Archives record our past. It helps to build the path to the future. Last week the death of the poet, activist and archivist Ahmed Saleem not only deprived the city of a scientific thinker, but a man who took conserving our archives in a meaningful way.

The world of archives is a much-neglected aspect of our national life, and one which handicaps our academic research. Like the massive archives of Ahmed Saleem, which need to be donated and or willed to some educational institution, scores of silent scholars have similar collections.

I say this because I have purchased many a rare book from the ‘used books’ informal shops on The Mall-Anarkali intersection on a Sunday. My friend Saifullah Khalid is the master of that place, and his own collection nears 65,000 books and manuscripts approximately. As he ages in body only, he is worried about his impressive collection.

The world of Lahore archives is getting a lot of attention, not only within the country, but in some of the world’s leading universities as well. The reason is simple. Firstly, the Punjab Archives has a collection of the entire record since the times of the Mughal Emperor Akbar and beyond, right through the Sikh era and the British era and the Pakistan era so far. Only the British Library in London has a bigger collection of books and documents of our region.

But then when this newspaper carried stories of the rare archives being dumped using garden handcarts in the old decaying horse stable inside the Punjab Civil Secretariat building, it created a stir. This scribe visited the horse stable and wrote a piece about it. You can imagine my shock when I picked up a letter from Bahadar Shah Zafar lying on the floor as urine-filled water flowed through the horse stable. In the letter, the Mughal ruler was requesting the East India Company to restore his pension.

When this letter was placed on the desk of the then archives department secretary, he brushed it aside as just another piece of wastepaper. The story created a stir and got students on the street. The then chief minister, incidentally my Government College days class-fellow, who was thrown out of class for always wearing flashy three-piece suits, promised to move them to a new place. To his bad luck that was the very house of my daughter’s in-laws.

Next he changed tack and said that the old Tollinton Market buildings would be used to store these historic documents. When that was denied, he claimed that a building would be built for the purpose in the market car park. Then the issue cooled down. Now they have informed an expert that a new building is to be planned and built inside the Punjab Civil Secretariat. Oh, what does the word ‘hogwash’ mean.

Last week one of the world’s leading archivist, Dr Kevin Greenbank of Cambridge University, visited Lahore for a week and we were discussing the world of Lahore’s archives. He had flown in to deliver a workshop lecture at a private university, as well as one at the GCU Lahore’s new remote Kala Shah Kaku Campus. A retired GCU official informs that some rare books have been shifted there, but they remain undocumented, and a peon acts as the librarian. Trust the decaying institution.

Among other educational institutions Dr Greenbank visited the National College of Arts (NCA) and everywhere he went he got positive comments about the city’s world of archives. At every educational institution he found the students very inquisitive and were asking what he said were “all the right questions”. His view remains that the world of archives of Lahore have a positive vibe, and people are increasingly interested in them. The point is that our bureaucrats are not.

What do you think now needs to be done? To this Dr Greenbank has a detailed opinion. His first advice was to first catalogue everything, every paper, letter, book, manuscript, document, file etc. Once that is done then they should be stored in clean boxes in a controlled environment. In this the moisture level, the temperature level and the light level must be the optimum, recommended so that the archives do not mould.

When asked if the Lahore Archives in the Punjab Civil Secretariat are so stored, he went silent. Then came the comment: “They claim they are shifting them to a new premises within the Secretariat”. “Did you see the new premises?” I asked. “I was not shown it”. But he went on to say that the present premises leaves a lot to be desired. Foreigners invariably do not talk of the negatives.

When asked about the people handling the archives there and the much-trumpeted digital programme, Dr Greenbank commented: “Oh, the staff are all great and have impressive knowledge. They asked all the right questions and were frank. Their computer programme is as good as anywhere and the images come out clear”.

So, it seems that with a good purpose-built new building with a controlled environment and every archive conserved properly, Lahore might yet have one of the finest archive collections in the world. It is a tall claim but very much achievable.

The city of Lahore is known as the city of gardens and colleges and green trees. The population today faces smog like never before, our gardens need a lot that need correction, and our colleges surely need trained and educated teachers. If these were investigated into and appropriate action taken there is hope still. It is about time that scientific methods prevail.

Added to all these neglected aspects of national life, if we can find a method of seeking out at least a hundred persons with book collections like the one Saifullah Khalid has, and these are then either donated to some public library, or even some specialised library, or also some university or school libraries, that would be a service that will be hard to forget.

But let me return to the week-long visit of Dr Greenbank. He loves the old walled city and spent long hours walking through it. “Did you try the food?” “Oh my god, that is one big reason I love Lahore. Every morsel is out of this world. It is meat, meat, meat”.

As Dr Greenbank narrated the Lahore world of food to four other Cambridge academics, one could see their mouths salivating. Then he rounded this tasty conversation with a Gowalmandi Food Street comment: “I asked the bearer if they had any other dish without meat. Prompt came the response. ‘Yes Sir, we have chicken’. Two of the scholars who heard this fell off their chairs laughing.

Published in Dawn, December 17th, 2023