Peshawar: Cutting trees

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By Dr Ali Jan

I was sitting in my cosy chair, feeling smug and sipping coffee in the evening when I received a distressing phone call from a friend, Arbab Haleem Khan, who gave me the news of some shisham trees being chopped down, “in the Cantonment, on The Mall near the Combined Military Hospital at 5 pm, on Jan. 24,” according to him. My heart broke and it felt like I had been personally robbed of something very precious.

In British India, the term “cantonment” meant a permanent military station or settlement where the soldiers lived, not in private houses, but in barracks, quarters, forts or occasionally camps. After defeating the Sikhs and occupying the old town of Peshawar in 1849, the British founded a new cantonment, turning it into a boulevard city lined with exquisite trees. The extensive infrastructure, built during that period is still in use. They introduced city planning, set up housing registries and byelaws, named streets, and later built elaborate road systems, bridges, railway lines, airfields, and so on.

Peshawar is now officially South Asia’s oldest living city, according to experts, boasting recorded history going back more than 2,600 years. The Vale of Peshawar lay at the heart of the ancient Gandhara (”Land of Fragrance and Beauty”) between the first and seventh centuries, AD. “Like a painting . . . as far as the eye could see were fields of blossoms. In spring near Peshawar the fields of flowers are very beautiful indeed,” gushed Emperor Babar in his memoir. (Babarnama 1526 AD). The Moguls called it “City of Flowers.”

Mountstuart Elphinstone, an English emissary who witnessed the grandeur of the Afghan Durrani kingdom, visited Peshawar in 1809 and described a garden which surrounded the town for miles. “It is called the garden of Shauh Lemaun (Shalimar)…and is full of trees…, beneath which are bushes, planted very thick, of red, white, yellow, and China roses; white and yellow jasmine, flowing cistus, and other flowering shrubs, of which I have seen some in England and India, and others were new to me…The space between the walks is filled up by six long ponds, close to each other; and so contrived that the water is continually falling in little cascades from one to another, and ending in a basin in the middle of the garden. In the centre of this basin is a summerhouse, two stories high, surrounded by fountains…” (Kingdom of Caubul, 1815)

The Sikhs destroyed and plundered Peshawar during their invasion in 1823. The marauding army of 40,000 Sikhs remained camped around it for many years and chopped down its gardens and trees for firewood. In spite of this great damage, when Mohan Lal, a traveller and historian, visited Peshawar in 1846 he was nonetheless impressed by the surviving greenery, and recorded: “The numerous gardens and scattered trees were covered with new foliage, which had a freshness and brilliancy never seen in the perpetual summer of India. Many streams ran through the plain. Their banks were fringed with willows and tamarisks. The orchards, scattered over the country, contained a profusion of plum, peach, apple, pear, quince, and pomegranate trees, which afforded a greater display of blossoms than I ever before witnessed; uncultivated parts of land were covered with a thick elastic sod, that perhaps never was equalled but in England…The gardens which surround the city and are adorned with the richest verdure, an adequate idea of grandeur of which is not easily conveyed by words.” (Travels in Punjab, London)

The present cantonment was laid under the direction of Sir Colin Campbell in 1849 on a high ground west of the old city. (For those interested, its earliest description can be found in Rev. Worthington Jukes’ reminiscences.)

In his authoritative work, The Pathans, Olaf Caroe, one of the last British governors, writes: “The cantonment at all seasons has a certain beauty. The great main road through it, known as The Mall, sweeps in easy curves through groves of fine trees shading the gardens of the houses on either side. The roads radiate from a central hub fixed at the old Company Bagh, where stands the Mackeson memorial, and around which, as any visitor will notice, stand larger and thicker clusters of more ancient trees, pipals, banyans, pines and palms. These great trunks are survivors of the famous garden of Ali Mardan Khan, with a garden house mentioned by Elphinstone, part of which — one of the only two old buildings in the cantonment — is still in use by the Brigade headquarters. Many of the specimen trees and avenues around the cricket ground and the Company Bagh probably date back from that time… The lateral roads forming ribs to the spine of The Mall afford vistas of the nearer mountains, violet-coloured, and at their most beautiful as the sun rises or sets…The trees were smaller then, but this was the setting against which the first-comers from our country bent to their work over a hundred years ago.”

Unlike government administrators we have these days, Olaf Caroe was a learned scholar and a man of fine tastes who upheld tradition and took much pleasure in simple things in life. A most sincere friend of Peshawar at heart, he wrote down a parting word of advice for his successors: “But the English who followed the Sikhashahi strove to make Peshawar once more a city of gardens, though with a suburban, not a stately taste. Working as best as they knew, they remade a tradition which Pakistan must have the will to preserve.”

I have a newspaper article in front of me, dated Feb. 26, 2000, which reads: “In the 1970s, the city ‘managers’ had cut down the Great Pipal tree at Shah ji ki Dheri, described by Shin Fa Hian and Hiuen Tsang the famous Chinese pilgrims and historians who travelled this place in 400 CE. According to Hiuen Tsang, “Its branches are thick and the shade beneath, sombre and deep. The four past Buddhas have sat beneath this tree…” The famous stupas built by Kanishka to the south of the Pipal tree have also disappeared. Another historic tree belonging to theKanishka period was cut down only recently in Ander Shehr.”

“The ‘Old Panj Tiraths’ are mentioned by The Gazetteer. As the name would indicate, there are five holy bathing places, or tiraths, shaded by some sacred pipal trees of great age. The Brahmins trace its origin to the five sons of Pandu – the heroes of the Mahabharata…the site is a place of great veneration to the Hindu community.” Now a derelict fisheries centre stands there. No protest, by the Hindu extremists in India over this post-partition sacrilege. Double standards galore!” (”O’Peshawar,” Friday Times)

I might as well add here that according to Imran Rasheed, author of Baghat-e-Peshawar, the old garden and religious pond at Panj Tirath are now gone too and the place has been turned into an amusement park that goes by the name of “Chacha Yunus Park.”

The article goes on to reveal: “The Cantonment Board has been notorious for its misdeeds. Top officials pilfer millions in cutting down historic trees. Even the military personnel and MES become silent abettors. The rules are broken with impunity and it is considered business as usual. Recently, several huge Sheesham and Banyan trees were felled inside the GPO, Saddar, within seconds – upon orders from a “serving” minister of the Pakistan Post Office. He was also responsible in cutting a dozen sheesham, banyan, mulberry, and eucalyptus trees inside the compound of the University Campus Post Office, despite resistance by the local staff. The sham auction showed receipts worth Rs40,000 for the entire swindle. The post office gives a look of a desolate barrack. Environmental legislation and enforcement is weak and everyone gets away with murder and a million in his pocket. Where is the accountability?”

Asking about accountability in Pakistan, good question! Not too long ago, in 2003, a former vice-chancellor chopped down the botanical garden in the heart of the city’s primary seat of higher learning — the University of Peshawar. This was no new precedent. In the past also some authentic official letters written by department heads and other officials to the administration were brought to light which called for action against certain offending officials cutting trees in the University of Peshawar since 1990s.

The writer is a member of the Sarhad Conservation Network.

Courtesy the NEWS

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