Dilli’s History

Saddi dilli as we like to call it today with love has a very long and deep rooted history which dates back to the Mahabharata times. Saddi dilli is considered to be over 5000 years old and it embeds the history of several empires into itself.

We would however like throw some light only on the past 1500 years or so and please allow us to safely assume that this should suffice. However if for any reason it doesn’t, please feel free to leave you comments in the space provided below.

The walled city has been quite rich in terms of the architectural findings and archeologists have found remains from the Mauryan Period which dated back to 300 BC. Partial remains of that period are visible even today. An example of the same is the iron pillar of Chandragupta Vikramaditya from the Gupta Dynasty, which now stands next to the Qutab Minar, was initially standing amongst 27 jain temples which were grounded by Qutbuddin-Aibak around the 10^th century, in order to erect the Minar and a couple other mosques.

Prior to the 10th or the 7th century except the scripture, archaeological evidences to book the city’s Ancient history are not as good. As a result, Dilli’s ancient history finds no records during this period and it may be regarded as the lost period of Dilli’s history. Extensive coverage of Dilli’s history begins with the onset of the Delhi Sultanate in the 12th century. And since then, Dilli had been the seat of Islamic and British rulers until India‘s independence in 1947.

Saddi Dilli’s core heritage is Islamic, which spans over 7 centuries of Islamic rule over the city, It also includes some British-styled architectures and zones in Lutyens’ Delhi which date back to the British rule in India. All records of Dilli exist in the form of scriptures or archaeological evidences, which crown Dilli as the capital city of some empire or the other throughout, with minor random breaks in between, making Dilli one of the longest serving capitals and one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. It is considered to be a city built, destroyed and rebuilt several times, as outsiders who successfully invaded the Indian Subcontinent would ransack the existing capital city in Dilli, and those who came to conquer and stay would be so impressed by the city’s strategic location as to make it their capital and rebuild it in their own way.

Below is a year wise list of all the dynasties which ruled saddi dilli post the 7th century.

Year	Dynasty
0736 – 1192	Tomaras – Chauhans
1206 – 1290	Mamluks
1290 – 1320	Khilji
1320 – 1413	Tughlaqs
1414 – 1451	Sayyids
1451 – 1526	Lodis
1526 – 1857	Mughals
1857 – 1947	British
1947 – Today	Independent India

 

All this while there have been 7 major and several minor cities within the territories now identified as the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCR-Delhi). Saddi Dilli is the 8th city. With the rule of every dynasty, there were significant developments and symbolic constructions made in and around the city as per the rulers requirement.

Of all the empires the Mughal Empire rose as one of the most powerful empires of the medieval world and eventually when their might began to erode rapidly after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. There were wars for succession and attacks on Dilli by Nadir Shah, Suraj Mal, Abdali and the Marathas and the breaking away of large territories like Hyderabad and Awadh helped the British consolidate their position and by 1803, after defeating the Marathas, they become virtual rulers of Dilli.

 

The Mughal King was now a pensioner of the British. David Ochterlony, who lived like a decadent Nawab with his 13 wives, was appointed the British Resident of Delhi in 1803 The Library of DaraShikoh was modified into his residence. The Britts and their alliances became more powerful and arrogant with each passing day.

Urdu was rapidly replacing Persian to emerge as the mother tongue of Dilli, there were many unwelcomed changes made such as colleges were transformed to offer English as a subject, thus earning the ire of a large population of the city. One had to study English, not for the sake of knowledge but for the sake of qualifing for a job. The British devised the Indian Penal Code and by the early 1830s Urdu became the official language of the courts.

Strong resentment against the Company had been building up gradually and both the peasantry and the elite after suffering under the rising taxes imposed by the company saw the British as enemies of India. On 11th May 1857, the soldiers of the Light Bengal infantry revolted in Meerut and arrived in Delhi, the British were thrown out and Bahadur Shah Zafar was re-instated as Emperor of India. The City was free for three months, the British however recaptured Dilli in mid-September 1857 and the city was set on a course that was to change it forever.

 

In 1858 the British Crown took over from the east India Company and India formally became a colony of the British. Despite their claims the British were far from magnanimous in victory, a systematic massacre was unleashed upon Dilli, and thousands were stabbed, hung on the gallows strung up across the city or tied to cannons and blasted.

 

The British were now inside the fort and the residents were given 24 hours to clear out, in order to prevent any rebellious action. In the eyes of the British the Muslims, co-religionists of the deposed king, were enemies and so hundreds were driven out of the city and not allowed to return for many years. This was the beginning of the communal divide that destroyed the unity that had been the strength of the revolt.

Mosques were demolished, converted in parks and godowns, Jama Masjid became a soldier’s camp and the Zeenat-ul-Masajid became a bakery for the British officers. With the loss of traditional patronage arts and crafts went into a decline, poets and artists left Delhi in search of new Patrons, Ghalib lost his court pension and died in extreme penury.

In the wake of circumstances many Dilli traders began to favor the new masters and requested a rail link to Calcutta for better trading opportunities, after much persuasion the British agreed and the railways arrived in the mid-1860s. The Lothian Railway Bridge divided the city in two parts, to its south lived the natives while to its north in Kashmiri Gate and beyond lived the British and their hangers on. Land was taken over for the railway station. The original residents settled the new areas of Karol Bagh, Pahar Ganj, Sadar and Bara Hindu Rao.

 

Opposite the main gate of the railway station, a new road was carved out, through Bagh-e-Jahanaara. The Jahanaara Sarai was demolished to build the Town Hall. Opposite the Town Hall the British cut a swath through the heart of the city and created the Nai Sarak. The traditional Lal Quila – Masjid Fatehpuri East-West Axis was now changed to the Railway Station – Town Hall North South Axis.

 

The British were able to defeat the rebellion in Delhi by mid-September and in 1876 Victoria declared herself Empress of India.

The first Municipal body of Dilli, set up in 1863, acquired all villages surrounding the walled city for future urban growth. This laid the ground for setting up of the Lal Dora villages in the early 20th century by making possible the land acquisitions for building what is now called Saddi Dilli.

The white civilian population lived north of the Lothian Bridge and the army inside the Red Fort. When the supply of piped water began in the 1890s, through the setting up of the Chandrawal 

waterworks, a rudimentary waste water disposal system was also put in place. Two storm water drains replaced the Mughal era drains. The Saleem Garh drain to exclusively handle the waste from Kashmiri Gate area and the Red Fort Cantonment to the Yamuna while the other carried the waste water from the native quarters. This practice of drawing water from upstream for consumption and dumping waste at a point downstream of the intake has been followed till today.

 

The dumping of all the filth of the city in the river, without first cleaning the water, has killed the river Yamuna in the last 111 years.

Constant efforts to downgrade the status of Dilli continued throughout this period, such as, Dilli was made a part of the Punjab. Though the Muslim nobility and artisans that were forced out or had fled from the city were not allowed to return for many years, the population of the city began to grow with the influx from Punjab and the North West Frontier province. Trade, commerce and manufacturing activities began to expand.

Curzon was Viceroy of India between 1898 and 1905. It is during his term that the 1903 durbar, the grandest of the three Dilli Durbars, was re-organized. Curzon’s interest in conservation led to the preservation of many monuments of Dilli that had been badly damaged, through deliberate destruction, systematic encroachment, willful neglect and vandalism.

The Dilli municipality had grown from its earlier insignificance into a body that had begun to engage itself with everything to do with the city. It intervened actively in the shifting of the cantonment from Daryaganj to beyond the north ridge, in the alignment of the railway, in acquiring lands around the city for future expansion and in demanding the erection of several bridges across the railway tracks for safe passage for the residents.

Electricity arrived when the city was being spruced up for the 1903 durbar and in its wake came the electric tram. By 1907, the tram had connected Ajmeri Gate, Pahar Ganj, Sadar and Sabzi Mandi to Chandni Chowk and Jama Masjid. At its greatest expansion the tramways spread across about 14 miles (24 kilometers), connecting Tees Hazari and SabziMandi to Sadar, Bara Hindu Rao and Pahar Ganj via Chandni Chowk, Jama Masjid, Chawri, LalKuan, Katra Badiyan and Fatehpuri.

 

On 11th December the grand durbar was inaugurated, action replay for King George V who had been crowned earlier in London on 6th May 1910. George V announced on December 12th that the capital will return to Dilli from calcutta. On the 15th, two foundation stones, one by the king and the other by the queen, were placed into the coronation pillar at what is now known as the coronation park. Despite the fact that they had punished Dilli for the rebellion and had moved the capital away from Dilli, they knew that not ruling from Dilli prevented a certain legitimacy that they were desperately seeking and so within 50 odd years of moving the capital out of Dilli, they had to return. We must also remember that even when they ruled from Calcutta the Durbar was always held at Dilli.

On the 15th of December, three days after the announcement to shift the Capital, King George V and Queen Mary laid the foundation stones of the new Capital at Burari, the site of the Coronation Durbar. The stones only carry a date 15th of December 1911 and nothing else. These two stones were fixed into a pillar, known now as the coronation pillar and stayed there till they were removed at dead of night in 1921 and in great secrecy carried in a bullock cart to be installed at the site of the New Capital on Raisina Hill. The secret operation was carried out because the British were afraid of the Civil Disobedience and Khilafat Movements that were then sweeping across the nation.

In any case the announcement did not mean that Dilli became the colonial capital from the next day. The capital formally shifted only in 1912 and four viceroys between 1912 to 1929 namely, Harding, Chelmsford, Reading and Irwin had to stay at the Viceregal Lodge, currently the office of the Vice Chancellor of Delhi University, because the Viceroy’ house, the Rashtrapati Bhawan of today, was still being built. The Land where the Durbar was held was found to be unsuitable as it became water logged during heavy rains. The site finally chosen belonged to the Maharajas of Jodhpur and Jaipur, Raisina Hill belonging to Jodhpur was acquired shortly after 1912 and construction began in 1913, but Jaisinghpura, property of Jaipur, where Connaught Place is located, was acquired in 1925 and construction could begin only in 1928.

By the late 1920s work was in full swing, a city was coming up, there were railway tracks running close to where the Baroda House was to come up later and the tracks went on through the area where the North Block, the South Block and the Viceroy’s house, now the Rashtrapati Bhawan, are located. The tracks were laid to transport the huge quantities of stone brought to the construction site directly from the stone quarries in Rajasthan.

The city that began to rise on the plains stretching down from the Raisina hill was coming up on land that had been leveled and cleared of all traces of earlier settlements, graves, mausoleums, 

wells and villages were removed. On the top of the hill was the Palace of the Viceroy: the representative of the emperor and offices of his minions who also lived off the avenues that radiated on either side of the office blocks, then there was this vast emptiness filled with a straight avenue with water channels on either side and rows of trees. At the other end of the broad avenue was a large statue of the King under a canopy, Royal, dignified and aloof. Between the residence of the Deputy and the likeness of the king was a memorial to those Indian soldiers, who had died for the king: The India Gate.

 

The British Empire was already tottering by the early thirties, the civil disobedience movement and the Salt Satyagrah had mobilized millions across India, the first roundtable conference between Mahatma Gandhi and Irwin had led to release of political prisoners and remission of fines. The Imperial administration was clearly on the retreat and yet it wanted the Viceroy’s House to be larger than the Buckingham Palace and higher than the Jama Masjid.

The decades of the 30s and 40s of the 20th century saw New Delhi coming into its own, an identity created by Baker and Lutyens, that had little to do with Shahjahanabad, now increasingly and disparagingly called Purani or Old Delhi. The only links New Delhi had with Purani Delhi was through the Harding (now Tilak) and Minto Bridges. New Delhi had to be antiseptically clean, and so all wholesale trade and other messy businesses had to be kept out of sight and this was ensured through locating the New Delhi Station at Pahar Ganj, the interstate bus terminus near Ajmeri Gate and the wholesale markets of grains, pulses, vegetables, fruits, cooking oils, pickles, dry fruits, paper, hardware, sanitary ware, timbre and building materials with in or close to the old city. The old had to remain dirty and unkempt to ensure that the new could preen before the world in its latest finery.

The area covered by roads radiating from Raisina hill and now known as the Lutyens’ Bungalow Zone, though Lutyens did not design any of these bungalows, is the quintessential New Delhi. This was a strange city; no industry, no trades, no crafts, it did not produce anything. Though a few very rich industrialists like the Birlas and the Dalmias, members of the Viceroy’s council and the national assembly lived in New Delhi, it was essentially a city of bureaucrats. The junior babu’s lived in colonies like Havlock Square, Jones Square and Raja Bazar Square, between Gole Market and Reading Road. There were just two markets, the Gole Market and the Connaught Place. The lower clerks, drivers, peons, and others lived in the old city and the old villages scattered through south and west Delhi, as did others that kept the city alive.

As the capital grew, new hotels like the Imperial (the venue for partition talks between the British; the congress and the league), The Claridges and The Fonseca came up in New Delhi. The last was replaced by Taj Mansingh in 1978.

New colonies came up, the colony for senior officers were named Maan Nagar and Shaan Nagar, while the sprawling colony for babu’s was called Vinay Nagar, There was reaction to the continuation of the class divide of the colonial period in the names that were chosen despite the attainment of freedom and the declaration that we were a democratic republic and so Maan Nagar and Shaan Nagar became Rabindra Nagar and Bharti Nagar while Vinay Nagar was broken up into Sarojini Nagar, Qidwai Nagar, Netaji Nagar, LaxmiBai Nagar and Nauroji Nagar, no one bothered about the name of the colony of class four employees and that continues to be called Seva Nagar. Lodi Estate for senior officers and Lodi Colony for clerks and section officers came up in the 40s, the Lodi Gardens came up in 1936 to the south of south-end Road. Sardar Shobha Singh, one of the major builder contractors of New Delhi, built large houses and tenements on these lands and named them after his father and thus the Sujan Singh Park came into existence in 1945, one of the last major constructions of New Delhi before India became independent. Delhi of the forties changed forever with the arrival of freedom and the aftermath of Partition. Large parts of the areas to the south, east and west of New Delhi also changed forever, what remained almost unchanged, for a few years at least, was the erstwhile Imperial Capital.

With independence came partition and with partition came a total transformation in the life of all of Delhi, New Delhi included. The celebrations for freedom were soon forgotten as senseless violence, that only humans are capable of, gripped the two new born nations. Delhi and Lahore saw some of the worst of this madness of rioting, arson and killings.

Hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs started pouring into Dilli from what was now West Pakistan and were settled in camps across the city or took shelter where they found it. These camps later developed into areas like Nirankari Colony, Tilak Nagar, Ramesh Nagar, Ashok Nagar, Moti Nagar, Rajinder Nagar, Patel Nagar, Lajpat Nagar and Karbala etc from the early fifties. The camping site of the refugees from East Pakistan eventually became Chitaranjan Park in the 1970s.

Dilli had taken a life of its own, no one was planning it any longer and it grew to accommodate the shelter less. The area that was New Delhi began to change rapidly, Chankya Puri came up as the diplomatic enclave. The Ashoka, The Janpath Hotel and The Lodi Hotels came up to cater to the rising number of visitors to the capital of Independent India. New markets like the Ghaffar Market, Khan Market, Shankar Market, Meher Chand Market, Sarojini Nagar Markets came up to meet the requirements of an ever expanding population.

The 50s and 60 is also the period when the Central Government got down to the serious business of institution building, Lalit Kala Academy, Sahitya Academy, The UGC, Academies of Research in Sciences, Agriculture, Social Sciences and Historical research were set up and architects like Habib Rehman and AchyutKanvinde played a leading role in developing a new architectural vocabulary for an independent and confident nation. Buildings and offices like KrishiBhawan, Rail Bhawan, UdyogBhawan, VayuSenaBhawan, ShastriBhawan, VigyanBhawan and the National Museum slowly but surely began to change the contours of Imperial Delhi.

From the 70 to the present is a period that has seen Dilli and its environs undergoing major transformations. Private builders had begun to promote large residential colonies from the mid-50s and Hauz Khas, Green Park, South Extension, Defence Colony, Kailash Colony, Model Town, Kirti Nagar, Maharani Bagh, Rajouri Garden, Friends Colony etc had mushroomed around both the Old and New Dilli by the1960s. Land prices began their unending northward journey; the Central Government stepped in to build the sprawling R.K. Puram for its own employees, it also set up the DDA with the express objective of providing affordable housing to Dilliwallas.

The DDA launched co-operative housing schemes and self financing schemes for the middle and upper middle classes and Janakpuri, Dilshad Garden, Rohini, Peetampura, Kalkaji Extension, Alakhnanda, Munirka, Patparganj, VasantKunj, Dwarka MayurViharetc came up, builders launched expensive colonies like Mansarovar Garden, Greater Kailash, Vasant Vihar. A large number of illegal colonies too sprang up, at times on encroached lands at times on land kept aside as green areas and gradually the planners began to lose direction.

Two mega sporting events, the very successful 1982 Asian Games and the unremarkable Commonwealth games and the Metro have done much to add to the glitz of the city but unfortunately Dilli is increasingly becoming a city that has no place for the pedestrian, for those on bicycles, for the old, the infirm, the handicapped and the differently-abled. Dilli has expanded at the cost of its original residents, the villagers; the callousness that the city fathers have exhibited about the needs of the villagers is also reflected in the city’s attitude towards the weak and the voiceless. Unless concerns about pollution and environment and making the city disabled and aged friendly begin to engage us in a fundamental manner, there is little chance of Dilli living up to its history of an eternal city.

References