Daily Times

LAHORE: Two women from Karachi, speaking at Faiz Festival, raised their voices against the real estate giant Bahria Town, which they said was going to disturb the beauty of the most populous city of Pakistan in the name of development. They also spoke to raise awareness of art, urbanisation and development in Karachi.

Both women, Shahana Rajani and Zahra Malkani, from Karachi Lajamia, also known as Karachi Art Anti-University, participated as panellists in the 3rd Faiz Intentional Festival 2017 session titled “Art, Urbanisation and Development in Karachi”, moderated by Lahore Bachao Tehreek Convener Imrana Tiwana, held at Adbi Baithak on Sunday.

The women, speaking at an open session, claimed that Bahria had occupied around 30,000-35,000 acres land at the site of Gadap that comprised around 30-40 villages. Gadap Town is located in the north-western part of Karachi with the Hub River on its western limits also forming the provincial border between Sindh and Balochistan.

Imrana Tiwana opened the session by highlighting the history of Karachi. She said that Karachi was known to ancient Greeks by many names such as Karakola, and it’s where Alexander the Great camped to prepare a fleet for Babylonia after his campaign in the Indus.

She said that around 50 percent of the city’s population lived in slums in 2000, and the number was believed to have grown. She further said that Karachiites were made up several ethno-linguistic groups from all over the country along with South Asian migrants. She informed that 90 percent of the population were migrants whereas around 50 percent were Muhajirs (ethnic group). “Karachi has largest concentration of urban Pashtun in the world, including 50,000 registered Afghan refugees,” she said.

Speaking on the issue of social justice challenges, she said that art can educate and create empathy that can lead to change in society. “Art exposes and helps resolve issues of social justice; while as a cultural tool, art helps humanise and actualise emotion, grievances and fears for those who may not have another place to voice concerns.”

She said that the state was allowing and also carrying out projects in the name of development but people were still confused about the actual development.

The speakers said that the local security forces were in the hands of bigwigs of real estate and land grabbers. They said that many families who had been living in Gadap Town area for decades had been dispossessed; adding that Bahria Town had put up boards telling everyone that it was their land now. They said that no compassion was shown to the residents of the area and many were compelled to sell their land.

The women from Karachi gave detailed presentations to audience on their project of Karachi Lajamia and its further initiatives.

They said that Karachi Lajamia had held sessions on Gadap, “It was a site-specific, research-based course carried out in Gadap Town using visual research methods to study, document and understand this historical township and its indigenous communities in light of contemporary processes of development, displacement and climate change,” they said. The Gadap sessions were organized in collaboration with the Karachi Indigenous Rights Alliance from February to July 2016.

Speaking at the occasion, they said that as a starting point, they took the ongoing real-estate mega development project of Bahria Town — allegedly violently transforming over 35,000 acres of land in Gadap — dispossessing indigenous Sindhi and Baloch communities to whom the land belonged.

Participants of the session recommended that they should take lawyers onboard in that regard as well as to use social media to highlight such issues.

Published in Daily Times, November 23^rd 2017.