A tale of sanctuary-turned-commercial hub

Historical Moti Bazaar’s image as ‘a place for women’ sustains throughout history

RAWALPINDI:

One may assume that “Moti Bazaar — the oldest commercial hub in Rawalpindi — may have been named after the Urdu word “moti” or the pearl but that is not the case.

Within the narrow streets, there stands a historical mansion built almost 139 years ago by Hindu cowherd Bhola Ram Bali in the love of his wife Krishnavanthi.

After the death of his wife, Ram Bali sold the mansion to Moti Lal Ram, a wealthy Hindu businessman in Rawalpindi at that time.

Around the 1900s, Moti Lal Ram turned the mansion

into Kanya Ashram or shelter homes for mostly Hindu women widows, who escaped the practice of satti — the ritual of burning a woman alive with her husband's dead body.

In this Kanya Ashram, Moti Lal Ram, an enlightened Hindu businessman, not only provided free accommodation and food to the widows but also honed their skills in sewing and embroidery. Apart from the Hindu widows, it also provided sanctuary to helpless Muslim and Sikh women and orphaned.

In 1901, after some financial crisis, Lal Ram put on display the needlework and other stitched items made by the women in Kanya Ashram outside the street. These hand-made and stitched items were sold for a good price within a few days.

Encouraged by the good sale, Lal Ram got more embroidered and Croatian items from these women, and the business flourished. Later, this Kanya Ashram was converted into a regular large sewing and embroidery centre and soon other people also started selling embroidered and needlecraft items here and it turned into a small “Moti Bazaar”.

A school was also built along with the Kanya Ashram, where Hindu and Sikh children used to study. The names of students and teachers written in Hindi are visible on the wall of this school.

After the partition in 1947, Moti Lal Ram along with his family migrated to India and the Evacuee Trust Property Board took possession of this mansion and the school. As the business grew, the six small makeshift stall-like shops in a narrow dark street turned into the largest women's bazaar in the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

Naveed Kanwal, a senior leader of Moti Bazaar Anjuman-e- Tajiran, said that starting from Moti Lal Ram’s Kanya Ashram, it has now become the market for the sale of items for women in Rawalpindi.

At the moment, Moti Bazaar has around 7,000 small and big shops and 75 small and big markets. Around 12,000 salesmen work in these shops and markets which have 15 entrance and exist points.

Shopkeepers said that around 5,000 women visit the market daily and traders are making roaring business. Moti Bazaar is surrounded by Lal Haveli Bohar Bazaar, Iqbal Road, Talwaran Bazaar and Urdu Bazaar Chowk.

In 1980, Syed Malik Shah, the then education officer of Rawalpindi, shifted the primary school located in the nearby Naya Mohalla to the now-closed mansion of the Kanya Ashram. Now it has been elevated to a high school on 2-kanal worth billions of rupees.

Unscrupulous elements, from time to time, attempt to grab this costly land to build commercial plazas. The education department will have to keep a close eye on these elements to save this historical building of the school from being grabbed. This Kanya Ashram is a masterpiece of Mughal architecture. Despite the passage of 139 years, its glory remains magnificent.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 28^th, 2022.