NAMING or re-naming roads on the spur of the moment tends to distort history and results in odd comparisons.

A recent example is the re-naming of Karachi’s University Road after Jamiluddin Aali.

Jamiluddin Aali is no doubt a distinguished writer who deserves to be remembered. But his contribution bears no comparison to that of Maulvi Abdul Haq who is rightly known as ‘Babai Urdu’. One has to make an effort to locate the road named after him.

Taking another instance, one has to make an effort to locate the road named after Nobel Laureate Prof. Abdus Salam in Islamabad while some important roads are named after lesser known officials and politicians.

To be fair to the people who deserve to be recognised for their contribution in any sphere of life, the people who matter should resist the temptation of making announcements on the spur of the moment. Instead, they should convey their feeling to the authority concerned, be it the government or a municipality or a private society, which should make a decision avoiding anomalies like the one which is the subject of this letter.

The president, prime minister and others who feel they have the authority in all matters should resist the temptation of re-naming roads and institutions on the spur of the moment just to earn applause.

Kunwar Idris

Karachi

(2)

PRESIDENT Mamnoon Hussain while inaugurating ‘Urdu Bagh’ as the new office of Anjuman-i-Tarraqi-i-Urdu, Pakistan, renamed ‘University Road, Karachi as Jamiluddin Aali Road.

Jamiluddin Aali was a noted Urdu poet and newspaper columnist who rendered services to the Anjuman, but this doesn’t mean that the already known University Road should be renamed.

It was given its present name by the then Commissioner of Karachi, Syed Darbar Ali Shah. Karachi University has a history of 67 years. It is still the largest university of Pakistan. It was established in 1951 as a federal university under the leadership of an Oxford-trained A. B. A. Haleem. It was shifted to new the campus in 1960. It is ranked among the 500 best universities of the world and 250 in Asia.

It is interesting to mention here that in 2015 the Sindh Assembly passed a resolution to name the civil hospital, Karachi, after a recipient of the Magsaysay Award, Dr Adeebul Hasan Rizvi, director of SIUT, but again in 2017 Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah renamed the hospital after the death of a German-born physician, Dr Ruth Pfau.

In other countries, if anything is named it can’t be changed without a genuine and logical reason, but in Pakistan buildings, roads, grounds, etc, are named and renamed.

Any other street or road near Aali’s last residence in Clifton/DHA or previous residence at Garden Road, which has no name, could be named after the famous poet.

Asad Subuktagin

Karachi

Published in Dawn, January 23rd, 2018