| September 1, 2003 | Monday | Rajab 3, 1424 |
Need some quick cash? Start a riot
City without a voice
Our city, their city
I GIVE you today brief accounts of the Dyal Singh and Ganga Ram Trusts for which I am grateful to A report on the initiative on indigenous philanthropy, published by the Aga Khan Development Network in 2000.
The report says:
The histories of the Dyal Singh Majithia Trust and the Sir Ganga Ram Trust illuminate the structures and environment of philanthropy prior to 1947. It provided Pakistan with valuable examples of how different religious and ethnic groups contributed to the institutions and approaches to giving that have endured in the contemporary context. Finally, with their endowments controlled by the Evacuee Property Trust Board (EPTB), these trusts highlight a unique, and problematic, component of government policies affecting social institutions in Pakistan.
The EPTB (also referred to as the Hindu Auqaf) was established in 1960 to oversee the philanthropic trusts left behind when their founders migrated from Pakistan. The EPTB manages both these trusts and, through its Shrines Department, Sikh Gurdwaras and Hindu Temples — the religious sites of communities that no longer have a significant presence in the predominantly Muslim, Pakistani society. With its head office in Lahore, the EPTB has offices in every district of Pakistan as well as zonal offices. A board governs the EPTB, although its composition, as well as the purview and activities of the organization are not transparent to the general public.
Sardar Dyal Singh Majithia (1848-1898) was the son of a wealthy Punjabi landowner who served under Maharaja Ranjit Singh. In 1895, he recorded a will with the Lahore Registrar, in which he gave most of his property for the construction of libraries, reading rooms and colleges to be administered by a trust. His relatives contested this will after his death. The litigation ended in 1907, however, and the Dyal Singh Reading Room and Library was opened at his former haveli. In 1910, the Dyal Singh College was inaugurated.
Sir Ganga Ram (1851-1927) rose from poverty to become one of the most influential figures in the architectural and social development of modern Lahore. As executive engineer of the city of Lahore, he contributed to the planning and construction of its first sanitation system and water works, the Lahore Museum, the Mayo School of Art (National College of Art), the High Court, the Lahore Cathedral, the General Post Office, Atchison College, the Chemistry Department of Government College, and the Albert Victor Wing of the Mayo Hospital. As a philanthropist, he funded and built (sometimes in partnership with government): the Hailey College of Commerce, Lady Maclagan Girls’ High School, Ravi Road House of the Disabled, Sir Ganga Ram Trust Building on The Mall, Hindu and Sikh Widows’ Home and School, Hindu Students Career Society, and the Lady Maynard Industrial School for Sikh and Hindu Women and Girls. In 1923, the Sir Ganga Ram Free Hospital was constructed on Queen’s Road. The Sir Ganga Ram Trust also endowed a medical college next to the hospital in the name of the founder’s grandson, Aftab Rai.
In 1927, the Dyal Singh College was nationalized. While the physical structure in which the building is situated remains the property of the EPTB, the educational institutions lost the funding provided by the trust. The library, however, is still sustained by the trust endowment, as administered through the EPTB, and continues to offer local and international scholars valuable research materials on Sikh history in the Punjab, especially from its outstanding Gurmurkhi and Hindi-language collections.
With partition in 1947, Sir Ganga Ram’s family left Lahore for India, where they continued his philanthropic efforts, including a Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in Delhi, partially sustained with funds from trust properties outside Pakistan. Both the Sir Ganga Ram Free Hospital and the Aftab Rai Medical College, now the Fatima Jinnah Medical College, currently come under the purview of the Punjab Health and Education Departments and are no longer connected to the trust. The EPTB has frozen the majority of funds and properties connected to the trust, which includes 11,000 acres as well as important buildings in the centre of Lahore. This action was taken to counter efforts of Sir Ganga Ram’s descendants to regain control of the trust properties. An EPTB official, however, stated that both the hospital and the medical college continue to receive some funding through the rent income generated by the trust properties.
Although both Sardar Dyal Singh Majithia and Sir Ganga Ram sought especially to educate, preserve or uplift members of their own religious communities, their philanthropic efforts extended to all citizens of Lahore. That this motive was lost in the trauma and violence of partition was noted by Saadat Hasan Manto, who observed the irony of the Pakistani rioter, injured while defacing the statue of Sir Ganga Ram, being taken to Sir Ganga Ram Hospital for medical treatment.
The histories of these two institutions underscore a complicated situation that is unique to the South Asian context. What becomes of indigenous philanthropies and their institutions when a dramatic societal and cultural shift has displaced the patrons and/or recipients of the philanthropic endeavour or has brought them into conflict with national policies or public sentiment? In the broader context of the Initiative on Indigenous Philanthropy, these profiles also underscore the need for a closer examination and discussion of the future role of the EPTB and the trusts and properties it administers. India’s system of auqaf administration, particularly as regards the trusts and properties of migrants, could provide an apt comparison and basis for considering different options. Now over fifty years since the creation of Pakistan, the ambiguous, and sometimes contested status of philanthropic institutions under the control of the Evacuee Property Trust Board reveals a disjuncture of partition that has yet to be fully resolved.
THE twin blasts in Mumbai triggered an apparent panic sale of shares at the Bombay Stock Exchange. The sensitive index plunged by a sharp three per cent. But the next day it recovered smartly, if curiously, exceeding even the most optimistic expectations.
On a parallel track, long before the debris of the devastation was cleared, officials and some sections of the media alike had already blamed Pakistan, Lashkar-i-Taiba and Gujarat Muslims for the bombings. Naturally, they said in unison, a Hindu backlash could not be ruled out. So Mumbai spent the night after the blasts cowering in terror.
The next day mercifully was a different story. Newspapers and TV channels that had helped spread fears of revenge suddenly declared a heightened state of normalcy in Mumbai. They celebrated the recovery at the bourse as a tribute to Indian secularism. The Indian middle classes had matured, the media declared.
So far so good, but cast another look at the sensitive index. Three per cent down the first day and more than a prompt recovery the next. Look again. Interestingly, the lingua franca of Indian bourses is Gujarati. What prompts sudden changes and volatility at the stock exchanges is thus discerned and divined by a select milieu of punters. Most others are just guessing.
Cut to a dispatch in The Tribune of Chandigarh on March 18, 2002, when the Gujarat pogroms of Indians by Indians were at their height. There was no Lashkar-i-Taiba there, at least not after Godhra. No Pakistani agents or Gujarati Muslims were involved in the massacre and looting of innocents.
At that time, what did the newspaper have to say about Jaipur, capital of Rajasthan, the state bordering Gujarat?
“The recent incidents of communal riot and betting by gamblers in Jaipur have made people sit up and ponder over the degeneration of the system. According to news reports, satta operators (punters) first speculated over two possible dates (March 13 and March 15) when communal riots could begin in Jaipur. They did not stop at this and put a price on a number of casualties. To protect their betting interests, they went a step further and tried to incite both communities in sensitive areas.”
“What is worse,” the newspaper said, “five-time BJP MP from Jaipur Girdhari Lal Bhargava is clueless about such illegal activity which led to the arrest of 69 persons.”
The deputy police chief of Jaipur Ajit Singh Shekhawat told The Tribune that 69 persons were arrested on the charge of communal riot-betting. According to him the stake money on day one alone had “touched a few lakhs. We cannot give definite figures.”
The Times of India, reporting from Ahmedabad and Vadodra on April 10, 2002, said: “Transcending the cricket arena, the euphoria for betting and gambling has acquired an appallingly insensitive form — that too in the already communally-charged Gujarat.”
It said: “After the Godhra tragedy and the myriad bouts of bloodshed that followed, the residents of Gujarat are fast realizing that humans themselves are the worst forms of evil. So, no wonder that they are getting accustomed to rumours and speculation on where exactly the next riot would wreak havoc,” it said.
“If reports are to be believed,” the Times went on, “the die-hard gamblers of Gujarat have been placing bets over the last one month on where the riots would break out, where curfew would be imposed and what the death toll would be.”
In Rajkot, there were reports that as many as 16 bookies had been gambling heavily on the riots, the Times said. “While the 16 bookies were operating from Sanganwana Chowk, their partners were active in Gundawadi, Kevdawadi, Jungleshewar, Sardhar, Janakpuri and Race Course.” Most betting was done “on who would start the violence and in which area.”
The ghoulish method of making money is not peculiarly Indian. For none other than the Pentagon was planning to introduce a new gambling system in the United States and beyond, apparently “in order to better predict terrorist attacks.”
Called the Policy Analysis Market, it was designed on the lines of the commodities futures market. This is how it would work: A person buys a futures contract if he believes a certain event — assassination of Yasser Arafat, for instance — will occur. If he does not think so, he sells the futures contract. The Pentagon then uses trends in this market to predict terror- related events.
Fortunately, some Congressmen found it an appalling scheme and had it quashed. Their arguments were rooted in the impracticality of the Pentagon scheme as also its unpredictable consequences. According to one analyst opposed to the scheme, it would be possible to trigger a desired result by manipulating the market, and make a lot of money in the process.
“Suppose a rich person wants to see Arafat assassinated. He buys up enough futures contracts to produce the result he wants. Then, if he is despicable enough, he arranges for the assassination to take place. A mere millionaire could easily become a billionaire this way,” the analyst said.
“Secondly, this gambling system will increase, rather than decrease, terrorism. It will ruin our reputation further in all the countries around the world.”
Senator Byron L. Dorgan from North Dakota who had objected to the plan, argued: “Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlour so that people could... bet on the assassination of an American political figure?”
Is terrorism the latest form of insider trading? If so, where does the buck stop?
BOOKER Prize winner Arundhati Roy began her writing career as a scriptwriter. She also acted in the one film she wrote and directed. The film entitled “In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones” in English was made in 1988 for Doordarshan but was shown just once by the state-run channel, that too late at night “when decent people were fast asleep,” according to Roy.
Penguin Books India has now published the script of the film, a rip-roaring depiction of the campus life in the 1970s, in this case at a Delhi institute of architecture in 1974. At a special screening of the film last Thursday, Arundhati took the opportunity to take the system of officially backed film festivals to task.
No one could have failed to notice a teeny-weeny role that was assigned in the movie to a young nervous boy who bore a strong resemblance to a latter-day popular movie star from Bombay. It was Shahrukh Khan, in a cameo role, with his stutter intact!
NOW the city has an elected government that appears to be fairly well-placed to control the conduct of the public services in the city administration. As people, we are in the habit of using the stick to belabour the ubiquitous ‘government’.
There have been reports in newspapers about several ‘ghost’ public dispensaries and health centres. They exist only on paper, but money is paid out to the non-existent staff and for other paraphernalia. Predictably, the culprits identified are some nameless, faceless middle of the order bureaucrats.
Without holding any brief for the bureaucrats, high or low, the point that needs to be driven home is to develop the practice of addressing grievances to the elected members of the city government. They are the people, who have secured votes on the basis of some clear-cut promises. If there is a ‘ghost’ school or health centre, the matter should first be reported to the elected ‘City Father’. He should be confronted with the horror of non- existent public facilities in whose name public money is shown as expenditure incurred.
Whether it is because we have had so little of democracy or it is only our social lethargy, the fact that hits the eye is that most of us take things as they come. We suffer, endure and grumble to ourselves, or in our close circle of friends or fellow workers. And having let the steam out for a while, the matter ends till the mood again gets sour and the grumbling is resumed, again. And so life goes on with all its defects, some of which are not difficult to remove if only we were more active in our own interests as citizens.
Look at the way, most of the commuters in this city are mistreated and humiliated in the over-loaded buses perpetually going haywire in the main thoroughfares of this city. Among those millions, nobody is complaining about the suffocating over- crowding the public buses. Nobody is protesting over the absence of bus stops or the audacious disregard for the few bus stops that have somehow survived the spreading chaos on our roads.
It is said that we get the public administration and services we deserve. Much of the mess that we endure without a protest can be sorted out if only we took ourselves more seriously and spoke out against what is manifestly unacceptable and intolerable. The bus operators hold out threats of strike at the drop of a hat. But, the public take it all lying down, while paying for the service they do not get in any proper shape or manner at a price too high, considering the quality of service provided. The bus operators protest every now and then, but their victims remain silent as stone or dead wood.
The same would go about the atrociously indifferent quality of sanitation services. We continue to live with garbage spread all over; in the streets littered with trash; with the underground gutters flowing across the main roads. These are not merely irritations and inconveniences. For the sensitive citizen these problems amount to brazen indignities and insults. The self-respecting citizen should refuse to abide by such affronts. But nobody is complaining!
There is another side of the same citizenry. One is left totally bewildered over the crowds the political parties with religious labels manage to collect to walk long miles, shouting their hearts out in their slogans that have nothing at all to do with public good. They even muster and parade hundreds of women in their black shuttlecock burqa. But, when it comes to real issues that matter every minutes of our normal life- for example, insanitation, unclean water and polluted air, un-swept roads ‘ghost” public dispensaries and schools — there is not a whimper of public protest.
With due respect, one has to address a few words to the ‘senior citizens,’ living in comfort and also with a measure of respect in public eye. Granted that the comfort and ease they are enjoying is well earned. Granted also that they have a right to take life with a sense of ease and freedom. But, the fact remains that there is so much here that needs to be taken seriously, particularly by those who have time to spare and a name that commands weight and due consideration.
Having earned retirement does not absolve senior citizens of their duty to react to what is glaringly improper. The senior citizens have a responsibility to guide and advise others. Also, indeed, to chastise and reprimand. Are any senior citizens in Karachi doing their bit as the elders and seniors of the elected City Fathers? The answer is not in the affirmative. It was in the same frustrating situation that the notorious spoiler Bernard Shaw made one of his character declaring that he felt unhappy when he saw people happy. That fellow was not being a kill-joy misanthrope. What he meant to say was that with so much around to be unhappy about, how can anyone be so happy?
In Karachi, it is now absolutely necessary that the citizens should find their voice. It is about time they started refusing to tolerate what is patently unacceptable like failure of sanitation services, roads in utter disrepair, overflowing gutters, ‘ghost’ schools and public health centres, habitual discourtesies of people in police uniform — khaki as well as white — and petty officials at public counters in government offices, dealing directly with public.
Things being what they are, it is indeed no small comfort to learn that the provincial police chief has told policemen to mind their manners in dealing with public. The members of this force have been told by their head not to misbehave with people.
Reaction against cases of possible misbehaviour has come in the shape of a command from Inspector-General — not in the form of a public protest. This illustrates the point sought to be made.
It is not too soon for the people of Karachi to find their voice and use it. They should stand up and reject outright what is wrong. They should complain against being mistreated, short- changed, humiliated or deprived of what is undeniably their due.
A colleague who recently returned from a vacation in Thailand cannot help comparing the civic infrastructure of Bangkok with that of Karachi. The monsoon downpours in Bangkok were heavier and more frequent, and the city’s soil softer and muddier than Karachi’s. Yet the difference in the aftermath of the rains was obvious. The municipality, as in many megacities in the world, does its work in that metropolis of over 10 million people.
Coming back to Karachi after two weeks, the colleague found that the city roads here showed little signs of recovery from the battering they took in the previous month’s rains. The thin tarred upper crust of many roads, that used to be black top, had been washed away revealing large uneven shingled patches. There were more potholes to be seen in the middle of major arterial roads.
The usual smug faces and bad manners of many immigration officers greeted all new arrivals at the Jinnah Terminal, the pride of Pakistan’s aviation industry. The lady at the counter was particularly rude to an Indian family, a young couple and their two children, and began cursing herself for having to process their entry. “I don’t even know where to start with these Indians,” she yelled at a colleague manning the counter next to hers.
The Indians understood her chaste Urdu and tried to offer help by pronouncing their last name as it was listed in the passport. However, they were rudely admonished and told to shut up and let her do her work. “I was talking to my officer, not to you, so keep quiet,” retorted the lady behind the counter. What a welcome!
Bangkok, as the colleague recalled, is a bigger concrete jungle than Karachi, with most major roads having overhead expressways, running alongside long lines of highrises that dwarf the multi-storeyed buildings of Karachi. From dawn to dusk, the city roads are choked with bumper-to-bumper, but very disciplined, traffic.
Like Karachi, the colleague pointed out, Bangkok is also a city of immigrants who consist mostly of people from poor neighbouring countries and the rural hinterland in search of better opportunities.
But unlike Karachi, there are no chaotic scenes in the streets. People sitting in their cabs, cars and tuk-tuks — Bangkok’s version of the rickshaw — brave the long traffic jams with admirable patience and in an orderly manner. Bangkok has grown, in size and in population, with grace.
Central Bangkok, the colleague reported, also has a modern, noise- and pollution-free electromagnetic urban commuter train system, which runs on concrete-built raised platforms. This, unlike what the critics of the Karachi Mass Transit Project would have us believe, has not disfigured the cityscape, increased pollution or turned the neighbourhoods through which it passes into crime dens and urban ghettos.
Good urban planning and the will to make it all work are the lessons this amazingly friendly city can teach our city managers.
The slipper mystery
An observant colleague recently noticed that a rickshaw had a slipper tied to its exhaust pipe. She could not figure out why the rickshaw driver had tied a small, dainty-looking slipper to the exhaust pipe. Her wonderment knew no bounds when she afterwards noticed that a large number of rickshaws in the city have slippers tied to their exhausts.
One day she plucked up the courage to ask a rickshaw driver why he had fastened a slipper to his vehicle. The rickshaw driver replied that it was a widely held view that a slipper tied to a rickshaw, or for that matter to a taxi, would ward off the evil eye.
He said that it had been observed that the vehicles that did not have slippers tied to them suffered accidents. He stressed that it was important for professional drivers who spent most of their waking hours driving to protect themselves.
The colleague pointed out to the rickshaw driver that a large number of people did not tie slippers to the exhaust pipes of their vehicles. Indeed, she added, they were unaware of such a measure, and yet they did not have accidents.
The rickshaw driver was unconvinced. He said he had been driving his rickshaw with a slipper tied to it for years. He said his elders had told him to take this step to protect himself from driving hazards. He refused to remove the slipper.
The colleague concedes that, though she is not superstitious, she does cast a sly glance at a rickshaw’s exhaust pipe whenever she boards one.
Book bazaar
A couple of Sundays ago, a friend, a confirmed bibliophile, went to the 19th-century Frere Hall sandwiched between Sir Abdullah Haroon Road and Fatima Jinnah Road to purchase inexpensive second-hand books. To his chagrin, he found that the place had been cordoned off by the police. He felt extremely vexed. After all, he had been making weekly pilgrimages to the book bazaar for the past year.
My friend asked a policeman on duty why the venue had been cordoned off. The policeman pointed to the residence of the US consul-general and the American consulate across the road. He did not say a word, but it was clear that the foreign envoy had taken exception to the weekly book bazaar held on the lawns of the Frere Hall. The provincial administration had obliged the US consul-general only too willingly.
Being a regular at the Sunday book bazaar, my friend had struck up a friendship with many dealers in second-hand books. He had the cell phone number of one of them. He called the bookseller and asked what he and his colleagues were doing. The bookseller told him that, barred from holding the weekly bazaar on the Frere Hall premises, they had gone back to their previous selling-point near Regal Chowk. The bookseller told him many book lovers who had been turned away from the Frere Hall had come to the previous venue of the Sunday book bazaar.
The friend at once drove to Regal Chowk. He had an odd sense of deja vu as he entered a lane lined by book stalls. Familiar faces greeted him. However, he insists that the provincial administration should give second-hand booksellers an alternative place to hold Sunday book bazaars.
Roads as party venues
The shamianas are back. They are pitched not just in back lanes or in kutchi abadis; they are set up even on main roads and in posh localities.
Normally, there are three “legitimate” occasions for blocking a street. One, if there is a tragedy — someone has died — and the bereaved family must put up a tent to make arrangements for visitors to sit and wait before going to the graveyard.
Two, if there is a religious occasion. Pakistani Muslims do not have any qualms about inconveniencing others.
Three, if there is a wedding.
Well, there is little that you can do about the first two. But what about the third one — weddings? A wedding means more than one function. It could be a mehndi, a mayun, a nikah or a valima. People think they are quite within their rights to appropriate a portion of a public road and celebrate their happiness regardless of the trouble their action causes to pedestrians, neighbours and the traffic.
Nobody should presume that those pitching marquees for wedding dinners are poor people. Go and see rich localities, and you will find that those hogging public property for a night of feasting are in fact quite well-to-do people. Not only well-to-do, but very influential, for they manage to get the police to control traffic.
Since this practice goes on unchecked at the expense of the people, the city government can make money out of it. As it is, the city government is cash strapped. Its sources of revenue are few. It could think about imposing a fee for the use of roads as marriage venues on a temporary basis.
— By Karachian
email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com