#5 marla house in lahore series
It is a beautiful combination.īut then of late we have seen that to ‘show off’ this one small ‘gali’ a series of gaudy additions have been made. For this very reason the ‘demonstration project’ which we know as Gali Surjan Singh showed just how the life of 13 families improved as their houses were restored to modern standards keeping the old architecture intact. The Act of 2012 certainly does want that historic monuments be restored, but of far greater importance are the people and their dilapidated houses, which in their own right have historic architectural importance. They are into ‘performance’ that can be seen, which are there in the shape of famous historic monuments. Their extreme religious beliefs have seriously dented the open-minded liberal views that the old residents were famous for.īut the sociology of the old walled city has never been the concern of our ruling politicians and bureaucrats. Culturally, this has meant that these motorcyclists have forced a ban of Lahore’s traditional Basant festival. For the old walled city it means a crazy rush of motorcyclists blocking narrow lanes and outer roads. Add to this the transport reality of Lahore which has two motorcycles for every house of seven persons. It surely is to their credit and one does not grudge them their success.īut the problem is that the rush of immigrants has led to the total population of the walled city almost doubling to almost 300,000-plus. These Afghans are all cheap labour for the illegal trading markets, with increasingly them moving to economically well-off areas setting up their own businesses. On the average where the old family average of seven persons inhabited each house, today seven Afghan families live, one in each room.Īn official survey tells us that today the ethnic divide is 64pc Afghans to 36pc all others.
Today we see that an influx of Afghan refugees, starting from the Russian invasion to the Taliban takeover to the American invasion to the second Taliban takeover, has constantly and silently moved into the walled city. This also meant that the traditions of the old city were weakening as new foreign immigrants moved in, backed as they are by traders who have transgressed their legal bound of 15 per cent of the city housing to almost 56 per cent … and increasing by the hour. The spin-off was imagined in the form of a rush of tourists, as well as improving the economic condition of its residents, who increasingly were leaving their traditional abodes. This law set up the Walled City of Lahore Authority, with the declared objective of “conserving and re-developing” the dilapidated houses and historic monuments of the old city. The direct result of this ‘demonstration’ project was that in 2012 the Punjab Assembly passed the ‘Walled City of Lahore Act 2012’ with the express purpose to conserving and restoring the old walled city to its former glory. It remains, still, an amazing display of what is possible within the old walled city. Almost ten years ago the Aga Khan Trust for Culture completed the Gali Surjan Singh restoration ‘demonstration’ project of 13 old dilapidated houses in a lane off Delhi Gate.
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