Hacking away at history: To ‘undo’ decades of neglect, authorities break the Shahi Khata

Locals fear this method of cleaning the historic drain will eventually be its undoing.

PESHAWAR: The Municipal Corporation Peshawar (MCP) has broken the historic Shahi Khata in two places near Qissa Khwani Bazaar. This action was taken after the Peshawar High Court (PHC) ordered the Khata be unblocked and cleared of all encroachments.

Locals, however, fear if the MCP continues maintenance in a similar fashion, the historic Khata in its original form could disappear over the next few years. The Shahi Khata dates back centuries and was constructed under the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh by the governor of Peshawar.

The court was forced to take action as the drain overflows even after nominal rain; the city failed to keep up with the Khata’s maintenance over the years. After the court’s direction, authorities took certain steps to hasten the cleaning process and – to ‘show their progress to the court’ – they broke the Khata in two places.

Talking to The Express Tribune, Chief Municipal Officer Saleem Khan admitted the annual cleaning of the Khata was a less than regular event during the past 10 years. This, he said, led to the current state of affairs – overflowing sewerage water at the first drop of rain.



“After the court’s decision, I asked the man in charge to re-establish annual maintenance of the Khata and he told me he had hired 122 men especially for the purpose. But only nine of them were working with him,” said Saleem. “The rest were working as personal servants in the houses of MNAs, MPAs, ex-nazims, naib nazims and other bureaucrats.”

All 122 men were then directed to report at their respective department within a few days, added Saleem. “I terminated 18 of them who failed to report back, while two of them were people with disabilities who could not work as janitorial staff. But the rest of the 102 employees have been called back from the houses of these people.”

The process of cleaning is almost complete now, maintained the chief municipal officer.

In response to a question, Saleem said the complete reconstruction of the Shahi Khata was not possible as there were at least 300 shops built on it. These have been there since the 1890s and are legal constructions, according to Saleem. He, however, justified the breaking of the famous structure in two places where slabs would be placed to provide easy access in future.

Locals, on the other hand, believe breaking the Shahi Khata in two places was unnecessary and a real loss for the city and its heritage.

“My shop was established on the Shahi Khata in the year 1890 and I know in the past there were stairs and openings left for the purpose of cleaning,” narrated a shop owner on condition of anonymity. “But after the introduction of the local government system, all such openings were sold to shopkeepers and closed down.”

In the absence of suitable existing openings, he added, the Municipal Corporation was now forced to demolish paved roads to access the Khata to clean it.

“It is a great loss. When they were trying to break the historic structure all their efforts failed for days because it was so solidly built, forcing the authorities to use something other than just human labour,” pointed out the shop owner. “The only solution was to reopen those stairs that had been purpose-built to maintain the drainage system, which is part of the city’s heritage,” he suggested.

Another trader blamed the local government and its alleged corruption. In Kohati, the original form of the Shahi Khata eventually disappeared. Kohati was the one area where the Khata was purposely left visible because of its beauty, he said.

“It was originally made of Waziri bricks from the Mughal era, but if you pay a visit to the Khata near Kohati, you see the unfortunate use of modern bricks covered with plaster. What remains of the Shahi Khata will soon fade away if people continue to break it,” lamented the trader.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 21^st, 2013.