“Why do you say it is a chapel?”
I am being met with a palpable air of suspicion and restraint. My curiosity is causing private glances between the six people who sit around the table. The meeting had been organised after a brief enquiry about a lost chapel built by Akhbar the Great for his Catholic, Portuguese wife, Julia Magallanes, during the Moghul Empire. A search on the internet had brought up a site within Lahore Fort now called, Seh Dora, where Christian imagery has been found and is now being restored as part of an ‘interfaith harmony’ project by the Walled City of Lahore Authority. I had called it a chapel because that is, before seeing it for myself, what I believed it to be. There are records of a chapel existing, and I thought that this was what had been discovered.
“It certainly is not orientated towards the east and there is, as yet, no depiction of Jesus or a cross, and so it being a place of worship is, as yet, not seen.” I admit.
“It was never a place of worship. Say it.”
“So what is it?”
“A pavilion. Jahangir was interested in Christian paintings and so had them put there.”
“Why the uncommon amount of female saints, particularly at the front as you face out into the courtyard?”
“It was never a chapel.”
This is the first time that I have experienced this kind of intimidation whilst being in Pakistan. It is not a nice experience. I steel myself and force myself to be curious and open. I try to find the common ground. I suggest they connect with the Christian community to help them decipher the defaced images and to help uncover the purpose of the building. More silent exchange of glances.
“We are not that far into the project. We cannot tell what we will do or need.”
The project, funded in part by the US embassy, was, as I say, a project exploring ‘interfaith harmony’. This response to my suggestion that the Authority dialogue with interfaith partners undermines their declaration of openness. I cannot put my finger on why I feel so threatened. Questions as to my background, my ‘interest’ in this work, my presence in Pakistan, all make me feel unnecessarily scrutinised.
I acknowledge that it looks, at this moment, as a pavilion. Their research and current interpretation seem right but I am left wondering why they are restoring this building and the Christian iconography. Obviously, they want to celebrate the Moghul heritage of multifaith (possibly even, interfaith) relations in the Punjab. No one can deny that this co-existence of different religious convictions is long standing and pre-dates the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Anything that rediscovers and recaptures this historic narrative of the land and people is welcome. There is, however, this reticence and caution that betrays this, in my Western mind, positive move in the right direction.
I had not asked for this interrogation. I had not even asked for a meeting. The meeting had been suggested and I had agreed. The ambush has thrown me and I feel unsafe. All my jokes before leaving the UK about kidnapping flash into my head. I hope my wife has the ransom money ready. I admit that reading Declan Walsh’s book, ‘The Nine Lives of Pakistan’, that explores the reasons why he was deported from Pakistan is making me paranoid. I breathe and try to remember the many positive interactions with Pakistanis over the last week.
I have just come from an extremely exciting and hopeful discussion with Refi Peer Theatre Workshop, for example. We discussed art, culture, faith and heritage. Their almost 50 years of experience, particularly in Sufi cultural work, has seen through many changes in Pakistan’s history. The current leadership is globally minded and sanguine about their place within Lahore and the wider Pakistan. It seems to me you need to be agile to navigate the religio-political life of Pakistan, particularly when working in the Sufi tradition.
The Sufi culture is, in my mind, what gives many ‘common’ Pakistanis (i.e. the general population) their openness to other faiths. The peaceful co-existence which the Pakistanis I have engaged with are keen to impress upon me is rooted, I think, in this Sufi heritage. The Punjab region, before British colonial rule, was clearly a place of interfaith harmony. All desires towards this are written on the landscape and architecture. There is, however, a ‘but’ lingering on my lips.
I dare not write what I am about to write, due to the experience of Declan Walsh, but there is a ‘contradiction’ within the Pakistani mentality. The paradox at the heart of this beautiful people must be a result of a shambolic and rushed process called, the Partition. I see the scars in the issues Pakistan still has and I fear that it is not unique to this place/people. The inherent puzzle was created by British diplomatic but religiously ignorant forces that did not invest the time to ask, ‘how would a religiously defined political entity, a nation, embrace and encourage difference to flourish within its borders?’ This, again, remains a question for us all not just Pakistan.
The obvious Sufi influence on the instinct of Punjabis, at least, is, at the same time, treated with suspicion and caution. The double speak of condemning attacks on Christians whilst maintaining a reluctance to expand the blasphemy laws to ensure those same victims are protected under law. This ‘contradiction’ weighs heavy on my heart and when this question is publicly raised, my new found friends struggle to answer it.
I conclude my time in Pakistan asking the same question of Britain. Is ‘multiculturalism dead’? What are the paradoxes within the psyche of the English or wider British people? How do we bring these contradictions out into the open and have the bravery to own them and find some synthesis between the two seemingly incompatible truths of our own identity. At this time of increasing polarisation and extremism there is a fight to avoid the opposition we experience at our very core. No wonder that we are so anxious as a people and defensive to any who might raise a question over our own self identification whether it is race, sexuality or gender.
My own journey ‘into the woods’, that is my trip to Pakistan, now leads me back home. This calls me to try and allow the Mowgli identity narrative, the elixir I fought to find here, to be a gift for those I call ‘my pack’. If I can be brave enough to name my own personal contradictions and paradoxes and to externalise them, vulnerably opening them to scrutiny in the hope of healing and synthesis, then God may use me to encourage others to find the same redemption in the same path. How can I, to quote Martin Luther, be simultaneously justified and a sinner? Accepted yet in need of transformation? Oh, how many people I know who need to the courage to admit their need of Jesus! But, as Tim Keller wrote,
You don’t really know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.
Tim Keller, ‘Walking With God Through Pain And Suffering’ (London: Penguin Books, 2015) p.5