Front view of Mohatta palace in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan on April 20, 2016 – All rights reserved to Camille Delbos/Art In All of Us/Corbis/Getty Images
Hindu entrepreneur Shivratan Mohatta had it built in the 1920s because he wanted a coastal residence for his ailing wife to benefit from the Arabian Sea breeze.
AP — Stained glass windows, a sweeping staircase, and embellished interiors make Mohatta Palace a gem in Karachi, a Pakistani megacity of 20 million people. Peacocks roam the lawn, and construction and traffic sounds melt away as visitors enter the grounds.
The pink stone balustrades, domes, and parapets look like they’ve been plucked from the northern Indian state of Rajasthan. They are a relic of a time when Muslims and Hindus lived side by side in the port city.
But magnificence is no guarantee of survival in a city where land is scarce and development is rampant. Demolition, encroachment, neglect, piecemeal conservation laws, and vandalism are eroding signs of Karachi’s past.
Karachi’s population grows by around 2% every year, and with dozens of communities and cultures competing for space, little effort is made to protect the city’s historic sites.
For most Pakistanis, the palace is the closest they’ll get to the architectural splendor of India’s Rajasthan because travel restrictions and hostile bureaucracies essentially keep people in either country from crossing the border for leisure, study, or work.
Heba Hashmi, a heritage manager and maritime archaeologist, said Karachi’s multicultural past makes it harder to find champions for preservation than in a city like Lahore, with its strong connection to the Muslim-dominated Mughal Empire.
Mohatta Palace is a symbol of diversity. Hindu entrepreneur Shivratan Mohatta had it built in the 1920s because he wanted a coastal residence for his ailing wife to benefit from the Arabian Sea breeze. Hundreds of donkey carts carried the distinctively colored pink stone from Jodhpur, now across the border in India.
He left after partition in 1947 when India and Pakistan were carved from the former British Empire as independent nations, and for a time, the Foreign Ministry occupied the palace.
Next, it passed into the hands of Pakistani political royalty as the home of Fatima Jinnah, the younger sister of Pakistan’s first leader and a powerful politician in her own right.
The darkened and empty palace caught people’s imagination with its overgrown gardens and padlocked gates. Rumors spread of spirits and supernatural happenings.
Someone who heard the stories as a young girl was Nasreen Askari, now the museum’s director.
“As a child, I used to rush past,” she said. “I was told it was a bhoot (ghost) bungalow and warned, don’t go there.”
Visitor Ahmed Tariq had heard much about the palace’s architecture and history. “I’m from Bahawalpur (in Punjab, Pakistan), where we have the Noor Mahal palace, so I wanted to look at this one. It’s well-maintained, and the presentations have a lot of detail and effort. It’s been a good experience.”
General admission is 30 rupees or 10 U.S. cents, free for students, children, and senior citizens.
It’s open Tuesday to Sunday but closes on public holidays; even the 11 a.m.-6 p.m. hours are not conducive for a late-night city like Karachi.
But the palace doesn’t welcome all attention, even if it could help carve out a space for the building in modern Pakistan.
TikTok still spreads rumors about ghosts, pulling in influencers looking for spooky stories. The palace bans filming inside,” it is not the attention the trustees wanted,” said Askari. “That’s what happens when you have anything of consequence or unusual. It catches the eye.”
A sign on the gates also prohibits fashion shoots, weddings, and filming for commercials.
“We could make so much money, but the floodgates would open,” said Askari. “There would be non-stop weddings and no space for visitors or events, so much cleaning up.”
The archaeologist Hashmi said there is often a strong sense of territorialism around preserved sites.
“It counterproductively converts a public heritage site into an exclusive and often expensive artifact for selective consumption.”