[MSN] Karachi bids to revive heritage ravaged by extremism.

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Karachi bids to revive heritage ravaged by extremism 


KARACHI (AFP) - Karachi is alone among its mega-city peers to have no
significant public artworks, victim of decades of religious fanaticism
likened to the Taliban destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, but artists here
are beginning to turn the tide.

"What the Taliban have done to the ancient Buddha's statue in Bamiyan a few
years ago, fanatics and ruthless government functionaries did to Karachi's
statues long ago," says Shahid Rassam, lamenting the dearth of public
artworks in Pakistan's biggest city.

Rassam is one of a handful of local artists working to revive Karachi's
public art, which flourished under the British Raj in India and survived for
a couple of decades until the early years of military dictator Zia ul-Haq.

But public art crumbled under Zia, as culture became an early casualty of a
regime that nurtured religious fanaticism.

The rot had set in under Zia's predecessor, Abub Khan, the first in a long
line of military rulers, who held power from 1958-1969.

"The religious extremists launched the first campaign against beautiful
statues in Karachi during Ayub Khan's rule when the city was stripped of
most of its street artifacts," says former city official Saifur Rehman
Grami.

Art enthusiast Grami says old Karachi was dotted with huge statues, at that
time appreciated across religious boundaries.

The monuments survived sporadically until Zia seized power in a military
coup in 1977 as Pakistan reverted to military rule.

His 11-year tenure encouraged sectarian Islam and religious extremism
prospered as he imposed curbs on cultural activities. In the process, he
gave extremists the freedom to ruin the remnants of Karachi's glorious
statuary, says Rassam.

"General Zia ul-Haq's period remains a nightmare for art and culture during
which Karachi suffered the most, because this city was the cultural hub of
Pakistan," Rassam says.

"Even many years after the creation of Pakistan most of these statues were
allowed to be erected at various gardens and public places but since the
late 1970s the wave of extremism uprooted all these monuments," Grami says.

Scores of sculptures depicting British rule are now little more than a folk
memory after being uprooted and destroyed.

Mohammad Ahsan, a resident of Karachi's Old Town, says he witnessed the
destruction of his locality's history.

"Khori Garden was one of the most beautiful parks of old Karachi. There were
many statues of those who played a great role in making Karachi the cleanest
city in the world, including a huge statue of Queen Victoria. 

"All these monuments were either destroyed or displaced in the 1970s and 80s
and the old fountains and water troughs were completely ruined," he says.

It was the mid-1990s before a large number of old statues and monuments were
discovered heaped in a municipal storeroom. Most were extensively damaged
with what Grami says is a mixture of official apathy and nature's ravages. 

Apart from marbles and bronzes depicting British royals, some depicted girls
in educational settings, carrying books and writing boards -- anathema to
extreme practitioners of Islam. 

Grami says although some old statues were recovered and restored by the
authorities, most were either destroyed or stolen. They included many
statues of historical significance at Karachi's former municipal
headquarters, Frere Hall.

"We had found some broken pieces like limbs and busts lying neglected under
the debris of the municipality's stores, but found it impossible to put them
together," Grami says.

What could be salvaged and restored has been given a safe haven at the
city's Mohatta Palace Museum, but their absence from their original sites
around the city has created an artistic vacuum.

However, municipal officials say that, politically, now is not "the
appropriate time" to re-install the statues.

"We could not restore them this time round because of possible reaction from
religious fanatics and indoctrination against cultural entities in the
general mindset of society," says a municipal official.

In a country once again under military rule and wracked by political and
religious turmoil, Karachi's mayor Mustafa Kamal has made a bold stand to
"invest" in culture as a buffer against rising extremism.

"We have started investing in culture, encouraging cultural activities, as
it is the only way to combat extremism and terrorism," Kamal says.

City hall has commissioned two statues from Rassam to be erected in the
heart of city -- a Whirling Dervish and a woman in chains symbolizing
earth's vulnerability in the universe.

"This contribution of mine could help give Karachi some places where people
could proudly identify themselves with, as people do elsewhere," Rassam
says.

Anjum Ayaz, another internationally-recognised sculptor, is busy erecting
his latest monumental work in the midst of a maze of flyovers in the city's
eastern neighbourhood, Korangi.

His 30-tonne, 67-foot (20-metre) high monument depicts sea, birds, animals,
people, rituals, holy verses and galaxies. "What I've tried to depict is the
universe," Ayaz says. 

Ayaz, whose works stands in Tokyo, Beijing and Dubai, has voluntarily
created and installed a dozen mini-sculptures at the city's busy Seaview
beach in what he says is a bid to bring art into the public domain.

"I am committed to my cause to work for the people," says Ayaz, globally
famous for his work in stone, marble and metal.

A Karachi city hall official says those who ruined Karachi's sculptures did
so on the pretext that the art of sculpture was "un-Islamic".

"They stripped the whole city of its beautiful art on such pretexts," said
the official on condition of anonymity. 

"And their terror is still reigning so supreme that most artists and
authorities seldom dare think about a revival."

Talat Hussain, a Pakistani artist who teaches at the National Academy of
Performing Arts in Karachi, says these works are part of the heritage of
fine art and of Karachi itself, and one cannot erase the colonial period
however much one tries.

"Nothing in history should be destroyed, not even the statues of despotic
English rulers. They should remind us of our past of being slaves and goad
us to protect our freedom."

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