Old Delhi - In search of our roots..

By Aniruddha Guha Sarkar https://www.instagram.com/aniruddha_gs/ New Delhi, India Prologue I often wondered why most of us start learning again from our outdated past as we grow older and (presumably) wiser. Why does a modern society need to preserve its past heritage and culture? Why should a nation care about its heritage cities which have long outlived their glory and utility? As I kept going to Old Delhi or Shahjahanabad (as it was called during the Mughal era when the city was founded around 1650 AD by Emperor Shahjahan) often over the last few years for clicking a few smart street photos, the answers to the questions above became slowly clear to me - as I learned to look beyond the smart photos into the life and times of this breathing heritage. Heritage cities the world over have a familiar trajectory - time of glory to a long phase of decay till it becomes legacy enough not to belong to the fast-moving present anymore, till it becomes legacy enough to find a place in the museums. Despite such a trajectory, a few living heritage cities still have unique stories to tell and a few precious wisdoms to share with the present and the future! The Log 1648 AD – The mighty Moghul Emperor Shahjahan has just shifted his capital to Delhi and his own residence to the newly constructed palace complex inside his fort city (Red Fort - a UNESCO world heritage site). A new capital city Shahjahanabad (now called ‘Old Delhi’) started to come up to the west of the fort in a quarter of a circle, with the Red Fort as the focal point. The iconic Jama Masjid gets constructed in about a decade a little to the southwest of Red Fort. While the royal family occupied the palace complex inside the fort, the rich and powerful of the royal court started building their mansions (called ‘Havelis’ in Urdu) on the west of the fort along the well-planned streets and lanes of Shahjahanabad. Towards the west of those mansions, start coming up markets that were needed for the royalty – separate markets for jewelry, fancy dresses, street food, etc. The finest workmen needed at those markets came from all across India regardless of their religions or castes and set up their modest living quarters nearby. Shahjahanabad was built by the Mughals for the Mughals. But the Mughals attempted to create a unique capital city without any preference for the religions or caste of its citizens. The result was a sprawling city of the best workmen and cultures from various parts of the large country, belonging to various religions. Very soon, Shahjahanabad became a planned capital city of 600,000 inhabitants (more than that of Paris at that time) of many religions – not only the dominant Muslims but also Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, and a growing number of European Christians. Primarily due to the religious liberalism of most of the Mughal emperors, the next century would see a significant rise of multi-ethnic cultural activities and expansion of trade in the city. Time changes for everyone, and so does fortune! Both changed for Shahjahanabad soon – the mighty Mughal empire started to decay from the early 18th century taking the fate of Shahjahanabad along with it! The entire 18th century was marked by misrule by inapt Mughal emperors leading to the weakening of the empire and the rise of Marathas and the British ‘East India Company’. The British decisively won in 1803 AD and established control of the city (except the Red Fort, where the figurehead Mughal emperor and the royal family still lived). 1857 AD - Everything changed forever in 1857 when an Indian contingent of the British army revolted under the name of the Mughal emperor, defeating the British to wrest control of Shahjahanabad. What followed was widespread arson and looting of the properties in Shahjahanabad by the accomplishes of the revolting soldiers. Four months later, the British Army regained control, and what followed was again arson and looting of properties of all those in Shahjahanabad who had reportedly supported the revolt. The last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was expelled to Rangoon, and Red Fort was finally taken over by the British. Many palatial mansions in the city (primarily of wealthy Muslims) were demolished, leading to thousands of Muslims migrating out. Large parts of Shahjahanabad, adjacent to the Red Fort, were cleared for security reasons - the demography, as well as the ethnicity of Shahjahanabad, had changed permanently! Now Europeans start to build their own settlement north of Shahjahanabad. The following decades saw a deepening of British control and imprint on Shahjahanabad. Shahjahanabad had already started its journey into political oblivion as the British consolidated its administrative functions in Calcutta. But, curiously, this was also a time of quietude when liberal thoughts, education, unique culture, and trade grew in Shahjahanabad despite its falling political fortune. Liberal thinking and the spread of education gave birth to many schools & early Indian colleges around Shahjahanabad and also many religious societies. The political fortune of Shahjahanabad kept falling further in the early 20th century as the British started building a new capital city in New Delhi, just south of Shahjahanabad. Sandwiched between the new capital city in the south and the European settlement in the north, Shahjahanabad quickly became another overcrowded Indian city. Despite all that, Shahjahanabad (called ‘Old Delhi’ by now) managed to retain its importance in terms of a city with an Indian identity and liberal thinking. Primarily due to its rich multi-ethnic culture, it was still breathing its Indian-ness. Its cultural heritage and free-thinking educational institutions made a significant contribution to the Indian freedom struggle that followed in the subsequent decades – a fact that is still visible in some narrow lanes of Old Delhi! 1947 AD – The nation became independent on 15th August 1947, and the first Prime Minister of the new nation hoisted the national flag on that day from the ramparts of Red Fort. The Red Fort soon became the symbolic heart of the nation from where the Prime Minister hoists the national flag on every Independence Day, even now! But in 1947, the entire country, including Old Delhi, was to see a bloody and violent migration of Muslims to Pakistan and Hindus from Pakistan into India within a fortnight from the joyous Independence Day - Millions of people crossed over in either direction in search of safety leaving their empty homes behind, thousands were brutally killed in sectarian violence, and hundreds of thousands became refugees in their own motherland. In the end, scores of Muslims left Old Delhi for Pakistan, and many Hindus from Pakistan took their place in the same city. Old Delhi absorbed more people than it had let go without any new construction, only to become more chaotic. In the decades that followed that bloody event, Old Delhi was to continue its downward journey into oblivion as this overcrowded city was not a part of the blueprint that independent India had created for itself. Many grand havelis started crumbling or got taken over by poor migrants, small shops and businesses kept cropping up in the narrow lanes or just outside the once-sprawling haveli complexes; roads became full with all possible kinds of transport, many original inhabitants left for better places and so on. 2021 AD - It's only recently that Old Delhi is getting a fair bit of attention from the local government – arguably for two reasons, to exploit its potential as a tourist destination and, more respectfully, to preserve the heritage and unique culture that Old Delhi still practices. The city has now been connected to the rest of Delhi with the metro railway, and the main roads have been widened, digital services have been made available, the main thoroughfare through Chandni Chowk has been decongested, reclaimed, and reconstructed to be returned to its 360-year-old glory, and so on. Old Delhi, despite all the odds since the early 19th century till date, has managed not only to survive into the 21st century but also grow its unique culture. It is still such a joy to stand in the middle of the deafening crowd there and smell the history at every street corner and feel the multi-ethnicity which is a core Indian value. Epilogue As I went through the unique history of Old Delhi, I understood the place and its people much better. My experience of Old Delhi, my personal interpretation of my experiences, and my expressions of it (my images) became much more honest and truer to myself and the time & place that Old Delhi now is! I was still missing answers to those questions that I started with – why should Old Delhi still be important to me and to the nation? What do I have to learn from it? - I needed to dive deeper into the place and my own self to find the answers, I needed to ‘feel’ the place again in the context of its past now. I stood before the mighty Red Fort, steeped in 360 years of history and visited by people from all parts of the world now – it still whispers its complex history to us all. It was never foreign; it was always a part of me – through my childhood imagination of this place shaped by televised addresses to the nation by successive Prime Ministers from here on every Independence Day.   A few hundred meters to the south-west stands another 360-year-old iconic monument – the Jama Masjid – Asia’s biggest mosque. Inside it reigns eternal peace and tranquility amongst the devout Muslim men and women. The roads just outside its gates are teaming with life - with people and all forms of transport jostling for every inch of space. With a closer look at the place and the people around, I start to discover various actors playing their roles – as they may have done for centuries – a devout Muslim in prayer in his small shop just behind the mosque, the religious tourists come from faraway places by overnight buses, the vendors selling their own modest merchandise for a living, the street food joints, the local shops, various forms of transports and so on – I feel life in its full glory and now armed with the history of the place, I know now that this life is not too different from the life that this place may have had centuries back – I feel a precious continuity. This is what, I now realize, sets Old Delhi apart from many other heritage cities – it is still very much alive and continuous – I just have to be a part of it to feel the past and our collective ‘roots’. The crowd in front doesn’t have any religion as it has people of all religions in it! Just around the corner, I find a van in front of a shop waiting to be unloaded with two of its window panes reflecting the Jama Masjid bathed in the setting sun while the next window pane displays poster of a Hindu God and Goddess!! A motorbike parked behind the mosque proudly carries the flag of a Hindu outfit while its rear-view mirror reflects the mosque as the sun sets! I realize, again, that this place remains (despite all the religious differences) a microcosm of India.  Walking along, I find narrow alleys full of small fast-food restaurants. Various fast foods are a part of the rich culinary history of Old Delhi, and these shops are extending continuity to that rich tradition. Old Delhi today is now an enigma – though it still has a faint trail of the royalty who had built the city long back, is now populated largely by a huge middle class and gets visibly taken over by a huge population of migrant daily wagers working in various markets. While the royalty and the middle class carry the unique tradition of this place and practice a traditional cultural/ religious or political life, the daily wagers live a meager life, some of whom spend their nights with old film posters as their roof. Space has become a precious commodity in this overcrowded city now – so much so that a good part of the lives of the lower middle class and the daily wagers get played in the open. Globalization is still finding a narrow path to enter this place of orthodox lifestyle. The original design of Old Delhi had dedicated markets to the west, beyond the mansions, and they are still there. The only difference is that they have lost the royal customers. Instead, they are now frequented by thousands of commoners. Much of Old Delhi today survives on these markets in one way or the other. Quieter residential lanes/ areas can be found away from these markets towards the west. Many of them have a unique history and have a rich history of notable contributions to the Indian independence movement during the first half of the 20th century – and a temple is still dedicated to these freedom heroes. With time, these areas have changed – the people and the buildings have aged, signatures of the new times have arrived, and the people here have adjusted to the changing times. But what is different is that most people here have carried their heritage with them! Hari Ram (name changed), a former national-level wrestler who had risen to prominence in the 1970s and knew the national leaders then, still ran his wrestling school till his passing away a few years ago. He would treat me (or anyone else) like his own family member, make us sit with him, and share stories & values of his times. Hyder Ali (name changed) still trains pet parrots (he even carries them on his morning walks to the market) and pigeons on his rooftop – much like his great-grandfather did almost a century ago! And through them, I realize the lives and times of my parents and my grandparents better. Almost every lane in Old Delhi has its own Hyder Ali and Hari Rams, who open their doors to you and let you experience and learn from the times gone by. If people make what a place is, then these people make what Old Delhi is – a heritage city with a unique history where the heritage is warm, alive and continuous – bridging our past with our present, allowing us to feel and learn from our own past, our own roots. We do have our own cyber cities and not far from Old Delhi, we have dozens of our ultra-modern residential high-rise mini-cities. Socio-economically, I probably belong more there, and I appreciate the convenience, comfort and stellar architecture of those high-rise mini-cities. But after a while, I realize I am missing a connection with my past there, I am not learning much from those places…. I realize how important continuity is, how important Hari Rams and Hyder Alis are for us to remain ‘rooted’, and how important Old Delhi still is! ******** End ***********