Grave mystery

KARACHI: Jammed traffic at Bahadurabad’s Alamgir Road due to parking outside dozens of eateries, milk and grocery shops is a common sight.

At the end of the road behind Kokan Society, greenery in Kokan Family Park and the relatively serene streets along Haider Ali Road help bring down the systolic pressure and give a pacifying effect to the nerves of those who pass by.

Many streets on Haider Ali Road have direction boards pointing toward Kidney Hill Park.

All such streets lead to another road named Barrister Ahmed Road. This is one of the two roads, the other being Amir Khusrau Road, that run parallel; they are on two sides to a kidney shaped hill with its highest point at 219 feet above sea level.

The hill, according to government records, was designated as a park in 1966. The notification mentions the park’s area as 62 acres. Falling within the municipal jurisdiction of Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), the park area largely remained undeveloped and barren, except for the few trees around a huge concrete water storage tank that was built in the early 1970s to supply potable water to posh settlements.

The settlements started to take root around the hill soon after partition.

A 36-inch diameter pipe of Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) pumps water to the tank.

Until 2000, the hill was accessible from many points on both Amir Khusrau Road and Barrister Ahmed Road.

Then, during the regime of General Pervez Musharraf particularly in the first few years of his rule, the property prices in Karachi skyrocketed. Around this time, people start cutting the hill from Amir Khusrau Road side, completely wiping out the slope of the hill, turning it into a vertical wall.

The space, thus carved out, was used to build big bungalows. From the side of Barrister Ahmed Road, people started encroaching upon slopes of the hill by building bungalows. The civic agencies concerned instead of taking action against the encroachers, helped those people by providing utility connections and constructing metalled roads and streets.

The Supreme Court in 2019 ordered removal of encroachments from the park.

Among the encroachments was a mosque found to be built with the name of Al-Fatah Mosque. The managing committee and trustees of the mosque filed a civil miscellaneous application (CMA) to become intervener in the main case to agitate the order of removing the mosque.

The mosque was eventually removed under the orders of the apex court. However, no final order was passed on the CMA.

When the CMA came up for hearing at Karachi registry of the apex court on December 28, before a bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed, the counsel for the applicant apprised the court that though Al-Fatah Mosque had been removed, there remained another place of worship with the name of Bismillah Mosque, a small graveyard and a mausoleum of Bismillah Shah Bukhari.

The SC bench ordered the removal of Bismillah Mosque and graveyard by shifting remains of those buried there to a proper graveyard elsewhere in the city. The court also ordered closing all the entry points to the Kidney Hill Park except the main gate from Faran Society side.

Eyewitness account

After entering the park from the main gate, the first thing that catches one’s attention is the large number of trees which appear to be newly planted; the trenches dug to plant them have not yet been fully filled. However, the trees seem to have taken root firmly and started growing new leaves and branches while some are also bearing fruit.

At first sight one is captivated by just the vastness of the park. One the side of Amir Khusrau Road the view is simply breath-taking. With the naked eye, everything looks clearly visible as far as the small hills of Dalmia. On the northern side the view up to Lyari Expressway and beyond is quite clear. Whatever open space the hill had has reportedly been covered with plants. On the small hillocks, colourful stone and wooden benches have been installed in all directions for comfortable sightseeing of the visitors. Each hillock has a mud track built and given a name.

However, according to the KMC guards deputed there, very few people visit the park as knowledge about it is limited.

The mazar mystery

The Bismillah Mosque, mazar of Pir Bismillah Shah Bukhari and a small graveyard lie at the eastern edge of the park.

For quite some time, debate about who the mazar belongs to had continued among Sindh’s scholars, intellectuals and journalists. A few of the researchers who actually visited the place say that it is the burial place of Pir Sibghatullah Shah Rashidi, grandfather of sitting Pir Pagara, who is also named Sibghatullah Shah.

According to researcher and author of the book The Hur Freedom Movement, Nasir Aijaz, Pir Sibghatullah Shah Rashidi, popularly known as Soreh Badshah (brave king), started a powerful movement known as the Hur resistance movement against British colonisation during 1930 to 1943.

The Hur movement’s slogan coined by Soreh Badshah, ‘Watan ya kafan, azadi ya mout’ (Our land or coffin, freedom or death) gained so much popularity that a large number oppressed people of rural Sindh started a fierce armed rebellion to drive out the colonisers from the region. To isolate such rebels, the British rulers passed Hur Criminal Act in 1942. The next year, Soreh Badshah was hanged on charges of rebellion. However, his burial place was not disclosed for fear of becoming a centre for the rebels. Soreh Badshah’s two sons Mardan Shah and Nadir Shah were sent to England. After partition, they were sent to Pakistan in 1950 and the government restored their spiritual seat.

According to researcher Hamsafar Gaadi, the young sons were told about the burial place of their father but bound not to make it public under an agreement.

Khalifas (viceroys) of the tribe who are responsible for performing the tradition of placing turban on spiritual head of the Hurs known as Pir Pagara used the term dastbandi (hand tying) to show that though they knew the burial place of Soreh Badshah, they could not disclose it because of an agreement which had ‘tied their hands.’

Both Aijaz and Gaadi say that they had visited the mazar of Bismillah Shah Bukhari and found it different from other mazars in many ways. On each mazar, the caretaker or mutwalli of the mazar belongs to the family of a person buried there. But here the caretakers of the mazar are from three generations belonging to the same [Hur] family. Every mazar prominently displays the shajra (family tree) of the person buried. However, this one has no shajra, the caretakers point out.

Gaadi told Bol News that he had visited the place about two years ago when a new structure of the mazar was being built. The caretaker of the mazar had given him old bills of electricity and water which showed the bills were issued in the name of Nadir Shah, brother of Pir Mardan Shah Pagara.

Court orders

The SC order of Dec 28, it appears, had reportedly forced the Pir Pagara family to remove the veil from the persona of the man resting in the mazar of Pir Bismillah Shah Bukhari for more than 80 years.

When Bol News visited the mazar on December 29, the caretaker of the mazar Ali Nawaz first asked, “Has the court ordered the demolition of the mazar also?”

Responding to the demolition matter, the caretaker said, “Read the backside of the tombstone where a transparent glass engraved Shaheed Soreh Badshah Rehmatullah was attached with the tombstone in a way that it seems part of it.”

Nawaz added that his family for three generations was taking care of the mazar. He informed that his grandfather and his father had been serving as the caretaker before him and Ali Akbar Shah, cousin of sitting Pir Pagara, regularly visited the mazar.