पुराना पाकिस्तान

[abhisays]

Desperado, 1981: This is a rare photograph of notorious Pakistani left-wing radical, Salamulla Tipu, hanging out from the cockpit of a PIA plane that he had hijacked with three other colleagues in 1981.

Tipu, a leftist student leader from Karachi, had joined Murtaza Bhutto’s Al-Zulfikar Organisation (AZO) to instigate an urban guerrilla war against the Ziaul Haq dictatorship (1977-88).

The plane was hijacked from Karachi, flown to Kabul and then to Damascus. Tipu and co. (armed with AK-47s and hand grenades), only released the passengers after the Zia regime agreed to release 50-plus political prisoners from jails.

In 1984, however, in an ironic twist of fate, Tipu the Marxist revolutionary, was executed by the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul after he’d fallen out with Murtaza Bhutto, while the other hijackers travelled to Libya where they are said to be still living.

Salamulla Tipu was grandson of Ashfaqullah Khan.

[abhisays]

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, addresses a rally at Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s mausoleum in Karachi in 1969.

The rally was held immediately after a protest movement led by leftist students; labour and journalist unions; political parties, including PPP and the National Awami Party (NAP), had forced Pakistan’s first military dictator Ayub Khan, to resign.

Construction of the mausoleum began in the early 1960s and was still underway when the rally was held. Wooden ladders and planks being used for construction purposes were acrobatically utilised by the crowd to gain vantage viewing points on the day of the rally.

[abhisays]

Army troops patrol the streets opposite Club Road and near PIDC building in Karachi, during the anti-Ayub Khan protest movement in 1969.

The picture was taken by a foreign tourist from his room at the Hotel Intercontinental (now, Pearl Continental), which is situated diagonally opposite the PIDC building.

[abhisays]

Legendary jazz saxophonist and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, visited Pakistan during his whirlwind tour of Asia and the Middle East in the early 1950s. Here, he is seen playing his sax with a Sindhi snake charmer at a public park in Karachi in 1954.

[abhisays]

Famous Hollywood stars Ava Gardner and Stewart Granger arrive at Lahore Airport, 1954. The actors arrived in Lahore with a full filming crew to shoot a major portion of the film ‘Bhowani Junction.’

[abhisays]

Ava Gardner shooting a scene at the Lahore Railway Station in 1954.

[abhisays]

Pakistani fans and artistes gather around the main cast of Bhowani Junction on the film’s sets in Lahore.

[abhisays]

American tourists enjoy a camel ride at Karachi’s Clifton beach in 1960. [Video grab from a 1960 tourism promotional film made by Pan Am]

A series of apartment blocks, bungalows, fast-food joints and restaurants have sprung up in the area today – but no tourists, especially not the bikini-wearing kind.

[abhisays]

A 1964 PIA press ad featuring famous Hollywood comedian and actor Bob Hope.

PIA was one of the first airlines in the world to introduce in-flight entertainment. It regularly featured in all the prestigious top-10-airline lists for over 20 years, before dropping out in the mid-1980s

[abhisays]

This is a 1967 press ad published in LIFE magazine for the American insurance company, Continental Insurance.


The number of American and British tourists visiting Pakistan began to grow from the early 1960s. The trend hit a peak in the late 1970s before starting to dwindle and peter out in the mid-1980s.

It (in a tongue-in-cheek manner) addresses those traveling to Karachi and getting injured during a ‘camel crash.’