My column in The Express Tribune today is about the exclusionary nature of cities. You can't fit more than a thought in an 800-word piece, so I'll be the first to say mine is nowhere near the last word on the subject.
What I also find interesting is how the inequity/exclusion in cities is a global phenomenon. There's some solace, I suppose, in knowing we're not the only ones.
My piece brought back recollections of another I wrote some years ago for The Friday Times:
A friend recently told me of her interest
in global warming. I asked why. I often do.
It’s a great way of finding out what the word “environment” means to
someone. “It’s already so hot,” she complained. “If it gets any hotter, even the ACs won’t
work.”
The Lahore I grew up in was a sleepy little
metropolis. It wasn’t the Lahore of the
1950s or 1960s where my parents’ generation wore drain-pipe trousers and The
Mall was where writers and intellectuals rubbed shoulders at Pak Tea
Houses. My Lahore was the Lahore of Zia
and the 1980s, where everyone either lived in Gulberg or in far-off Model
Town. The Lahore of today is a behemoth. It stretches from the North shore of the Ravi
past Thokar Niaz Beg in the South while the DHA – when it finally completes and
colonizes its ten or so Phases – is fast approaching India. Today’s Lahore is a mixture of things: a
confused and congested Old and older City, where pollution and poverty detract
from the beauty and complexity of the built heritage; a post-partition sprawl
trying to come to grips with the demands commercialization and consumerism
place on the existing urban fabric; and a mess of residential housing (some
public, some private and some controlled by the Army) that exhibits the hopes
and aspirations of today’s Lahoris – all expressing their aesthetic
sensibilities through the homes they build.
To a large extent, my politics were shaped
– as are everyone’s – by my environment.
But for me, it was the limited urban environs of the Lahore I knew that
shaped by opinions. My Lahore was the
Lahore where an active civil society objected to the treatment of women under
the Hadood Laws and the religious persecution of the Ahmedi and minority
communities by a host of Blasphemy Laws.
Those were (and are) pressing issues of the day, and no one but civil
society gave the establishment a run for their money on these issues. But this civil society never protested for
clean drinking water; the Lahore I knew always had clean drinking water. The sewers worked and, other than an hour’s
load shedding here or there, there was no reason to take the local government
to task. There were also never any
protests for better educational institutions; all my friends went to Aitchison,
Kinnaird, LAS, LGS, LCAS and the host of other O and A level acronyms that
passed for schools in residential districts.
Oh, and of course, everyone had a home.
Roti, kapra and makan? That was and remains a slogan of the poor,
for “the masses”. Now that I think of
it, when was the last time civil society protested against poor civic
utilities? Or the lack of a clean
sewerage system? Or the fact their
daughters don’t have a school to go to?
It hasn’t because it hasn’t needed to.
A disclaimer: Civil Society has and does
play an indispensable role in Pakistan’s politics. It has shaped and refined the quality of
debate and sophistication of argument.
It has taken on issues – like women’s rights, religious freedoms and,
more recently, the judiciary and the imposition of Emergency – when few dare to
do so. On the national level, it has
been able to amend laws and to change public perceptions. But it has always had the luxury to choose
from many issues that plague our Republic.
Just as my politics were shaped by my
physical environment, my friend’s opinion on global warming reflects hers. In her world, everyone has an AC and, if they
don’t, well, they can eat cake! She is
from a Lahore where the 4 kanal “farm house” is the residential accommodation
of choice, catered by two automobiles and a phalanx of split units. Fuel conservation for her is not public
transport, its not using the older car.
Our urban environments have made elitists
of us all. This is not a popular thing
to say, as it goes against the grain (Islam-, we are told, teaches us that we are
all equal). But it is a false
shackle. Just as we hoisted it on
ourselves, we can take it off. The
secret lies in identifying the elitism and segregation that lies everywhere in
our urban environment. Then, if one is
so inclined, it’s just a matter of casting it away.
There’s a high wall separating the
Cantonment from the non-military homes off of Zarrar Shaheed Road (the stretch
of Allama Iqbal Road before it changes to Barki Road). As if the residents of that locality do not
have a right to gaze onto the green belt and ceaseless private traffic. The smaller entrances to DHA are actually
guarded by the Punjab Police – there to ensure undesirables do not enter. Some time ago, a snake charmer – trying his
best to answer my questions about his most lucrative neighborhoods – told me
he wasn’t allowed in the Cantonment or DHA.
Everyone’s seem police pickets in Gulberg, but how many times do you see
the police pulling over the driver of a private automobile. It’s almost always motorcycles and rickshaws.
These are bit little examples of the
segregation actively enforced and applied before us. On a larger scale, you have a city designed
entirely for those who own or drive automobiles. Anyone who is unlucky enough to commute by
foot will find nothing but a torturous urban environment.
How long can such an urban environment
sustain itself? At some point, one of
the many millions of have-nots who support the lifestyle of the haves will
stand up and take notice of this segregation.
They will ask why their families aren’t allowed in Cantonment’s Polo
Ground Park. Then someone will ask why
just a handful’s of God’s own civil servants – all employees of the people,
mind you – continue to occupy such a large tract of urban land in the middle of
the city, while at the same time property prices skyrocket and there’s a
shortage of housing units.
On a cool December evening in 1955, 42 year
old Rosa Parks refused to vacate seats reserved for whites on a public bus. Her simple and elegant protest started the
Montgomery Bus Boycott and earned her the recognition (by the US Congress) as
the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.”
By simply refusing to play the immoral rules of the game, Rosa Parks
began the fight for racial equality in the US.
When will our cities produce their Rosa Parks? Who will be the first to react to the
classist segregation that identifies us and forms our world-view?
