From 1922 to 1973, Lahore was home to the ‘Emerald Isle’ Freemasons’ Lodge. It still meets in Dublin today — in exile. At the beginning of their monthly meetings, the Tyler (a symbolic guard of the Lodge) makes a statement in Urdu, English and Irish to remind the Lodge members of their ‘home’. He yells: “Next year in Lahore”, in the hope that Freemasonry will once more return to Pakistan. It is an echo of the closing lines of the Jewish Passover prayer, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

As every Lahori knows, the former Mall Road (now Shahrah-i-Quaid-i-Azam) cuts through the heart of Lahore, to reveal a golden stream of glorious architecture on either side of the bifurcation.

Start near the Canal. Aitchison College is on your right (its myriad jewels partially hidden by a commensurate tree lining), then the Governor’s House (a superstructure equally hidden by odious political hoardings), and the very lush Jinnah (neé Lawrence) gardens on your left before Charing Cross appears in front of you. Here you can see the marble pavilion that once housed a statue of Queen Victoria, and on the right, glistening orange in the misty morning sun, the historic but dormant Punjab Assembly. On your left, is the well-preserved Shahdin Manzil, now the object of pride of a local bank — this area was once the heart of colonial Lahore, the pride of British India.

Yet within this epicentre of Lahore stands a curious 98-year old building, hidden by clusters of sheesham trees, its history forgotten.

Here stands the Freemasons’ Hall, which once served as the District Grand Lodge of Pakistan and is ‘affectionately’ known as Jadoo Ghar (The Magic House). It is now one of the offices of the Punjab Chief Minister. It is a grand, beautiful structure, built in 1917 to serve the growing Masonic needs of Lahore.

Justice Sidhwa of the Lahore High Court, himself a Freemason, described it in 1969 as: ‘a pleasing piece of architecture which with its sweeping driveway and high porte-cochere, retains a stately and serene air of grandeur … on the ground floor, heavy teak doors open into a waiting hall floored with marble tiles and panelled with teak …’

Enigma, obscurity and mystery surround this glorious landmark where Rudyard Kipling was apparently inducted into the Freemason fraternity

The original teak doors are still in place — imposing, as is the air of grandeur in the main hall and the dining hall to your right (now the main meeting room). Perhaps the best-kept secret of this building is the luxurious staircase. Emblazoned in red and gold, the carpeted staircase leads into a spacious mezzanine like foyer area before more stairs lead to the first floor which has been given a great deal of attention. Each successive politician adding objects of increasingly questionable relevance to the walls of the old Lodge rooms, including portraits of Mughal emperors.

Unlike other buildings of great historic value, the Freemasons’ Hall has not fallen into disrepair, owing perhaps to the wherewithal of its current occupants. Even so, every shred of Masonic evidence has been covered with gaudy, bronze seals of the Government of the Punjab.

Glory days: an old picture of the Freemasons’ Hall, Lahore, Photos by the writer

The Freemasons’ Hall on the Mall Road was not Freemasonry’s first home in Lahore. Where the British quit the Punjab, Freemasonry began to provide a social retreat to British officers far from home. There are records of Freemasons’ Lodges in all parts of modern Pakistan stretching from Bannu to Hyderabad and Quetta — marching behind regiments of the British Indian Army.

The first Lahori lodge, ‘Hope and Perseverance’ was consecrated in 1859. Rudyard Kipling’s (initiated into Freemasonry in 1886) famous poem ‘The Mother Lodge’ is dedicated to this Lodge. The associated hall was in use until the Lahore earthquake of 1905 when it yielded to the newly constructed hall on the Mall Road. The exoskeleton of the old hall can still be found on the eponymous Lodge Road in Anarkali. It is heart-warming perhaps that this building still has a social function. Where it once served as the home of a fraternity, it is now the sanctuary of a sorority — a government girls’ school.

Trawling through the Punjab Archives in the poorly heated tomb of Anarkali and the Freemasons’ Library in Holborn (London) reveals a series of stories and people that breathed life into the quiet building on the Mall and occupied this small portion of Lahori history that has gradually become lost. There are fond reminisces of grand dinners rivalling those at the Punjab Club and the Gymkhana where Masons and their wives dressed to the nines to enjoy the best of local and foreign cuisine. Other accounts detail the extensive charity given by the Freemasons to local causes such as orphanages while others talk about friendly visits of Lahori Masons to Karachi where they enjoyed dinners at the Hotel Metropole.

Most interesting was the work done by Dr Hermann Selzer, the penultimate District Grand Master for Pakistan. As a Jewish doctor and refugee who came to Lahore in search of work in the twilight of the Second World War, he set up a successful practice in Lahore. He also became a Freemason in Lahore in Prince Albert Victor Lodge in 1949 and eventually became the DGM in 1961. He strove to give Freemasonry a Pakistani colour to make it more accessible and acceptable to the uninitiated, most notably by changing the name of the District Grand Lodge of Punjab to the District Grand Lodge of Pakistan in 1969 and creating a logo for the organization’s Pakistani arm. Even after his eventual exile from his beloved city due to growing anti-Semitism, he remembered the work he had done in Pakistan as being noble, good and becoming of a true patriot.

The Jadoo Ghar was also home to a 2,000-book library of Freemasonic and general history. The library housed numerous portraits including sketches and a gavel fashioned by Rudyard Kipling. The location(s) of the library’s contents is unclear, likely in the homes of bureaucrats, magpies, arts students and other occupants of this building since the 1970s.

Walking through the corridors of the hall, trying to imagine this building as it once was, one cannot help but feel a sense of loss. Not a loss of Freemasonry, but the loss of a connection with the Lahore of yesterday. Is this city as it once was — a cosmopolitan nexus of ideas, people and plurality? Or has it lost its soul in the new bridges, roads and societies? Freemasonry was an undeniable part of the rich tapestry of Lahore from 1859 till at least 1973. This section of the tapestry is now missing, historical darning having hidden it away.

Freemasonry has been banned in Pakistan for 30-40 years now. The initial move was instigated by the provincial governments across various years in the 1970s as part of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s bid to appease the religious right. The second ban was brought in by the federal government under orders from General Ziaul Haq on June 16, 1983 by Martial Law Regulation 56.

Freemasonry fell prey to suspicion and misunderstanding within Pakistan since 1964 when reports of a brawl between Freemasons in Karachi seems to have caused the Army to demand the resignations of all commissioned officers from Freemasonry. This appears to have set the ball rolling on other sections of society also shunning Freemasonry. An ostensibly secret society, drawing on members of all religions with its ‘true’ purposes unknown, did not instil confidence in the xenophobic Right of Pakistani politics.

There was also a generally held view that Freemasonry drew on a concentration of influential Pakistanis who could influence government policy. Conspiracy theorists worried that Freemasons concerned themselves with politics and religion at their meetings. However, a Pakistani Freemason wrote before the proscription: ‘...the District Grand Lodge, has scrupulously maintained a clear-cut policy that always has spoken and still speaks clearly and unequivocally, namely, that no Brother shall discuss or bring politics or religion under discussion into Freemasonry in any form whatsoever’.

By the end of the 1960s there were growing calls for a ban to be imposed on Freemasonry and all other secret societies in Pakistan. Newspaper clippings from May 1969 begin with telling headlines such as ‘Ban on Freemasonry in Pakistan urged — Vehicle to promote Zionism’, ‘1,300 Freemasons in West Pakistan’ and ‘Freemasons under surveillance’. A pamphlet published by Misbah-ul-Islam Faruqui in 1968 concluded that the fact that Pakistani Freemasons consumed alcohol was damning evidence that these men could not be good Muslims and thence that Freemasons in general were up to no good. He stayed that Freemasonry was a ‘threat to our economic, political and ideological freedom.’ Whether this was the case or not is and will remain unclear.

Two separate petitions filed by the last Pakistani Freemasons have wormed their way through to the Supreme Court to challenge the ban and the seizure of Freemasons’ assets across the country. The properties include the Freemasons’ Hall on The Mall in Lahore, a property in Multan belonging to the local cantonment board and property on Haider Road in Rawalpindi belonging to a bank. The first petition was rendered moot by the 8th Amendment to the Constitution, which disallows Martial Law Regulations for being called into question. The second petition is currently in the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. However, with the death of the last petitioner (and last known Pakistani Freemason) in March 2014, the fate of the petition and with it, the earnest hope of the Tyler in Dublin to be in Lahore once more is consigned to the whispers of history.

Humza is a medical student from Lahore with a proclivity for history. He tweets at @humzaay

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, March 1st, 2015

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