The story of Karachi is a story of the good, the bad and the ugly of urban development. The good we have, the bad we ignore and the ugly that is slowly finding its way to seep into the clogged sewers of “urbanized” Karachi, which perhaps if had the power of speech would tell the story a bit differently. It is a journey of a small town, blissfully lullabying itself to the sound of the Arabian Sea to a metropolitan of the 21st century, a global capital, killing itself to the shattering sounds of bullets. 

This story has its origins in obscurity. Legend names Karachi after Mai Kolachi, a fisherwoman who settled by the sea and started the first fishing community. Whatever the case maybe, this small fishing settlement grew by leaps and bounds. It was a peaceful little town when the British conquered it. Soon after, however, it became a city. A city that boasted the first tramway of South Asia, Karachi was soon turning out to be a major port, where the Great Game was played between the British Empire and the Tsars of Russia. In such a strategic point of such a great empire, many communities of varying ethnicities and religions to settle in this now burgeoning city of commerce.

Fast forward and we come to the time of Partition. It was 1947, when a boundary was demarcated in blood. Countless men, women and children were brutally murdered on both sides of the border. It was a separation of conjoined twins by a sword. Sweat, tears and blood flowed into the sea.

Karachi, at that time, had a population slightly under half a million, out of which 42 per cent were Muslims and 51 per cent were Hindu. This demography went through a swift and abrupt change. In four years so many Hindus left the city for India and so many Muslims migrated to Karachi that the Hindu population was dwindling to a mere 2 per cent while Muslims were a healthy 96 per cent of the whole population of Karachi. Majority of these were the immigrant Urdu speaking Muslims who came to be known as Mohajirs.

Did the government try to stop this massive movement of people? Yes it did, but perhaps for the wrong reasons. The first capital of Pakistan was stripped of many signs of its past. It was a new beginning. Almost all the roads were renamed after people who did not have much significance to the history of either the locality or the city. For example, Elphinstone Street was renamed to Zaib-un-Nisa Street.

Translations of Soviet literature were common, and the Mohajir intelligentsia, as well as student federations thrived. In a single year, three governments were changed due to overwhelming protests by university students; as a result, quite absurdly, the university was constructed at a location further than government administrative areas. Just 11 years after independence, the capital moved to its present location, Islamabad.

Divisions were created on income, new satellite towns were made for lower income households, and middle-income settlements were created for the slightly well off. Saddar was soon losing its value as wealthier residents moved out and most cultural activity shifted to foreign cultural centers. While the city was still managing its great demographic change, it was now divided on lines of rich and poor. Beaches were transformed from open access to all “Ghareebo ka Saahil” (Beach of the Poor) to limited access “Ameero ka Saahil” (Beach of the Rich). The nail in the coffin came from Zia ul Haq’s Islamisation policies that were implemented by an iron hand.

In the same period a Mohajir Qaumi Movement was started by students led by Altaf Hussain which was later renamed as Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). Karachi was now divided on ethnic, religious, class, cultural lines. On one hand, there were the old residents of Karachi, many of whom had moved out of Karachi to interior Sindh or to India, much disillusioned by the new scenario. On the other hand, the new Urdu-speaking immigrant population that came to fill the void and power vacuum created after the emigration of rich and influential Hindus from Karachi.

By the last decade of the 20th century, due to an immense rise in the economic activity of Karachi, various other groups of people migrated to the city. One such group, the Pakhtoons, also challenged the monopoly of MQM. Such a conflict was bound to happen, and it came out in a ruthless fashion only a few weeks ago. In July 2011, more than a hundred Karachiites fell victim to bullets that cruelly correlate with divisions on sectarian, religious, ethnic, or cultural grounds. 

To this day, the government fails to realize that urban development is not conterminous with high-rise apartments or the commoditization of land. It is not the philosophy of pushing the poor out of city bounds or segregating a city on economic grounds. It is not making roads by destroying schools; it is not raising walled structures to ghettoise elite areas and is not invading the privacy of Hindu temples in a post-migration Muslim metropolis. Urban development is accommodating the rich as well as the poor, it is creating harmony, it is eliminating divisions and it is rebuilding.