/ARTS WEEKLY/PAKISTAN: Forgotten Statues Await New Life

By Zofeen Ebrahim Reprint | | Print |

Zofeen Ebrahim

KARACHI, Pakistan, Jun 3 2003 (IPS) - She looks on with lifeless eyes, the widow’s veil poised on her graceful head. There is no sign of the orb or the sceptre, or the right arm or the left hand. The nose is brutally disfigured for a queen. Someone has cruelly dropped tar on her imperial robes.

But the necklace around her neck and studs on her ears are intact.

This is the larger than life statue of Queen Victoria, which rests on a chipped marble pedestal on which have been engraved these three letters – VRI. Next to her is the equally regal marble statue of King Edward VII, without the head. His robes too have a mixture of tar, paint and bird droppings forming a kind of a pattern.

Look closer and you will find that the embroidery on both the imperial figures has been deftly copied in marble. A little further you see the marble statue of a man dressed like an Englishman, his shoes badly damaged.

Then there are six other statues, made of bronze. "These formed a fountain and there is a theme running if you care to notice," says Kaleem Lashari, director general of Sindh Archives, where these statues lie dumped in the southern Pakistani city.

In fact, two huge statues greet you at the entrance to the archives. One of the mammoth figures rests an innocuous plastic ‘lota’ ( pitcher) and, on the other, someone has left a pair of sneakers to dry. If one did not know any better, one would consider that to be part of pop art!

Kaleem Lashari says: "These were put up during the colonial rule (of the Indian subcontinent, before the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan ) and depict the Raj taking care of its subjects." Thus, there is an angel protecting an Indian girl child – back then child marriage was practised, the ritual of ‘sati’ was rampant and widows burnt at their husbands’ pyre. The British are seen empowering the women.

Next you see a poor child with a ‘takhti’ (writing board) and Britannica shielding the child and at the same time imparting knowledge and spreading enlightenment.

At the backside of the archives there is a statue of a blindfolded woman sitting holding a book in one hand, a sword on her lap and presumably holding scales with her other hand – except that these are missing. Sitting and imploring for justice is the statue of an Indian woman.

There is one of a woman carrying a water pitcher with water coming out. The base on which it sits reads ‘IRRIGATION’. And the last one is that of a lone British soldier, musket in hand. While made of bronze, somehow it does not look part of the earlier group of statues.

Says Kaleem Lashari, "no one knows who made them but the workmanship is excellent”. Niilofur Farrukh, art historian and dean of the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts, adds: "Stylistically their origin lies in the Victorian aesthetic although some borrow from Greek mythology. Maybe they were copied from drawings by local artisans?"

Whoever the artist and whatever the age they depict, Kaleem Lashari is determined to bring these dumped art pieces to life. However, he adds, "Restoration of marble statues is difficult as it means recreating. Unless we have the design or even photographs of these statues, it would well nigh be impossible. But cleaning we can do easily and remove the tar and polish the marble.”

Some books on Karachi refer to these marble statues. ‘Karachi – Megacity of Our Times’, edited by Hamida Khuhro and Anwer Mooraj, Oxford University Press, 1997, says: "The Queen’s Statue which is by Sir Hamco Thorneycroft, R A., was unveiled by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales in March 1906.”

”The monument consists of a classically treated architectural pedestal with statues of bronze around the base, and crowned with a colossal white marble statue of the Queen Empress, wearing a widow’s veil and the imperial crown and robes of state, and holding in her hand the sceptre and the orb,” it adds.

”The principal groups at the foot of the pedestal represent India approaching justice and peace. On one side is a lion, and on the other a tiger, with heads erect, guarding the monument. At the rear the River Indus is symbolised by a woman carrying an urn and pouring water on the thirsty soil,” it continues.

Nillofur Farrukh believes these pieces should be treated as part of Pakistan’s historical monuments, not vandalised at some government’s whim. She does not remember when they were razed and taken from the garden adjacent the Frere Hall, but they "were up there till the mid-1960s" when she "used to roller skate around them" with her friends.

However, Arif Hasan, Karachi’s eminent architect and social scientist, remembers it to be the "latter part of Ayub (Khan’s) regime, the same time when the names of roads were changed”. Kaleem Lashari remembers the time of Fatima Jinnah and Ayub Khan’s election campaign "when there was general unrest and people started destroying anything that belonged to the state".

Khan was military ruler and then president of Pakistan (1958 to 1969). In 1965, Khan defeated Fatima Jinnah, sister of the founder of Pakistan Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in presidential elections.

Saifur Rehman Grami, local district officer for culture and sports, also recalls that some "thirty years ago, during Ayub’s regime in the early sixties, there was a religious movement and people demonstrated violently and razed the statues (because they were seen to be against the Islamic practice that frowns on icons and graven images).

In 1994-95, when he was director for culture of Sindh province, he was informed of some statues that had remained buried in a workshop for years, because successive governments were either not interested in displaying colonial culture or feared the wrath of the extremists.

Whatever the reason, Saifur Rehman Grami decided to have them dug up and had these transported to Mohatta Palace for safekeeping.

"We even found some broken pieces like limbs, and busts but we were unable to put them together,” he said: "These are part of fine art and our history and you cannot erase the colonial period, however much you try. These form part of our cultural heritage and our children should know about it."