Qissa Khwani: Dumping 15,000 tons of ammunition in sea, and other strange stories

Speakers at storytelling session talk about fond memories as well as sad recollections.

KARACHI: One of the ‘strangest’ things that the eccentric Cyrus Cowasjee has done in his life was to be part of a project that dumped 15,000 tons of ammunition into the sea sometime in the 1940s.

“The story behind the project was that, before partition, the British realised there were a lot of arms which had to be disposed so that they wouldn’t cause harm,” said a member of the Parsi community, who has been in the shipping business for years.

These strange stories shared by various eminent personalities from different religious communities made up the three-day storytelling event, titled ‘Qissa Khwani’, an initiative of The Citizens Archives of Pakistan.



The session on the second day, titled ‘Pakistan: An Inclusive Country’ was held at the Pakistan American Cultural Centre on Thursday evening. It focused on the stories of minorities in Pakistan and the work done by them in different civil and social sectors.

However, due to poor moderating and a lack of relevant questions, the session was filled with random conversations rather than  storytelling.

Differing opinions

A debate started between participants and speakers as audience members insisted that minorities are being suppressed. “I was never treated differently and never felt segregated,” said one of the speakers, educationist and former headmistress of Karachi Grammar School kindergarten and junior section, Norma Fernandes. The retired teacher said that while her family shifted to Canada, she decided to stay back as she felt a sense of belonging in Pakistan.

Activist Hilda Saeed, who is a founding member of the Women Action Forum, said that it was the minorities at the lowest strata of our society who face problems and struggle to get jobs.



“I would go to the Muharram procession and even celebrate Diwali,” recalled Saeed, who is a Christian. “It did not matter to us what religion we belonged to. What was important was that we all stayed together.”

Saeed explained that it was General Ziaul Haq’s era that gave rise to intolerance for the minorities. He shared an incident where a woman was lashed 100 times and a man was stoned to death simply for being in love.

Cowasjee said that once in the port business, there were labourers of every community but the minorities have slowly been pushed out.



“While nearly 10,000 Parsis once lived in Pakistan, that number has now come down to around 1,800,” said Cowasjee. “There has been a migration of brain power also with most senior officials today being foreign nationals.”

Dr Ruth Pfau, who heads a charity that fights leprosy, shared some advice with the audience, saying that the country needs its people to start taking action rather than being just armchair critics. Speaking about her charity, she said that people who suffer from leprosy are deprived of love and the charity’s main aim is to make them feel loved.

Lawyer and provincial chairperson of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Amarnath Motumal, termed the country a blessing. “We are not living in any rented house. We are its owners.”

However, Motumal said that blasphemy laws and forced conversions are troubling the Hindu community. “Girls as young as seven are being forcefully converted and are being separated from their parents.”



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