Hri Institute for Southasian Research and Exchange

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.

Text and images: Sarita Manu

A glimpse of Haroon Habib's walls

Freedom Fighter, journalist and writer Haroon Habib’s house is akin to a photo gallery. The walls of his rooms tell stories and bring alive the history of Bangladesh’s Liberation War of 1971.

Haroon Habib in his home

As a young fighter, Haroon joined the war forces; during the war he was recruited by the Mujib Nagar Government as a war journalist. When the Bangladesh Forces were organised into eleven sectors, Haroon went to Sector 11. This is when the Sector Commander Major Abu Taher gave him a Yashica camera. This camera captured most of the images we see with him today (his first camera belonged to Dr. Humayun Hai).  Buying film was difficult and printing it was an even bigger task:  one had to travel 60 km inside the Indian border to get to a printing studio. Haroon printed most of his pictures at a studio in the Tuha Hills of Meghalaya.

Despite the difficulties he endured, Haroon kept clicking pictures wherever he was. The majority of the participants of the war were young Bengali peasants and students. Armed with his simple camera, Haroon Habib captured nearly 100 rare images of these freedom fighters, the countless refugees, the Indian army officers and many others. Looking at photographs of some children from the war, he fondly tells me that two of them grew up to be medical doctors.

It is only in recent years that Haroon’s photographs were made public at various exhibitions. Since then, many have also found place as permanent exhibits on his walls. Each photo is neatly captioned, dated (when the date is known) and now, also digitised. When young children from the neighbourhood drop in to look at the pictures and hear the stories he has to share, Haroon is happy that the photographs can serve as living pieces of history for current and future generations.