'Pul Kay Us Paar'

Final Intersection after KalaPul and the FTC Flyover.

"Karachi's politics, and its strategic and economic importance in the country have played a strong role in the shaping of it's culture." Do you agree or disagree?

When discussing successful governance of a state, Abraham Lincoln's famous words that, "A house divided amongst itself cannot stand,” are always evoked. In this context, we wonder how a city like Karachi which is divided by ethnicity, political affiliation and class has been able to hold its ground. The extent of how successfully the social fabric is held together is debatable, however the city has developed a culture of defining and operating within social boundaries. While romanticising Karachi's resilience through the violent manifestations of this divide is problematic, one must acknowledge that the difference is perhaps what makes Karachi the melting pot it is known to be. This essay aims to explore how Karachi's politics, strategic and economic importance have created a culture of divide that has manifested in the form of visible and invisible boundaries that bifurcate the cityscape.

The residents of Karachi define themselves by virtue of knowing what they are not. It starts off with simple questions of demographic nature such as, what language they speak and where they 'originally' came from. Then it zooms into the geography of which side of the bridge they inhabit and eventually the adjacencies of where they live begin informing their character profile. For instance- if there is an Imam Bargah or Jamat Khana near their residence? Does it happen to fall in the former Nine-Zero or Lyari territory? From here the divisions become more clear and so do the questions- What religious faction do they associate with? Do they happen to have any political or military affiliations? The interesting phenomenon here is that while the geographies need not have tangible divisions separating them from each other, the divide is more socially embedded than physical.

This may be because in South Asia, spaces are often defined by their colonial and postcolonial histories. Emotions attached with spatial histories in turn inform the identities of the space's inhabitants. For instance Nida Kirmanis theorized that young Baloch men in the Lyari neighborhood of Karachi were constantly troubled by feelings of fear and insecurity due to the spatial and social power relations in the neighborhood that they had experienced growing up. This directs attention to the notion that perhaps spatial relations and the site become an extension of one's identity and therefore a defining parameter of it. In this context, the citizens of Karachi while taking pride in being residents of the financial and commercial capital of the country, are also well trained in the practice of walking the line between chaos and order. They cannot help but identify with feelings of insecurity owed to the constant need to adapt to anarchy that has plagued the city over the years.

Housing about 22 million people, Karachi is a pulsating mass that serves as the industrial and financial capital of Pakistan. It facilitates 32 percent of the country's industrial activity, generating about 15 percent of the national GDP; 25 percent of federal revenues; and 62 percent of income tax. It also happens to be the most ethnically diverse city in the country, housing various ethnicities such as Muhajirs (migrants), Sindhis, Punjabis, Pashtuns, Baluchis and so on. It grew from a fishing village in Pre-colonial times into a major trading port by virtue of the EIC invasion of the subcontinent and by 1854 became the administrative and bureaucratic center for the region; connecting the subcontinent to the Persian Gulf, China, and Africa. It enjoyed this status even Post-partition for which it was made the federally administered capital of Pakistan- separate from Sindh. While this status was revoked in 1958 when the capital moved to Rawalpindi, its status as the commercial, financial, and trading capital of the country has remained.

Politically, its identity began to develop in the 1970s and 80s when the Muhajir Qaumi Movement came about pioneering the idea that Urdu-speaking Muhajirs should be regarded as a fifth nationality and given constitutional recognition. This left a bitter aftertaste in the mouth of the PPP and Sindhi Nationalists who had already spent the better half of the last decade rioting against the standardisation of Urdu as the Federal language in Hyderabad. The occasional scuffle between Sindhi and Muhajir communities occurred on the "interface" which theorised by Allen Feldman is a "the topographic ideological boundary that physically and symbolically demarcates ethnic communities", where rioting functions as "a traditional mechanism for setting and even extending territorial boundaries. This for the most part was Lyari, Malir and Baldia Town- all regions which till the early 2010s, were riddled with conflict and violence. It can be said that this was the start of bifurcation of the cityscape on basis of political affiliation.

Additionally, the Pashtun-centric Awami National Party began gaining momentum with the rising migration of Pashtuns to Karachi following the 1980s Afghan Refugee crisis. This resulted in the dilution of polar power struggles between the MQM and PPP for there was now a third stakeholder. In 1985, when Muhajir student Bushra Zaidi was killed by a bus driven by a member of the Pashtun community- who almost entirely controlled Karachi's transport- violence swept the city and the streets were set ablaze. A third divide had now occurred on boundaries where the rest of the city ended and Pashtun territory started . Violence on these interfaces intensified after a hundred Muhajir and Bihari basti dwellers were killed in 1985 on newly consolidated "territories" adjacent to Pathan strongholds in Orangi, between Banaras Chowk and the Metro Cinema. By 1986 these riots bled out into Aligarh and Qasba Colony. Ultimately the city was punctuated with both tangible and intangible red tape cordoning territories off from each other and Banaras Chowk, Mukka Chowk and Cheel Chowk became the "interfaces" for division.

Laurent Gayer states that in 1987, when the MQM swept Karachi’s municipal elections they used the opportunity to set up a ‘‘parallel or secondary local state’’ in the city. By 2001 the establishment of this state was solidified when a new form of local governance allowed smaller administrative districts more autonomy. For urban centers, there was now a mayor (Nazim), and the equivalent of a city council, which had not existed before. Using this the MQM was able to exert further control over its constituencies in Karachi- having a direct control over maps and boundaries. Ultimately as a result of this the MQM almost entirely dominated District Central and District East territories, such as Nazimabad, Liaquatabad, Azizabad, Federal B Area, New Karachi and Gulshan-e

Iqbal. Malir, Lyari while District South remained primarily under the influence of the

PPP. Even today the Jeay Bhutto posters and Benazir statue welcome you into Clifton at the mouth of Khayaban e Saadi where the Bilawal house enclave and Ziauddin Hospital domains lie. Cheel chowk in Lyari remained showdown-central for Baluch, Pashtun and local gang wars and District West, Baldia, Pathan and Qasba colonies are ANP dominated territories. In all of this negotiated geography and culture of divide, the city as a whole and its needs have been repeatedly ignored.

As a response to this ignorance and the failure of the police and state institutions' to provide essential services like security and infrastructure, private enclaves are set up where citizens fend for their own amenities and private security. Kaker argues that this practice perpetuates urban unrest by shining a light on state failure and also absolves the institutions of their responsibilities to their people. It also widens the rift between those who can afford to facilitate their own living and those who had trusted the city to provide. Here Naiza Khan's art collection, Membrane becomes an important case study as it talks about different experiences of urban space in Karachi and the social implications of spatial politics. Her study focused on Manora Island- a former naval base rejuvenated into an island refuge which was gentrified in 2006 when the civilian population were bought out of their property to make way for a luxury resort. This plan never materialised and resultantly left Manora island abandoned. Through her work, Naiza khan shed light on how territorialisation of land makes the city defensive and hostile. It also highlights how acts of state negligence and market failure shape landscapes of ruin. Manora becomes a metaphor for the gentrified enclave where- should this plan have materialised- we could have been looking at the island version of French Beach or yet another gated community. What is left is an abandoned paradise; one cannot tell which fate is worse.

Today those who can afford safety often reside in bizarre private enclaves such as Army officers Housing Society (AOHS), Naval Housing Society (NHS) and Malir Cantt where the average non-resident of the space is entirely unwelcome. The very act of entering these enclaves can be likened to Immigration where one must deposit their original National Identity Card at the gate and register their vehicles to be able to cross- the parameters of which are laced with barbed, electric wires and read 'trespassers will be shot.' Perhaps this is the new "armed clientelism" that regulated Karachi Mohalla's back in 1999 when as a result of the coup, streets had their own soldiers and youth generals in charge of Mohalla affairs. Today this segregation is more tangible, visible and defining; where each territory operates as a castle, connected by a drawbridge that can be dropped at any time, surrounded by moat that can be set alight. In this culture of divide, some may be safe, but the city risks losing the very aspects that make it a spectacular Gordian knot bound together by its politics, strategic importance and economics. It risks losing celebration of that difference that makes this place the binding agent in the melting pot that holds this country apiece.

Bibliography

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