Two Cities, 8 Capitals, 2O Million Residents and Nowhere to Go
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ASTRAGALO, 27 (2020) Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike - CC BY-NC-SA ARTICLES, ISSN 2469-0503 DELHI: TWO CITIES, 8 CAPITALS, 2O MILLION RESIDENTS AND NOWHERE TO GO Sohail Hashmi Freelance writer, filmmaker and heritage activist https://dx.doi.org/10.12795/astragalo.2020.i27.02 Delhi has been described in many ways -ce- The name New Delhi happened by de- lebratory, poetic, envious and jealous. It has fault, the British could not decide between been called the eternal city, the forever bride, the two names that they had narrowed down the graveyard of empires and there are others, the choice to, Georgeabad (City of George) and some laudatory and others not so generous.1 Georgetown, the latter did not have too many One of the most remarkable things backers because one Georgetown already exis- about Delhi is the fact that only one of the 8 ted in South Africa and it didn’t sound right, capitals that were built here over the last 1000 the former proposal had a lot of support becau- years or so, was named Delhi and that is New se it went well with Tughlaqabad, Ferozeabad Delhi. The seven historical capitals that came and Shahjahanabad and tied in with the British up in Delhi, in chronological order, were Lal desire to present themselves as the rightful in- Kot, Siri, Tughlaqabad, Jahanpanah, Ferozea- heritors of the great Mughals. bad, Deenpanah, Shahjahanabad and then That is why even as they ruled from Cal- came the 8th capital New Delhi. cutta the formal installation of their monarchs as emperors of India did not occur at Calcutta but in Delhi, in 1877 for Victoria, in 1903 for Edward the VIIth. and in 1911 for George Vth. It 1 On the history of Delhi, see Historic Delhi, Ed.H.K.Kaul, was at his coronation that George announced OUP 1985, fifth Impression 2004, The Delhi Omnibus, OUP 2002, second impression 2004, Shahjahanabad/Old that the capital will return to Delhi in 1912. Delhi, Tradition and Colonial Change, Ed. Eckart Ehlers and Thomas Krafft Manohar 2003. - 19 - DELHI: TWO CITIES, 8 CAPITALS, 2O MILLION RESIDENTS AND NOWHERE TO GO Though the British had removed the tural and planning hotchpotch of illusions of capital to Calcutta in 1859, to punish Delhi colonial grandeur, historical inevitability, po- for being the centre of the revolt of 1857, they litical expediency, bureaucratic incompetence knew that their being recognised as rulers of and judicial insensitivity. All this has spawned India, by the people at large, depended greatly a kind of urban growth that militates against on their presence in Delhi. all historical characteristics of an organic ur- Meanwhile their attempt to divide Ben- ban growth. This paper would seek to touch gal, along religious lines in 1905 to weaken the upon some of these and also to try to unders- anti-colonial struggle, back-fired and in order tand the reasons for these anomalies. to turn a bad situation into an advantage they Before we come to these issues, we decided to move the capital to Delhi. Tempo- would like to talk a little more about the ca- rary structures were thrown up at great spe- pitals that rose and fell in Delhi, and through ed and the basic offices were shifted, Edward this short narration we would like to outline Lutyens and Herbert Baker were chosen as the the kinds of things that we think are necessary architects to design the new capital for “Bri- in a city. tish India”.The Construction began in fits and Of the 7 capitals that were built in De- starts, slowed down during the Second World lhi in the mediaeval times, only the first, that War and also got caught in cost over runs. is Lal Kot, also known as Quila Rai Pithora or The new capital was finally inaugurated more popularly referred to as Mehrauli and the in 1931. The issue of naming the city was never seventh capital, that is Shahjahnabad, had time resolved, the workers involved in the construc- and resources to grow into cities. tion began calling it Nai Dilli and the English The other five were mere capitals, built translation as New Delhi became the popularly and occupied by a king, at times by a successor accepted name that stuck for good and thus or two and then deserted. None of the five re- Shahjahanabad, by default, became Old Delhi. maining capitals developed into a city, the suc- Naming the Capital New Delhi wasn’t cessors to the founders built their own capitals, a very bright idea, because historically each the population moved to the new location, the new capital had had a unique name -Lalkot, earlier buildings were stripped of everything Siri, Tughlaqabad, Jahanpanah, Ferozeabad, that could be carried away, what remained were Deenpanah or Shahjahanbad, while the region the bare walls that fell in course of time. where all these capitals came up had always The 8th capital, New Delhi, built by the been Delhi. The Capital was never Delhi, it was British was never visualised as a city, it was always a part, a small part, of Delhi, and that is imagined merely as a show piece and it conti- what it is even today New Delhi is spread over nues to be that. The present government, with an area of 47.2 km2 while Delhi is spread over their proposed plans of rebuilding, might ac- an area of 1484 km2 that is more than 31 times tually succeed in destroying even this USP of larger than the area of New Delhi. New Delhi. The kind of development and growth Mehrauli and Shahjahanabad followed that New Delhi now represents is an architec- two different trajectories of growth, the for- - 20 - Sohail Hashmi mer following a more gradual growth, turning its own rhythm that makes it tick with life; it slowly from the site of a capital into a pilgri- needs to develop a special lilt in its language, a mage centre, because of the presence of some lilt and flow that is unique to the city. major Sufi Saints who took up residence in this A place needs all these and a thousand area. The development of Shahjahanabad hap- other things, drawn from a diverse range of in- pened in two phases. In phase one, an entire fluences, to grow into a city. And it needs time city culture was shifted from Agra to the new for all these things to gradually evolve and to capital that Shahjahan had built in Delhi, the fall in place. A city has to be inclusive and cos- next couple of hundred years constituted the mopolitan. A place where only natives –sons of second phase during which Shahjahanabad the soil– live, is a village; it becomes a city when acquired the wherewithal of a city.The city was migrants come, in little trickles and in waves sought to be destroyed by the British after the and settle down over a period a time, a couple of great rebellion of the Sepoys and the peasantry hundred years or more. That is how a city comes in 1857, an attempt that Shahjaanabad resisted into existence. bravely and continues to do so. It will be of some Mehrauli and the area around it began interest to take a look at these two trajectories, to grow from a village from the moment the To- but before we come to that we would like to lay mars arrived and built their capital here, they down our understanding of how cities develop. were replaced by the Chauhans, followed by the You cannot construct an administrati- Mamluks, the Khalijis, the Tughlaqs, the Lodis ve area, palatial accommodations for the rulers; and the Mughals in that order, Mehrauli ceased build market spaces, streets and avenues, circu- to be capital form the time of the Khaljis, but lation areas, open spaces etc. and call the space the settlement continued to grow into a city. a city, a city needs time to grow organically. A What kept the place ticking was the vi- city is not merely an extended market or a place brant presence of the Sufis. Khwaja Qutub-ud- of work where people come to labour, to trade, Din Bakhtyaar Kaaki, the second of the Chishti to buy and sell. A city needs workers, profes- Sufis in India, took up residence in Mehrauli sionals, artisans, painters, musicians; it needs in the early 13th century and when he died, he to develop its own traditions of workmanship, was, in keeping with Sufi traditions, buried in of scholarship and of intellectual discourse. It his hospice. Because of his popularity, people needs its centres of learning and dissemination continued to flock to Mehrauli in large num- of knowledge; it needs people with skills, its bers, even after his death and so the place was own crafts and its own residential, commercial neither deserted nor did it fall back to becoming and public spaces. A city needs its own style of a village because, new sets of arrivals continued construction that takes from many traditions to add to its diversity. and evolves its own. A city needs its own whole- The land where a Sufi is buried is consi- sale markets. It needs to produce things to tra- dered holy and people willed that they be bu- de with its own residents its hinterland, with ried in the neighbourhood of the shrine. Over other cities and countries. A city also needs to the next seven centuries mausoleums and gra- develop its own cuisine, its own taste for music, ves continued to be built in the vicinity.