The survival of Karachi’s Bleak House

However they're changed, I still call the roads by their original names. There’s such a thing as preserving history.

If you happen to be a student of English Literature and belong to the tribe that believes the only cure for insomnia is to read a page from Charles Dickens’ classic novel Bleak House, this column is not for you. It is about a thoroughfare in Karachi’s Cantonment area named Bleak House Road that has survived the nationalist wave that decided that most thoroughfares in the port city had to be given an epigraphic facelift after independence. This is nothing new. The Saddar Town Administration had performed a major linguistic hysterectomy on over 400 roads and streets during the last seven years without even breathing hard. And this included a street named after a famous Hindu philanthropist Sobraj Chatumal, a park, a roundabout and a cricket stadium. And one of the city fathers had decided that Deepchand Ojha Road should be renamed after a newspaper.

Bleak House Road, which acquired its name during the days of the Raj, achieved a measure of importance as it once housed both the consulate general of the Soviet Union and the British Council. Mr MA Khuhro, who was the chief minister of Sindh at the time of Partition, also constructed his mansion on this road. A peek into the past, however, will indicate that changing the names of signposts was regarded as some kind of catharsis and both India and Pakistan, in the euphoria of release, indulged in an orgy of obliterating as many of the vestiges of colonialism as they could find. The obvious targets were, of course, roads, streets, buildings, bridges and historical references.



And so the city fathers, whenever the mood took them, plotted the demise of the empire builders in stages. Queen Victoria was laid to rest in the late 1950s and Haji Abdullah Haroon was installed in her place. Sir Charles Drigh pegged down from natural causes after providing the only outlet to the aerodrome and was replaced by King Faisal. Lord Elphinstone bid a tearful farewell and went out with the English Cold Storage, Mexicano, Rodrigues and Co and the Abbas School of Ballroom Dancing, and a poetess named Zaibunissa was handed the key to the most famous street in Sadder. John McLeod, deputy collector of customs during the 1850s, after whom Karachi’s Wall Street and commercial hub was named, was replaced by II Chundrigar, the sixth prime minister of Pakistan and a confidant of the founder of the nation… .

So far Hawke’s Bay, named after Sir Edward Hawke, the British admiral who inflicted a decisive defeat on the French at the battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759, appears to have also survived. I could be wrong, because there have been numerous letters in the newspapers that it was time to perform replacement surgery and I haven’t kept up with developments in that wonderful picnic spot. Some goons in Lahore are also trying to change the name of the Gaddafi Stadium.

Karachi has not been alone in the quest to honour national heroes. By 2000 AD, a startling 2,500 roads and chowks in Bombay have fallen prey to national sentiments. In an article entitled “History wiped out in BMC’s road-renaming game”, published in the Indian Express on August 22, 1999, Vijay Singh stated “A precious part of vintage Bombay and the history associated with the name of a street also continues to be wiped out, while potholes multiply”. The authorities can do jolly well what they like and rename all the thoroughfares in the city. I’ll still call the roads by their original names. There’s such a thing as preserving history.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 29^th, 2013.

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