Much like the waves of Karachi’s coastline – sometimes overwhelmed by Monsoon seas and sometimes stretched out alongside winter’s gentle ripple, the stories of this city appear and disappear with few traces.
Who were the community of people whose flint tools from 2 million years ago were found on Mulri Hills opposite the University of Karachi, now buried under an apartment block? Why were stone megaliths erected in circles on the outskirts of Karachi? And more importantly, how have they survived for so long?
Why was such a harbor so perfectly sheltered from the Arabian Sea by the Manora peninsula, not a thriving seaport in ancient times? Or was it? Mentions of what is today Karachi go back to at least the 3rd century BC, Krokola, Monrontobara, Kharacchi, Rasal Karazi, Kaurashi, Karachar, Kalaiti Bunder, Ramaia, Kolachi, Kurrachee. But tantalizingly, no more than names remain, except for the famous story of the seven sons of Aubhayo, six of whom were caught in a whirlpool off Clifton called Kulachi jo and swallowed by a whale. The remaining son, who was disabled, had a metal cage designed, lowering himself into the whirlpool where he not only killed the whale but removed the bodies of his brothers from its belly. The graves still exist at the busy crossing of Gulbai (or Kul Bhai), once surrounded by lofty date palms that were removed by an aesthetically challenged city official.
The first written account of the establishment of Karachi is found in the memoirs of Seth Naomal Hotchand, the great-grandson of a Hindu trader Seth Bhojomal. Bhojomal moved a group of traders to Karachi in 1729, after the port, Karak Bandar, on the far side of the Hub River, silted up, making it difficult for trading boats to navigate to and from Muscat and Iran. Just 25km away lay the perfect port of Karachi, naturally protected by deep mangroves, and with access to the Arabian Sea. However, the new town was walled into a protected mud fort, mounted with guns, suggesting there was a need for protection. But from whom?
Local tribes seem to have taken an interest in Karachi’s fortunes only after the town was established in the mid-18th century. However, the area has been at the edge of regional adventurism since at least 500 BC, coming into the sway of the Achaemenid Empire, Alexander’s expeditions, Maurya, Indo-Greek, Scythian, Parthian, Kushan, Sassanian, the Khilafats of the Umayyad, and Abbasids, Dynasties of Tahiri, Saffarid, Ghaznavi, Ghori, Safavid, Mughal, and in between the sweep of Mongol invasions. Little is known of the impact on what is now Karachi. But one can exercise poetic license and imagine emissaries, tax collectors, and the rumble of discontent.
This fugitive history had little meaning for the East India Company, which by the time they arrived in Sindh, had already annexed large parts of India from Calcutta westwards. Having embarked on the disastrous attempt to control Afghanistan, to prevent the expansion of Russia, they lost face, emptied the coffers, and were nervous of consequential rebellions inside India. Enter Sir Charles Napier.
History remembers him as the conqueror of Sindh. We learn more about Charles Napier, the man, from letters to his mother. A soldier’s soldier, who had no desire for war, he was nevertheless an unflinching strategist, a problem solver. If that required war, he would not shy away from it. A veteran of Napoleonic and American wars, he said, “War is natural to me, but I love it not. I hate to destroy.”
Highly critical of the incompetence of his employers, East India Company, which “had rushed with such ostentation of power and boasting to an unjust war sunk under the calamity, and the public partook of its weakness,” he was aware that “the sword of invasion is not pleasant to draw.” Asked at the age of 59 to fight a war better suited to a man of 39, he succeeded in conquering Sindh at the Battle of Miani. His strategy: “My wish is to be left quiet a little while each day, to obtain an insight into Indian wars history and country; for knowledge and thought only can enable us to act wisely in such positions.” He had more respect for his seasoned native soldiers than fellow British officers, “youngsters who make curry, drink champagne and avoid the sun.”
Although Admiral Maitland, in command of HMS Wellesley, had formally occupied Karachi on 7 February 1839, and Sir Charles Napier was only expected to stop the rebellion, he took it upon himself to take charge of Karachi, a town of “miserable mud villages with a population of robbers, all filth and poverty and misery.” He wanted to “show government how very important a place it may become and how to make it so.” His dream was to turn Karachi into the Star of Asia.
He created a water supply system, developed roads and sanitation, created a modern police force, and developed the port with docks and a causeway to Keamari. He built Napier Barracks for the military and installed a Lighthouse on Manora. The Obelisk at the end of Karachi’s Port Grand marks the spot from where he left Karachi in 1847, a mere four years after he took charge, and a hundred years later, Karachi was declared the capital of Pakistan.
In between, his successor Bartle Frere, and the many illustrious mayors like Jamshed Nusserwanji Mehta and Harchandrai Vishandas, fulfilled his vision, attracting members from Parsi community, entrepreneurs from Gujarat and Goan and British businesses. India’s first airport was established in Karachi, as well as its first Telegraph connection.
Where Napier could see the future of Karachi, he, like so many who came after, was unaware of or had forgotten its past. It was clearly more than miserable mud villages. The only remnants that survive are the temples and shrines. At the time of British conquest, there were 34 temples, 21 Mosques, and 13 shrines dotted all over the city. Who were the people who visited a 1500-year-old Hindu temple dedicated to Punjmukhi Hanuman? What brought Sufis from across the Muslim world- the 8th, 9th, and 10th century shrines of Syed Noor Ali Shah, Abdullah Ghazi, and Yousuf Shah Ghazi, Pir Hasan Ghazi Shah, and Pir Sakhi Sultan Manghopir in the 13th century? Who were the devotees who visited these temples and shrines? Some suggest that the many mounds of Karachi may hide dwellings of the past.
With each decade, Karachi continues to forget – forget its reputation as the cleanest city of the East, as the city of cinemas and entertainment, as the city of peaceful entrepreneurship and generous philanthropy.
As we emerge from the trauma of the last three decades, Karachi is trying to remember once more and wrest away its history from those who would tear down its buildings, its stories, and its future.
