Not many people know that the City of Lights was also known as Krokola, Kalachi-jo-Goth, and Kurrachee at different points in history. The inhabitants of this vibrant city remember hearing tales of it being referred to as Kolachii by elders. The one consensus regarding Karachi is that it is the hub of business, culture, and technology and is the heart of Pakistan.
The glory of the city was the same back in 1947 when Pakistan celebrated its independence and Mohammad Ali Jinnah selected Karachi as the first capital city of the country. With such a grand status bestowed upon it, the city saw a boost in the incoming immigrants that came from not only India but other regions of South Asia too. The city became home to thousands of refugees. The physical landscape and economic structure changed dramatically as the government was responsible for settling and feeding an astounding number of people. Despite the many challenges faced by the young capital of Pakistan, Karachi thrived and proved itself worthy of being a capital. As Chaudhry Muhammad Ali Khan recounted in his biography, “One of the first decisions taken during partition days was the selection of Karachi as the capital of Pakistan. For strategic and other reasons, the capital could only be located in West Pakistan…… .”
He reveals the reason behind the decision of selecting Karachi as the capital of Pakistan in 1947, “In West Pakistan the only province which had a Muslim League ministry was Sindh; Punjab was under governor’s rule and the North-West Frontier Province had a Congress Ministry.”
It was the year 1959 when Ayub Khan decided to shift the capital of Pakistan from Karachi to Islamabad. It is said that Karachi was found to be unsuitable to be the capital city of the country for various reasons. Karachi remained the capital for around 20 years but a capital city is one that is supposed to be free of all pressures of security and politics, something that Karachi was shackled in.
Karachi is a coastal city which makes it vulnerable to attacks from the direction of the Arabian Sea. With the increased influx of immigrants, the infrastructure of the city was buckling under the pressure. Despite it being the economic hub of the country, the city’s transportation, sewage, water, and housing systems were collapsing. Slum areas were popping up in different parts of the city and the glaring fact was that Karachi could not maintain its status as the capital of Pakistan. With a heavy heart, the people of Karachi got ready to say goodbye to the city’s capital status as Ayub Khan chose Rawalpindi as the interim capital of the country.
The official and established reasons for choosing Islamabad as the capital are based on administrative, political, and national security concerns. As Islamabad is a planned city, it is designed in a way that is befitting the capital of Pakistan. Nestled at the foot of the Himalayan mountain range, it sits protected from attacks from opponents from every direction. It is strategically located near the military base of Rawalpindi. The weather of the city is pleasant and civic amenities are maintained and upgraded timely. Since its inception, Islamabad has served the country remarkably well as the capital city. One might even say that there was no glitch in the planning of it and it truly serves its purpose to this day.
Despite all the sound reasons, the air of the old capital of Pakistan is saturated with murmurs of the decision being unfair. Many hold the view that Karachi was wronged and the decision to demote the city as the capital of Pakistan was rooted in discrimination against the people of the city.
The people of Punjab are in the majority in the ruling class of the country. Pashtuns are people that hold powerful and chief positions in government and elsewhere, especially in the province of Punjab. A notion floats around the nation that the reason behind Ayub Khan’s decision to move the capital from Karachi to Islamabad was rooted in his ethnicity. The people who were and are disgruntled about the demotion even hold the conviction that the General was a Punjabi by nature and since he was a Pashtun by birth, he saw it fit to move the power of the government in the province of Punjab.
“From 1947, the country had unwittingly conducted a vast human experiment: what would happen if a diverse place suddenly cleansed itself of many of its minorities, so that almost everyone was, on the surface, the same?
Now the results of the experiment were coming in.
Muslims, the single “nation” championed by their leaders just a few years before, proved to be strikingly diverse. They always had been. Now some looked within their numbers and began singling out new minorities to replace the ones they had lost.”
-Steve Inskeep, Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi
According to the majority of people, the shift of the capital city was justified but many of them feel that it is ethnically justified. Since the migration of Muslims from India, there has been a power struggle between the different ethnic groups of the country. Each lean towards its people being superior to others due to idiosyncratic reasons. Discussions regarding the topic at hand amongst the common people often bring up the fact that Punjabis and Pashtuns are the natives of the land of Pakistan which is why they are the best suited to protect it as they are most loyal to the country. On the other side of the coin, immigrants and Sindhis truly feel that they were cheated out of their right as Quaid-i-Azam himself designated Karachi as the capital city of Pakistan.
Perhaps another reason behind the disdain of the people of Karachi was the fact that at the time of independence, the Sindh government offered Karachi to be the seat of the central government. Chaudhry Mohammad Ali’s account of the event is, “The Sindh government came forward with the proposal to make Karachi the capital of Pakistan and offered to place the Governor’s House, the Assembly building, and other necessary accommodation at the disposal of the central government.” It is further reflected in Quaid-e-Azam’s statement, ”Pakistan is grateful to the Sindh government and the Corporation and people of Karachi for welcoming its central Government to have its headquarters here and for providing all facilities.”, which he gave during a civic reception in Karachi in August 1947.
In spite of the contradictory sentiments surrounding the demotion of Karachi as the capital city, the majority of Pakistanis concur that the city is the heart of the country. It is hustling and bustling with millions of people from every walk of life. The city has the signature smell of the sea that wafts through the streets. Karachi wakes up bright and early to strengthen the economy of the country and works well into the night to contribute 25% to the GDP of Pakistan. The woes of the city are many but the fire is still alive. To this day, people throng to the old yet grand capital city of Pakistan.
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