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HYDERABAD, Pakistan: On her 99th birthday in May 2017, Dharam Mukhi sat thousands of miles away in the United States when her family unveiled an extraordinary gift: a video chronicling three centuries of the Mukhi family’s legacy and the painstaking restoration of her childhood home in Sindh, Pakistan.

The video brought back the carved wooden galleries, the Italian cupola and the marble staircase of the mansion she had left behind when her family left Hyderabad during the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent in 1947 and the violence and upheaval that followed. 

“I feel like I am back home,” she told her son, Dr. Suresh Bhavnani. Twenty days later, she passed away.

Built in 1921 by her uncle Jethanand Mukhi, a Hindu politician and philanthropist, the three-story Mukhi House was more than a residence. With its Corinthian columns, mosaic floors, stained glass, and frescoed walls, it stood as a palace at the heart of Hyderabad. Its halls hosted luminaries of the era — Indian National Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru and Sindh’s pre-Partition chief minister, Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah, among others.

“They considered it a palace, not just a house,” said historian and archaeologist Dr. Kaleemullah Lashari, who later led its restoration. “They built it with that vision and lived in it to the fullest.”

After Jethanand’s death, his brother Gobindram Mukhi, Dharam’s father, carried forward the family’s civic leadership. He was elected to the Sindh government as a voice for the Hindu community, despite threats and assassination attempts. 

But Partition forced the Mukhis to move their children to Bombay while Gobindram and his wife returned frequently to manage affairs, clinging to the hope of resettling in Hyderabad.

That hope ended abruptly in 1957 when Gobindram died in a road accident near Thatta. The family never returned. The mansion, once the jewel of Hyderabad, was reduced to decades of disrepair. It became a government office, then a girls’ school, then a paramilitary checkpoint. 

Fires, neglect and scavengers stripped it of its grandeur. 

“Its vital structural elements had grown weak,” Lashari recalled of his first visit to the decaying building.”

The Mukhi family, still in possession of the property papers, offered the house to the people of Sindh on one condition: that it be conserved and turned into a museum. 

Declared a heritage site by the Sindh government, restoration began in 2009. The work was arduous, from sourcing tiles to match originals to recreating stained glass, and training artisans to revive lost techniques.

By 2013, the house had been restored to its former glory, though bureaucratic inertia kept it closed to the public for years. From the US, Dr. Bhavnani campaigned to keep the project alive, circulating videos such as Legends of the Mukhi House and urging Sindhi youth to reclaim the site as part of their cultural inheritance.

 “When the place was finally turned into a museum and inaugurated, I credited my late grandfather with inspiring my persistence,” Dr. Bhavnani said. “He was living the role of a Mukhi who had promised to serve the community that had elected him, and who were now vulnerable as they had chosen to stay back in Sindh.”

Today, the museum preserves not just architecture but memory. Dharam’s photographs line the first floor: her beside the family’s first car, near Hyderabad’s first telephone, at garden parties with colonial administrators. 

“We have displayed her photographs in the museum as part of the exhibition,” said Naeem Ahmed Khan, a museum official.

Schoolchildren now walk through its sunlit galleries where once statesmen and reformers debated Sindh’s future. 

For Lashari, the building is a symbol of generosity across borders and generations: 

“Just think about how noble the purpose is. A family, which no longer resides here, agreed … to allow their property to be turned into a museum for the benefit of the general public.”

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has appointed a serving major-general of the army to a senior position in the interior ministry, officials said on Monday, with the unprecedented move ostensibly aimed at “enhancing coordination” among civil armed forces amid a surge in militancy.

While the appointment of retired army officials to civilian government positions is a norm in Pakistan, which has been ruled by its powerful army for nearly half of its 78-year history, the appointment of a serving officer is unprecedented.

Major General Noor Wali Khan has been transferred and posted as an additional secretary at the interior ministry on a secondment basis for three years, according to a notification issued by Pakistan’s Cabinet Secretariat.

“General Khan will head all civil armed forces in the ministry,” Qadir Yar Tiwana, an interior ministry spokesman, told Arab News, declining to share further details of his mandate.

A senior official at the interior ministry, who requested anonymity, said the appointment was aimed at “enhancing coordination among multiple civil armed forces working under the interior ministry.”

The ministry oversees several civilian armed agencies, including the Frontier Corps, Pakistan Rangers, Pakistan Coast Guard, Gilgit-Baltistan Scouts, Federal Constabulary and the Anti-Narcotics Force.

The ministry plays a pivotal role in overseeing internal security, counterterrorism, law enforcement and public safety in Pakistan, which became the world’s second-most affected country by militant violence in 2024, with deaths rising 45 percent to 1,081, according to the Global Terrorism Index 2025.

The South Asian country is battling twin insurgencies, one led by religiously motivated groups, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), mainly in its Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and the other by ethno-nationalist Baloch separatist groups, Daesh and other smaller groups in Balochistan.

Afzal Ali Shigri, a former inspector general of police, told Arab News, he saw the appointment of a serving general in the interior ministry as a “strategic step” aimed at countering the surge in militancy through enhanced coordination among civilian forces.

“The interior ministry is a very powerful division of the government as it deals with major issues concerning internal security of Pakistan,” Shigri said. 

“This appointment is a prerogative of the federal government as they might have considered it necessary for better coordination among various departments.”

In response to comments for this story, the military’s media wing asked to direct all queries to the Establishment Division or the ministry of defense.

The posting of a major general to the powerful interior ministry is being widely seen as another significant step in extending the military’s footprint into civilian governance structures. Last year, a serving army officer was appointed to the top position at the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), which oversees national identity cards and citizens’ data.

The interior ministry’s mandate extends well beyond internal security, dealing with critical issues such as visa regulation for foreign nationals, including hundreds of thousands of Afghans residing in Pakistan. The ministry has in the past faced allegations of corruption and irregularities in visa issuance, an area now expected to come under stricter oversight with the appointment of a serving general.

In addition, the ministry recently elevated the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary, a force traditionally under provincial control, to the status of a federal entity. Insiders say General Khan will also supervise this transition, further consolidating military oversight of civil armed forces and internal security operations at a time when Pakistan faces mounting pressure from militancy and cross-border challenges.