Harking back: When traders are decision-makers, old Lahore falters

There are known patterns of large cities collapsing, or expanding beyond control. Karachi is known as the world’s second largest city. Lahore is the 7th largest. Experts predict that by 2050 Lahore will be the world’s largest city.

This is a frightening prospect. Imagine a city 100 kilometres from one side to the other, and large enough to join neighbouring dwellings. That prospect is already in existence. But in theory the major determinants of the quality of a city are transport systems, water supply, conservation of existing structures and the overwhelming entry of commercial outlets in residential areas. Today we are a city without buses, or water and unplanned dwellings.

It is almost like an invisible process, visibly slow, the dismantling, brick by brick, of an old beautiful city, only to be replaced by concrete monstrosities. We will describe, firstly, the old walled city, then the British-era beauties, and then recent developments.

From the once beautiful green city a few thousand years old, Lahore is slowly becoming a barren concrete place, lacking the characteristics that made it famous. Let us have a look at a few examples. The law laid down by the colonial rulers with the ‘specific objective to save the character of Lahore’ was to follow a time-tested rule, which they follow in England still, is to never allow over 15 per cent of the built area for commercial purposes.

Till 1947 this was the case. But come the horrors of Partition, an ‘under-reported holocaust’, and people from Amritsar and other Indian cities rushed in and started opening shops. Within three years large areas were set aside for specific commercial uses, like, textiles, cooking utensils, spares of different varieties, etc., and within 15 years we see over 45 per cent of Lahore had gone commercial.

The rise of old Lahore as a commercial centre also ushered in politicians with commercial needs, and very soon the expansion accelerated and by 2012 a Walled City of Lahore Authority was created specifically to check this rush. One hoped that the commercial push would stop and historic places would be protected. But the opposite happened. Even in faraway strictly residential ‘mohallahs’ like Maullian near Lahori Gate saw old buildings being knocked down for concrete ones.

According to one study, today approximately 65 per cent of old ‘once walled’ Lahore is commercial. The bricks of the Akbar-era wall the traders used and any attempt to rebuild it are opposed. The politicians in power then opposed disturbing these traders. Reminds me of the Machiavelli saying: “When the trader becomes the Prince, all he does is sell the State”. Sounds familiar.

If you take a round of the old streets in the 12 gateways, you will see a shop in almost every house. These developments made old residents move out to faraway places. The fact also is that the rich traders of old Lahore themselves live in posh faraway residential colonies. One friend, now a tax commissioner, informs that these rich traders, who in the evenings frequent posh eateries, pay the least taxes, most none at all. But then no one dares touch them. Monetary grease works wonders. That is all I will say.

This commercial evil has spread to other areas at an amazing pace. In our youth we lived in a quiet Rattigan Road area. Today all the residential houses have been converted workshops. There was once the massive mansion and lawns of the house of G. Mohyuddin. Today exactly 212 houses and flats, and 12 shops have arisen. On the front was the Bradlaugh Hall, where the India’s Independence Resolution was passed. The main structure is intact, but all around smaller houses, all illegal, have arisen, as have shops and workshops.

The adjacent house of Prof. Ruchi Ram Sahni, the famed GC professor, has met a similar fate. Shops, workshops and small houses by the dozen. If you take a turn on Tape Road and the old beautiful residential houses have been knocked down. We see car spare parts shops abound. Next is the ‘darbar’ of Ali Hasan of Hajwer (Data Sahib) has shops all around. The pious seem to attract the profiteers.

This evil of commercial expansion seems to have had a terrible effect even on relatively recent developments. Take the main Gulberg Boulevard. Once a quiet green residential boulevard, come the business house leaders who ruled the Punjab and within 10 years this serene boulevard has become a commercial hub with tall buildings mostly without parking facilities. At one point is M.M. Alam Road, which in our college days was a quiet residential thoroughfare. Today it is a crazy commercial hub mostly dedicated to eateries.

Even the inside road have this evil expansion. The last Sharif government of the Punjab took the amazing, surely illegal step, of declaring the entire Gulberg as a commercial area. No place else on Earth can this happen. No one dared challenged this decision for traders have strong arms.

Let us move further eastwards towards the DHA colonies. Initially very liveable, but then the evil traders stepped in. Initially it were car shops, and as one went deeper the tall monstrosities have started to appear. No one dares to question the ‘armed’ developers.

The reason one has shown these few examples is to put forward the proposition that there is just no power of the civil authorities to stop traders from making illegal inroads. Everyone knows how the process works, or should one say greased. We all have become aware of the limitations of ‘the rule of law’. So what if there is a written Constitution, or ‘rules’. The money-changers manage matters.

But merely criticising is not the pastime of this column. We have to find solutions. Just how can one, maybe within the next 10 years, get the old walled city back to its glorious past? The WCLA is incapable, irrespective of the power of its image, of handling the ‘walled’ portion, let alone several other monuments it has been, in my view ‘wrongly’, lumbered with. The need is for areas to be marked, and specialised ‘walled areas’ built on the other side of the wholesale markets. There they will have more space and specialised clientele. That will be profitable for them and their clients.

If this happens, of which I have grave doubts, how will the emptied space to be reconstructed? This will be a chance for tourism-related buildings to come up, place like hotels and handicraft places. New schools and ‘mohallah libraries’ can come up. It is time we remade old Lahore a meaningful place.

One strategy should be to ban all new commercial buildings. This is a must if we are serious about how we should progress. But to wish such an outcome is one things, actually doing it is another. The traders will oppose any progress, of this have no doubt. Even bureaucrats would in most cases oppose it lest their resource ‘flow’ dries up. A good starting point is to have a Master Plan. That would also mean being back to square one.