Historical monuments and buildings need special care if they’re to be conserved for posterity. In Pakistan, instead of preserving and taking pride in our historical richness, we have been inflicting great damage on it.
LAHORE is the repository of two of the seven world heritage historical monuments in Pakistan enlisted by Unesco. The city is one of those very few places in the world that have more than one antiquity which the world body takes care of to ensure their conservation. At the same time, Lahore must also feel deeply concerned over how all its three monumental Mughal buildings — the Lahore Fort, the Shalamar Gardens, and the Tomb of Jahangir — have been vandalized by at least three governments, starting from a sound and light show in the early ‘60s, till the recent staging of a play, Anarkali.
The sound and light show began some time in 1962 at the Jahangir quadrangle. The show had a rich background musical score to depict battle clamours, shrilling conspiracies and the rendering of scintillating songs by damsels in Mughal and Sikh courts. Yet, its staging was not without the destruction of the exquisite walls of Emperor Jahangir’s sleeping chamber. The walls were pierced to install heavy lights and sound boxes. The show went on with occasional hiccups till its closure in 1992 when government revenue from the sale of tickets dipped to rock bottom because some officials had their personal entry tickets printed and sold them in much more quantity than what was fixed by the department concerned.
In February 1974, the fort was prepared to host dinner for heads of states and governments who were in Lahore to attend the Second Islamic Summit Conference. The archaeology department was asked by the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto government to conserve the Mughal building to its original grandeur in a few days. The work done in haste caused damage to the periphery walls; and its parapets, walls and the gigantic Alamgiri Gate were painted with clay.
A dinner reception was hosted at the magnificent Sheesh Mahal and food was cooked on its marble floor. As a result, the dazzling white marble walkways around the Sikh period Ath Dara (eight ways) and the sleeping chamber of Emperor Shah Jahan were badly burnt. Heavy lights were placed along exquisite marble lattices, which were drilled to pierce two-foot long iron rods to support a shamiana tied to huge ropes. And because of big chandeliers, the ceiling of the Diwan-i-Khas and the Shah Jahan chamber tilted down a bit.
In 1989, Prince Karim Aga Khan visited Pakistan and the Nawaz Sharif government once again chose the Sheesh Mahal for a dinner reception in his honour. What was done to host the reception was almost a repetition of 1974. Its marble lattices were again penetrated deep to fix heavy ropes to erect a shamiana with the help of pointed iron rods, some of which were one to two feet long. Food was cooked on the marble courtyard, burning it badly from as many as 20 places. Peels of orange and pomegranate, used to serve juices to the guests, could be seen littered between the Sheesh Mahal and the Diwan-i-Khas. On both occasions, archaeology department officials took months to remove the garbage, wash floors and remove black spots from the floor.
In 1993, it was the turn of the caretaker government of Moin Qureshi whose information minister, Nisar Memon, staged a cultural show to damage the Diwan-i-Aam. When the preparations for the show were in progress, a 16ft piece of the Akbar period “jharoka” was damaged.
Queen Elizabeth came to Lahore on an official visit in 1996 and the Nawaz Sharif government arranged a tea reception for her at the Lahore Fort. This time the department concerned was again asked to do some conservation, and three days were given to the department to complete the task. The department this time round washed the delicate structures of the Sheesh Mahal and the Diwan-i-Khas using detergents and scrubbers to damage their marble pores. Clay was painted on the majestic Alamgiri Gate, niches and outer walls and parapets. Simultaneously, small water cauldrons outside the chamber of Shah Jahan were filled with mounds of earth. This was, by far, the major damage done to the fort in the name of conservation.
But 1998 may be remembered as the worst year in the history of official vandalism. This time the victims were the Shalamar Gardens and the Tomb of Jahangir. The Punjab government of Shahbaz Sharif got the rare hydraulic system of Shalamar, one of the two world heritage monuments in Lahore, demolished to broaden the G T Road outside. This is decidedly the greatest damage done to any historical monument across the world. The hydraulic system comprised three tanks to purify and supply water to the garden’s reservoirs. The system was built in 1641AD by royal engineer Ali Mardan Khan, to whose credit are several Shah Jahan period buildings in Lahore, and whose labour dug the Shahpur canal extending over a stretch of around 100 miles from Madhopur headworks to Lahore in only three months. The canal has now gone dry but still exists as “Suk Nehr” as a city residential area. The demolition of the system has eliminated the Mughals’ water supply system, once existing only at this site.
Another historic degeneration took place at the Tomb of Jahangir the same year when prime minister Nawaz Sharif ordered that a VIP gate should be carved into its northern wall to provide a passage to his guests from within the country and abroad. The project also envisaged developing a helipad near Shahdara Town. The federal government awarded the contract for the gate to architect Nayyar Ali Dada, for which the wall and the ticket booth were to be broken. History does not provide any evidence to the existence of a gate in the monument’s northern wall, but the year saw the making of many historians who claimed the existence of such a gate. The opinion of architect Dada was no different.
When the gate was built, Shahdara Town people converted the tomb into something that was for domestic use. They made the whole monument a passage which gave them an easy access to the city. They used the building for all their good or bad purposes and even spent nights there, cooking food and washing dishes and clothes. They invited relatives and friends to a new environment, grazed cattle and respond to the call of nature anywhere at the site. The ticket booth never became functional and nobody ever purchased entry tickets. As time passed, the historic building was also used for criminal activities.
Genuine local and foreign tourists invariably faced embarrassment and even intimidation by the town people and every day saw a decline in the revenue, and in two years the building went completely under their control. Officials of the archaeology department in the beginning resisted town dwellers, but in a few days they backed out.
For two years, the Tomb of Jahangir remained in control of Shahdara Town residents. In 2000, the department closed the door but the residents set it on fire to again make their way into the area. Later, the department reconstructed the wall and called the police in to prevent illegal entry. With the passage of time, things returned to normal and the monument has now been restored.
Another structure falling prey to official vandalism was the Sikh period Hazoori Bagh built between the Badshahi Masjid and the Lahore Fort. In 2001, the Punjab tourism department, while sponsoring a car race, hoisted certain banners on its marble walls for which long steel nails were fixed. As a result, parts of the building were damaged.
The monuments of Lahore changed hands last year when the Punjab government took over in July. Soon after, City District Nazim Mian Aamer Mahmood hosted a lunch reception for a foreign delegation at the Diwan-i-Aam. The last such episode is the staging of Anarkali on the green lawns of the Diwan-i-Aam when Indian Punjab Chief Minister Maharaja Amrinder Singh visited this part of the country. The sponsors were an NGO which erected sets for the play.
In this regard, the latest occasion was the visit of Chinese prime minister for whom two receptions were held at the fort’s Diwan-i-Khas.
UNESCO: It may be pertinent to note that official vandalism of our monuments has badly tarnished the government’s credibility with a world body like Unesco. This UN organization protested each time a historic structure was ravaged. It was particularly perturbed when world heritage buildings like the Lahore Fort and the Shalamar Gardens were victimized. Unesco put the Lahore Fort on the ‘endangered list’ as early as 1991, and when the hydraulic system was demolished, the Shalamar Gardens were also listed as such.
This means that the monuments stand divested of their original affluence and efforts are needed to restore the past glory. Unesco has already started the restoration of Sheesh Mahal’s exquisite ceiling, second to none in the world, and different studies of the Shalamar Gardens structures and flora have also been initiated. The UN body is certainly paying for the loss inflicted by our successive governments.
LEGAL: The Antiquities Act of 1975 prohibits any public and private ceremony inside a protected monument and its section 18 unequivocally prohibits such festivities which are inconsistent with the objective of preservation. Even before, a similar law of 1968 existed on the statute books. Both laws provide for a punishment of one-year rigorous imprisonment or with fine or with both as mentioned under section 20(2). As such, all governments and their departments have committed an illegality which carries penalty. More than this, successive governments have vandalized history, a crime against civilization.
TAIMUR AZMAT: Punjab Information Secretary Taimur Azmat Usman defended the staging of Anarkali saying that using Diwan-i-Aaam lawns was not illegal.
“We consulted experts in archaeology and they said that grassy plots outside a structure could be used,” he told this writer when asked if the provincial government had not violated the law by allowing the play to be staged. He said the Environment Protection Tribunal also permitted staging of the play when the sponsors moved a petition.
The secretary information, however, conceded that the provincial government had no legal authority to manage archaeological buildings like the Lahore Fort which is not only a protected monument, but also forms part of world heritage. The only law the province has is the Punjab (Special Premises) Act whose protection is not extended to major monument. Technically speaking, prime monuments are still governed by the federal legislation (Antiquities Act of 1975) and Punjab is yet to go for an enactment. Taimur feels that the provision in the act for the federal archaeology director-general’s authorization may help for the interim. “We may get the authorization for the Punjab archaeology department’s DG till we ourselves legislate.” But the stage may not come soon because the legislative work will only be taken up once Punjab gets hold of all sites and monuments in the province.
