‘Sair-e-Dilli’: A new book views Delhi’s past through a human lens
DAG’s ‘Sair-e-Dilli’, looks at the lived experiences of Delhi’s inhabitants between the 19th and 20th centuries
Is there any one “Delhi"? It is a question that Sair-e-Dilli, a new publication by DAG, seeks to answer. Through diverse visual representations of the city in the form of maps, paintings, photographs and illustrations spanning 19-20th centuries, the book looks at how cities shifted shape as empires rose and fell, and centres of power moved to newer locations, thus expanding the breadth and scale of Delhi. “The many historic cities of Delhi were not built on top of the other—like those of Rome or Istanbul—but laid out side by side on Delhi’s more expansive plain; and as each fell into decay, they created a sort of open-air archaeological park," writes Ashish Anand, CEO and managing director, DAG, in a note in the book, which was published as a companion to the recently concluded exhibition of the same name in the Capital.
Sair-e-Dilli, edited by historian Swapna Liddle, features essays by Rudrangshu Mukherjee, chancellor and professor of history at Ashoka University, Haryana, and A.G. Krishna Menon, an architect, urban planner and conservation consult ant. For Liddle, it was important that the publication looked beyond a Western construct of Delhi’s history, which focused more on the chronology of its his toric "seven cities" and their architecture, rather than on the sociocultural milieu at the time.
As Menon writes in his essay, Preserving Delhi’s Past and Drafting its Future, “At one level, the prints, paintings and photo graphs draw attention to some of the familiar tropes of Orientalism that the for eign gaze signified in the representation of the modern cultural landscape of India, but at another, it signals the elision of the local gaze, which is seldom fore grounded." He asserts that the signifi cance of this local gaze has seldom been interrogated by contemporary architects, urban planners and conservation profes sionals as a polemic issue. Today, it is civil society that is more aware of the importance of viewing local heritage beyond the colonial viewpoint. And that is evident in the kind of walks and talks that have been taking place across Delhi. And that’s where this book plays a role too in spot lighting local cultural histories.
Though Delhi has a very long and layered history, with the Tomar dynasty establishing its seat of power in the 11th century, the city’s visual record—in terms of depiction of built spaces—dates largely from the late 18th century onwards. According to Liddle, the 19th century thus becomes a fascinating period in this sort of representation, through paintings, prints and photographs. “This coincides with some important writings on these historic places by Indian as well as colo nial writers. It is therefore a rewarding and instructive exercise to study this period to see how different artists and writers were viewing the city, at the same time as these visual representations were being created," she says.
In the works of colonial administrators and historians such as Alexander Cunningham, who was appointed by the Government of India in 1862 to study historical remains from Delhi to Bihar, these historic sites were merely ruins or monuments, a way of understanding the past, but with limited relevance to the present. But when Liddle read Indian writings of the 18th-19th centuries, she realised that Indians saw these places as living sites, which had their histories, but were also a part of the present, for instance, as places associated with social and cultural beliefs and practices.
Take, the four-volume Asar-us-Sanadid, published in 1847 and written by Syed Ahmad Khan, a judicial officer in the East India Company’s government. He too, like Cunningham, was a member of the Archaeological Society, but in his works, he focused on the culture of con temporary Shahjahanabad. He added nuggets from his own interactions to his writings, highlighting people that inhabited different sites of the city, be it Miyan Ghulam Nur, the khadim of the dargah of Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, or accounts of his visit to Kalkaji temple in Bahapur.
The publication shows the changes that took place in the city, especially post the first war of independence of 1857 and after the capital was transferred from Calcutta to Delhi in 1912, and the subsequent building of New Delhi. In the early photo graphs, there are visible changes in the landscape of Shahjahanabad in the aftermath of the 1857 revolt, with demolition of buildings, new construction in Chandni Chowk and the erasure of a canal that had once flowed through the city. “Most visual representations of the city’s historic monuments and sites seen here happened under the influence of colonial rule, and followed conventions that were influenced by the colonial lens. Hence we frequently see picturesque idealisation, or the emphasising of the architectural at the expense of the human element," says Liddle.
The challenge was, given the limitations of this visual record, how to illustrate accounts of Indians in the 19th century, such as Syed Ahmad Khan, which went against colonial understandings of historic cities as only remnants of the past. “...they are there if we look closely— the mundane activities on a rooftop terrace outside the northern gate of Jama Masjid as seen in a Company painting, or the homes of the village of Indarpat within the Purana Qila in a photo by an unknown photographer," she elaborates.
The visual material also sheds light on what the city’s landscape could have been. For instance, in a map of New Delhi, you can see some important features marked, which were not ultimately built. One of these included an enclave for higher education planned between Ferozshah Road and Connaught Place. “In the 1910s, it was thought that colleges would be located here, so we see ‘Great College Street’ and ‘University Square’, as well as plots for individual institutions marked on it. But politics overtook town planning," says Liddle.
Student agitations against British rule made administrators change their mind in favour of a university campus at a safe distance from the new capital city. Many such details in several maps highlight how such political conditions impacted the development of the city. “By bringing this rich collection of visual records into the public eye, it invites all of those who are interested in Delhi’s heritage to explore the history of these sites through these materials. It also encourages us to go back and rethink our own engagements with the sites, which are in fact living spaces in our own time," she says.
‘Sair-e-Dilli’ is available at DAG galleries in Delhi and Mumbai, and on the website.
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