Vaissnavi Shukl
The exodus that followed the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 led to one of the largest human migrations in the world, and resulted in the mass abandonment of private property and structures of cultural heritage, Hindu and Sikh temples and havelis in Pakistan scrambled to find an audience following the partition that was driven along religious lines. Today, Rabiya Arif, an urban and disaster risk management specialist at the World Bank, takes us through the walled city of Lahore, where these spaces of heritage are being inhabited by low income and marginalised communities as informal settlements, leading to what I call accidental preservation. In our conversation today, Rabiya rethinks the idea of conservation in South Asia, where such informalities within heritage structures often take centre stage in urban planning, but are not quite included in dialogues of conservation.

My name is Vaissnavi Shukl and this is Architecture Off- Centre, a podcast where we highlight unconventional design practices and research projects that reflect the emerging discourses within the design discipline and beyond. Architecture of Center features conversations with exceptionally creative individuals who have extrapolated the traditional fields of Art, Architecture, Planning, landscape, and urban design.
I hope you’ve brushed up all your graduate school thesis memory. Otherwise we’ll have to jog your memory now.

Rabeeya Arif
Yeah, a little bit and I was like, I was like wow. Taken aback by what I had written and like there are a lot of…there are a lot of great ideas. Probably very poorly written. And very long and complicated, but like I almost feel like rewriting the whole thing and expanding on some of those ideas. But there are definitely a lot of really interesting ideas. So that was nice. I read a part of it, but not the whole and I was like, wow, I need to sit down and reread what I wrote in 2019.

Vaissnavi Shukl
That happens to me with even the stuff I have written yesterday, so don’t worry, 2019 is a long time ago. Okay, so let’s jog your memory a little more, and start off by walking us through the Old Walled City of Lahore maybe?

Rabeeya Arif
Yeah, absolutely. So I think, like I’ll start also like sort of describing what I was doing in the Old Walled City before. And basically my thesis was sort of trying to like study the ways in which the there is this informal inhabitation of spaces of heritage within the walled city that actually subverted the original intent of the buildings, however, they helped in the social economic development of the spaces that were being inhabited. And so with this sort of mission, I think I started just walking through the whole city like talking to conservationists, talking to historians, talking to older people, just talking to the local people, anybody that I could speak to, and just learning a lot about everything that is there and then coming across many, many like surprises and discoveries that actually haven’t been documented, aren’t as well known. But it was really interesting in the city itself, as is, like most historic cities, is a palimpsest, essentially, it has like layers and layers of you know, heritage from the Rajput, to the Ghaznavid, to the Moghuls, to the Sikh, to the Colonial and current times. And so it’s really fascinating. And so like, I you know, I was going through this and I just saw some really, really interesting ways in which heritage was being sort of inhabited and reused. And there were spaces that were like there’s this really great and very beautiful Sikh Haveli , called Haveli Nau Nihal Singh. Which is now repurposed as a government girls’ school. And so, like, it was just a fascinating building, which is beautiful and it has all these, like, it has a room which has which is filled with frescoes, but at the same time you have all these like, really young girls playing in the courtyard of this haveli. And then you have all kinds of interesting, more informal processes going on where there’s these havelis that are repurposed as like elastic making factories or like bookshops, or like shoe making, informal businesses that are growing within legs of the rooms. And then you have some really crazy things, which is like, there was a Mandir, like a temple, a Hindu temple, which is a vermicelli factory. And then I also came across a lot of Hindu temples that were actually used still by like, very low income populations that whose sort of ancestors were the migrants or the refugees from the partition, and they were just using these temples as their homes and were dwelling within these structures. And so it’s like really interesting and very layered instances.

Vaissnavi Shukl
So your thesis and I think a large part of your professional practice in Pakistan, which is a few years ago focused on this area in Lahore, the one that you’re talking about, and you were particularly looking at addressing questions of heritage. And by heritage, I think it extends into a slightly different discourse on documentation, preservation, adaptive reuse, and the likes. And you find that conservation, particularly in South Asia differs vastly from the European context. One of the ways in which I think it differs is that it’s not exclusive in the way it’s preserved. I mean, it’s not almost a conscious decision, but it’s how do I put it, it’s accidental preservation for the lack of a better way. I don’t think a term like that exist, but it seems like it’s been preserved because of these uses, which very organically happened within those buildings. What do you think do you want to talk a little bit about your fieldwork and your other observations?

Rabeeya Arif
Yes, absolutely. So this was my interpretation of what is happening that I was trying to rethink conservation in the South Asian context and particularly in Lahore, which is the city that I was studying in Pakistan. And so, like, you know, I was asking the question of what exactly is conservation and not only was conservation but who has the right to conserve? How can spaces of heritage be used in my home? And can such instances as I described before, their, you know, sort of conservation or preservation done just by inheriting structure… inhabiting the structures, can this be the conservation heritage? And so it was, really it was it’s the thesis itself was like, very comprehensively, like, you know, like addressing a lot of different and researching a lot of different issues from the idea of what conservation means. Not only the western context, but also the applied South Asian context. How even within the western context, like it is, you know, something like the Venice Charter is coming from a very sort of linear notion of what history is, however, even within the Western philosophy of history itself, this is contested, like the Hague-alien notion of linear history is contested by Walter Benjamin, who has a more sort of historic materialism of more like fragmented approach. And so I was thinking that okay, if this is what’s happening in the western context, what is happening is that vision contexts where the notion of like time and history as well as consequences of the notion of what time is, is far more it could be cyclical at times. There could be, you know, like a idea of the rise and fall of civilizations and like it’s it’s very different. And so, with this idea, and also like, you know, realising how the world itself has moved on with the idea of what conservation is, especially thanks to the NARA Charter, I think you must be aware of like Japanese temples that question, you know, the notion of what authenticity is, and what it means to… what preservation means, essentially, and what is it that you’re preserving that it also led me to allow for the rethinking of what it would mean in a South Asian context, especially where there are these sort of vibrant, informal…informal living environments within the space?

Vaissnavi Shukl
Yeah, whatever you said was so tantalising and kind of made me nostalgic about time at the GSD about three-four years ago talking about Walter Benjamin and Hegel and the other guys, but in fact, one of the words that you mentioned, palimpsest is also something that we spoken about a bunch of times in this season, and I was reading something you wrote and found this one, excerpt very provocative, you said, quote, “In the South Asian context, preservation practices typically lead to the sanitization of the vibrant often informal living environments within such spaces of heritage, thereby instigating a disengagement with the present and the removal of traces of those histories”, guess this is a direct reference, I think to Benjamin. But to begin with, I really appreciate your use of the word alternate histories as opposed to a singular History with, you know, the capital edge. But more than that, what struck me was your inclusion of informality of these heritage spaces within the conservation dialogue. Now, informality and by extension, you could think about and we often think about it as encroachment, most times, raises the question of patronage of the resident with regards to the upkeep of the building and earlier in the season, we also had somebody from India who is talking about patronage as almost a pre dominant form and almost requirement for preservation, how do you look at preservation without an accountable patronage?

Rabeeya Arif
So I think there’s so many responses that I wouldn’t give to your question. And one… one thing that immediately struck me was your use of the word encroachment because I actually do address this in my thesis where I’m sort of like highlighting how, like right now, especially…especially in the Walled City of Lahore, this was… this is like one of the tasks of the government, the government faction responsible for preserving the Walled City, which is like removal of encroachments. And so… and actually, I worked with them when I was, you know, in midst my undergrad as an intern, and I was also a part of that activity and this like all of what I’m saying is actually arising from my work later as well, as a historic preservationist in Lahore with Dr. Han truss culture. And so, in terms of encroachment, you know, I was like researching about the idea of like, sort of the notion… the beginning concept of like conservation as a discipline within South Asia and also like, who’s, you know, installing it who’s beginning it’s very much colonial, right It’s very much coming from the Archaeological Survey of in… the ASI. The sort of the British colonial officers that are coming in responsible for like, you know, preserving these structures and, like, it’s very interesting to see sort of their notion of what it means, you know, to conserve and so basically, like, for example, someone like H.H. Cole, who’s, you know, comes up with the first sort of document for like preservation report of these structures. And he’s sort of speaking very much about his theory of conservation is very like restoration. Removal of encroachments and he’s saying that these places should be kept solely as showplaces and as the only means of perpetuating the most beautiful and interesting specimens of Lahore appear mobile art. And so his, you know, his whole idea is that this is our building for show. Right? And he outcries the occupation of a Sariah near the John used to by railway employees and their families and he says it’s an evil which has caused and still causing, and seizing and cruel destruction. And then you have a lot of the word to call, you know, a lot of these characters that are just speaking about how the natives don’t really have any idea how to conserve their own structures, and so they’re speaking about how there should have what conservation means, and so they kind of instal you know, concept of it, which still in many ways, is being practice you know, by the current preservation practice, practices in Lahore. And so my my question then, you know, arose in that context that in a in a place, especially, thinking about a place, especially countries that are also low income, and the Walled City of Lahore is a place where a lot of the population is demographically lower income, a lot of them there’s also migrants and refugees, you know, that people from minority ethnicities. And so what does conservation mean, it’s such a space. That was one of them. And then the question, one of the ideas one of the main ideas of the thesis was an attempt to conceptualise the historic urban landscape together with the spatial temporal landscape and depict the ways in which the users and inhabitants of the built environment engage with any add layers to it over time. And so by that alternate histories is not just the past histories, but it’s also the present histories, and also the question of the conservation thinking about future histories.

Vaissnavi Shukl
No, I think it makes sense. But my question still is, you were working with the city of Lahore and you were looking at the encroachments, quote unquote the ‘encroachments’ and I want to do, maybe just push you a little bit more and think through that idea of encroachments in terms of how the, I would want to say universally but as at least in the South Asian context, we live with those informal settlements and the dense urban fabrics that we have, but when it comes to tourism, in a lot of places with a certain heritage importance there is that need to sanitise the places, sometimes to the extent where they’re not recognisable anymore. But at a higher level we’re also looking at public policy and the economics of maintaining a demarcated heritage area within a city. And it often has to do with tourism. I don’t know what tourism within the Old Walled City of Lahore looks like. But I’m just drawing from my Indian context and how there’s a fair bit of tourist activity within these a semi they’re also living cities. They’re not completely abandoned and just tourist places but in the European context, what has happened is we’ve… we’ve seen city centres being almost unaffordable for middle class people to live in and so, you have all these luxury stores popping up and boutique hotels and Bed and Breakfasts but we know that it does not necessarily hold true in South Asia. I mean, we still do have the boutique stores and luxury brands showing up in heritage precincts, but what is what is your reading of that interleaving relationship between her dish and tourism in Lahore? Is it… I don’t know if the walled city of Lahore does look at its dense urban fabric as a place where tourism could bloom?

Rabeeya Arif
No, Vaissnavi, absolutely, it does. And that was one of my critiques of it. Which was that what exactly… why is there like one static notion of what tourists tourism itself should be that why is it that a you know heritage building in need only be sort of a museum or sort of a museum piece of history where often museums in our context are not as approachable or accessible by lower income residents and… and no, I’m not not at all against museums, I feel like in my thesis as well as sort of like differentiate between like, very, very grand, you know, spaces of UNESCO World Heritage Site and then those spaces that are considered lesser heritage are not taken care of, or not having the finances to be taken care of. But the question, really, was that even in terms of tourism, would you rather you know, like come and see, for example, the Nau Nihal Sikh Haveli in all its glory as an empty building or would you witness it as a girls’ school? And how does that detract from what it is, but except to only like maybe add to the experience? And to me, that’s… that was the essence that once you do do this, sort of, well high-end commodification, you do sort of take out the soul of the city. And so the question is that you can still, you know, like focus on economic development by focusing on local economic development, focusing on maybe informal businesses and you know, the people the residents there and have this combined approach of doing preservation you know, like somehow do… keep the buildings but keep, repurpose them for the inhabitants for their businesses for their living, and create sort of a symbiotic harmony between preservation in urban development, and also ask can conservation essentially also help the poor? And I’m saying this and I also remember that I came across this Guardian article about Walter Benjamin while I was really interested in it about… about ‘dirty, zesty cities’. That was part of the title and he’s basically, you know, complaining about how European cities were essentially just that, like he’s saying that Marseille and Moscow, you know, are so like, vibrant and wild, and there’s dirt, but there’s also like, there’s a lot going on and then slowly, you see now that they’ve also been sanitised. So probably South Asia is in a place where Europe was once in the past. But the question is that do we really want to follow that? You know, model or do we want to keep a retain something that that is very that we know now in South Asia which is like this vibrancy and this life? And… and also like it’s not just I think this is also becoming into the idea of like local creative and cultural industries and their economic development is now also becoming more mainstream, where you have like even the World Bank, sort of coming up with cultural and creative cities report recently and trying and really make the case for economic development for these local businesses. So, you know, it’s…I think it’s becoming more understood as a way to go about things.

Vaissnavi Shukl
You did you research almost two three years ago. I don’t know what the governance structure in Lahore is like, and I’m kind of really sad that I was I was meant to be in Pakistan earlier this year, but that trip never happened. And I really wanted to see Lahore but what do you think the city stands right now with regards to its vision for urban development, with conservation, with tourism? Is there any sort of a master plan that the city has or I don’t know like a heritage cell or any any specific governmental body that is looking at the overall state of buildings in urban fabric and not just buildings as structures but buildings with all these alternate lives? That is, you know, being occupied by either vermicelli factory or a shoe making factory or a girl school?

Rabeeya Arif
Yeah, so I think I have a slightly been out of touch with what’s happening in Lahore, currently, as now I’m mostly working on places like Lebanon, Iraq, Africa, places in Africa and so you know, but my not my last sort of update on the places that and especially like I do, you know, coming out of thesis I did study like, you know, all the organisation structure and there’s, there’s actually a lot of different factions, public and private. And so, for the Walled City itself, there’s a government faction that works on its preservation. Additionally, there is like the evacuee trust property that focuses on the heritage that was, you know, leftover from the partition and so often like Sikh and Hindu heritage, and then there’s the Okaf, which focuses on religious monuments so like there have taken care of all of the mosques. And then at the same time, you have the, you know, this international organisation like the Aga Khan Development Network that has their own, you know, the Aga Khan Cultural services Pakistan, which is also one of their major projects is right now in Lahore. So they have, I think, a year or two years ago, come up with a master plan for the wall city in in, you know, together with the Walled City authority, and which is very much funded by the French development bank. So, so it’s interesting because there are a lot of these external donors, but there is like a whole plan for how to go about it. So there’s definitely that there’s definitely still, you know, this a proper plan, but also I noticed that the AHART also has like a development approach, which does think about, you know, the sort of the communities that are living there and sort of does work a lot on reuse as well. So, so you do have all these different elements.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Now, you mentioned before, right? You’ve been working in Lebanon, another international contexts. So yeah, after this wonderful thesis, and after graduating from MIT, update us on what you’ve been doing and what your current work looks like. And what is next for you?

Rabeeya Arif
Yeah, absolutely. So after I, after MIT, I joined the World Bank, exclamation mark. And so I think that I especially I think it was this maybe this experiences within the walled city which you know, made me look at conservation in a different way and made me also realise that there probably isn’t any conservation firm that’s working specifically in this way that I could, you know, join. And so I think I went more towards urban development and so the World Bank was a place for that. And I was also in MIT, I was also much more, I’ve been very engaged in sort of urban informality and was working with like, you know, reintegrating the informal city of Buenos Aires into the formal city. And so at the bank now, I’ve been you know, involved in a lot of similar aspects. So I’m Urban and Disaster Risk Management specialist here. And so I work in, for example, and very different diverse projects, to be honest, like I think the experiences that you just get on like, you know, very good projects, all of a sudden, you just get them thrown at you and you just take it sort of, and they’re all interesting. So I also don’t, can’t… don’t say no. And so I’m working on things like so in Lebanon, we’re working on the post conflict reconstruction of housing and heritage after the Beirut explosion, and in Iraq, as well, after you know, the whole situation with ISIS. And so that’s been very interesting and I think Lebanon specifically like the route one of like, one of the things that we’ve been trying to do right now is try to also preserve some historical housing that can also become like re… reinhabited by the lower income groups that had left it and so also sort of become you know, like social with affordable housing. So I think that kind of ties in very well with what I wanted to do and what I hoped for and so like, I hope that that comes into implementation right now. We have next week, actually, the project appraisal and the final meeting to like decide whether it’s project you’ll have this project will go through and begin. And so that’s like one part of it I’ve also been working on like, urban poverty and informality. Also, unlike very different things, such as like mainstreaming climate resiliency and infrastructure PPP is in Ethiopia or things like that. And so it’s been a lot of diverse things, but it’s, it’s been very interesting, steep learning curve. And I think currently, I think I’m still just learning more and like, getting into more of this work with the realisation of how, you know, negotiations with the government, how to go about these projects, how implementation actually, could happen in these contexts, learning from the implementation on the ground that I saw with the local government in Pakistan. So it’s definitely very interesting. There’s a lot to it right now.

Vaissnavi Shukl
I think if there’s anything you can sum up from your career trajectory and you know, your wonderful change in direction is that architecture training can be modified in multiple ways. And I think you pretty much embody the mission of the podcast that is to highlight all the different ways in which we could engage with the built environment beyond just architecture. So yeah, thank you for being on the show and for wrapping up this season. This was a long journey, but I think it was so sweet and delightful at the end.

Rabeeya Arif
No, absolutely. Thank you so much Vaissnavi and so proud of you for doing all of this and good luck to you as well for all your future endeavours and honoured to be a part of your podcast.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Special thanks to Ayushi Thakur for the research and design support, and Kahaan Shah for the background score. For guests and topic suggestions, you can get in touch with us through instagram or our website through our website archoffcentre.com, both of which are ‘archoffcentre’. And thank you for listening.