This is the first in a series of articles on Lahore monuments planned by Dawn to mark the 60th anniversary of independence

LAHORE, March 22: Iqbal Park, formerly Minto Park, has a pride of place in our history as the venue for the meeting which passed the Lahore Resolution in 1940. In 1968, we created a tower, Minar-i-Pakistan, at the site to commemorate the resolution. In 2007 — exactly 60 years after independence — it offers a microcosm of the greed and inefficiency of those who have been managing our affairs.

The once green acres, which produced many a leading sportsman and where the city dwellers would have their walks, now breed crime. If that is not suffocating enough, the sickening environment polluted by vehicular traffic all around makes the place truly dangerous.

Some people have grabbed portions of the park in the name of ‘official arrangement’. The grounds are dingy and unkempt, and unlit at night — to the benefit of drug addicts and criminals looking for prey. The police are not totally oblivious to who comes in and goes out of the park; they are routinely accused of extorting money from the homeless who dare to take refuge in the park for a night.

Minto Park, so named after Lord Minto, Viceroy and Governor-General of British India, was carved out of the old and extinct Badami Bagh. For some time, it was also called Parade Ground because the British army housed in the Fort after capturing Lahore in 1849 used to have their drills here. The British India government converted the open space into a playground.

A swimming pool named as King George Memorial Tank was constructed here which existed in its original form until around a decade ago. A cricket pavilion was built in the main ground near the Budha Ravi. It was called Peeli Kothi because of its yellow coating. The pavilion still exists, but in a bad condition. In front of it were three cricket pitches. There were football grounds on the Badami Bagh side of the park.

Local sports also thrived here, including wrestling, kite flying and gulli danda. A wrestling arena in a cluster of trees in the centre of the park was called Jhangi (cluster) Qazian. The place hosted some memorable bouts involving all-time greats such as Goonga Pehalwan, Imam Buksh and Gama Pehalwan. The arena had a persian wheel which wrestlers used to turn as part of their routine exercises. In the same compound body builders had their Muslim Health Club.

In 1940, the British government organised an all-India industrial exhibition in Minto Park. The same year, in March, the All India Muslim League held its historic meeting in the park to adopt the Pakistan Resolution.

Traditionally, Hindus of Lahore used to organise their Dasehra Mela in Minto Park. Muslims would hold their Eid Mela outside Delhi and Akbari gates. The Eid Mela was shifted to Minto Park on the occasion of the first Eid after the creation of Pakistan. There was no shortage of the much-needed shade in hot summers. The park had a number of trees all around, including jaman and mango trees. The beds of flowers near the Peeli Kothi kept the flower market outside Lohari Gate in bloom. The plants were watered from the nearby Buddha Ravi, which had by now been turned into a drain.

In main, the park got its water through a channel originating from the Lahore canal near Mughalpura. The channel irrigated the Circular Gardens around the walled city and branched off near Lady Wellingdon Hospital to irrigate Minto Park.

At the time of partition, a large number of families from India took refuge under a bridge of the Budha Ravi near the park. Sheikh Muhammad Mushtaq, who served as a razaakaar or volunteer at the time, says many a refugee who died in their temporary abodes under the bridge lie buried in the area between the Minar-i-Pakistan and the Lady Wellingdon Hospital, their graves disappearing when Ravi Road was widened some years ago.

Minto Park continued to serve as the cricket nursery even after the creation of Pakistan. Clubs including Crescent, Ravi, Pioneers and Friends produced big names such as Abdul Hafeez Kardar, Maqsood Ahmad, Khan Muhammad, Gull Muhammad, Nazar Muhammad, his son Mudassar Nazar and Salim Malik.

The park got a facelift courtesy a cricketer when former Test star Fazal Mehmood was appointed as the first chairman of the Punjab Sports Board during the governorship of Lt Gen Atiqur Rehman in the early 1970s.

Fazal constructed a sports complex for indoor games close to the cricket ground, gave the park four hockey grounds, in the area facing the Fort, and improved the football and cricket grounds. The park is now a nursery of hockey players also.

An indication of the bad times the park was to fall on came when the Pakistan People’s Party government in Punjab allowed dog races in the park in the 1970s. It was not so much the choice of the sport that caused the alarm, but the destruction that accompanied it. A wall was erected in the cricket ground to make room for dog races. The park’s regime banned races some time later and as for the people, they pulled down the wall some time later to restore to the cricket ground its original size.

Nevertheless, the slide had begun and as 1980s approached there was no stopping the Lahore Development Authority to rob the park of its most precious asset: the trees. The cruel chopping down was even more painful since it came in the reign of Governor Gen Ghulam Gilani, otherwise known as a reviver of Lahore’s green grandeur.

The old arena was demolished and the body of the creator of the national anthem, Hafeez Jallandhari, was shifted there from the Model Town graveyard in the early 1990s. Gen Gilani gave the city Racecourse Park and Gulshan-i-Iqbal which diverted the attention of the people from Minar-i-Pakistan and Minto Park.

The arrival of astro turf snatched from Minto Park its status of being a major hockey training ground, and the elimination of the historic arena deprived the practitioners of the dying sport of wrestling their historic source of inspiration.

The management of the ground is the responsibility of the Punjab sports department, which, in the true spirit of the times, handed over its swimming pool to a private contractor many years ago. The pool was built anew and expanded, encroaching one of the four hockey grounds and the adjacent gymnastics arena.

At the rear of the pool stands a marriage hall. On the front facing the shrine of Baba Haider Sain are shops and a public toilet, which help the contractor generate additional money. Shops have also been built at the entrance of the park facing the fort. All these mindless additions over the years are symptomatic of the liberties the usurpers have been allowed in the country since independence.

The list of problems is long. The park has a battery of 60 gardeners but it seems none has his heart in his job. Or maybe they have work to attend to elsewhere. The grounds were without water for 18 months recently because the park’s tubewell could not be run for want of power. The space at the entrance has been taken up by the parking lot. The poles that marked goals in the hockey ground have been stolen. The nearby tomb of Hafeez Jallandhari serves as a safe haven for drug addicts come night or day. Its walls are broken and no one seems to be interested in rebuilding them. Dirty and dilapidated, the sports complex cuts a sorry figure.

The park’s boundary wall was broken at three points to allow entry of vehicles for a public meeting of President Gen Pervez Musharraf before the presidential referendum of 2001. The breaches have not been filled, only the ground near the wall has been dug up to block entry of vehicles.

The wrestlers have, however, muscled their way back to an arena at its original site, with a mosque built in front of it. The sports board has in recent times constructed a wrestling stadium in the Guddi Ground facing Badami Bagh. Some bouts have been organised here but cynics dismiss them as attempts to profit through gate money.

Cricket has not altogether become extinct at the park. Hundreds of youngsters still play the game here but the glory that was once associated with the park is gone.

A view of the city from the top of Minar-i-Pakistan is no more allowed ostensibly on account of an out-of-order lift, but Lahoris, as always, say they know. A large number of people have in recent years used the minaret as a vantage point to jump to their death. They could not have found a more ironic venue for their final act.