Our present past

Blue skies, majestic trees, singing birds, lush green hills and pristine air bedecked the mesmerising Abbottabad of yore. Founded in 1853 by Major James Abbott, it was raised by the British Royal Engineers.

In 1883, the Hazara Gazetteer declared Abbottabad, gateway to the breathtaking Siran Valley, fabled Silk Route and the towering Karakoram, Hindu Kush and Himalayan ranges, as the most beautiful hill town of the Subcontinent.

Elms, ash and camphor trees from Britain, chinar from Kashmir and Lebanese cedars and oaks adorned this enchanting hamlet. Daffodils, gardenias and fabulous geraniums added a burst of colour and fragrance to the blissful settings. The Indian subcontinent was the Koh-e-Noor of Britain’s imperial crown. Abbottabad was a minuscule part of it.

Colonists exploited the people, land and resources of a weaker country claiming to be an intrinsically superior group. This convoluted sense of entitlement was immortalised by Rudyard Kipling in his poem ‘The White Man’s Burden’. He defined colonisation as a selfless moral duty to tame what he called the half-devil half-child savages.

The lack of infrastructure in India impeded Britain’s extractive and administrative plans. This, in turn, led them to develop roads, railways, ports and communication systems at a frenzied pace. From 1860 to 1880, India’s rail network alone mushroomed from 838 to 15,842 miles.

The aim was military empowerment and expeditious extraction of resources rather than Kipling’s selfless moral duty towards what were deemed the Abduls of the British crown. Economist Utsa Patnaik formulated the Drain Theory to explain how, by 1938, Britain had extracted a mind-boggling $45 trillion from colonial India.

The fallout was impoverishment and famines throughout British rule. The Bengal Famine alone, in an area that had been one of the world’s wealthiest for the preceding three centuries, led to the death of four million people. Churchill callously blamed the famine on Indians “breeding like rabbits” and taunted that if food was scarce how come Gandhi was alive.

During the 1857 War of Independence, the entire Subcontinent had only 35,000 widely scattered British soldiers. The mode of governance was that of indirect control. Feudal lords and notables were empowered and nurtured as dynasties. They were accountable to none but their British masters.

The judiciary, military and bureaucracy were tailored to aid and abet this lot in the service of the crown. This patronised coterie formed the power elite that the British potently used to purge the subcontinent of its liberty and riches.

These lines are not to reminisce about our colonial past. It is rather a stark reminder that our present past has our borders, outlined after a violent and arduous journey, merely marking the point where bondage to the British crown ended and that to our power-elite began. Our generations being born in an ever-expanding vortex of poverty and vulnerabilities are a stark testament to this pulsating and overarching edifice of the British Raj.

Countries valuing their independence have prospered. Japan, Singapore and Brazil are among the world’s ten largest economies. With a GDP of $814 billion, Singapore’s success is attributed to building on its aspects of colonial heritage. Paul Romer, former chief economist of the World Bank, contends that Hong Kong, a tiny British colony till 1997, has done more to reduce world poverty than all aid programmes of the World Bank over the last century.

Modern China, two years younger than Pakistan, has a GDP exceeding that of the UK, France, Italy and Germany put together. India, our independence partner, now a country of around 1.44 billion people, has a $3.57 trillion GDP. Experts predict that it will soon be the world’s third-largest economy. Tellingly, India even forced history to come full circle with Rishi Sunak becoming the first Indian heritage prime minister of Britain.

As colonies have progressed, our subjugation prevails. Intoning thy wish is my command; our rulers kept on submitting to Western diktat. Being a proxy in their wars fostered ubiquitous extremism, terrorism, economic servitude and an alienated populace.

In the war on terror, Pakistan lost 83,000 precious lives. Dr Hafiz Pasha writes in his book ‘Growth and Inequality-Agenda for Reforms’ that, till 2018, the estimated cost of terrorism to Pakistan’s economy has been a mind-boggling $251.8 billion. This is 93 per cent of Pakistan’s GDP.

Back to Abbottabad: it remains an important garrison town. Known as the city of schools, Abbottabad is also home to prestigious educational institutions. People from these military and educational institutions have always remained central to the echelons of power. Both Pakistan and Abbottabad have remained totally devoid of their official and emotional consideration.

Mowed-down trees, an encroached upon once elaborate stormwater drainage system, filth piled by overflowing gutters, maddening traffic, concrete eyesores in green areas and filled-up ravines define the Abbottabad of today. To add to the grotesque, unplanned shanty towns steadily clamber up the once beautiful surrounding hills.

Detonations resound driving away the birds, as stone-crushing plants eat away at the foothills of Thandiani, Abbottabad’s glorious sunrise sentinel. They spew a haze of dust that envelopes the surroundings as it settles down on the choking town below.

Charles Allen writes in ‘Soldier Sahibs: The Men Who Made the North-West Frontier’, that on hearing of his transfer to Calcutta, a sorrowful Abbott penned the poem ‘Abbottabad’. He lamented: “Oh Abbottabad we are leaving you now, to your natural beauty do I bow. Perhaps your winds’ sound will never reach my ear; my gift for you is a few sad tears”.

Kaka Abbott, as he was known to the locals, would have been mortified were he to visit the Abbottabad of a sovereign Pakistan today. The coloniser would surely and rightly have mocked us, that too in fluent Hindko, about our vaunted liberty and its ravages on Abbottabad, his beloved abode.

The writer is a freelance

contributor. He can be reached at: miradnanaziz@gmail.com