A Vandalised Civilisation (original) (raw)
Panāh-I Din Daran: The Story of the Forgotten Mughal Capital, Dīnpanāh – The Court Observer
The Court Observer- The Society for Court Studies Blog, 2023
”نہ تھا شہر دہلی یہ تھا چمن کہو کس طرح کا تھا یاں امنن جو خطاب تھا وہ مٹا دیا فقط اب تو اجڑا دیار ہے“ (“Delhi was never just a city, it was a garden of harmony They have erased all signs of that, now only a ruined waste remains") -Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal Emperor, on the destruction of Delhi in 1857 It is hard to imagine that the city that Zafar so eloquently described was not a favourite of his ancestors, at least for the first century. Scholars believe that Delhi gained prominence as the Mughal capital only after Shahjahan, the fifth Emperor built his capital city, Shahjahanabad, in Delhi in 1648— eventually ransacked by the Company in 1857. While Shahjahanabad and the Red Fort have dominated Delhi's Mughal history, this blog challenges this narrative by highlighting that Mughal presence in Delhi began not under Shahjahan, but a century prior: under the often ignored second Mughal Emperor, Humayun. Humayun had established Dīnpanāh, the 'Refuge of Religion,' as his capital in 1533. Although much of Dīnpanāh is lost—remnants like Purana Qila, Qala-i Kuhna mosque, and Sher Mandal have endured. Stylistic similarities reveal that Dīnpanāh was the unacknowledged inspiration for iconic monuments including Humayun's Tomb, Red Fort, and Fatehpur Sikri Complex. By delving into its architectural, political, and cultural history, this blog emphasises how even in anonymity, Dīnpanāh, the forgotten capital, became a testament to Delhi's rich architectural legacy and resilience through the ages. Keywords: Delhi—Mughal—Dīnpanāh—forgotten
Inhabited Pasts: Monuments, Authority, and People in Delhi, 1912–1970s
The Journal of Asian Studies
This article considers the relationship between the official, legislated claims of heritage conservation in India and the wide range of episodic and transitory inhabitations that have animated and transformed the monumental remains of the city, or rather cities, of Delhi. Delhi presents a spectrum of monumental structures that appear variously to either exist in splendid isolation from the rush of everyday urban life or to peek out amidst a palimpsest of unplanned, urban fabric. The repeated attempts of the state archaeological authorities to disambiguate heritage from the quotidian life of the city was frustrated by bureaucratic lapses, casual social occupations, and deliberate challenges. The monuments offered structural and spatial canvases for lives within the city, providing shelter, solitude, and the possibility of privacy, as well as devotional and commercial opportunity. The dominant comportment of the city's monuments during the twentieth century was a hybrid monumental...
I begin my brief essay with an extended quote from Bashiruddin Ahmed ¶s ³Vaqiat I Darulhukumat Dehli´ (Accounts of Delhi, the Abode of Governance), his massive three volume documentation of Delhi ¶s history and monuments, first published in 1919. This is an account of a palace starkly titled ³Mahal jo khud raha hai (The palace that is being dug up).´ The Mahal that was being dug up would have been in what is now the heart of central New Delhi, near what we now know as Hailey Road, close to the iconic Agrasen ki Baoli, somewhere between Connaught Place and Modern School. To the east of this baoli and masjid near the GIP (Great India Peninsular) railway line there was a very big, wide enclosure inside which was some palace. The palace doesn ¶t exist anymore but some walls of the enclosure are left. Inside there are heaps of stone and earth and labourers are regularly digging and carting off the stone and earth. With these very stones the road is being built and if this speed continues then in a few days the field will be entirely clear. The imagined picture of this palace that can still be seen in the imagination, even that opportunity will go. The width of the enclosure, the height of the walls, the vast stores of stone, the high heaps of earth, the traces of the foundations, all are sufficient proof of the fact that this palace was one of extraordinary size and grandeur. Now if the government doesn ¶t clear such dead and out of use buildings then how will land come for New Delhi and God-like judgement [be passed]. Har ke aamad imarate nau sakhat Everyone who came made a new building Raft manzil badigare pardakhat And left for another destination (to pay up) Why should the friend [of the building] come? The time has changed. Our way of life has changed. Our necessities have changed. In short, the sky has changed, the earth has changed. If these buildings are let remain, of what use are they in this time? So their erasure is the demand of the necessities of the time. Now only those monuments are preserved with which some prime historical happening is linked, or which is the memorial to some glorious king. As for the rest, there is no remedy except servicing them hospitably with pick-axes and shovels. Instead of those tattered and useless buildings now new airy, pleasant houses, mansions and parks will be built in which lights will twinkle with electricity, electric fans will whirr, and the corks of soda lemonade will pop all the time. Now the time is gone where there was some value and necessity for buildings of traditional design. When those who valued these things have not remained then what Delhi (for instance at Kadam Sharif) should be discontinued. 4 A confidential report printed by the Government of India in 1912 enumerated the ³Religious, etc.´ buildings of Delhi into three categories ± List X, Buildings which should be preserved, List Y, building which should not be destroyed unless destruction is imperative, List Z ± List of religious building etc. which need not be preserved 5 . List Z was by far the longest, 168 entries, far longer than the 45 entries in List A, and the 33 entries in List B. Bashiruddin Ahmed ¶s statement, quoted earlier, that only those structures are preserved which are memorials to some glorious king does not seem at all hyperbolic when looking at these categories ± most of what the Government wished to preserve of the religious buildings in Delhi were the tombs of kings and what they understood as religious structures of truly spectacular, trans-local significance. Anything of merely local importance could be dispensed with, become terra nullius to make way for the Imperial city being planned. Many of the structures not thought worthy of preservation included temples and dargahs and venerated mazars with histories of veneration going back seven hundred years or more. Some examples from List Z ± Village Chokri Mubarikabad. Shiwala and Baoli (shiv temple and well). An ordinary temple built along with the garden; nothing important. For local use, south of the road. Village Indarpat ± Mandar Bhaironji. East of Old Fort. Ordinary temple, unimportant, ghair-abad. Village Indarpat ± Dargah Abu Bakar (also known as Matka Pir) ± offering of cash and food on each Thursday. A grave(tomb) on a mound near the old fort. East of road. Some other grave also. Village Raipur Khurd. Makbara or Langre Khan or Langarabad and masjid. Old buildings. Ghair-abad [not settled or regularly 4 File 77/1915/Education, Chief Commissionerǯs Office Records, Delhi State Archives 5 File 47(10)/1914/Revenue and Agriculture/Chief Commissionerǯs Office Records, Delhi State Archives DzList of Religious Buildings to be Preserved in the New Capital Area.dz worshipped in]. Worshipped by Badi nomads. Every year fair of Badis is held. 1,000 persons utmost. It should be remembered that this is the early 20 th century, when the whole population of the Delhi province is well under half a million people, and an annual gathering of a thousand people, and their migration through Delhi province, was in no way an insignificant number. But in the utilitarian logic used to acquire land for the new city, people ¶s sentiments, histories and attachments to land played no role in the ³importance´ of religious buildings, which tells us something about British ideas of what religion was supposed to be, a category which excluded both locality and ³earthly´ sentiment. When the Archaeological Survey brought out its list of Delhi ¶s monuments (the famous Zafar Hasan list) enumerated according to the boundaries of village land, it followed pretty much the same classificatory scheme as the Confidential report. ³I -Monuments which from their present condition or archaeological or historical value ought to be maintained in good repair; II ± Those monuments which it is only now possible or desirable to save from further decay by such minor measures as the eradication of vegetation, the exclusion of water from the walls, and the like; III ± Those monuments which from their advanced stage of decay or comparative unimportance, it is impossible or unnecessary to preserve«´6 The preface goes on to add, ³«because a building is put into class III, it does not follow that there should be any unseemly haste to convert it into road metal.´ Though as the extract I quoted to begin with shows, this 6 The DzZafar Hasan Listdz, a four volume compendium, is called so because it was compiled by Maulvi Zafar Hasan of the Archaeological Department. It has recently been reissued as a set of three books by Aryan Books International. A DzReferencedz acting as a kind of preface to each volume gives us the schema of classification of the monuments. Maulvi Zafar Hasan ,1997. Monuments of Delhi Ȃ Lasting Splendour of the Great Mughals and Others. Delhi: Aryan Books International. caution was mostly retrospective. It is instructive to compare Bashiruddin Ahmad ¶s Waqiat to the Zafar Hasan list, which is also a multi volume compendium of the ancient remains of Delhi, especially as both came out around the same time. All three volumes of Bashiruddin Ahmad ¶s book were published by 1919, whereas the three volumes of Maulvi Zafar Hasan ¶s book were published between 1916 and 1922. Significantly, Bashiruddin Ahmad eschews Zafar Hasan ¶s form of enumeration of buildings according to the administrative divisions, the form of colonial governmentality, and instead follows the 19 th century old model used by both Mirza Sangin Beg and Sayyad Ahmad Khan, of guiding a traveller through the landscape of Delhi with Shahjahanabad imagined as a centre, enumerating things that you would find on the way if you travelled certain routes, say from Shahjahanabad to Nizamuddin or Mehrauli, or circumambulating Shahjahanabad. And there is certainly no classificatory logic to Bashiruddin ¶s selection or description of monuments. He seems to write of everything he comes across, old or not so old, famous and grand or small and insignificant, temples, hospitals, venerated graves, forgotten domes. If he could, it seems, he would have written about the very stones of Delhi ¶s roads ± for isn ¶t that the phrase, in speech and literature, that describes the true lovers of Delhi in all their glorious eccentricity and cussedness ±dilli ke rode, the stones of Delhi ¶s roads? 7
Journal of emerging technologies and innovative research, 2018
Journey of any city is a very fascinating one to scholars of urban studies as well as dwellers, visitors, policy makers and managers of cities. Delhi has an extremely rich past dating back to prehistoric times and charting epochs like the Gupta period, Rajput phase, the Sultanate, Lodhis, Mughals, British and finally, capital of Independent India. This paper presents a birds' eye view of the urban character of Delhi from the prehistoric times to 1638: the founding of Shahjahanabad. The objective of the paper is to contextualize many monuments, travel writings, novels, memoirs, films, myths, stories, stereotypes present in/ on Delhi to a continuity as well as complexity of urban and cultural tradition. As thinkers and users of cities, it is imperative that we appreciate the ethos we inherit, consume, represent and create. Using a variety of sources from history, sociology, cultural and urban studies, the paper puts together diverse dimensions of this ancient city and imperial capital from the perspective of underscoring that urbanity has always been a matter of intersecting spaces, lives, powers and intentions.
Varanasi, the city of history and continuity, is one among the oldest living cities in the world, recording settlements since ca 1000 BCE, and eulogized in the followed up mythological literature. Recent archaeological investigations in its vicinity date it back to 1500 BCE. Visit of the Buddha in the 5th century BCE is a testimony to its importance, which helped to develop a monastic township of Sarnath. By the turn of the CE 6th century the city was established as a great sacred place (tirtha), and by the end of the 9th century most of the pan-Indian sacred places were re-established here. The turn of the 11th century, known as Gahadavala period, recorded the golden era, however by the invasion of Aibek in 1197 and assassination of the king, the city fell into darkness that continued till the mid 16th century when Mughal Emperor Akbar patronised its growth and glories. During the British period, in the 19th century, the city was marked by establishment of modern educational institutions in imperialist frame, including introduction of railway. Recently being conscious of maintaining identity, the issue of heritage conservation and related movements are the important scenario. Keywords: British period, Delhi Sultunate, early period, Gahadvalas, Mughal eras, Modern period, pilgrimage, post-independence, Pratihar, soil phosphate, transformation, Vishvanatha.