Kharadar to Defence

People who are regular listeners of Aga Ali Murtaza Zaidi, for them this article might be repetition but the point he highlighted in couple of his speeches is very much considerable and a big issue for Khoja community these days. In continuation of that some clarification and elaboration is stated in this article.

If we go back half century, mostly Khoja community were situated in Bihar colony, Kharadar, Khada Market, Mossa Lane and its surroundings, few families were living in Nazimabad, Korangi and Malir also but Kharadar was considered to be the hub of Khoja community in that era. This was indeed an intelligent decision by our fore fathers that when they migrated after partition, instead of getting scattered and living in isolation, they preferred to live collectively and merged with Sindhi Khojas living in Kharadar town.

With the passage of time and development in Karachi people started relocating from Kharadar and again a very smart decision that they remained on collective approach and get settled in Soldier Bazar, Lines Area, Garden, Guru Mandir and surroundings. We should be very much thankful to Shaheed Hameed Ali Bhojani for his untiring efforts in development of Khoja community on whole and specifically for his projects in Soldier Bazar and surroundings which provided the baseline to Khoja people in making soldier bazaar as a hub of Khoja community.

Third phase was relocation from soldier bazar towards PECHS, Mehfil-e-Murtaza and its surrounding is another Khoja populated area and today we are seeing lot of families moving to DHA.

As there is no authentic data available about division of Khoja families per area we have to make some wild guesses, following graph is a bird’s eye view of khoja families living in different towns of Karachi in my opinion, please note this is just an assumption and it may be incorrect.

With many advantages in collective approach there are few obvious disadvantages which are logical and understandable in all community based areas. Firstly unnecessary rise in property prices, secondly the area becomes very much congested and lastly the houses are getting less spacious. If you compare current solider bazaar with what it was 20 years back, you’ll find huge difference. Series of apartments are being constructed with less open area and small space between two apartments.

On average if today you want to purchase a house in soldier bazaar, a 3 bed room apartment will cost you around PKR 5 million to 8 million. Similarly in PECHS prices will start from 7.5 million onwards. In that price you’ll get a normal apartment but in same price if you move to some other area like Gulshan, Gulistan-e-Juhar or other new areas like Rizvia II etc. you can easily get a 240yards town house with a small garden and open space for parking etc. but it will not suit us because we do not want to live in isolation and specially due to sectarian issues in our city, it is not at all recommended to live in segregations. Also the massive development projects have made the movement in Karachi very easy and the distance are getting shorter day by day.

Solution to this issue proposed by Aga Ali Murtaza Zaidi is to develop a new society for Khoja Community on a large scale basis in some newly developed area. The prices will be low and you can increase your life style also. For example instead of living in congested apartments, in same price or less you can have your own town house with a garden and an open passage with the potential to build 1-3 stories which can be utilized in case of family extension or to generate additional income by renting it.

Now the question is where to start from, in my opinion there can be two models of developing a new society for community. Both are realistic and doable, first one is forming housing authority and they will be responsible for the entire project and second is just to lay the stone and leave the rest on individuals. Let’s look at both approaches.

Khoja Shia Isna Asheri Housing Authority:

A team formed under supervision of Khoja Jamaat or if Jamaat is not interested then a group of investors from Khoja Community can collectively form a team and initiate a housing project on a huge land, there can be commercial and residential plots for Khoja community people in different sections starting from 80yards to 1000yards and similarly commercial plots. This housing authority can work exactly same way other housing projects are working.

Individualist Approach:

For example there is no one interested in first approach, a group of individuals should survey in different areas and identify the vacant land at different locations. All we need is an imambargah and zonal office of KPSIAJ, once the area is allotted for these places, people will themselves purchase lands in surrounding.

We definitely need to look at this issue in more detail as in coming years due to less purchasing power and higher prices in existing community based areas, people will not be able to afford house and unwillingly they will have to move to some mixed areas and concept of collective approach will not extend further.

Think!