A Rich Heritage Neglected

A Rich Heritage Neglected. 

It is often said that Pakistan is a young nation with an old civilization. Pakistan came into being only 56 years ago but the civilization of its people goes back to over 5000 years. The United Nations has declared six world heritage sites in Pakistan. Most of these sites can be said to be in various degrees of neglect.

There is no active hostility in the general populace of Pakistan towards its pre-islamic heritage, such as the one represented by the demolition of the Bamian Buddhas in the neighbouring Afghanistan. The Pakistani attitude can best be described as one of a not-so-benign neglect and indifference, more by the elite than by the state. This lack of pride is leading to the neglect and gradual loss of Pakistan’s priceless cultural heritage.

One of the must-see places in Pakistan for us was Moenjo Daro, a pre-historic site in the interior of the Sindh province. We took a flight from Karachi to go to Moenjo Daro, perhaps the premier world heritage site in Pakistan. The flight in a Fokker plane was surprisingly pleasant; we were served newspapers, snacks, coffee, drinks and sandwiches whereas one would be fortunate to get even a candy in a similar short flight in North America. The airport at Moenjo Daro is small but quite functional. It is quite decent for a small location and well maintained, with attractive plants of roses and that omnipresent subcontinental plant, bougainvilleas.

The Moenjo Daro site is literally a stone’s throw from the airport. We were only the second visitor to the site that day; the first one was a justice of the Supreme Court of India who had gone to Karachi for some conference. There are no hotels in Moenjo Daro and none is needed, with the amount of tourist traffic there at present. The only place we could stay at was the government rest house which is located at the entry of the Moenjo Daro complex. A very kind gentleman welcomed us to the rest house (real cheap, only Rs. 250 per night) and asked us to sign a register. I scanned through the last two pages of the register; there was only one Pakistani visitor, the rest were all Chinese, Japanese, Germans, Dutch, etc. There were no restaurants in the vicinity; the only arrangement for food was a cook attached to the rest house who was willing to cook to our order, subject to whatever was available in the store. I couldn’t help contrasting this place with Khajuraho, another place discovered in the last century in the middle of nowhere in Madhya Pradesh, although of much lesser significance from a civilizational viewpoint than Moenjo Daro. Khajuraho is now a bustling tourist attraction, where a small township has come up with hotels, restaurants run by both Indians, French and Italians, shops and other tourist facilities; there is even a daily sound-and-light show in Hindi and English to entertain and inform about the history of the Khajuraho monuments to the visitors. I could just imagine the potential awaiting Moenjo Daro if only there was proper marketing and promotion; if Egypt can attract milions of tourists to its pyramids in the middle of nowhere, why not Pakistan perform a similar feat with Moenjo Daro?

We had the whole rest-house to ourselves that night. It was an eerie experience. The room had cobwebs all over the walls. At night we had a hard time sleeping with strange sounds and a ’pehredaar’ (watchman) blowing his whistle at regular intervals. A clock struck every hour between midnight and five A.M. I could not figure out why the ‘gharhial’ struck only at night time. To make matters worse for us, the bed was quite uncomfortable and the lights went out at around midnight. The place had become a veritable ’bhoot bangla’. My wife cursed me for bringing her to this scary place. And this was without my telling her that we were in perhaps the most lawless area of Pakistan!

The next day, we were taken on a round of Moenjo Daro by the custodian of the place. No matter how much one has read about Moenjo Daro in books and articles, one is still struck with awe when one visits and actually sees the place. Spread over several hectares are the ruins of a city from which the town planners of today can learn a lesson or two. It has wide boulevards, a surprising covered drainage system and community services, like garbage collection and swimming pool which would be the envy of many towns and cities of the subcontinent even today. The engineers displayed amazing skills in bringing water to the swimming pool from a nearby well through a naali drain. The city had both single and double storey homes; some of the double storey homes were served by tall wells so that the residents did not have to carry water from the ground floor to the second floor. There were several wells in the city and they had all smooth, perfectly round brick walls. There were streets for the poor and streets for the rich, and the streets for the rich even had a booth for a security guard. We saw large tandoors which were presumably used for commercial or communal cooking. The bricks used in houses, wells, tandoors or communal baths were quite similar to those being used now. The nearby museum carries specimens of jewellery and pottery found in the city which could have come from the nearby villages. The clay figures also suggested resemblance to gods which were worshipped by the later inhabitants of the area. One has to keep reminding oneself that all this happened more than five millennia ago.

The security at the place was minimal. Old blackened seeds of wheat were scattered at the site. I asked the custodian what precautions were taken to ensure that old relics from the ruins were not stolen or removed from the site. His reply was that people in the surrounding village would catch anyone trying to run away with the stolen stuff. This did not seem to be an entirely satisfactory arrangement to me. He casually gave us a few seeds of blackened wheat as souvenirs to take home with us.

Despite its world heritage status, the whole place is suffering from neglect and many structures are in danger of crumbling. A report in The Dawn newspaper when I was there made for a sad reading. Reporting on a crumbling wall, the report said,

“Archaeologists said that it was a big loss because the wall located in the DKG area was unique in the entire Indus Valley civilization sites. The fallen bricks were seen lying scattered on the spot when this correspondent visited the pre-historic site, while some portions of the same wall were crumbling and about to collapse. The department of archaeology has not taken any measures for the maintenance of the world heritage site. Around two years back, the chief engineer of the department, Mohan Lal surveyed and identified some 93 original walls which were leaning”

The Archaeological Survey of Pakistan spends only Rs. 50,000 per month on this site all of which goes towards the salary of people like the night watchman. The report went on to warn that “The entire DKG area is facing a danger and structures can collapse at any time as the last year’s rains had developed fissures, gullies, crevices and ditches and de-shaped their originality. Even walls in the DKC area were seen leaning and some of them had developed cracks. With temporary artificial support, certain leaning walls have been saved from being fallen. However, the structure of well and drain in DKC area are fast decaying and walls in the area from where ring stones had been recovered had eroded and are about to fall.”

Such, then, is the sad state of maintenance of Pakistan’s premier world heritage spot.

Moenjo Daro owes its discovery to a former Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, Sir John Marshall, who discovered the place in 1911. The diggings took place between 1922-28. The inhabitants of the nearby village had already noticed the human remains of the area and called it the mound of the dead, or Moenjo Daro in the Sindhi language; the place still carries that name.

John Marshall’s contribution to the discovery of Pakistan’s heritage is not limited to Moenjo Daro. He also discovered the archaeological sites at the second most famous Pakistani site designated as a world heritage, namely, Taxila. The diggings here took place mostly in the 1930s. This place is on the historic G. T. Road, and is much more popular than the less accessible Moenjo Daro. The place, also known in Sanskrit as Tashashila is the site of the famous international university during the Buddhist period and attracted large number of national and international students in both religious and secular subjects, such as Vedas, Buddhist philosophy, Mathematics and Astronomy. It was on the cross-roads of the world trade routes and finds mention in the travelogues of many foreign travelers, such as Mangasthenes and Hieun Sang. The Taxila museum is a veritable treasure of sculptors, ornaments and artifacts. Its staff is well-informed, knowledgeable and take considerable pride in their work. The curator of the museum was quite friendly and let us into a locked room where some prized items were kept.

After visiting the museum we headed for the two digging sites at Taxila. The first one, two miles up the road, was Sirkap ruins. Sirkap was a well-known city until the time of Kanishka. Here, we were met by a bearded mullah-type, a retired military man, who was the lone custodian at the place. He took us around the place for a brief visit to the ruins of Sirkap. One of the ruins we visited was dug deep and showed signs of three distinct civilizations. Our guide mistook us for fellow Muslims and told us how the place suffered a zawaal or a destruction thrice in its history, caused by the wrath of Allah on pagans, as mentioned in the holy quran.

From Sirkap we went to the other well-known diggings at Jaulian. One has to take a scenic trek up the top of a hill to get to this site. The surrounding view of the valley from this site is panoramic and a tonic to the tired eyes. But the panoramic view is not the only reward of the short trek. The stupas themselves are magnificent. They are guarded day and night and the statues of Buddha and Bodhisattva, their attendants, the animals, and artifacts, even though mutilated and some even decapitated, show the elegance and opulence of the gandhara art.

The Jaulian site has a large monastery with the residential cells of monks. There are several inscriptions in Kharoshti, the script in use until the 5th century AD. Some of the sculptures here are duplicates in plasters, the originals being on display at the Taxila museum. A tank at the centre of the court collected rain water off the wooden roof, the same ancient technique of rain-harvesting which is in vogue again in the water starved India of today. Jaulian is perhaps the best kept historical site in Pakistan. The custodians, too, are better informed and seemed to take a fair bit of pride in what they were guarding.

While crossing the Jehlum River on the Motorway, one’s thoughts turn to what one had read in the history books about the epic battle in which Raja Porus tried to defend his land against the mighty armies of Alexander. One is tempted to ask if there is any monument to commemorate the native hero, but doesn’t even bother to ask because one knows the answer.

Most Pakistanis have never heard of a place known as the Ketas Raj. There are no signs of Ketas Raj while passing through the scenic salt range on the motorway, but if you take the Kalar Kahar exit and ask anyone about it, you will have no problem in reaching the place. To get there, you have to take a well-maintained highway to Choa Saidan Shah. The Ketas Raj comes into view suddenly, without any prior indication, approximately 25 kilometers from the Kalar Kahar exit. It is an impressive complex of seven temples, known as Satghare. It has been described as the second most sacred shrine of the Hindus of Panjab, after the Jawalamukhi temple, now in Himachal Pradesh. This site was once a bustling place of pilgrimage for hundreds of thousands of Hindus and a huge mela was held here every year; it has turned into ruins in half a century. The Hindus from India approached the Pakistani government several times to open the place to them for pilgrimage but that request was denied every time. We were told during our visit that some yaatris were to visit the place for the first time the following day and the ruins had been spruced up for the occasion. It was not certain whether the pilgrims were to be from India or from Sindh in Pakistan; I did not, however, see a mention of any such pilgrimage in the Indian media.

The temple complex is built around a large tank. There is a legend surrounding the tank which is mentioned in the Mahabharata epic. According to the epic, the Pandav brothers were sent into exile after Yudhishtra lost in the gamble to the Kaurav leader, Duryodhan. Once during the exile, when the brothers were feeling very thirsty, Yudhishtra sent his youngest brother to search for water. The story of the brothers’ search for water is described as follows:

“Yudishthir asks Sahdev to go in search of a lake or stream from where they can drink water. Sahdev finds a lake, and is about to drink water for himself before calling his brothers that there is a voice, with no body to be seen around, asking him to stop and answer his questions first before drinking the water. Sahdev ignores the warning and continues to drink the water. Taking the very first sip of water, Sahdev faints(almost dead) and falls to the ground. Realizing that Sahdev hadn’t returned yet, Yudishthir sends Nakul in search of Sahdev. Nakul finds the lake and Sahdev but decides to drink the water first. The voice again gives him the warning but Nakul also ignores it and drinks the water prior to answering the questions and also faints. Yudishthir get worried and sends Arjun. Arjun finds the lake and Nakul and Sahdev but also drinks the water first ignoring the warning by the voice given to him and faints. Yudishthir then sends Bhim who also lands with the same fate as his younger brothers. Yudishthir then goes himself to find the four brothers. On reaching the lake he decides to drink some water but the voice gives him a warning to answer his questions before drinking the water, he then discovers his four brothers and asks why were his brothers lying fainted on the ground. The voice replies that they had ignored his warning . The Yaksha(a form of "Yama-Lord of Dharma") in that lake had cursed that until anyone who came to drink the water of that lake was to first answer his questions correctly before drinking the water otherwise that person would die. Yaksha offers to Yudishthir that if you are to answer the questions correctly I will spare the life of one of your brothers. Yudishthir then asked the Yaksha to ask the questions.”

The questions were about the philosophy of life. A sample of questions and answers:

Q. What is that which can give eternal happiness?
A : Controlling the mind and managing the thoughts to make the mind devoid of negativities and greed and ego and lust, makes the person get away from all problems and be happy.
Q. Who’s company is eternally beneficent?
A : The company of noble people is eternally beneficial.
Q. What rescues man in danger?
A : Courage is man’s only strength and salvation in danger.

The Yaksh was satisfied with Yudhishtra’s answers and returned to life all his brothers.

There have been other legends associated with the place as well.
We took a brief round of the complex which my mother used to mention to us with great fondness. It has separate bathing quarters for men and women. The surrounding temples are in a dilapidated state and all the idols are now missing from there.

The Ketas Raj has a historical importance that goes beyond its religious significance. This was also a place of learning during ancient times and finds a mention by that genius chroniclers of his travels, Al Beruni. He stayed here for some time and learnt the Hindu philosophy and the Sanskrit language from the Brahmins at this place of learning.

Going through these monuments, one wonders if Pakistanis will embrace these ancient monuments as part of their cultural heritage? There is some evidence that at least some of them, in search of a Pakistani identity, are willing to accept the pre-Islamic culture as their own. Prominent among them is Aitzaz Ahsan, a leader of the Pakistan People’s Party. His recent book, The Indus Saga, has won critical acclaim in Pakistan. Ahsan has tried to reinterpret the two nation theory which created Pakistan. According to this ex-post interpretation, the Indian subcontinent can be divided into two nations because of a civilizational divide. The areas that now forms Pakistan roughly correspond to what he calls part of the Indus civilization; whereas the areas now constituting India correspond to what he terms Gangetic civilization. This division may appear somewhat arbitrary and artificial to the Indians but it makes a lot of sense to those Pakistanis who do not want to define themselves in purely religious terms.

This article would be incomplete if I did not give the Pakistani authorities full credit for taking excellent care of the symbols of Sikh heritage in Pakistan. While the Sikh shrines have benefited from the political games between India and Pakistan and the Pakistani attempts to woo Sikhs from India and abroad, one must give credit where the credit is due. I visited three Sikh shrines during my visit to Pakistan - Punja Saheb, Nankana Saheb and Dera Saheb. All three sites are very well looked after. All three gurudwaras perform the mandatory daily service (the parkash of guru granth saheb) and serve food daily from the langar, the community kitchen. All three shrines have on-site accommodations for the overnight stays of the visiting pilgrims. These sites provide evidence of the great devotion of the Sikhs to these shrines and their support and contributions has played a key role in their preservation. But no amount of devotion and contributions would have sufficed without the full cooperation and support of the Pakistani authorities.

(i)Asaan vanjaa ditte – We lost/destroyed them(/i)
(a villager describing what happened to the statues in the historic Ketas temples)

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(i)We do admit all these statues were the cultural heritage of Afghanistan, but we will not leave the part which is contrary to our belief.(/i)
(Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil,
Foreign Minister of Afghanistan, on the demolition of Bamiyan Buddha statues)

(i)Asaan vanjaa ditte – We lost/destroyed them(/i)
(a villager describing what happened to the statues in the historic Ketas temples)