Lahore, the storied capital of the Mughals and Sikhs, is choking. Pakistan’s second-largest city recorded a staggering Air Quality Index (AQI) of 1900 on November 2, 2024.
Primary schools have been shut for a week. Children have been advised to wear masks while work-from-home mandates have been issued.
The smog in Lahore has also become an India-Pakistan issue. First, Pakistan Punjab Chief Minister, Maryam Nawaz spoke about India and Pakistan tackling smog together. Subsequently, Marriyum Aurangzeb, environment minister of the Punjab spoke about “easterly winds” being responsible for the smog.
Author Haroon Khalid has chronicled both, Lahore and the Pakistani province of Punjab in his works including A white trail: A journey into the heart of Pakistan (2013), In search of Shiva: A study of folk religious practices in Pakistan (2015), Walking with Nanak (2016) and Imagining Lahore: The city that is, the city that was (2018).
Born and raised in Lahore, Khalid has a special bond of kinship with the city, whose winters he nostalgically reminisces about.
Down To Earth spoke to Khalid about the current state of emergency in Lahore due to the smog. Edited excerpts:
Q. As someone who has chronicled Lahore and Punjab, what is your first reaction when you hear that the city is now ‘most polluted in the world’?
It breaks my heart to see such a beautiful city experience this kind of a catastrophe. There used to be something magical about Lahore in the winters, the mist, the bonfires, barbeques, and now all one can imagine about Lahore in the winters is smog.
Q. Is Lahore now uninhabitable?
I’ll be careful about saying the city is unhabitable. It is still home to millions of people, who despite all the challenges are finding a way to live there. All I would say is that people shouldn’t be subjected to living like this.
Q. Since it became the Hindu Shahi capital over 1,000 years ago, can you recall any other instance in its history when Lahore has faced such an existential crisis?
Lahore has experienced several political existential crises. Hulagu Khan’s invasion in the 13th century comes to mind as perhaps the worst time for the city, when hundreds of residents were decapitated. While there have been other crises as well — the time of the Sikh Misls, Ahmad Shah Abdali’s attacks, partition violence, I can’t think of anything worse than Hulagu Khan’s time. Perhaps it is the nature of the violence itself — decapitation of heads.
Q. As someone who has written extensively on Punjab, what is your opinion on the 19th century Canal Colonies (in today’s Pakistani province of Punjab) and the 20th century Green Revolution (in today’s Indian state of Punjab)? Do you think both these events were epochal in Punjab’s history, leading to the dense smog blanketing both Lahore and Amritsar, and reaching up to Delhi (part of the British Punjab province)?
I think at its core, the rise of the canal colonies and the subsequent Green Revolution symbolise commercialisation of agriculture, which of course lends itself to ‘efficient’ utilisation of the land, that may require burning of the previous crop to plant a new one. It is a toxic combination of capitalism, agriculture and state incompetence.
Q. Delhi and Lahore have always presented interesting similarities. Power centres during Sultanate and Mughal Rule, each today host refugees as a result of the Subcontinent’s Partition. And now we have lethal, toxic air and dead rivers to again link both cities. Your thoughts.
It goes on to show that despite creating hard borders, all these places, villages and cities are interconnected and what happens in Lahore will impact Delhi. It is criminal to not have cross-border cooperation to address these environmental catastrophes that are staring at us.
Q. Can this area of the Subcontinent, the Northwest, be salvaged from the ecological and environmental mess it is in?
It is hard to imagine that right now, given the scale of the problem. But unless we can imagine a better future, there is no way we can get ourselves out of this ecological and environmental mess. Though the only way I think this can happen is through a more interconnected South Asia, particularly cooperation between India and Pakistan.