Every day one reads of municipal bodies and city governments taking action against people who have encroached upon public roads and newspaper flash pictures of their goods and chattels being taken away in trucks.
That makes a sad sight, for the encroachers are not rich, but then the law has to be observed by everyone. The whole proceeding only portrays the lack of discipline in our people.
The cultural heritage too is not free from encroacher. Since most of the monuments do not have permanent watchmen and security guards to protect them day and night, stray elements take advantage of this.
In Lahore, for example, there are cases where land attached to historical monuments has been nibbled away slowly and only a careful examination, or measurement, discloses the theft.
Perhaps the worst cases of encroachments occur on graveyards, where it is easy to pilfer a few square yards of land at their very edge, and nobody is the wiser, especially if the caretaker is not vigilant.
There was a letter in a Lahore newspaper the other day in which the writer, while admitting his mistake in not visiting the graves of his parents for more than twenty years, was horrified to discover that they were no longer there when at last he did go to say Fateha, as the ground on which they stood had been appropriated by an unscrupulous builder and now formed part of his house.
These graves too were at the edge of the graveyard. He had no idea which authority could rectify matters, and how? Islamabad is perhaps the only city in Pakistan where such theft of graves is not possible.
Every square inch in its graveyard is part of the plan, all the graves being numbered and registered.
Moreover there is nothing adjoining the graveyard for which anyone would be tempted to encroach on it and take away a few square yards. This is not possible in all the other and there is no regulated system of burial.
However, even in some of those big cities, there are graveyards that have acquired historical importance because of the great men interred there. For instance, in Lahore's Miani Sahib, many of the graves are redolent of the history of Punjab during the last century.
Actually, most of Lahore graveyards are like that because everyone who dies in the provincial capital is not buried in Miani Sahib, and these are ones that are victims of land theft.
One of them, Qabrastan Ghorei Shah, named after an ancient saint, is the last resting places of numerous famous personalities of Northern Lahore whose relations found Miani Sahib too far away.
In many ways Ghorei Shah is older than many parts of Miani Sahib, and, incidentally, this was the graveyard about which the writer of the newspaper letter complained that the tombs of his parents there had been encroached upon and vandalised.
This anti-social and anti-religious practice is symptomatic of the depth to which human depravity can go.
As mentioned above, sometimes the land around protected monuments, usually mausoleums, is also encroached upon. Some time ago a national Urdu daily of Lahore -featured the tomb of Sharfunnissa in Begumpura suburb where scores of illegal shanty-type dwellings had come up around it.
The mausoleum is known by the name of the cypress trees carved on its outside walls. The lady who is buried there was the pious wife of Lahore's Governor during the early 18th century.
As the story goes, some people took the land on lease for agricultural purposes and, contrary to the canons of rules and decency, began to parcel out plots for residential buildings.
The authorities came to know and wanted to demolish the structures, but, as usual, the inevitable stay order from a civil court came in the way. Bow the case is being pursued by the government before a higher court.
There must be innumerable such examples all over the country, because, unfortunately, graveyards do not receive the attention they deserve. Like other anti-social practices it is difficult to pinpoint the measures that can be taken to enforce the sanctity of graveyards.
The obvious way out is for city governments and local bodies, which are now wholly elected by the people, to devote some care to the matter. If they are serious they can find ways out, with the willing co-operation of people themselves, and see that places of burial are not encroached upon.
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