KARACHI, Aug 3: The archaeology department has received the first instalment of the long-awaited funds for the renovation of Wazir Mansion, the birthplace of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

The director of the National Museum of Pakistan, Mohammad Mehrban, told Dawn on Saturday that the archaeology department had received Rs1.2 million.

“The archaeology department has purchased six air- conditioners, a TV set, a DVD player and a computer with a Pentium IV processor. These equipment would be placed at Wazir Mansion where visitors would be shown audio and video documentaries,” he explained.

He added that the ministry of culture had promised to give the archaeology department Rs6 million for the overall renovation of Wazir Mansion. The remaining Rs4.8 million would shortly be released, he said.

Mr Mehrban said that during the renovation of the building, belongings of the Quaid-i-Azam would be shifted to the National Museum and Wazir Mansion would be closed to the public.

In April 2002, under the directives of Sindh ombudsman Justice Haziqul Khairi, the city government carried out the essential repair work of Wazir Mansion as a stopgap measure until the Pakistan Archaeology Department received the funds needed to initiate elaborate and much-needed renovation of the building.

Mr Khairi took suo motu action under Section 9 of the Establishment of the Office of Ombudsman for the Province of Sindh Act 1991.

An official of the city government told Dawn that the renovation work had focussed on the anti-termite treatment of the woodwork, prevention of water seepage into the building and repair of pipes badly corroded by rust.

A booklet given by officials at Wazir Mansion says that the building was built during 1860-1870. It is a three-storey building that stands in Kharadar on Chagla Street near Merewether Tower on I.I. Chundrigar Road (formerly McLeod Road). It was in 1872 that Jinnahbhai Poonja acquired this building. The Quaid-i- Azam was born here on Dec 25, 1876.

It adds that after the partition of the subcontinent, this building was purchased by one Wazir Mohammad from a Hindu landlord, Gordandas Mohthandas. In 1953, the government of Pakistan purchased this building from Wazir Mohammad, and the Pakistan Works Department was assigned the job of renovation. Under the Ancient Reservation Act 1904 the building was declared a “protected monument” in 1953. It was declared a “national monument” in 1979. The department of archaeology and museums of Pakistan, government of Pakistan, took over the charge of the Wazir Mansion on Aug 13, 1953, for its proper upkeep and preservation. The formal inauguration ceremony of the Wazir Mansion was performed by the then governor-general of Pakistan, Ghulam Mohammad, on Aug 14, 1953.

In his book, Jinnah of Pakistan, Stanley Wolpert writes: “Jinnah’s father Jinnahbhai Poonja (born circa 1850), the youngest of three sons, married Mithibai, ‘a good girl’ of his own community, and soon moved with his bride to Sind’s growing part of Karachi to seek his fortune. After completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, Karachi enjoyed its first modern boom as British India’s closest port, only 5,918 nautical miles from Southampton, two hundred miles nearer than Bombay. The population was as yet under 50,000, a far cry from more than six million who inhabit that premier city of Pakistan today, but enterprising young people, like Jinnahbhai and Mithibai, flocked to its municipality’s commercial heart, pulsating along both banks of the Lyaree River. There Jinnahbhai rented the second floor apartment of a three-storey house, Wazir Mansion, (since rebuilt and made into a monument and museum), in the bustling cotton mart on Newnham Road still cluttered with camels and laden with bales of raw cotton.” (Wolpert’s book came out in 1984).

Earlier than Wolpert — in 1954 — in his book, Jinnah: creator of Pakistan, Hector Bolitho lays the recently engineered controversy about the Quaid-i-Azam’s birthplace to rest. He writes: “In the heart of the bustling new city is old Karachi; the town of mellow houses that Jinnah knew, as a boy. Some of the streets are so narrow, and the houses so low, that the camels ambling past can look in the first-floor windows. In one of these narrow streets, Newnham Road, is the house — since restored and ornamented with balconies — where Mohammad Ali Jinnah was born.”