The Napier Road in Karachi is named after the famous British General Sir Charles James Napier, who conquered Sindh from the Mir rulers of the time. The road begins at Lee Market and ends around Denso Hall.

Before General Zia’s martial law and the Islamisation that followed, evenings and nights were the time when this road used to be frequented by its visitors longing recreational satisfaction of one or another kind.

As soon as the day passed and the lamps would light the beautiful streets of the city, there would be traditional dance parties in the buildings on both sides of Napier Road, from Lee Market to Nigar Cinema. Many well-off visitors and literati would participate in these events.

Renowned Urdu poet Saqi Farooqi writes on pages 84-85 of his book, Aap Beeti, Paap Beeti:

“In those days, Jalib used to live in Jacob Lines with his elder brother Mushtaq Mubarak. After work, I would sometimes go home to irritate my wife. When I would have roamed around Saddar to my contentment, I would then head home in Qasimabad to perform the duties of irritating my wife or knock at Jalib’s brother’s door to get some sleep since it was nearer.

“Mubarak was a Superintendent in some public office. He was well aware of the art of music. So much so that even the singing ladies of Napier Road would greet him with a bow. A couple of times he took me along to Napier Road. Jalib would accompany us sometimes and not at other times. Once, when we entered the kotha (the room where the musical evenings would be held), the woman singing for the audience stopped singing until Mushtaq sahib sat down. It then dawned on me that Jalib’s voice was not God-gifted, it was blood-awarded.”

The most famous place on Napier Road was Bulbul Hazaar Daastaan. However, during Zia’s extreme rightist rule, local police had made things difficult for not only this but all other such places.

On one occasion, I went to call on a senior Radio Pakistan artist at his residence in an apartment building on Napier Road. I was amazed to see some of the residences with cardboard signs hanging on the door that said: “This is a home of moral people.”

The famous Nigar Cinema on this road has also been closed for quite some time now. The only remaining sign of the place is a rusty billboard and underneath it an uncanny sculpture of a lion, the party symbol of Mian Nawaz Shareef’s Pakistan Muslim League-N. The locally influential Mutahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has been kind enough to spray paint the lion with the colours of its party flag: of course, an art of its own kind.

A young man from the area said the reason of Nigar Cinema’s shutdown was “because of the violent situation,” Javed said.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, in the good old days, ordered the construction of three huge, concrete swords to be built on a square on the road that led from the Clifton Bridge to 70 Clifton, his residence. The swords were, of course, his party’s election symbol. The square where these three swords stood erect also had an engraving: “Unity. Faith. Discipline.” The Urdu translation of the word faith before Zia’s rule was yaqeen-e-mahkam, a term that was somewhat liberal in its essence. However, Zia changed it to eemaan, a word that is on the forefront in Islamic ideology.

In 1977, succumbing to the rants of the Pakistan National Alliance’s demand of changing the country from a democracy to a sharia state (the focus of their slogan being nizaam-e-Mustafa (PBUH)), Bhutto changed the weekly holiday from Sunday to Friday and ordered the shutdown of all liquor stores, liquor sale and consumption centres and any other such recreational platforms in the country.

It was perhaps the acknowledged ignorance of the fanatics that they did not demand the demolition of the concrete swords. Perhaps, those too would have been removed. It was General Zia’s kind-heartedness that he legalised liquor production, sale and consumption for non-Muslims in the country soon after he assumed power. Ironically, no Muslim had problems with alcohol being legalised for non-Muslims in their land of the pure.

Ejaz-ul-Haque Qudoosi sahib writes on page 39 of the third edition of his book, Taareekh-e-Sindh about Sir Charles Napier that he played a vital role in conquering Sindh from its rulers of the time. In fact, the man who concluded the rule of Talpurs in Sindh was this man, Sir Charles Napier.

Qudoosi sahib further writes that Napier was appointed to lead the British forces in India in 1847. From 1849 to 1850, he remained the Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in India. Due to some misunderstandings with the Governor General of India, Lord Dalhousie, Napier resigned from his post and retreated to his personal life. He died on August 29, 1853. Sir Charles Napier is buried in the church of Saint Paul.

The honours that he received, both during his life and posthumously, do force some to question as to why this man was described in history as a hero, when the plight he brought upon the Talpur rulers and their families in Sindh has been no secret.

One of the things one can ponder over about Napier’s professional persona was his administrative skills. It was Napier who structuralised the modern government in Sindh after he conquered the state for the British. It was agreed upon that he not punish the wives and daughters of the Talpur unethically and unprofessionally, as writes Qudoosi sahib in his book.

However, there was more than that to Napier’s character. A. W. Hughes writes on pages 50-51 of the Scinde Gazetteer that Napier ordered an investigation into the matter of the unusual number of suicides by women in the state. It then came to be known that for petty reasons men murder their wives and then claim that the women have committed suicide. In 1849, Napier sent a note to all the magistrates in the Sindh, demanding an immediate end to these crimes. He also issued a proclamation which read:

“People of Sind, - the government has forbidden you to murder your wives, a crime committed when the British conquered this country. This crime of woman-murder is forbidden by the religion of the English conquerors; who shall dare to oppose the law? Woe be to those who do. But this is not all, ye Sindians, Balochis and Muhammadans, murder is prohibited by your prophet. You, who murder your wives, outrage your own religion as much as you outrage ours! This the government will not permit.

"*The government therefore visited with punishment such murders, and the crime began to disappear. Some foolish men among you believe that the English are easily deceived, and you have, in a vast number of cases, hanged your wives, and then pretended that these poor women committed suicide. Do you imagine that the government believe that these women committed suicide? Do you believe that the government can be deceived by such villainy that it will let women be thus murdered?

"If you do believe this, it becomes necessary to teach you how erroneous your judgment is, and if you persevere, your sufferings shall be great. You are therefore thus solemnly warned, that in whatever village a woman is found murdered, a heavy fine shall be imposed on all, and rigidly levied. The government will dismiss the Kardar (mukhtiarkar). It will order all her husband’s relations up to Karachi, and it will cause such danger and trouble to all, that you shall tremble if a woman is said to have committed suicide in your district, for it shall be an evil day for all in that place. You all know that what I say is just, for never was woman known to have committed suicide in Sind till the law decreed that husbands should not murder their wives and this year vast numbers of women have been found hanged; gross falsehoods have been put forth by their families that they committed suicide; but woe be to their husbands! For the English Government will not be insulted by such felons. The murderers shall be sent to labour far away over the waters, and heard of no more.”

Perhaps Qudoosi sahib was right when he said what he did about Napier. However, the man who oppressed the women of the ruling class immensely can also be witnessed through the vantage points of history to have ventured for the rights of the poor and victimised women of the area to every possible extent. According to the May, 2004 edition of the monthly Paighaam, a periodical of the information ministry of Sindh, eight men allegedly killed a woman in the name of honour (kaaro kaari) when Napier was the Governor of Sindh. Upon being informed of the crime, Napier immediately ordered the execution of all the men by a firing squad. Along with that, he also ordered that the main culprit’s arm be amputated before he is shot dead.

Muhammad Usman Damohi writes in his book, Karachi Taareekh Kay Aaeenay Main that although Charles Napier was a national enemy of the state of Sindh, and all condemnation for his acts of overpowering Sindh are not enough, yet the love that he had for the city of Karachi was unmatchable and praiseworthy. The progress, the status and the respect that he bestowed upon the city of Karachi can never be appreciated enough by the people of the metropolis. It was Napier who declared Karachi the capital of Sindh without any delay as soon as he was appointed as the authority over the province, occupying himself with the development of the city.

It was during Napier’s times when Karachi, previously an insignificant habitat, became a city of international repute and whence has never looked back, achieving only further milestones on the road of progress. He used to call it the bird of gold. It is said that when he was leaving for Bombay, he had tears in his eyes because of the love that he had for Karachi. On the first of December, 1847, the people of Karachi had organised a farewell in honour of Sir Charles James Napier. In 1853, a statue of Charles Napier was erected at the Mol Pul point that touched Kemari. The statue was repaired in 1901.

Usman Damohi says that the Napier Road in Karachi is now called Mir Karam Ali Khan Talpur Road. I tirelessly searched for a signboard that would have the road’s new name on it, but all in vain. However, all the buildings, even banks, refer to it as that Napier Road. Perhaps whoever changed the name of the road had thought that the rechristening of the road was the only way he could avenge Napier’s victory against the Mirs.

Photos by Akhtar Balouch
Translated by Ayaz Laghari

Read this blog in Urdu here.