Pattan Minar: A Warning to the Curious
Words by Afifa Khan and Rosie Campbell
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Pattan Minar: A Warning to the Curious by Afifa Khan and Rosie Campbell
A few miles southeast of Noushehra (now Rahim Yar khan) lie the ruins of the ancient city Pannan Pur, along the banks of the now dry Ghagra River. Once lush and green, the Indus eventually changed its course and the Ghagra dried up. According to legend, this is because the river god fell in love with a woman who was already betrothed. In vengeance, the river rose up in fury, drowning the entire city and leaving it abandoned. The lush green land eventually turned into the Cholistan Desert. Today, a single ancient tower standing amongst the ruins is all that remains of the city of Pannan Pur. Some attempts had been made in the late 19th C. by a British agent to unearth some of its secrets however mysterious events stopped their explorations in its tracks and lead to a tragic end for the Indian excavators. Since then little has been done to disturb the site.
Much of the archaeological departments and legislation of South Asia have their roots in the British Colonial period. The first formal archaeological government agency in South Asia was the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) which was set up in 1861 by Alexander Cunningham (Ghosh, 1953). But even before this agency was created, the British and other Europeans had been conducting excavations and research into the heritage and archaeology of the region. Many factors play into their interest in this region, there was part genuine thirst for knowledge but there was also, inarguably, a colonialist attitude in these early antiquarians. There was a sense of entitlement to the heritage and artefacts of these ‘exotic’ lands that were rapidly falling into hands of the British and other outside hands. This sense of entitlement meant that most anyone with some power, if not expertise, would be able to conduct ‘archaeological’ explorations without a thought to what the removal of such cultural heritage would mean for the people of that region.
One such example was Colonel Charles Minchin, the British Political Agent and administrator overseeing the Bahawalpur Princely State (1866-1876). Minchin had grown up in Madras and his family had long been in service to the British East India Company. This upbringing would have done much to inform his attitudes in the coming years. He joined the army after completing his education and then went on to act as an ‘arbitrator’ and administrator at different levels within the Colonial government of India. Upon overseeing Bahawalpur, he overhauled and organised the state department in order to make them in the image of European departments, while also placing Europeans officers as heads of those departments (Khan, 2021). In between creating prisons, schools, canals and organising farmers, he conducted archaeological explorations all over Bahawalpur, despite having no formal expertise in the subjects. This includes places like Rai Ka Tibba where, allegedly, he found a ditch filled with ashes, human and animal bones. Such discoveries did not deter him from further exploration. That is until he came to a tower in the deserts of Cholistan.