The road much travelled — III

In early 2003, whilst attending a law conference in England as a junior barrister, I was invited to privately meet with the chief guest, a judge of the High Court of England and Wales. Needless to say, I was flattered and making my way across the room, found myself nervously rehearsing all the intelligent things I would say to him. As I approached the judge and his wife both smiled. I gulped and opened my mouth to speak, but before any words came out, the judge gently asked me, “Could you tell us something about Rawalpindi? I was born there you see”. To say that I was surprised to hear that Rawalpindi — a city that had been almost entirely eclipsed by the younger, more modern ‘Islamabad the Beautiful’ — should retain such a hold on the psyche of an Englishman who had not seen it for more than 50 years, would be an understatement.

Raza Ali Abidi, in his Urdu travelogue Jarnaili Sadak which records his 1985 journey along GT road, recounts a conversation with Chaudhry Mauladad (who at that time was in his late eighties), which sheds some light on the Pindi of old. Chaudhry sahib vividly remembers the British period. “The Raj may have been that of the British who were Christians and believed in the Bible,” he says, “but they worked in accordance with the Quran and Sunnah. There was a Session Judge who was a good friend of mine. Once I brought a wild hen for him as a gift, and he asked me straight up, Mauladad, tell me the truth, are you here to ask a favour? I protested that I had no such agenda. He said, if you are not here to ask for a favour, you are my friend, otherwise leave, I will not speak with you”. I am amused at the increasing relevance of this little anecdote and wonder if a history of justice in present times, would record an episode, even fractionally as salutary.

Mr Abidi had also met the now extinct breed: an Englishman who had spent his entire life in the subcontinent. His name was Mr Cunningham, and he loved history. According to him, archaeologists had found relics of ancient Christianity in the Ojhri Camp area (which is notorious for the 1988 blasts, that not only reportedly killed more than a thousand people — despite the official death toll of 30 —but also spelt the end of the Junejo government). Despite, however, its historic antecedents the city could not be settled until the Gakhars arrived there around the same time as the Mughals. The Gakhars were adept at maintaining their independence, by offering hospitality to the invaders from the north, (confident that they would move on) and keeping at arms length any overtures from Delhi.

Pindi prospered and thrived during the Raj: the British built wide avenues and bridges and planted trees and orchards; raised red-brick and tiled-roof buildings for schools, colleges, courts, churches and hospitals; in place of an old Gurdwara, they laid the foundations of what is now Raja Bazaar, and where Christian relics had been discovered, established the Cantonment. It was perhaps due to their efforts that the 1907 Gazetteer acknowledged Rawalpindi as the cleanest city in North India.

Even by the mid-eighties, when Mr Abidi visited, this city of wide avenues and orchards, it was falling apart and being overshadowed by neighbouring Islamabad. This process was only escalated by the Ojhri Camp, and the more recent blasts at Liaquat Bagh (which killed Benazir Bhutto) and Parade Ground mosque (which killed more than 40 people). During Pervez Musharaf’s time, even Rawalpindi’s most loyal citizen, the GHQ, considered re-locating to Islamabad. Whilst the GHQ has reversed its decision, it has not been able to stem the city’s decline. The beautiful buildings of the Raj have been replaced by hurriedly-designed shopping plazas and the heavily-encroached wide avenues have been transmuted into narrow roads that can not be navigated. The only reminder of the glory days of the Raj is St Paul’s Church on the Mall, bearing witness, in its isolated elegance, to an era long gone by.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 21^st,  2011.