark the train’s route give short shrift to the Act and the city’s heritage.

This raises disturbing questions. How can the Punjab government undertake a project that damages the city’s communities and heritage sites? Surely a less destructive route could have been chosen? How can the government violate the law with such brazen impunity? Further, why is the government cagey about following established procedures, including the provision of information to citizens? What is there to hide? The Orange Train is a perfectly legitimate venture. All it needs is intelligent and thoughtful planning for maximum impact and least possible harm.

This leads to the final question: do we have to destroy the city, strip it of its identity, and displace communities to provide a facility? This is not development. At best, it reflects a failure of the imagination, at worst callous indifference.

Just as a 700-year-old tree cannot be compensated for by an ornamental shrub or sapling, people cannot be dispersed and scattered, picked up from one place and put down in another without great loss and damage

This is not to say that there should be no development. What it means is that construction and development must follow the city’s grain; flow with it; enhance and expand it to meet people’s needs. It is to argue for people-friendly growth that takes the needs of place and context into account. Signal-free corridors are not meant for roads that serve colleges and hospitals. Lahore is a university town and the pavements and roads that run past educational institutions are pedestrian spaces where the student community can move around freely and safely. Each space, each community, each place where people live and interact on a daily basis has its own function and needs that are shaped by human interaction and the minutiae of daily routine that over time become a way of life. People are not insentient beings. Just as a 700-year-old tree cannot be compensated for by an ornamental shrub or sapling, people cannot be dispersed and scattered, picked up from one place and put down in another without great loss and damage. The inhabitants of Jain Mandir and Kapurthala House know this. They are fighting not only for a roof or a room or a piece of land but for their communities and their way of life.

Lahore is not a patch of indifferent, anonymous land randomly dotted with buildings and roads. It is a place of human habitation where people have put down roots. Human beings are not premised on singular needs just as the city of Lahore, whose life is intertwined with theirs, cannot be reduced to any one single aspect. It is in its streets and mohallas; in its chai shops and pavements, under its wayside trees, in its gardens and parks and in its nooks and corners that daily life is lived and experienced. It is here that memories are made and individual identity takes shape. Places define   and structure our sense of ourselves – of who we are and our place in the world. They anchor us in time; give us a sense of home and belonging so that when we leave them, or they are destroyed, we are left with a sense of immeasurable loss and homelessness.

I’m talking, of course, not of the privileged minority that whizzes down signal-free corridors in air conditioned isolation and whose sense of identity is shaped by and invested in the shopping malls of Dubai, Washington or Paris and who can move away at the first touch of inconvenience or trouble, but of the vast majority. I’m talking of those of us who are physically, emotionally, psychologically invested in the land and the city. These are people who belong to the city and to whom it belongs – the pedestrians, students, pedlars, flower sellers, hawkers, shopkeepers, rickshaw drivers, office workers, idlers, teachers, bhands, mirasis, writers, artists, poets, idealists, cynics, optimists, pessimists, hijras, housewives, lost lovers, villains, chai shop savants, the man getting ‘champi’ under a wayside tree, the maasis on their way to and from work, the daily wage labourers, children playing cricket in mohalla streets, the jobless, unemployed and homeless who at night find refuge on the city’s pavements  and were categorised as ‘na jaiz log’ by an Orange Train functionary.

Lahore is a historic city. Its original name – Loh-Awarna – Loh’s fort takes us back to the edges of written history. Its journey through time is marked by its gates and monuments – its ‘heritage sites’ and protected buildings. They bear witness to the rich cross-fertilisation of cultures, faiths and ideas that have gone into its making. We are anchored in time and history by Lahore’s monuments and buildings. They link us to our past and give us a sense of continuity. A city is not reducible to any one of its parts. Its presence is diffused through its landscape. When we think of Lahore we think of the city’s whole being. Lahore is not just Shalimar or Defence. It is Shalimar, Chauburji and Buddu da Awa; it is the Walled City with its mazy streets and Phaja’s sirri pai; it is Data Sahib and Madho Lal Hussain; it is basant and ‘bo kata’ and barsaat; it is Ganga Ram’s colonial tree-lined Mall; it is the canal in summer, noisy with boys; it is its trees – alive with birds at sundown, somnolent in the summer’s heat; it is its colleges and universities. And it is people talking into the night and around the clock. These give it a life and a texture that is uniquely its own. It also shapes our active engagement with the world in which we live. A city must grow with time and the Orange Train is a welcome venture. All we are asking is that its route be changed to one less destructive. Not to do so would cause immeasurable and irreparable loss to Lahore and those who live in it. History will not forgive us for that.

Neelum Hussain is a writer and founder of Simorgh Women’s Resource Centre