Sadequain’s house, Sibtain Manzil, in Nazimabad. ─ Photo by the writer
It is a universally acknowledged truth that an overwhelming majority of Karachi’s immigrant intellectuals once lived in Nazimabad. Talking about it invariably turns into a litany of famous names who resided there.
Some well-known former Nazimabad residents include artists Sadequain and Iqbal Mehdi, Justice Lari, actor Shakeel, film-maker Saeed Rizvi, actress Sangeeta, writers Mukhtar Zaman and Ibn-i-Insha, scholar Alia Imam, poet Ahmad Siddiq aka Majnun Gorakhpuri, journalist Mujahid Barelvi, columnist Nasrullah Khan, singer Salman Alvi (then known on radio as Salman Mian the banjo player), plastic surgeon Dr Mohammad Jawad (of Saving Face fame), and Aale Raza, brother of Hashim Raza.
This isn’t surprising as from the 1950s to 1970s Nazimabad was the centre of India’s Muslim culture and an inheritor of Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb. Partly this has to do with the way history unfolded: most refugees to Punjab or Bengal, who fled persecution, moved from the Indian part of the province to the Pakistani. As a result, homogeneity of language and culture in Lahore or Dhaka was maintained.
From the 1950s to 1970s, Nazimabad was the hub of intellectual and cultural activity in Karachi
Immigrants who came to Karachi, however, were different. Many did come due to unrest in their hometowns but most came for opportunities in a new nation. They originated from cultural centres of the subcontinent such as Lucknow, Delhi, Amroha and Hyderabad.
Among these new immigrants was the first generation of educated, socially-mobile Muslims; graduates of Aligarh or Osmania University who had played an important role in the Pakistan movement. As Jaun Alia once acidly remarked, “Pakistan ... ye sab Aligarh ke laundon ki shararat thi” (Pakistan — this was the mischief of boys from Aligarh).
Karachi’s character, till then, was that of a mercantile port city. The Urdu-speaking intelligentsia altered it dramatically and engineered a mini-renaissance.
Consider, for instance, Muslim members of the Indian Civil Service. At Partition, there were 980 ICS officers of which 468 were Europeans, 352 Hindus, and 101 Muslims — the rest were from other communities. Karachi, as the country’s capital, got the bulk of Muslim ICS officers. Along with Urdu-speaking intellectuals, they settled at the outskirts of Karachi in areas such as PIB Colony, Martin Road, and Jehangir Quarters where small homes were allotted to them.
By 1951 the city’s population had gone from 400,000 at independence to one million. Soon residential areas were marked out. One of these was the area that stretches from Paposh Qabristan to Liaqatabad Flyover abutted by Orangi Stream and Gujar Nala.
In the days before Partition it was an arid piece of land, 10km from Karachi’s centre and dotted with Sindhi and Baloch villages. In 1950, however, the government bought the land from tribal leader Masti Brohi Khan. By 1952 the locality was marked out and named Nazimabad after Khawaja Nazimuddin, the second governor general of Pakistan.
Another new locality, Liaqatabad, was named after Liaqat Ali Khan.
Nazimabad’s plots were sold at reduced prices to immigrants who had been characterised as ‘Mohajirs’ in the 1951 census. The new residents were given plots at subsidised rates of 3.5 rupees per square yard, most of which were 216 square yards but the ones off the main roads could go to 600 square yards.