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Cantonments – By Ahmad Rafay Alam
A cantonment is defined as a place where any part of the armed forces are quartered, or which is needed for their purposes. They are a characteristic feature of South Asian English colonialism, peppered as they are almost exclusively in this region. The fact that these militarised garrison zones remain so important a feature of our major urban areas should remind us of the immense shadow our colonial masters still cast upon us.
There is, however, a crucial distinction between the colonial cantonment and present cantonments: Whereas, after the Mutiny/War of Independence of 1857, the English army cleverly withdrew its troops from indigenous civilian populations and established their cantonments well outside city limits — and this is the reason why, in Lahore, for example, the cantonment is miles from the Walled City and the Mall is main artery connecting the two — our armed forces seem perfectly at easy while urban growth has cocooned some cantonments within civilian urban areas. Some, like Lahore, have even become civilianised.
The English chose, the carnage of the events of 1857 being a good enough reason, to separate their troops from the politics and gossip of the bazaar. With the debate about the role of the Army in politics one of the crucial political issues of our time, our armed forces seem to have grasped this importance of such a decision only recently. That is, if the statements of Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani are anything to go by.
Recently, notices published in national dailies and on the Internet (www.ldc.gov.pk– but don’t bother; the link doesn’t work), informed the public that the Ministry of Defence intends to dispose of some land used for military purposes. These properties include the Birdwood Barracks (or the Lal Qila) situated off Waris Road and the water tanks opposite Zakir Tikka on Sarwar Road in the cantonment. The notices, billed as a “Grand Investment Opportunity,” raise some important questions and issues about the very nature of property ownership and the role of cantonments in urban planning, development and conservation of our built heritage.
To begin with, the lands which form our cantonments are lands originally vested in the federal or provincial governments for use on behalf of the welfare and benefit of the public. That’s us, the civilian people of Pakistan. They were declared cantonments by notification under the various cantonment legislations of the past because they were needed by the armed forces for the public purpose of providing defence facilities to the citizens of the country. It seems to follow logic, then, that if any cantonment land is no longer required by the armed forces for the public purpose of defence, it should revert back to the care and control of the federal or provincial government so that it may once again be applied for the welfare and benefit of the people. Incidentally, this argument is also sound for the lands Pakistan Railways is forever trying to dispose of for the purposes of “7 Star Hotels.”
Under the Cantonment Ordinance, 2002 — the latest bit of legislation providing for the administration of cantonments — the power granted to the federal government to declare an area a cantonment comes with an equal and opposite power to de-notify any cantonment area. The Birdwood Barracks, 22 acres of green and shade in a crowded mixed-use district, would be ideal as a new park for the city, and it is well within the power of the federal government to make it so. However, the Ministry of Defence reckons the land is “suitable for multi-purpose commercial activities.” So there will be no park. But given the winding and narrow alleys of Waris and Birdwood roads, one can only imagine the effect such intended commercial activities will have on the fabric of the existing neighbourhoods in the vicinity.
The water tanks on Sarwar Road in the Lahore Cantonment throw up other interesting issues and questions. Under the Cantonment Ordinance, it is the local government of the cantonment (the old cantonment boards have been replaced by a hybrid form of local government administration) which is “vested,” amongst other things, with the ownership and control of “all waterworks for the supply, storage or distribution of water for public purposes and all . . . things connected therewith or appertaining thereto.” Thus, it is the local government in the Lahore Cantonment which owns and controls the water tanks being put up for sale by the Ministry of Defence.
Section 102 of the Cantonment Ordinance directs that “All properties vested in a local government shall be applied for the purposes . . . for which . . . duties or obligations are imposed upon the local government.” Nowhere in the ordinance is it mentioned or implied that the cantonment local governments have the duty or obligation to put up any of its property for auction, and that too for the benefit of the federal government.
The point here isn’t new. It was fully thrashed out by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in the fascinating case of Pakistan vs Punjab (PLD 1975 SC 37) which concerned the reaction of the many cantonment boards and the federal government to demand orders for the payment of property tax issued by the government of Punjab. Under the law, the federal government is exempt from the payment of property tax, and it had harboured the impression that the cantonment boards — being de facto extensions of the Ministry of Defence — were also permitted like exemption. The Hamoodur Rehman Supreme Court unequivocally held that cantonment boards, being bodies corporate permitted their own seal and power to enter into contracts, were totally independent and distinct from the federal government and that, as such, no exemption from property tax could be extended to them.
Parenthetically, Pakistan vs Punjab was, at the time it was decided in 1974, in the words of the chief justice, “the oldest litigation pending in the Court.” Also, no account exists of whether the cantonment boards cleared their outstanding property tax arrears. However, by virtue of a presidential order issued by General Ziaul Haq in 1979, taxes leviable under the West Pakistan Urban Immovable Property Tax Act, 1958, “cease[d] to be leviable in a Cantonment.”
If the federal government is totally separate from cantonment boards (and the new cantonment local governments), then how come the notice inviting expressions of interests in the water tanks issued by the Ministry of Defence — which are, by law, vested in the local governments — does not bear any sign of the approval of the local governments concerned? It would also be interesting to see who collects the proceeds of the auctions of these properties; whether it will be the local government administration, the Ministry of Defence or the GHQ.
Stop Press: Salima Hashmi, artist, activist, art historian, former principal of the National College of Arts and current dean of the School of Visual Arts, Beaconhouse University, has now commented on record that the water tanks on Sarwar Road are “exceedingly relevant to the brick buildings of today. They are not properly preserved here, but in other countries such structures are protected by law.” Let’s see what the future holds for these landmarks.
The writer is an advocate of the high court and a member of the adjunct faculty at LUMS. He has an interest in urban planning. Email: ralam@nexlinx.net.pk
Courtesy: the news, 11/3/2008
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