Karachi: The story of a city

I was introduced to Karachi in the mid-1950s when barely four. Out of a village from north Punjab which was the only place I knew before then this was as big as it could get. The Clifton Beach was a vast expanse before you made it to the coastline. The arched monument where they now have a children’s park was the only landmark around which hawkers sold ice-lollies and Pakolas to a sprinkling of visitors. Gandhi Garden and surrounding areas were lush-green with foliage that grew widely and wildly. It was deep evergreen and gave out purple-petal flowers with a beautiful fragrance. Karachi smelt of the plant that is no more.

Mohammad Ali Society was the eastern most edge of the city. Drigh Road was another city and a halt on the train-track. So was Malir. Now I believe the DHA has gone into the sea while Bahria is creating alternate cities in the north. I don’t think it rained then because I have no memory of flooded roads. The buses moved us to wherever we needed to go and the conductors carried a satchel which had multi-coloured tickets for different destinations as he cut one to each passenger.

I then got reacquainted with Karachi in 1970 still short of 20. By now it was a city of lights. I could see more and sense more. It stayed up late and was noisy. We passed by the Metropole hoping to steal a peep. Bambino had arrived but so had Scala; to these I would get intimately familiar later. Politically, these were the days of the lull before the storm. There was a sense of ethnic sensitivity. I learnt about places belonging to the Sindhis which meant there were non-Sindhis as well. I also learnt that a few were Punjabis which meant there were also non-Punjabis. My 1950s memories were minus such definition.

Then things happened. In 1971, we lost the Bengalis without a thought that they were once us. They had become the other and remained so all of 1971. First ever national elections of 1970 had thrown up Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as the uncontested leader in West Pakistan and with the break-up of the country he emerged a victor in what was left of the country. He assumed power in 1972. He heralded two trends. The common man became the centre of the political equation because of his vote. This was to be a game-changer for the future. However it brought along identity making people acutely aware of their antecedence and sense of belonging — the Sindhis specially so since that is from where ZAB belonged. ZAB’s PPP in Sindh then passed a law declaring Sindhi as the official language and the medium of instruction for Sindh’s schools and colleges. Karachi revolted.

Consisting of ‘Muhajirs’ from UP, Bihar and other parts of India they not only brought their unique culture they coalesced around Urdu as ‘their’ language of identity. Along with Islam, Urdu had been the leveraging element for the Muslim League to pitch for Pakistan. It soon graduated to a language of defiance against the onslaught of imposed Sindhi resulting in the unfortunate 1972 Language Riots in Karachi. In the early 1970s it was common to see wall-chalking castigating Sindhis. There were shops and houses gutted by arson and fire and it was understood those belonged to Sindhi occupants. Sindhis relocated to interior Sindh in large numbers. From being a salubrious, homogenous mix people became identity driven. It wasn’t yet fear but a sense of eeriness was in the air.

The ‘Muhajir’ was reborn. The language riots and a policy-founded quota system in government jobs by the PPP government in favour of the lesser qualified Sindhis gave rise to increased alienation among the Muhajirs. Fear became the driver of reinforced ethnic alignment. The APMSO and then the MQM were born under Altaf Hussein. It wasn’t out of nothing that the sphinx rose. As he galvanised and exercised power with a reign of terror from the mid-1980s to around 2015 Karachi had an owner. He became the symbol of absolute power and exercised it through extortion, torture, murder, arson and killing. Even when he exiled himself he remotely lorded over the city reducing Karachi to a crime capital. Karachi had lost its face and its spirit forever. Crime replaced politics even if politics was exercised in its own name. Karachi became a hunting ground for competing gangs of malice and malfeasance. Crime, corruption, tribalism and crass neglect followed soon after.

Repeated dithering over countering MQM’s lawless activities meant it was being tolerated at the cost of the city’s peace and its future. Many decided to close businesses and locate elsewhere. Despite the MQM, the political party, many Urdu-speaking people that it represented suffered excessively at the hands of the fascist ways of the party’s militant wing. Tales abound in how the politics, the society and the civility, and hence the city, degenerated over decades to a point where none has remained viable. As the city structure and its spirit collapses around itself newer cities are being founded. Perhaps that is how and why cities decay and ultimately vanish and that is how new cities emerge. Perhaps that is what we are witnessing in Karachi.

The case in point is how it has become impossible to manage refuse or clear drains. Twenty tons of it gets created every day in a city that now counts over 20 million. Already at sea-level even gravity cannot help except pile and overflow. All systems are broke. No one collects the waste and none disposes it. There is just no municipal system in place despite all the structures and their trappings. When it rains it inundates all and scatters the filth from its heaps to all corners of the city. Potable water or electricity are now the laments from the past. The city has a bigger challenge: drowning in its own filth. The city has no owners. MQM was used and manipulated for political ends by all and sundry including those who initiated operations against it to cleanse it but ended up fraternising it for political gains. When the city’s demise became obvious a rearguard action was undertaken to decimate the toxic leadership of MQM and then to defang the party of its militant ways. Its large ‘Muhajir’ majority remains unhinged and lost under a listless and a diluted MQM. The inertia of the ‘real’ MQM looms inhibiting replacement leadership.

The world saves its heritage and its cities. We don’t have to let ours go under as monuments to our incompetence. A strong and representative local bodies system is constitutionally mandated — all across the country. That is where the top court could perhaps enable a safety for Karachi. Mandate the governments to institute and empower those who can run their affairs. Rather than rectify and remedy we let cities slide into non-function and oblivion. The PPP does not own the city, nor does anyone else. The existing local government is a sham. There is no political responsibility. That is how cities die.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 16^th, 2020.

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