Hri Institute for Southasian Research and Exchange

BY: HAROON KHALID

This is the story of two of my friends. Let us call them Salman and Ayesha. When the story starts, it finally seems as though Salman’s and Ayesha’s relationship is heading somewhere. They had been together for two years, but their future was uncertain. At 23, Ayesha’s family was eager to get her married, having completed her graduation, whereas Salman, also 23, was planning to leave for his Masters degree soon, with marriage not fitting into his plan. However now that it had dawned upon Salman that he would be moving away for two years, he realised how much he would miss Ayesha. He was finally getting serious about her, and was thinking about talking to her mother about their relationship.

Both the families knew each other well. They were neighbours in the highly secluded army housing in Islamabad. Salman’s father was a general when he was murdered by the Taliban. Ayesha’s father was a serving General. Ayesha’s mother was looking for suitable suitors in other army families. Ayesha had also decided that it was time that her mother was told about her relationship, so that she could help convince her father. Ayesha was making plans with Salman over the phone when her mother walked in and overheard the conversation. All hell broke loose. She told her husband. They both decided that Ayesha has to be married off as soon as possible. A son of a fellow general living in Australia and working in an accountancy firm seemed like a perfect fit. Ayesha had not even seen his picture. When she refused her mother threatened to commit suicide. Her father told her that he would kill her if she ever talked to or met Salman again. They took away her phone and barred her from leaving the house. She was ordered to quit her job in a couple of months: a job that she had recently taken up and loved. The next day Ayesha was taken to the house of the Australian boy and engaged to him in his absence. She would be marrying him in December and moving to Australia, the first time she would ever be leaving the country and living away from home. She still hasn’t seen his picture. The love story of Salman and Ayesha comes to an end.

The most amazing part of this true story is not the forced marriage. When you grow up in Pakistan such practices are somewhat of a norm. What is intriguing however is that why Ayesha couldn’t be married to Salman. He is also from an army background, lives in the same vicinity and his family enjoys the same social, economic and political status in the society that Ayesha’s does. I found the answer in a Pakistani movie called Mirza-Sahiban (1947) based on the Punjabi folk love legend of Mirza and Sahiban. The movie depicts both the lovers to be first cousins, Mirza being the nephew of Sahiban’s father. Growing up together they fall in love and want to marry. However the union is opposed by Sahiban’s brother and mother, even though the father is sympathetic. They want Sahiban to marry another cousin, who happens to be the nephew of Sahiban’s mother. The objection that they have is not with Mirza but at their audacity to fall in love with each other outside wedlock. Being from Muslim families these cousins would have been eligible to marry each other, but that could not have happened once the society found out about their love story. That of course makes the relationship illegitimate. This is where the question of honour comes in. Had Sahiban’s brother not found out about his sister’s love affair with Mirza, would he have still objected to their marriage? Love, it would seem, is forbidden when disclosed.

Applying this to the situation of my friends, Salman and Ayesha, I also wonder what the reaction of Ayesha’s parents would have been, had her mother never found out about the relationship between the two. Would the family had still reacted and refused to allow them to marry? I have my reasons to doubt. Ayesha’s mother would have reacted differently had Ayesha told her about Salman, instead of her mother finding out. She even would have agreed to marry them off and promised to help with convincing the father. It would have been an acceptable love had it remained a secret.

It is amazing how a love legend that was composed generations go still has resonance with the realities of the lovers in the Pakistan of today. The issues brought up in these stories still plague our society. Ill-defined concepts of honour and dignity are played out on the woman’s body, where a simple act of falling in love is seen as an act of trespass against the patriarch. Despite tall claims of “enlightenment” and “modernity”, we still uphold the same “traditional” “moral” standards that were used to oppress individuality centuries ago and are still used to do the same.

BY: HAROON KHALID

Every Sunday, Ahmed Saleem travels to Rawalpindi Sadr, from his house in Islamabad to buy books being sold on the footpath. All the vendors know him by now. Some bring special books for him knowing that he will appreciate them and pay the sellers a good amount. “They don’t keep them for sale. First they show it to me. If I reject [the book], only then do they put it out in the open,” he says. Over the past forty years, Saleem has been following this routine, buying and collecting books for his archive. His focus has been the social sciences, history, archaeology and literature. He now has about ten thousand books in his collection.

Saleem has dedicated the upper portion of his house to his archive. There are several racks here, teeming with books, newspapers, documents and pictures. He lives in a tiny room next to the hall. This is his bedroom, his study, his office, and more. From here he has written over one hundred books, making him one of the most well-known historians of the country. Almost 70 now, he still writes and collects prolifically. “Around 1974 I decided to write a book on the political history of Pakistan. I made a list of all the books that I would need for my research, but sadly there was no library or archive in the country at that time where I could find these books. Some I found from people’s collections, some from libraries, and some from other places. It was a struggle getting them all together. I decided then to make an archive, where researchers and students could come and research easily,” he says. Now his collection is one of the best known private collections of books, newspapers and documents in Pakistan, popular with students and researchers.

Saleem has particularly focused on books that were written and published from pre-Partition India. These books, unlike other books written during the colonial era and published by world renowned publishers, are not available in the libraries of Europe or North America. These were considered too insignificant to be archived at that time. But now, as they have become rare, Saleem’s archive is one of the only places in the world where these books are available. Most of these publishers have ceased to be. The oldest book that he has in his collection is called “Trade with India”. Published in 1711, the text documents Dutch trade with the Indian peninsula. He also has a collection of books written on freedom fighters like G.M. Syed and Abdul Ghaffar Khan, before the creation of Pakistan. He has books, written in regional languages from the pre-Partition era. The collection also includes a compilation of all the sermons delivered by bishops in Lahore.

Photo credit Amarjit Chandan (2009)

“Back in the 70s, cheap books, which are now referred to as chapbooks, were sold on public buses along with eatables. Waris Shah’s Heer was the most popular book at the time, and sold in various regional languages,” Saleem says. These books are no longer sold, as the book-reading trend has nosedived in Pakistan. Once available everywhere, these books have now become a rare commodity. Saleem has been collecting them since then, preserving an entire era and a genre of literature that is now extinct. He has also been collecting newspapers and magazines since 1947; the collection includes some that are even older. “I have a magazine published in 1901 from London, called the Americanization of the World. That magazine predicts how American culture would dominate the world in the next century. How accurate has that prediction been,” he says.

Along with books and magazines, Saleem has been collecting historical documents. He travelled to Peshawar to collect the documents of the Meerut and Peshawar Conspiracy Case of 1922-27, which indicts communist freedom fighters, including Amir Haider, the cousin of the future President of Pakistan, Ayub Khan.

Saleem realizes that his collection is likely to go to waste if not properly managed. Therefore in 2001, connecting a few like-minded people, he established a trust called the South Asian Research and Resource Centre. The trust is currently in the process of cataloguing the collection. About 20% is complete. “I am now relieved that my life’s work will not go to waste after me,” he says.

Text and Images by: Haroon Khalid

Sitting behind a desk, Arif Jafri plays with his flute as he talks about his music archive. Jafri is a classically trained musician who has been playing the flute for the past forty years. Now he is heading the program for National Intangible Heritage Archives in collaboration with UNESCO, a project which aims to digitize all music composed from Pakistan to date. There is no doubt that music is Jafri’s first love. There is no other person better suited for this project. His recently published book, Who’s Who in Pakistan’s World of Music, is placed next to the flute. This is an encyclopedia of all musicians, singers and music collectors from the country, and includes their current contact information. His office walls present a history of music in the Indian peninsula, introducing one to the concept of gharanas (families), the different gharanas and their family trees. This is a record spanning over seven centuries in some cases, summed up in a few pages. There are pictures of famous people from particular gharans next to the family trees. In the middle of two gharans, Jafri has pinned up black, round records, which were used to play music before the advent of cassettes. A rack near the entrance has a collection of cassettes. Another one next to his seat has newspapers cuttings about famous musicians and singers. It is, in short, an office dedicated to music, and housed within the building of the Pakistan National Council of Arts, a government institute, built in the 1970s to promote arts in the country.

Part of Arif Jafri’s collection of texts on music	Records from Jafri’s collection	The wall of history: gharanas over time

“We have about 4000 hours of music,” he tells me, as he takes out a thick book from under his desk and places it on the table. “This catalogue contains information about everything we have,” he says. It is a photocopied book, which begins with a description of what musical gharanas are. A page has been dedicated to each collection, and includes the name of the artist, gharana, record duration, songs, and production details, and also the form in which the original collection is available. Their collection, which is available in records, cassettes, and now CDs, is currently being transferred into CDs with golden-plated surfaces. This master copy is guaranteed to live for more than 100 years. Jafri points at three pages pinned up behind his chair. Guidelines to Cataloguing it reads. “These are international standards that we follow,” he says. “Any music, song ever produced in Pakistan is with us,” he says.

This is a project currently sponsored by UNESCO. The total duration of the grant is three years. 

By: Haroon Khalid

Lahore, the city of gardens, has lost most of its gardens. The few that have remained have been abandoned out of fear of dengue fever, a disease that haunts Lahore after the monsoon rains. It’s a congested city now, with millions of cars. It is the second most populated city in the country. Millions moved here after the Partition of 1947, changing the landscape of the city forever. Sporadically, in between several commercial plazas, one may notice a historical monument, built during the colonial era or even before that. But in the modern Lahore they seem to be out of place, lacking context. It is impossible to visually imagine the city as a spacious one, with plenty of gardens, and aesthetically pleasant buildings. Project Lahore is aiming to do just that.

“It’s a visual history of Lahore,” says Siddique Shahzad, a 35 year old, IT professional, co-founder of Project Lahore, along with Qasim Khan. “I have always been fascinated with vintage photography. It’s very popular in the West. I have been collecting old photographs of Lahore since the past many years. Recently I decided to put them all together for the people of the city,” says Shahzad. Launched in February 2010, the Facebook page titled “Lahore – the city of gardens” now has almost 6000 ‘likes’ or followers. The group’s various albums have over 500 vintage photographs of the city. It is a collection of old maps, monuments, activities, statues, and paintings, among others. The collection depicts a Lahore that no longer exists. There are several other photographs that will be put up soon. The entire collection is digitized.

One image from the Project Lahore collection

Siddique explains how he collected the photographs from different sources, including the British Library, the Columbia University Collection and other sources on the net. His aim has been to put all of them in one place. He has visited antique shops all over the city, purchasing old paintings of Lahore, which he has now also put online. “I always contact my sources and assure them that we will give them the required credit, which helps in convincing them to allow us to use the photographs. We use watermarks to make sure that these pictures are not used commercially from our end, as most of them are commercially protected or have copy rights,” he says. Another project that they launched recently, called “Lahore Memories” aims to use family albums of residents to offer insight into the past.