PART ONE

Lahore and Lahories

A Borrowed Column on Lahore

I wrote about the Islamisation of Lahore last week. My very great friend, Mohammad Idrees, wrote the following lines in The Pakistan  Times , on July 20, 1979:

          "A Brandreth Road insurance company gives a Nishtar Road  address. They know nothing about it at Townhall and they can only guess that Nishtar Road could either be Abbott Road or Brandreth Road. So, you can try both places and you are bound to find your favourite insurance company either here or there.

          Actually, the street renaming game is now getting to be sickening. Why can't we let our streets be?

          The Townhall, too, is tired of advertising and re-advertising new street names and complains that people don't take notice of the campaign. In an effort to popularise the new names, signs have been put up at many entry and exit points but to no avail.

          The Townhall had appointed a street renaming committee. Now that committee is to be expanded, if it hasn't already been expanded. The governor has desired that the renaming be speedily undertaken and done with.

          The Townhall recognises the futility of its efforts to make the new names stick but it still has plans to launch a full-scale campaign once again to persuade people to shed their tendency to call those old streets by their old names. I heard of plans to launch such a campaign some weeks ago-and I wouldn't be surprised if it has already been launched and no one has taken notice.

          There is a list of 150 city squares, which may be up for renaming one of these days. The number of city streets, which may meet the same fate, must indeed be considerably larger.

          Charing Cross is Faisal Chowk. To the tongawala , it is still " Malka Da Butt " Chowk Masjid-i-Shuhada exists only in newspaper reports. Otherwise, it is Regal Chowk. And I still have to see someone who calls Mozang Chungi, Chowk Qartaba. The Mall is indeed Shahrah-i-Quaid-i-Azam, and ought to be, but what do you do about " Mall Road "?

          Mela Ram Road is Data Darbar Road and Jail Road is Gulberg Road. But are they? For that matter, is Queen's Road Shahrah-i-Fatima Jinnah?

          Empress Road is quite a mouthful as Abdul Hameed Bin Badis Road. So is Davis Road as Sultan Mohammad Shah Aga Khan Road. If you didn't know, Ferozepur Road is now Maulana Jalaluddin Roomi Road and Ravi Link Road is Maulana Ahmad Ali Lahori Road. The stretch from Minar-i-Pakistan to the Railway Station is Chaudhry Rehmat Ali Road.

          Perhaps more people know the Mayo  Road is now Allama Iqbal road than those who are aware that Kutchery  Road ought now to be called Abu Raihan Al-Beiruni Road and Lytton Road must be called Ghazi Ilmuddin Shaheed Road.

          The Stadium Road in Gulberg should be called Fresno Road and it ought to remind you of Fresno , our sister city. We have another sister city in Cordova and one ought not to need a reminder for that.

          We also have a brother city. One should have thought that a sister city was good enough. But, then, Istanbul doesn't want to be called our sister city. It wants to be called our brother city and why should anyone object? Our Zamzama Chowk, lest you forget, was renamed Istanbul Chowk when the Mayor of our brother city visited us in January.

          I think we have a very great pre-occupation with names. Isn't there a proposal to change the name of Ganga Ram? Krishan Nagar is already called Mustafa Abad but why does everyone still live in Krishan Nagar?

          The street renaming committee was at one time trying to make things difficult. It wanted to go into old history. It wanted to know more about gentlemen like Abbott and McLeod and Edward and what they did for the city. Perhaps that is why it became necessary to think of appointing another committee or expanding it into a fair-sized assembly. Or perhaps a simpler explanation is that a bigger committee will handle a bigger job quicker.

          When will Townhall change the name of Lahore? I am quite surprised that nobody has seriously suggested that we change the name of the city itself and be done with it.

          As for street names, let's build new streets and give them new names. We achieve very little by campaigning for new names for old streets. Let's remember that this is essentially the tongawalah's city and his name for the defunct Freemason Hall is still "Jadoo Ghar."

          N.B: One error that Idrees made in this piece: Krishan Nagar was not renamed Mustafa Abad but Islampura.

          So, you see, this name-changing business has been going on from day one. The Quaid-i-Azam would not have approved of it nor yet Allama Iqbal.

          City fathers, when they can't do things for the city, begin to hide their incompetence behind honoured names. This reminds one of another issue. Private institutions, especially schools and colleges, are exploiting the Quaid's name for commercial purposes.

          I think there is a law against this. But if there isn't, there ought to be one. Let us spare the Quaid and Iqbal at least.

* * * * *

THERE is a friend who insists that Elizabeth Taylor's new marriage should be called the Eighth Amendment. A local columnist, on the other hand, sees some similarity between Mrs. Taylor's eighth marriage and Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan's bid to cobble together the seventh politicial alliance of his career.

Friday, October 11, 1991