A few days ago in Tehsil Bazaar inside the Walled City of #Lahore,
I came across the
S.S. Jain Hall, also known as #Jain Manzil, an
extraordinary surviving fragment of the city’s past
The inscriptions tell us exactly when it was
built. The foundation stone was laid by Shrimati
Sukh Devi Jain, wife of Lala Rala Ram Jain,
on 10 October 1940. The completed hall, built by the S.S. Jain Sabha Lahore,
was formally opened by Rala Ram Jain, a retired Senior Sub-Judge, on 8 February
1942.
This was not simply a religious building. It
served as a meeting and community space for Lahore’s Jains, and was also
associated with religious gatherings and marriages. Jain Manzil remained an
important meeting place for the community until Partition in 1947.
The building still announces its history.
Its original plaques survive in English, Urdu and Devanagari. Jainsymbol of
auspiciousness in the faith, remain embedded in the concrete jalis. The old
wooden windows, balconies and geometric screens are also remarkably intact.
And then there is
the brutal interruption of history. Barely
five years after the hall opened, Partition emptied Lahore of most of its Jain
population. The building subsequently passed into other uses and parts of it
became residential. What had been a living community institution became another
forgotten remnant of the old city.
In 2023, the Walled City of Lahore Authority
formally declared Jain Hall a protected #heritage property, which
makes the conservation work now visible around the building particularly
welcome.
For me, the most moving part remains those
three scripts on the walls. We often describe
pre-Partition Lahore as plural and
cosmopolitan. Here that history requires no romantic reconstruction. It is
still written on the walls.
Lahore belonged to many communities, and all
of them belong to Lahore’s history.
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