Lahore Museum’s Prized Possession: Saifur Rehman Dar (1938–2024)

By Saeed Husain

Saifur Rehman Dar’s passing on December 17, 2024, marks the death of one of Pakistan’s leading lights in museum development and management. Serving as Director of the Lahore Museum (1974-1993 and 1995-1998) and Director General of the Department of Archaeology and Museums Punjab (1991-1995), Dar’s years of active service marked the time when both institutions were at their most active, keeping a healthy pace with global museum developments.

The biographies of individuals become part of the biographies of the institutions they serve. Born in 1938 in Gujranwala, Dar joined the Lahore Museum in August 1974 after Pakistan’s most notable museum had faced several years of neglect; events after Partition had left the Sir Ganga Ram-designed building a mere shell of the grandeur with which it was designed. For Dar, who had served 17 years at the now-federal Department of Archaeology and Museums ( DOAM ), being at the helm meant that the institution could recover its lost prestige and look forward with a stronger focus.

As Shaila Bhatti notes in Translating Museums: A Counterhistory of South Asian Museology, when Dar joined, out of the 17 officers employed, none had visited any other museum in Pakistan. Most staff members at museums and archaeological sites in Pakistan happen to accidentally start working there, something that has not changed considerably today.

While most museum directors in Pakistan at the time focused on rearranging collections, Dar took a global approach, prioritizing the development of diverse museum professionals. Colleagues from the federal department were called in, and so were graduates from Peshawar University’s archaeology department. Soon, with the help of Bashir Ahmed Kureshi – former Chief Secretary of West Pakistan and Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Lahore Museum – Dar was able to involve the Ford Foundation and the Asian Cultural Council for capacity training at the museum.

Dar had come into an environment where he was one of the few qualified people to work in a museum space. Armed with his doctoral dissertation from Greece on the archaeology of Taxila, Dar was now working nearly from scratch to bring up the standards of museums around him.

With this academic inclination, the training programs Dar organized and led at the Lahore Museum culminated in Museology and Museum Problems in Pakistan – a landmark 1981 publication that not only documented the state of museums in Pakistan but also served as a foundational guide for museum professionals nationwide. An even greater achievement was the launch of the  Lahore Museum Bulletin  in 1988 – the first of its kind for a Pakistani museum. Its publication filled a longstanding void since the Museums Journal of Pakistan, an earlier but short-lived attempt to establish museological discourse in the country.

Dar remained critical of merging archaeology and museums in the same department, which strained resources between the two entities. This also resulted in museums in Pakistan being typeset to only hold relics of the past instead of contemporary and dynamic exhibits on societal events. This was a disappointing legacy set for museums in Pakistan, which held the opportunity to establish a Pakistani identity borne out of its cultural riches.

Alongside internal mismanagement, battling the wishes of bureaucracy is a critical tenet of the job when serving at any cultural institution in the country. The level of bureaucracy extended to the very top of the helm of Pakistan’s executive order at the time.

One example of where Dar had to step in was with dictator General Ziaul Haq, who, while visiting Japan, promised that one of the most well-known artifacts in Pakistan – the ‘Fasting Buddha,’ excavated in 1894 by H.A. Dean at Sikri, near Peshawar – would be brought over to the country for an exhibit on Gandharan art. This, of course, was done without consultation with local experts in Pakistan and without knowing the intricacies of sending over an ancient artifact, particularly from a museum and collection infrastructure that can struggle to maintain it at the best of times properly.

Sirat Gohar Daudpota, a PhD student in archaeology at the Taxila Institute of Asian Civilizations in Islamabad, while writing his thesis and working on the rediscovery and exhibitions of the ‘Fasting Buddha’, noted that Dar, as director, wrote back to the involved ministries and the board of governors of the Lahore Museum. While most of the artifacts promised by Zia could be sent to Tokyo, the ‘Fasting Buddha’ could not be moved due to its condition – it was the museum’s prized possession. After a series of dissenting notes and conversations, Dar had to relent to military pressure but assured that one representative from the Lahore Museum went with the artifacts to guarantee their safekeeping.

Today, Lahore Museum stands in stark contrast to when Dar served as director; 2001 marked the last time a museum specialist, Dr Anjum Rehmani, was appointed director. Since then, a rotating pool of unqualified bureaucrats has been at the helm of Pakistan’s largest museum. While anthropologists, archaeologists and art historians lament the state of affairs, the Lahore Museum’s director’s office has become a ‘punishment’ post, where bureaucrats are sent to be sidelined or bide their time waiting for a promotion. Dar remained critical of this imposed bureaucratization, insisting that bureaucrats ought to serve as patrons at museums, rather than intrude upon matters outside their professional expertise.

Dar outrightly established himself as a prolific author and global authority on museums in Pakistan, publishing 30 books and 200 papers, writing in English, Urdu, and Punjabi. This saw him not only being a prominent part of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), under which the Lahore Museum became the first Pakistani museum to obtain ICOM membership but his legacy was further cemented by his development of museums at Harappa, Kasur, Mohenjodaro and Taxila while also serving as Project Director of the Bahawalpur Museum. Until his passing, Dar gave a series of public talks and interviews, strongly believing in the public face that museum officials had to maintain in Pakistan.

(Saeed Husain is Managing Editor, Folio Books)