Lahore and Delhi – A Tale of Two Cities

Lahore Railway Station

 

Yesterday in the newspaper there were reports of a blast and deaths in a church in Lahore and subsequent mayhem. It took my mind back to pre 1947 Lahore then governed at the apex by the British. Both of my parents went to college in Lahore and have described it numerous times to me. It was a leading city of India then where lived Sikhs, Hindus, and Christians of many hues, Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims as well as others from many different religions and races. They all lived in harmony and the city was a great education and cultural center of Asia. The current film industry in India was located there then. The city was well maintained in those days with regular electricity and water supply unlike now, clean low cost or free hospitals and schools where teachers took their jobs seriously, courts that pronounced judgments in months and years not decades as now. Sadly the city has sunk into hell like conditions bit by bit since the British left.

Many years of my own life were spent in Delhi another great city of Asia and this too was a grand city before 1947. I have seen it slide into misery and chaos in front of my eyes. Perhaps one could describe its conditions as close to hell too if one went by assessments of international bodies that declare that it has one of the highest rape rates in the world, the most polluted with the worst air quality of the world capitals and as in Lahore there is chaos on the roads, irregular electricity and water supply and courts that take decades not months for arriving at many judgments.

What changed between 1947 and now to cause this severe deterioration in two leading cities mentioned here? Before 1947 the cities were ruled by colonial rulers who in the main owed their allegiance to a King or Queen in a distant land. Now it is ruled by natives. One would have expected the situation to improve but the reverse seems to have happened. The general opinion is that the cause of these problems is governance deficit and corruption. Further analysis indicates that prime cause of the governance deficit is also corruption. The British in the main were corruption free and therefore paid attention to their work sincerely even though work hours were brief, often only half days with the rest of the day spent in clubs and socializing. The joy of the office hours then lay in doing the work well and getting a pat on the back. Now it lies in increasing hidden illegal wealth and handling the fear of being discovered or sucking up to a boss as  corrupt and inefficient characters also tend to be sycophants. Now, the hours of bureaucrats and their political masters are long under an erroneous belief that long hours produce more work. Then the belief was that short hours followed by other essential aspects of healthy living produce an efficient man and therefore good quality of work. While governance was excellent in British times it has been dilapidated ever since. This goes to show that a few sincere and honest hours of work are far better than long hours filled with corruption and dishonesty. It is true that some of the wealth and the crown jewel -The Kohinoor- from Lahore and Delhi went legally to make London the finest of Capitals of the world by the mid twentieth century from an impoverished one in the mid nineteenth century but enough was left behind to make the cities of India and Now Pakistan fairly good too. After the British left the wealth of the nations has continued to flow into offshore accounts or greedy hands illegally, and little is being left behind so that these cities have been sinking into hell like conditions. This tale of two cities is a tale of human character and its results.

Some counter the argument of this note by citing that both Lahore and Delhi were grand cities even under native rule before the British. But those were times of Monarchies, the times of the Sikh King Ranjit Singh in Lahore and Moghul Emperors in Delhi; those were times when for the sort of crime, bribe taking, rape and corruption that is common place in these cities now, the head would perhaps have been severed off the torso and thrown in the river Jhelum or Jamuna that flowed behind the royal palaces of these two cities.

On the other hand, these are times when the most famous and sordid rapist of Delhi is busy making a documentary of the incident for BBC three years after the incident, taking the opportunity to justify an act more sordid than perhaps even Satan could dream of from the comfort of lodgings paid for by the public and a heir of one of the fat off shore accounts of Lahore arrives from a luxurious mansion in London to hop up and down a dais shouting childishly - Kashmir sada hai, lavange, lavange  (Kashmir belongs to us, not the people of Kashmir, we shall take it, we shall take it) to the cheers of thousands, while the heir of another dynasty in Delhi after returning from a holiday in Europe arrives with innumerable escorts and security forces paid for by the people of an impoverished India, where mothers and infants have gone to sleep on a hungry stomach and a drink of tears, to make a grand declaration - Poverty is not real, it is merely a state of mind. The public pays for their homes, servants and guards and the roads are cleared when their procession passes by just as they used to be in the times of Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Lahore or the Moghul Emperors of Delhi. In the past, in the days of Kings. When rule passed by inheritance, the people as well as the Kings believed it was so ordained by the Lord Almighty, God of the Universe. Which god now so ordains for political heirs in democracies? It is none other than the people and eventually all nations get the leaders they deserve.

Very sad, all this! Isn’t it? Would you be able to change some of this for the better in these two cities and the country dear PM Modi ji and dear brother Imran Khan?

Image of Lahore from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lahore_railway_station.jpeg

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