DISSERTATION FINAL REPORT
INTERPRETATION OF SHAHJAHANABAD BY TRAVELLERS
Divya Chand A/2441/2012 4th-B, B. Arch SPA, New Delhi
Guide: Ms. Kanak Tiwari Co-ordinator: Prof. Jaya Kumar
ABSTRACT A good travel writer can give you the warp and weft of everyday life, the generalities of people’s existence that is rarely reflected in academic writing or journalism, and hardly touched on by any other discipline. (William Dalrymple in conversation with Colin Thubron, 2015)
This dissertation is an exercise in gathering accounts of various travelers over the centuries who have visited Shahjahanabad and perceived its urban spaces and written about them. The text recognizes the wider significance of travelogues in social studies. Interpretations of travelogues till now, specifically in the Indian context are looked at. An attempt is then made to analyze the gathered accounts about Shahjahanabad, to understand its past and present. Through this process, we achieve an understanding of the spatial evolution of Shahjahanabad through the centuries. What is also discovered, is the evolution of how this place has been perceived by visitors and outsiders, as well as locals, and how this perception has altered along with the space. We see how travel writing has played an important role in history, is building character of places. Further, the increasing importance of good, observational writing is noticed, in today’s age of information and imagery overload. Travel writing not just documents the observations of a person at a place, but can help us in better understanding the city at a personal level.
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Declaration The research work embodied in this dissertation titled INTERPRETATION OF SHAHJAHANABAD BY TRAVELLERS has been carried out by the undersigned as part of the undergraduate Dissertation programme in the Department of Architecture, School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, under the supervision of MS. KANAK TIWARI. The undersigned hereby declares that this is his/her original work and has not been plagiarised in part or full form from any source.
(Signature) Name: DIVYA CHAND Roll No.: A/2441/2012 Date:
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acknowledgements First and foremost, I have to thank my guide, Ms. Kanak Tiwari. Without her assistance, dedicated involvement and commendable patience in every step throughout the process, this paper would have never been accomplished. I would like to thank you very much for your support and understanding over these past months. I would also like to show gratitude to my dissertation co-ordinator, Prof. Jaya Kumar, for her support and guidance. Getting through my dissertation has been tedious but a pleasure and I am much grateful to School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi for providing me with this opportunity. It was a humbling experience to indulge in research, and made me realise all the hours of hard work that all authors that I’ve quoted in here and more must have put into their extensive studies. This dissertation stands as a testament to my admiration for them, and aspiration to gather as much knowledge and wisdom, in strive for a more informed opinion. I am also incredibly grateful to my family, for their blind support, and compliance with my demands on acquiring all the books that I ever asked for.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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ABSTRACT DECLERATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENT LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES 1.INTRODUCTION 1.1. Research Question + Introducing Research 1.2. Aims and Objectives 1.3. Scope and Limitations 1.4. Research Methodology
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2.SIGNIFICANCE OF TRAVELOGUES 2.1. Travelogues as important accounts of society 2.2. Previous interpretations of Travelogues
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3.LOOKING AT SHAHJAHANABAD 3.1. A historical overview of Shahjahanabad 3.2. Historical overview through the eyes of travelers
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4.LEARNING AND CONCLUSION
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BIBLIOGRAPHY PLAGIARISM CHECK
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LIST of figures Figure1: Watercolour of Chandni Chowk in Delhi from ‘Views by Seeta Ram from Delhi to Tughlikabad Vol. VII’ produced for Lord Moira, afterwards the Marquess of Hastings, by Sita Ram between 1814-15. Figure2: Chandni Chowk in the 1860s, photograph by Samue Bourne Figures 3 and 4: View from atop the south western minaret of the Jama Masjid, photographs by author. Figure5: A hidden jewel in the tiny lanes, Photo by author Figures 6 and 7: The Diwan-e-khas in the Red Fort, As in the Delhi book and as today.
LIST of tables TABLE 1: Graph showing the major events in timeline, since the conception of Shahjahanabad in mid-seventeenth century Source: Wikimedia Commons
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1. introduction 1.1 Research Question: How have travelers over the centuries perceived urban spaces of Shahjahanabad and how can their writings help us better understand the city?
Introducing Research: A common experience of people who travel, is that time slows down when they are on their journeys. An exercise in time perception (Matt Danzico, 2013) suggests that when we experience something new, unusual and dynamic; our senses are heightened; we take in more details about sights, sound and smell than we normally would. As our brain records more memories, we tend to believe that new experiences last longer. Throughout history, countless explorers have trotted across the globe, recording their incredible journeys. In olden times, with limited connectivity and interterritorial conversation, these travelers were important members of the society. Carrying messages over large distances passing through multiple kingdoms and societies, they were few in the world who had seen and experienced settlements and spaces of multiple cultures. Their records were extremely precious to leaders and scholars of those times as they held a wealth of information about lands near and far away. Much of these records have survived to this day, acting as some of the most important primary sources of history available. Apart from giving insights into the courts, public events and military developments, travel accounts also provide valuable and detailed descriptions of day-to-day activities—common habits and customs that the locals consider unremarkable. (Maxwell, 2013) Traveler’s accounts throughout history, around the world, thus, give detailed and vivid accounts of experiences. They are rich repositories of information that document personal, cultural, social, political and spatial conditions that individuals experience in certain places and times. They therefore make intriguing instruments of historical research. Generally as first-hand experiences, travel accounts tend to give unfeigned insights into the society and spaces of the period. While a lot of monumental architecture, generally in the form of palaces, forts and tombs still survive to date to be studied and investigated; the vernacular of bygone eras is a challenging domain of study. In this case, travel accounts act as useful resources to help comprehend the daily city life, the nature of public spaces, the prevalent domestic architecture etc. Accounts by travelers tend to be less glorified and are generally unbiased as compared to those by court historians and hence, give a more honest picture of the time. Accounts of the same place by different people over different times, gives a source of analyzing temporal changes. We can see how the same space was adapted to various uses, by 1
different groups of people in different political and social contexts. According to Henri Lefebvre’s theory, there are 3 natures of spaces. Conceived space or conceptualized space is what the maker envisions. They identify and determine the nature of space. The space is then lived in and given character by people. This is Lived space. It is directly lived through its associated images and symbols. Perceived space, on the other hand is a social product. The spatial practice of a society secretes that society’s space. The traveler as an outsider has a good stand to perceive and analyze this outside space, generally with an investigative, observing eye. This visitor of chosen space can produce a more informed and comparative understanding of space, compared to what the maker or resident/user of that space could produce. The wider purpose of this dissertation is to establish travelogues as rich, tenable sources of information to re-imagine history and generate a clear picture of spaces and society of certain periods in documented places. The dissertation further intends to explore the significance of travel writing in the present day, within the contemporary context of abundant access to information and imagery over the Internet. This exercise is taken up in the context of Shahjahanabad. The Mughals are said to have dominated the golden era in India’s history: culture and trade booming, and construction of iconic architecture, much of which still survives, proudly standing to this day as India’s image of a rich and exotic culture. While these are still available, for those interested, to be studied and investigated; through the study of travel accounts, this dissertation aims to analyze how the Mughal city of Shah Jahan was like outside the court of the rulers during its conception and initial years. The text then journeys through the life of Shahjahanabad along with travelers who’ve visited this place through the ages. The space has evolved through time, alongside the various social and political events that have taken place there. Various people, with varying backgrounds and varying intents of visit have come, and have played a part in creating a diverse repository of information about this place. The text attempts to delve into this repository, with an objective to dig out information and inferences of relevance to the subjects of architecture and urban studies.
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1.2 Aim and Objectives: AIM: The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the various facets of the historical city of Shahjahanabad through the accounts of travelers who have visited it over the many centuries since its conception. OBJECTIVES: • To explore the scope of spatial analysis of places, by studying travelogues of visitors to these places • To recognize the wider significance of travelogues, and how they have been interpreted till date, particularly in the context of architectural discussion • To study the past and present of the urban spaces of Shahjahanabad, through the writings of a chosen set of visitors • To derive conclusions through this study about the evolution of the place and simultaneous evolution of its perception by visitors • Explore relevance and significance of travel writing in the present day, in the context of architecture and city studies 1.3 Scope and Limitations SCOPE: Research work for this dissertation is carried out specifically for Shahjahanabad. Travelogues analyzed are limited to foreign travelers who have visited India. Spaces chosen for analysis are city spaces outside the court of the Mughals, considering that the spectacular grandeur of the palace is already well discussed. A mapping of the culture of use of spaces by the common people is envisioned. For analyzing spatial characteristics and evolution of the same, accounts by travelers from Mughal times to the present are used. LIMITATIONS: • Due to the vast number of travellers who’ve headed here, it is next to impossible to go through all the visitor accounts written of these places. Hence, the research is limited to a chosen set of writers, mostly accessible, popular, and the writings of who tend to stoop towards spatial descriptions. • As the number of travelers and their accounts has exponentially been increasing along the studied timeline, the selection of accounts is the author’s personal choice, and doesn’t necessarily abide by any criterion. • Many popular visitors from the west in past, whove left records to studies, spent time in the ruler’s court as guests of the royal family. Hence, records of everyday 3
life and spaces, beyond the blinding splendor of the Mughals, are hard to unearth. • During the analysis of spaces by travelers, one has to keep in mind the personal views and bias said writer must’ve possessed. Bias against/for the ruler, a stereotype in the mindset, responsibility of reporting findings to their employers etc. might’ve affected their reports. • Most travelers wrote accounts in their own indigenous languages and their writings have undergone several translations and abberrations to reach their current forms. A lot of precious accounts are also inaccessible due to unavailability of translations. 1.4 Research Methodology Research for this dissertation is done through the study of primary and secondary accounts by travelers to the walled city of Delhi. Some literature on the analysis of travelers to India in the past is also referred to. The findings from the study are occasionally also compared to the present state of spaces discussed, to first-hand accounts of these spaces by the author. There is an attempt to analyze the writings based on year and era when the travelers visited, personal traits of the traveler, condition of the city at that time and other aspects of relevance.
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2. SIGNIFICANCE OF TRAVELOGUES 2.1 Travelogues as important accounts of society Travelogues, over the ages, have played an important role in shaping our understanding of society in times and places separate from our own. They are a valuable source of descriptive historical evidence. As they are primary accounts of the incidents and places described, there is no error of interpretation to worry about. They help in recreating an image of the past as the writer saw it, first-hand. They help in recreation of the socio-cultural scene and the way of life of the place described through a personal lens. They go beyond just civic, political or military data, which is generally accessible from other official sources. In history, travelers were not just tourists but part explorer, part discoverers and part historians. They were amongst the more learned and aware people of the society and their writings tend to reveal much about the times and places, with a certain intellect. In the past, the few who traveled, mostly used to be important people of the society. Only few ever got to leave their native lands and these were usually conquerors, rulers, big merchants, scholars on assignment or religious mercenaries etc. They developed a better understanding of the world at large than the others got to, as they had access to information and experiences that the majority didn’t. Marco Polo’s written experience of the Silk Route is believed to be the first account for western readers to throw light on the mystical east. Travelers often gained enough information and understanding to compare and analyze places as we will see further on in the writing, when Bernier compares Shah Jahan’s capital to Paris. These travelers facilitated exchange of religious and cultural ideas beyond borders, and often became language scholars. Individual travel accounts from the past offer a fuller representation of the process of early modern globalization—a narrative too often told only by number and statistics. Another plus point for travel accounts would be the valuable and detailed description of day to day activities—common habits and customs and lifestyle. Written in a 3rd person perspective, by outsiders, accounts give details of life that other sources don’t because the locals might find them unremarkable. Some of these accounts also give relatively unfeigned understandings of the condition of society, as they are generally personal documents of the writers. Not in obligation to any court, commissioner, company or lord, it captures the unaltered impressions on the mind of the writer.
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2.2 Previous interpretations of travelogues Perhaps the oldest known, and amongst the most celebrated of travelogues is The Odyssey of Homer. It is in the form of a Greek epic poem, believed to be composed near the end of 8th century BC and describes Homer’s 10-year struggle to return home after the Trojan War. While Iliad, the other of the two of Homer’s epic poems talks of events, quarrels and provides a comprehensive military account of the Trojan War, The Odyssey has a certain bent towards the texture of everyday life in its diverse discourses. The Odyssey offers an astonishing variety of sensory experience. (Edith Hall, 2008) While this epic is considered to belong in the genre of magical realism, it contains several passages describing landscape and physical environments. The visual brilliance of The Odyssey has inspired, apart from countless novels and poems, a number of visual artworks. So influential were the effects of The Odyssey, not only on travel documentation and literature, but all forms of art ranging from painting and sculpture to poetry and music, that underlying effects of its style are now indiscernible, as they’ve penetrated through western culture throughout the world. Homer’s Odyssey formed the foundation of travel writing in the western world. Over the many centuries that have followed, as mankind flourished, and as several kingdoms and settlements came up in lands far, far away; several individuals ventured out to discover lands distant and away from their own. What drove the early traveler were commonly opportunities of trade and governance. Although there were many a soul who ventured on voyages guided purely by their human curiosity to discover new places and try to take in all as much of the flora, fauna and culture of a place. Many travelers from the west headed east down the silk route in search of the famous goods and spices the east had to offer. With these items of delicacy, what the travelers took back home were stories of great adventure and the many places of intrigue they had seen on their journeys. Since the number of people who got to venture on these great journeys was very few in ancient times, people looked upon the travelers with great veneration. Their writings were extremely precious accounts of what the world held beyond the limits of their own lands that they were tied down to. Marco Polo (1254-1324), is probably the most famous Westerner who traveled on the Silk Road. He excelled all the other travelers in his determination, his writing, and his influence. His journey through Asia lasted 24 years. He reached further than any of his predecessors, beyond Mongolia to China. He became a confidant of Kublai Khan (1214-1294). He traveled the whole of China and returned to tell the tale, which became the greatest travelogue. (Silkroad foundation, 1997) Marco Polo’s accounts are some of the most indispensable writings in the history of mankind. They give in explicit detail the graphic account of his journey, his time at Kublai Khan’s court. Considered of great importance, multiple copies of his manuscripts were made within the century of his death, these writings paved the way for many travelers who headed east.
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One of the many cases, which highlight the great significance and impact that Polo’s writings have had, is in how the revered author Italo Calvino chose him as a protagonist for his famous novel ‘Invisible Cities’. The book is in the form of a conversation between Marco Polo and the great emperor Kublai Khan. The dialogue majorly consists of Polo telling Khan about the state of his empire and the many cities he has visited in his journeys. The book is a complex piece of literature with Polo’s accounts swinging between memory, imagination and fantasy. Though fiction, this book is a great example that illustrates the traveler as an intellectual who people approached for wisdom and information. With a complex understanding of cities, its architecture, spaces and people, Marco Polo has Kublai Khan riveted to his word through the dialogue. The book, because of it’s approach to the imaginative potentialities of cities has oft been used by architects and artists to visualize how cities can be, their secret folds… It offers a beautiful alternative approach to thinking about cities, how they’re formed and how they function. (Check in Architecture, 2008) It is a popular read amongst architects and planners and has also been used as an exercise in architectural schools to understand the various depths of spatial relationships. Even to this day, many people follow Marco Polo’s footsteps and undertake this journey through the oriental lands amongst the remains of the Mongol empire. William Dalrymple’s ‘In Xanadu’ is a book accounting one such journey in the 1980s. This is his first book, written at the age of 22, and describes his journey from Jerusalem to Xanadu. Covering all aspects of his journey, the most notable factor of Dalrymple’s writings here would be his thorough understanding of spaces architecturally and his comparison of spaces as he sees them and as Marco Polo and others who traced his path have described them before. The book is said to be one of the most detailed travelogues of recent times, and the author’s eye for architectural details is evident. The book recreates the place of travel both as Dalrymple saw it and as Marco Polo did and hence, offers the reader an insight into the spatial changes that have occurred between the times these two travelers explored and observed these places. While Marco Polo’s visit to India was limited to the Coromandel Coast on his way back from China, many travelers have been attracted to the depths of India. We owe much of our knowledge of India’s past to these visitors as they left detailed accounts of their journeys, experiences and observations that they made here. There were many reasons that brought travelers here. There were Greeks who accompanied Alexander the Great in his Indian Campaign and then travelled on further, in this land that they found mystical. A good number of pilgrims from China headed to India, to visit the Buddhist monasteries and relics. Their accounts narrate in detail the existing caste system, the educational requirements for the Brahmins, the teaching of Buddhist doctrines, the legal and economic practices, the social and cultural norms, the eating habits of the natives, the natural and manufactured products of India and the prevalent urban life and architecture. India saw a number of Islamic visitors as well. The practices and customs of India intrigued them and they developed a sense of respect for the wisdom and knowledge of the land despite their radically different religious culture. The ongoing Islamic reign facilitated the travels of these 7
merchants and writers, and often they joined the court of the rulers as informants and ministers. Thus, detailed accounts of from within the courts of Ghazni, Tughlaq and the likes still exist. Often overwhelmed by the scale and grandeur of the many wonders of India, the narratives carry valuable information on the topography, culture and places at that time. The subsequent centuries saw a hoard of visitors from Europe, having heard of the great wealth of the East, drawn here mostly by the prospect of trade and profit. The discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in 1497 by Vasco da Gama, opened the country up for visitors from the west, who no longer needed to pass through Arab lands in order to reach India. Mastery of the sea route brought not just traders, but also clergymen, scholars, and even conquistadors. A sizeable number of accounts by European travelers have since been written. They have set the foundation for India’s image in the western mind, promoting cultural exchange through words, in the realms of philosophy, religion, language and more. From the advent of the East India Company’s trade and into the peak of the Raj, a score of British people documented their experiences in India and left diaries that give detailed (though often biased) renditions of their time here. The number of visitors to India has only escalated with the varying means, and increasing ease of travel. A diverse, rich reservoir of potent information lies in the accounts of these travelers. “Rare, however, are studies that focus on the nature of travel accounts more generally, their historical influence, their meaning as expressions of their times, and the problems they raise as historical sources.” (Bentley, 2003). In the context of travelers to India either, not a large amount of such analysis has been done. ‘The India They Saw: Foreign Accounts’ is a 4-volume compendium of foreign perceptions of India. This book talks of the early European travelers and colonial historians who discussed the Indian system of codifying the key facts and lessons of history as mythology and who were interested in the political history and forms of government, administrative and social systems, military techniques and rules of warfare, taxes, climate and physical landscape, agriculture, trade and commerce, ports, mineral resources, mining and deep sea excavation, social and economic conditions of the Indian kingdoms, the morals and manners of the people, the religious diversity and co-existence and the actual as well as the ideal conduct of kings. (Gupta, 2012). The books are divided into volumes according to time to accommodate the great number of accounts emerging from each era of history. The Architecture section in these books bring together various instances from accounts of people describing Temples and Caves, Tanks and Lakes, Forts and Palaces, Town Planning, Mosques and Mausoleums. Though arbitrary, this section gives an insight into the quality of spatial information available in travel accounts. The book also has some accounts wherein mention has been made of local Towns and Bazaars and of the dwellings of common people. The book is a commendable collection of interesting excerpts from the vast number of travel accounts that exist describing the country and various aspects of it. It limits itself though in bringing these writings together but makes no attempt at an analysis. 8
Some more writers have ventured into the study of what travelers to India in the past have left us. Jonathan Gil Harris, who himself is a visitor to India, has adapted to the country eventually and ‘become Indian’, recently wrote a book titled ‘The First Firangis’. It contains the authors experiences combined with accounts of travelers who came to India around the 16th century as slaves, servants, adventurers and even fugitives from the law. It gives a remarkable insight into the similar tone of visiting a foreign land, 7 centuries apart. Based on hard research yet presented in a fast-paced conversational style, The First Firangis raises larger issues of the syncretic role of migrations, mixings, adaptations and transformations in the human history of the subcontinent. (Nair,2015) In recent book titled ‘A strange kind of Paradise: India through foreign eyes’, Sam Miller explores the multifold realities of India, in the past and in the present, through the his own outsider perspective, combined with many like his, who’ve been pulled to India. A collection of amusing accounts, the text is also an account of how these interpretations through foreign prisms have played an important role in creating India’s international image. William Dalrymple’s ‘White Mughals’ is a study of influential visitors from the west, in the 18th and early 19th century. Such was the impact of India on these visitors and such was their influence on the country that they were considers of almost the same rank as the reigning rulers and hence, the title of the book. The book is based in a time of mingling of diverse people from distant places, with distinct cultures and ideas. Of notable mention for this dissertation is the book “City of Djinns: A year in Delhi” by William Dalrymple himself. Written in 1989, it describes the author’s first year of life in Delhi. Intrigued and mesmerized by all the layers of history and society that Delhi had to offer, Dalrymple gives beautifully chiseled descriptions of the capital city as he sees it. The distinction in this book though, is the method in which the author seamlessly ties Delhi’s many pasts together with the present he observes, and encourages the reader to comprehend what the city was like before, and how it has evolved to its present form. This is done using accounts by various travelers in the past, as well as using some retrieved letters written by British officials in the city back in the day. A remarkable travelogue moving through time and space, this book is an epitome in illustrating the richness of spatial information not only in travelogues, but also in study of past travelogues. This is blatant in the book when the author explores forts and buildings in the city and compares what he sees to what his travelling ancestors described to him. The discussed literature assists in establishing the significance of travel accounts in understanding the past and present, the culture in historical context and the evolution of a place. With reference to these books and from accounts directly acquired from diaries of travelers who’ve written about places in India, this dissertation aims to stoop the discussion in the direction of architecture. Specifically, the chosen area of case study is analyzed using the accounts that travelers have left of them over the centuries that they have existed and thrived. A temporal understanding of spatial change is sought through the curious eyes of a traveler. 9
3. LOOKING AT SHAHJAHANABAD 3.1 A historical overview of Shahjahanabad
TABLE 1: Graph showing the major events in timeline, since the conception of Shahjahanabad in mid-seventeenth century Source: Wikimedia Commons
The significance of travel writing and the role it has played in perceiving places is illustrated in this dissertation through the study of accounts by visitors to the much revered past capital of Mughal India, Shahjahanabad. Established in the middle of the seventeenth century, the city has been through a tumult of significant political, military and social events and survives till day as the Walled city of Old Delhi or Delhi-6. While Akbar and Jahangir preferred to rule India from Agra, Shah Jahan got his own new capital built at the historically important city of Delhi, on the western bank of the Yamuna. Shah Jahan moved his court here in 1648 on completion of the construction of the Red fort. The following years saw building of many important structures within the large red walls of the city. With the fall of the Mughal Empire during the mid-18th century, Delhi faced raids by the Marathas (a people of peninsular India), invasion by NÄ der Shah of Persia, and a brief spell of Maratha rule before the British arrived in 1803. Under British rule the city flourished—except during the Indian Mutiny in 1857, when the mutineers seized the city for several months, after which British power was restored and Mughal rule ended. After quelling the 1857 revolt the British built a military garrison inside the Red Fort and evicted the 3000 people (approximately) who were living there at that 10
time and destroyed many of the large residential mansions. The British Empire then shifted the capital of India, to Kolkata, where it stayed till 1911. They then returned to Delhi to build a new capital, what is today called Lutyen’s Building Zone and Shahjahanabad became the old city. The spirit of the place refused to die though, it evolved from being an administrative capital city to a major hub of trade and commerce with many large wholesale markets coming up in the mid-19th century. These markets like Chawri Bazar (hardware market estb.1840), Phool Mandi (Flower Market est.1869) etc. survive till date. Another major event in the city was after India attained freedom in partition with a major change in the population. With the large number of migrant inflow, the spaces transformed, the architecture adapted and the building and population density increased rapidly. The main market street of Shahjahanabad (currently Old Delhi), Chandni Chowk has been a busy, bustling market for more than 300 years since its inception during the reign of Shah Jahan. His favorite daughter, Jahanara Begum is said to have laid the foundations of this market. Since then, this street has seen countless traders, shopkeepers, shoppers; leaders, laborers; explorers and travelers walk on it. While it left visitors in awe in the time close to its conception, Chandni Chowk still has an aura that enchants a visitor as the daily users carry on with the bustle of everyday trade and life. The labyrinth of lanes that drift from the main Bazaar street of Chandni Chowk into the thriving urban fabric of the city have laid way for countless visitors eager to uncover the many secrets they hold. With the study of accounts about Shahjahanabad by the several travelers the city played host to, this dissertation hopes to re-imagine history and generate a clear picture of spaces and society over the many years. The city spaces of the common people, outside the court of the Mughals are focused upon.
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3.2 Historical overview of Shahjahanabad through the eyes of travelers The building of Shahjahanabad, the great capital of the Mughals, the still beating heart of our national capital of Delhi, began in 1638. By 1650, the Red fort and the Jama Masjid as we know it today was ready. The city has its share of grand and not so grand architecture that has evolved and adapted, incremented and deteriorated over the centuries of being used and exploited. While the place has evolved, so have the notions and perceptions people have about it. Accounts by travelers throughout the timeline of Shahjahanabad reveal different aspects about it. At its zenith, Chandni Chowk was a fabled area frequented by local elites, Armenian and Turkish adventurers, Persian poets and Italian merchants (Rumi, 2013). The number of westerners who reached Delhi, back in the seventeenth century were comparatively limited. They were mostly traders and merchants. There would be the occasional western diplomats sent by their rulers, to establish healthy relations with the Mughals. Some travelers took care of their business and went on with their voyages while some stayed on. A few found occupation in the court of the Mughals as well. Francois Bernier, a French physician working in the court of Mughals, visited the newly conceived city of Shahjahan, and described it in a letter to his friend Monsieur Francois De La Mothe Le Vayer written in July 1663. This is probably the first ever detailed description of Shahjahanabad in text. Written for a western audience, highly unfamiliar of the local terrain, practices, and culture, the description is highly detailed and graphic. The text occasionally attempts comparison of the spaces with those in Paris. What emerges is a comparison of the grandeur of two world famous capital cities of two highly successful empires in two different corners of the world. Exemplifying the claim that travelers tend to understand nuances of spaces in comparison, a notch better than laymen, backed by his insight as a physician, Bernier’s description of this new city starts off with a comparison of it with Paris and how Europeans tend to compare them habitually. Bernier argues in favor of the architecture here and it appropriateness in the heat of India. Treating of the beauty of these towns, I must premise that I have sometimes been astonished to hear the contemptuous manner in which Europeans in the Indies speak of these places. They complain that the buildings are inferior in beauty to those of the western world, forgetting that different climates require different styles of architecture; that what is useful and proper in Paris, London or Amsterdam, would be entirely out of place in Dehli; insomuch that if it were possible for any one of those great capitals to change place with the metropolis of the Indies, It would become necessary to throw down the greater part of the city, and to rebuild it on a totally different plan. Without doubt, the cities of Europe may boast great beauties; these, however, are of appropriate character, suited to a cold climate. 12
Figure1: Watercolour of Chandni Chowk in Delhi from ‘Views by Seeta Ram from Delhi to Tughlikabad Vol. VII’ produced for Lord Moira, afterwards the Marquess of Hastings, by Sita Ram between 1814-15.
Bernier goes on with a long description of Shahjahan’s city and its appropriateness and beauty in local context, with a constant comparison to Paris. He points out how the streets of S. Jaques or S. Denis transported hither, with their close houses and endless stories, would be uninhabitable in the heat of India. He endeavors to give an accurate description of the city in much detail now. He talks of the conception of the city and choosing of site near the ruins of the several old empires, abandoning the heat of Agra. He elaborates about the urban design decisions made back in the day, and about the extensive suburbs that the city had, making it difficult to define the circumference of the Mughal Capital. These suburbs have all now been encompassed into the vastness of the national capital of New Delhi. He discusses the citadel in relation to the city and also the temporary use of the palace square: The tents of such Rajas as are in the King’s pay, and whose weekly turn it is to mount guard, are pitched in this square… In this place also at break of day they exercise the royal horses, which are kept in a spacious stable not far distant ; and here the Kobat-kan, or grand Muster-master of the cavalry, examines carefullv the horses of those who have been received into the service… Here too is held a bazar or market for an endless variety of things ; which like the Pont-neuf at Paris, is the rendezvous for all sorts of mountebanks and jugglers. In his descriptions of the two main market streets, we notice how different they were when conceived compared to now, and how the positive and negative spaces interacted, before they were built upon by stacks of concrete blocks: As in our Place Royale, there are arcades on both sides ; with this difference, however, that they are only brick, and that the top serves for a terrace and has no additional building. They also differ front the Palace Royale in not having an uninterrupted opening front one to the other, but are generally separated by partitions, in the spaces between which are open shops, here, during the 13
day, artisans work, bankers sit for the despatch of their business, and merchants exhibit their wares. Within the arch is a small door, opening into a ware- house, in which these wares are deposited for the night. He writes about how the smaller merchants had ‘tolerably commodious’, ‘good houses raised on terraces’ and how ‘The rich merchants have their dwellings elsewhere, to which they retire after the hours of’ business.’ He describes how the major chunk of the population lived in houses of which ‘Very few are built entirely of brick or stone, and several are made only of clay and straw, yet they are airy and pleasant, most of them having courts and gardens, being commodious inside and containing good furniture. The thatched roof is supported by a layer of long, handsome, and strong canes, and the clay walls are covered with a fine white lime.’ He discusses the frequent rampant fires these thatched houses used to cause. He describes in detail what a “good house” meant back then, capacious airy in the suburbs, on the banks of the river, with ‘courtyards, gardens, trees, basins of water, small jets d’eau in the hall or at the entrance, and handsome sub-terraneous apartments which are furnished with large fans’. His accounts are precious for all this information about the realities of the city then, probably skipped out in the ‘Shah-jehan-nama’, which focuses on the blinding grandeur of the court. As Bernier pointed out, ‘In Dehli there is no middle state. A man must either be of the highest rank or live miserably.’ Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was a gem-merchant who visited India in the 17th century no less than five times. He hailed from a family of cartographers and is said to have had a natural flair of exploring and getting to know new lands. Gibbon described him as “that wandering jeweler, who had read nothing, but had seen so much and so well”. Here mostly for business, and not under court duty, his work retains its value, both for its independence and general freedom from exaggeration. His accounts are most exploited for the elaborate description of the popular Peacock throne that must’ve caught his admiring jeweler’s eyes. Tavernier’s accounts also have comprehensive information of the routes he undertook from one place to the other during his travels. Tavernier describes the Older Delhi, near which Shahajanabad was planned. Delhi is much broken down and is nearly all in ruins, only sufficient of it remaining standing to afford a habitation to the poor. There are narrow streets and houses of bamboo as in all India, and only 3 or 4 nobles of the court reside at Delhi, in large enclosures, in which they have their tents pitched. He gives us a brief introduction to the city, and the route into the city. Jahanabad, like Delhi, is a great straggling town, and a simple wall separates them. All the houses of private persons are large enclosures, in the middle of which is the dwelling, so that no one can approach the place where the women 14
are shut up. The greater part of the nobles do not live in the town, but have their houses outside, so as to be near the water. When entering Jahanabad from the Delhi side, a long and wide street is to be seen, where, on both sides, there are arches under which the merchants carry on their business, and overhead there is a kind of platform. This street leads to the great square, where the Emperor’s palace is; and there is another very straight and wide one, which leads to the same square near another gate of the palace, which there are the houses of the principal merchants keep no shops. Tavernier goes on to give a detailed description of the Palace of the Mughals. He doesn’t describe much of the city and spaces of the common people. The reason probably being, the brief length of his stay at Delhi, and him being hosted and catered to inside the palace. It gives us an idea of the polarities of the city inside and outside the court since the beginning. One is compelled to think that most of the guests and members of the court stayed oblivious, or chose to ignore the plight and conditions and spaces of use of the lower strata of the society. The court, so grand and elaborate, left people in much awe that they felt the description of the riches imperative. Unlike his other contemporaries, Italian born Niccolao Manucci had been in India all his adult life. Manucci’s biography reads like something straight out of a swashbuckling romance. He was born to poor parents in Venice in about 1639. At 14, he stowed away on an Asia-bound ship carrying an English aristocrat. This lord took a shine to Manucci, retaining him as a page. But shortly after arriving in India in 1656, the Englishman died, leaving the young teenager master-less. (Harris, 2015) Working under the Mughals, he documented a first-hand account of the court in his four volume “Storia do Mogor” (Stories of the Mughals) He(Shah Jahan) expended large sums in the construction of this city, and in the foundations he ordered several decapitated criminals to be placed as a sign of sacrifice. The said city is on the bank of the river Jamnah, in a large plain of great circumference, and it is in the shape of an imperfect half-moon. It has twelve gates, and ancient Dihli forms a suburb, as also do several other villages. Having been in India and working for the Mughals since the age of 17, Manucci only gives us a brief description of the palace and streets of Shahjahanabad, in his highly detailed account of the Stories of the Mughals. He was probably much more used to the Indian landscape compared to his other contemporary western travelers/writers and didn’t find anything fascinating in the spaces to dedicate words too. In another instance of his lenghty accounts, he comments on how the houses of India have no architectural style whatsoever and that the people tend to spend all their wealth in the construction of temples and other religious structures. These initial few accounts are of much value to us considering their uniqueness and paucity of available primary accounts of people from that time. 15
Shakespeare wrote “All the world’s a stage”, and many voyagers from the west embarked on voyages to watch the whole show. As is much evident in Bernier’s writing, what they described was ‘the drama of Mughal India’ to people back home in Europe. The ethnographer watched people of foreign cultures act out strange scenes; he kept hiself mosty invisible in his descriptions, assuming a separation from the exotic scenes he described in much the same way that spectators in a darkened auditorium are divided from what is enacted on stage. (Harris, 2015) Bernier and Manucci stayed on in India for many more years to come and describe in detail the drama that ensued in the Mughal rule, leading to Aurangzeb’s succession to the throne. With their two very different viewpoints – one the angst struck French intellectual, the other the ex-con and hard-nosed Venetian man of action – Bernier and Manucci colour in the gilded outlines provided by the Mughals’ own court chronicles and their miniature paintings. (Dalrymple, 1994) The following century saw a considerable increase in the number of westerners heading to India, owing to the increase in trade and establishment of the East India Company. By the eighteenth century, British migrants to India arriving via the sea route were absorbed into a well-established colonial system designed to empower them. (Harris, 2015) A large number of officials from Britain, along with their families, came to the country and set up home here. This was accompanied by weakening of the Mughal stronghold. Many fell in love with the country and its rich culture, married Indian women, started wearing Indian clothes and became what Dalrymple calls “White Mughals”. ‘The officers travelled around the country for work and many of them documented their journeys in this strange land. British officials, under-employed in their day jobs, would pootle away in their free time – as amateur archaeologists, numismaticians and riddle-solvers.’ As the influence and aspirations of the company gained scale, ‘..for the British, Indians became both a subject race and an object of study and scrutiny’. (Miller, 2014) This observation is illustrated well in our chosen context by multiple resident Englishmen. William Fraser, who was a British India civil servant, fell in love with the many layers of history and culture that Delhi had to offer to him. He collected many manuscripts and commissioned local artists to create paintings between 181519, the collection of which are now famous as the ‘Fraser Album’. The artwork illustrates the life of the Mughal subjects of the time. It consists of portraits of villagers, soldiers, holy men, dancing women, Afghan horse-dealers, ascetics, village life. Of much importance, to the information archives of Shahjahanabad, is the ‘Delhie Book’ titled ‘Reminiscences of Imperial Delhi’. It is a collection of commissioned work by Sir Thomas Metcalfe, company style paintings done by multiple artists of Indian origin. Most prominent amongst these was Mughal painter, Mazhar Ali Khan. This collection by Metcalfe is important not just because of the impeccable quality of the artwork, combining western and Mughal styles, but also because it documents the state of many monuments and buildings, which were destroyed and seriously damaged during the mutiny of 1847, and the attacks that followed. 16
Many other structures have decayed over time, and have gone through irreversible transformations. Fortunately, where they are preserved, the works of scribes and painters have succeeded in outlasting those of architects and masons – an irony, since hard stones appears far more durable than weak paper. (Kaye, 1980) These images are of much value today, helping us picture the lost time of Twilight Delhi, before the siege. Sir Thomas Metcalfe’s eldest daughter, Emily, Lady Clive Bayley has left a detailed account of her stay in Delhi. With accounts of her lavish colonial lifestyle, she has described in detail her stay at the Metcalfe house, which is now a DRDO office and Dilkhusha, the octagonal tomb in Mehrauli, used by the Metcalfe’s as a summer retreat. Reminiscing about Delhi, years after the Mutiny had happened, this is what Emily wrote: I used to enjoy driving through the streets of Delhi as everything was new and striking; the buildings of marble and red sandstone were so magnificent, the shops were so quaint, the colours of the cotton cloths hanging from the windows and across the streets were so gorgeous, the costumes so picturesque, and the crowds were so extraordinarily thick. Two syces rode at great speed in front of the carriage in order to clear the road, for the dashing little horses went at a good pace. On fete days the crowd in the Chandnee Chouk, or Silver Street, was so numerous and compact that the children could walk on the heads of the people, which was an astonishing sight to anyone fresh from England. But alas! after the Mutiny, these crowds were no more to be seen. For some years afterwards only a few scattered groups of people were to be seen on gala days in this celebrated street, and although more inhabitants have now returned to Delhi, it can never be again what it was in those palmy days which I am describing. Emily describes the many gates of the walled city, through which she says the mutineers entered in 1857, she describes the many big houses of fellow white comrades in the city, and appreciates the beautiful mosques and Jain temples. The polarity within the social strata of society was only greater for the British populace, and women like Emily hardly ever got to experience the city at a personal level. She writes: Chandnee Chouk, which I have mentioned, was a narrow street, very picturesque indeed in its broken architecture, leading up to the Jumah Musjid, which was inhabited only by jewellers and silver- smiths. Of course they never displayed their wares in public, all their Valuables being kept in boxes in the back rooms of the houses; the front room being open to the street, without doors, carpeted with a white cloth on which one or two men would be sitting, working at their trade, with some very simple tools and a small crucible alight for their metal work. If a European stopped at a shop he generally sat on the edge of the floor of the shop, which was always raised a few feet above the road, and bargained for any articles he wanted. I was never allowed to do this by my Father as he did not approve of English ladies entering any of these native shops.
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The mutiny did take a heavy toll on Shahjahanabad, but the crowds that Emily talks of did come back to Chandni Chowk in due course, but sooner than one would suspect. In 1859, Lieutenant Majendie writes: This street—the “Chandney Choke” is most striking, with the gay crowds passing up and down it, a motley collection : fat natives ambling placidly along on equally fat ponies, droves of snow-white, big humped bullocks ; a palanquin or two ; now an elephant with handsome crimson howdah, now a camel with a string of bells round his neck, which make pleasant music as he trots along ; now a Sikh horseman ; now a detachment of soldiers ; now a party of Nautch girls, with big rings in their noses, and tinselly gewgaws about their persons, tinkling the bracelets on their bare, finely-shaped arms, singing and pirouetting with a sad sort al mocking abandon, in hopes of attracting attention; now a knot of little naked boys, rolling one another over in the dust, and playing blithely; or a beggar, deformed and loathsome, crying out in cracked, discordant tones for alms ; and always a mass of natives in the rose-coloured turbans which seem peculiar to Delhi, and which add to the gayness of the scene ; while the bright, glittering appearance of the shops, which I have befor noticed, gives a pretty finish to the whole. “Up among the Pandies” written by V. D. Majendie, in the year 1859, is, for its greater part, a narrative of the personal adventures of a lieutenant of the Royal British Artillery of those times. The author was a witness to the mutiny of 1857 and visited Delhi for just 2 days a year after the great mutiny. He describes his approach,
Figure2: Chandni Chowk in the 1860s, photograph by Samue Bourne
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the mixed feelings the first sight of Delhi’s skyline sparks in him, with associations of the ‘traitorous guns’ that ’vomited forth their iron showers upon a small band of English soldiers’, he can’t help but command his attention and admiration at the imposing skyline of Delhi, with its minarets and palaces. He further describes his journey “ – by the red walls of the palace, which look almost too new (so well have they worn) to have been the production of the Moguls, but too fantastical to have been the handiwork of anyone else – by trees, and bungalows, and gardens, curiously mixed up with the fortification – till we reach splendid street, the broadest and finest I ever saw in an eastern town, with a stone aqueduct or canal, and a fine row of trees plannted down its centre, and on its either side shops glittering with the jewellery, scarfs, coored silks, shawls, and the other manufacturers for which Delhi is celebrated.” This admiration is followed by a rant of disgust at the shabbily maintained hotel he stays at, in the “dirtiest, narrowest, and most unpleasant lane” he ever saw. He visits the ransacked red fort, and notes the British soldiers smoking their pipes in the throne-room of Shah Jehan and his illustrious successors, “the vast palace of the Great Moguls rings with the hearty jokes and echoing laughter of English infidels”. He then climbs up to the top of one of the minarets of the Jama Masjid, and leaves us a highly graphic image of what he saw: “..such a view burst upon me as repaid me triplefold for my pains (of ascending the large amount of stairs). I should fail signally were I to attempt to convey to my reader an idea of the scene which lay spread out like a map beneath me, confusedly grand ; the mass of buildings and temples ; the vast courts and halls of the palace, the massive fortifications ; the glittering river Jumna, winding far away in the distance ; the busy throng flocking up the “Chandney Ckoke;” the labyrinth of narrow crowded streets ; the bright cupolas and domes; the dark clusters of trees ; the fine old red walls, contrasting effectively with the snowy -white buildings which they enclose—till with dazzled, weary eyes, one turns for relief to the broad peaceful plain, which stretches out all round, covered with the moulding ruins of “Old Delhi”- ancient tombs, villages, fine old forts, clumps of shady trees, and miles of fair green meadows, covered here and there with the waters; away and away in the distance, far as the eye can reach – away beyond Delhi, and its extremest outskirts - beyond the silvery Jumna and the old red walls does the misty view extend, exciting you to expressions of delight and admiration, which lead your Sikh conductor to conclude that you are a raving maniac, who has ascended the minaret for the sole purpose of committing suicide.” The Jama Masjid is as majestic and breathtaking today, as it was to any of our mentioned travelers in the past. A climb up the minaret today leaves one equally, if not more, dazzled and delighted as it did Majendie more than one hundred and fifty years ago. What one sees is a majorly different. In this century and a half, much has happened in Delhi. As I walk up the narrow winding staircase of the south-western minaret of the Jama Masjid, I try to make a count of all the more and all the less my view will have, compared to 19
Majendie’s. The British Raj decided to make Delhi their capital to gain a better stronghold of the country, abandoning Calcutta. They declared the building of New Delhi in 1911, and by 1931, the Indo-Sarcenic capital buildings, of megalomaniac scale, were ready for occupation. The British were soon overthrown in 1947, and Nehru raised the national flag of our independent nation for the first time, within walking distance of me, at the Lahori gate. Partition happened, and the demographics of Shahjahanabad altered drastically. With many of the original inhabitants leaving, and an unending influx of immigrants since then, this area has grown much in density. This area is now the “Old Delhi”, and what Majendie called “Old Delhi” is now consumed in the ever expansive New Delhi, capital of the world’s largest democracy. I try to list all the monuments I might get to see when I reach above, the Qutub Minar and Vikas Minar, the Jain temple in Shahjahanabad, and maybe the Baha’i Lotus temple in South Delhi, the dome of Humayun’s tomb and the dome of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.. The long flight of stairs turns out to short a climb to anticipate all the unending features of this vast city. I reach to up to the chhatri and am, quite predictably, overwhelmed at the sight. I feel even more helpless than Majendie must have, to put into words the endlessness of this city that lay around me. I start with ogling at the many pigeons flying and resting on the huge onion domes around me. These don’t seems to have changed over the centuries at all. I proceed turning clockwise trying to observe and absorb all I see. People scatter around like ants in the huge square courtyard of the masjid. Blue plastic sheets line up the Meena bazaar and the strong walls of the Red Fort stand tall. I observe the strange barracks that the British got built inside the Fort, oddly well maintained compared to the other structures. I look beyond the greens for the ‘silvery’ Yamuna, but give up in vain. The super-busy ring-road now runs where the waters once flew. Instead of the sprawling greens, I see sprawls of concrete settlemen,ts, mixing into the haze. I follow the ring road and Vikas Minar, independent Delhi’s first sky scraper stands out. I see fading silhouettes in the smog of Delhi, of the Lotus temple, and the Humayun’s tomb. I see a series of buildings rising high up, Barakhamba Road. The largest Indian flag flutters from the center of the busy Connaught Place. Beyond this, the southern part of the city again fades into haze, so much construction, going far beyond what my human eyes can see. I look down closer, and see the seemingly disorderly stacking of concrete blocks of ‘Old Delhi’. The Civic Centre stands tall, but everything in front of is an uneven checkerboard of concrete. I fail to see the labyrinth of streets amongst this, and there are no dark clusters of trees, just the odd one peeking out from the mass of terraces. Looking beyond I see the northern ridge, where the British Civil Lines once were, I see the Mutiny memorial church and the lanky Pitampura TV Tower. I don’t see the vast gardens of Roshanara but the Old Delhi railway station with its bright red walls. I too see the busy throng at Chandni Chowk, but no line of shady trees or canal flowing down the middle, to reflect the glittering moonlight, that fails to shine through this thick smog anyways.
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Figures 3 and 4: View from atop the south western minaret of the Jama Masjid, photographs by author.
There have been drastic changes in the social and political landscapes, which have led to drastic changes in the physical landscape as well. The number of visitors to Shahjahanabad, which can hereon be referred to as ‘Old Delhi’, has increased drastically, to say the least, in the past years. Who these travellers are and their nature of writings has, no doubt, altered a great deal as well. People who visit this area today are either looking for the famed street food, cheap deals in the various wholesale bazaars or are the history buffs, looking to travel into the glorious past of the city. More often than not, this leads to disappointment, as is much evident from their accounts. William Dalrymple, perhaps the most popular travel writer of this day, expresses his great disappointment on visiting Chandni Chowk in the 90s. Having read Bernier’s accounts of the Moonlight Bazaar, and poems mentioning elegant caravanserais and fabulous Mughal gardens, his personal experience turns out to be much less glamorous than expected. But instead, as you sit stranded in a traffic jam, half-choked by rickshaw fumes and the ammonia-stink of the municipal urinals, you see around you a sad vista of collapsing shop fronts and broken balustrades, tatty warehouses roofed with corrugated iron and patched with rusting duckboards. The canal which ran down the centre of the bazaar has been filled in; the trees have been uprooted. All is tarnished, fraying at the edges. On the pavement, a Brahminy cow illicitly munches vegetables from the sack of a vendor: a Muslim ear-cleaner squat outside the Sis Ganj gurdwara and peers down the orifices of a Sikh nihang (gurdwara guard). Raza Rumi, a Pakistani traveller to Delhi starts his narration of Chandni Chowk in historical fable as well, describing the past glories of Shah Jahan’s city. When it comes to the present, his description is also, laced with utter disappointment. The Chandni Chowk of today is still a commercial centre, but quite uninspiring and run-down.’ The canal and the pool have dried up and disappeared, but all the names remain. Unrelenting noise is a constant irritant and the area is nothing but a trader-merchant slum now. The moonlight struggles to find a corner through which it can shine down but cannot find it. 21
He proceeds to call the Shahjahanabad of today a large ghetto! Congested and filthy, with an occasional tree dotting the roads, Shahjahanabad is the epitome of rampant and ugly commercialisation. The beautiful havelis and their fountains have reincarnated themselves into camera shops, mechanic shops, banks, clothes stalls, and even an out of place McDonald’s outlet... Splendour is just so transient. As the narrations about this area have shifted from what the authors see to ‘Once upon a time’s, a trend is observed with people heading over to these spaces today with a want to travel into its famed past. Travelers find solace in the surviving traces of the Mughal time, in the unique spatial experience of the tiny lanes, where the centuries merge together. The same walls that now form the rickety paan shops and dirty godowns once supported sprawling mansions and the lovely Delhi courtyard houses known as havelis. You can see it for yourself: the slum was once a city of palaces. People travel into the depths of the lane, to find the once grand architecture, morphing and crumbing to accommodate the needs of the present. They seek the odd peek into the Mughal past, and point it out for us. Darymple further writes: The haveli was a world within a world, self-contained and totally hidden from the view of the casual passer-by. Now, however, while many of the great gatehouses survive, they are hollow fanfares announcing nothing. You pass through a great arch and find yourself in a rubble-filled/car-park where once irrigation tunnels bubbled. The shish mahals are unrecognizable, partitioned up into small factories and workshops; metal shutters tum zenana screens into locked store rooms; the gardens have disappeared under concrete. Only the odd arcade of pillars or a half-buried fragment of finely-carved late Mughal ornament indicates what once existed here…. There is still continuity here, a few surviving traditions, some lingering beauty, but you have to look quite hard to find it. It is only the really intrigued who actually look that hard enough. It is impossible, even for the locals of Delhi to know their tremendous expanding city well. Only few people from the capital ‘travel’ into the erstwhile Shahjahanabad to explore what the place has in store. Many of those who do, do so for the very popular variety and authenticity of kebabs, sweets and street food. Some of the very best accounts of Delhi-6, of recent times, are by Indians itself; considering the fact that few visitors from the west venture beyond the rickshaw tours that travel companies send them off too. One cannot blame them then, for not being able to observe beyond the maddening crowds and tangling electric cables. As Deepa Krishnan, whose blog, titled DelhiMagic won Tripbase 2011 Best Delhi Blog Award puts it: “To me, Shahjahanabad is the very heart of Delhi. If you explore Shahjahanabad on foot, then amidst the crazy noise and chaos, Delhi’s history will still call out to you. There are so many buildings here, each with a story to tell.”
The Delhi Walla is possibly the most popular internet blog about Delhi, and this is what the author has to say: But little remains of Purani Dehli’s canals and tree-lined passageways bespeaking the Mughal era. Windowless hovels and dangling power cables fit the modern description of Old Delhi, aka Shahjahanabad. Its neighborhoods retain almost nothing of their original character…. Old worlds are disappearing and being replaced by the new. In such a time, the supposedly unimportant elements of a city have become precious. In Old Delhi — and The Delhi Walla is not referring to the touristy Jama Masjid or Chandni Chowk — the commonplace streets and neighborhoods have acquired the desperate beauty of a fading fresco. This giant mural not only provides us an aesthetic sense of our past but also shows us the silent and ceaseless transformations of our values, beliefs, aspirations and ways of life.
Figure5: A hidden jewel in the tiny lanes, Photo by author
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4. LEARNINGS AND CONCLUSION Journeying in time, through Shahjahanabad’s being, along with a few of the explorers who’ve headed through the different eras here, was indeed informative, and also interesting, owing to the many perspectives. If some of the learning was to be listed, it could read as follows: • In earlier times, an exhaustive exploration and documentation of Shahjahanabad exist in the travel writings. Generally, written for communicating about this exotic oriental city to the many back in their native lands, who would’ve never gotten to witness it in person, the graphic imagery is strong in these texts. As is the case for Bernier’s writings, these have survived till this day, helping us visualize the zenith of the Shahjahan’s glory. • Travel Writing often provides us with comparative accounts of places, by travellers who’ve voyaged farther and wider than the layman. Bernier’s seventeenth century comparison of Shahjahanabad to Paris, is important in that sense it gives us an idea of both of the places, the similarity and the disparities. This was even more precious when it was written, considering the lack of images and information about places available to people, unlike today. • These accounts also tell us about obscure places, and their obscure uses, things that official records would not bother with documenting otherwise. Thanks to these accounts, we have an idea of market places, dwellings of the common people, the view from a certain cupola et al. • They also sometimes contain accounts of spaces that didn’t survive for us to see today. So we have an idea of what Delhi was like before time took its toll. The Metcalfe’s here are to credit, helping us picture much beauty in the Delhi before 1857. • The discussed accounts have helped us imagine previous cultural use of places that did manage to survive, which we can see today, being used in a different form. • We have observed an evolution of perception of Shahjahanabad through this study. While once it was perceived as the epitome of the great Mughal architecture and town planning, an advanced city worth of comparison to Paris in its time. With the fading out Mughal supremacy, those in Metcalfe’s age already started to admire the glorious past. This tendency only increased with the passing years and all the changes the city went through. The area now is only disapproved at for the chaos and decaying condition, and has become a destination of nostalgia. The idea of Chandni Chowk has evolved from the Moonlight path of exquisite goods to the highly contrasting smoke filled, traffic clogged nightmare, impossible to cross in sanity. • Even though information and imagery is ample available in this day of the internet, travel writing today, has increased in importance. The intrigued ones, who put in the extra effort of looking more than just once, see a whole different side of the city. What they write, click and share then, plays an important role in raising awareness about the spaces and also to build a positive public image of the city. 24
Figures 6 and 7: The Diwan-e-khas in the Red Fort, As in the Delhi book and as today.
What is written and conveyed by travel writing, thus, not only helps understand a place better, but also plays an important role in forming a dominant public perception of the place. One cannot blame the locals and the city, to function as the organic machine it is, to survive and grow within the physical constraint. But, one sure can admire and attempt to understand this process Travel writing compensates, in its own humble way, for the lack of self-awareness of a culture. Sam Miller confesses, when he is chortled at; ‘another foolish foreigner more interested in the past than the future’, that he is a ‘slave to the picturesque’.(Miller, 2014) As William Dalrymple very articulately puts it, “Certainly, if nineteenth-century travel writing was principally about place—about filling in the blanks of the map and describing remote places that few had seen—the best twenty-first-century travel writing is almost always about people: exploring the extraordinary diversity that still exists in the world beneath the veneer of globalization.” In the tumult of modern daily life, we need some who can convince us to slow down and take a look at what is beautiful, what is noteworthy and maybe even inspire us to do something about conserving it.
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BIBLIOGRApHY • Jain, M. (2011). The India they saw , Volume 3 and 4. Delhi: Ocean Books (P) Ltd. • Bernier, F., Brock, I., Constable, A. and Smith, V. (1916). Travels in the Mogul empire A.D. 1656-1668. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press. • Manucci, N. (1965). Storia do Mogor or Mogul India 1653-1708. Calcutta: Ed. Indian. • TAVERNIER, J. and Phillips, J. (1905). Travels in India. Originally published in French ... Reprinted from the original English translation of John Phillips ... With a valuable introduction, a short memoir of the author &c., notes, index and an appendix containing the facsimile reprint of the original wood-cuts and plates, etc. Pp. vi. xiv. 506. “Bangabasi” Office: Calcutta. • Majendie, V. (2007). Up among the Pandies. [Place of publication not identified]: Leonaur. • Kaye, M. (1980). The Golden calm: A English Lady’s Life in Moghul Delhi. Devon, EX: Webb & Bower ltd. • Dalrymple, W. (2003). City of Djinns. New York: Penguin Books. • Miller, S. (2014). A strange kind of paradise. Penguin Books. • Rumi, R. (2013). Delhi by heart. New Delhi: HarperCollins. • Harris, J. (2015). The first firangis. New Delhi: Aleph Book Company. • Nair, G. (2015). The First Firangis book review. [online] The Hindu. Available at: http://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/the-first-firangis-book-review/ article7188696.ece [Accessed 12 Sep. 2015]. • Maxwell, M. (2015). World History Connected | Vol. 10 No. 1 | Mary Jane Maxwell: Introduction to Forum:Travel and Travel Accounts in World History. [online] Worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu. Available at: http:// worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/10.1/forum_maxwell.html [Accessed 3 Aug. 2015]. • Checkinarchitecture.blogspot.in, (2015). Check-in Architecture: Invisible Cities. [online] Available at: http://checkinarchitecture.blogspot.in/2008/05/invisiblecities.html [Accessed 12 Sep. 2015]. • Krishnan, D. and profile, V. (2009). Delhi Magic: Ten things that define Delhi (8). [online] Delhimagic.blogspot.in. Available at: http://delhimagic.blogspot. in/2009/08/ten-things-that-define-delhi-8.html [Accessed 8 Nov. 2015]. • Soofi, M. (2015). City Hangout – Lanes & Localities, Old Delhi » The Delhi Walla. [online] Thedelhiwalla.com. Available at: http://www.thedelhiwalla. com/2013/03/07/city-hangout-lanes-localities-old-delhi/ [Accessed 8 Nov. 2015]. • ELIAS, E. (2014). The wayfarers. [online] The Hindu. Available at: http:// www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/the-wayfarers/ article5579698.ece [Accessed 12 Aug. 2015].
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Master Document Text INTRODUCTION1.1>Research Question + Introducing ResearchName of Topic: INTERPRETATION OF SHAHJAHANABAD BY TRAVELLERSResearch Question: How travelers over the centuries perceived urban spaces of Shahjahanabad and how can their writings help in better understanding the city?INTRODUCTION TO DISSERTATION:A common experience of people who travel, is that time slows down when they are on their journeys. An exercise in time perception (Matt Danzico, 2013) suggests that when we experience something new, unusual and dynamic; our senses are heightened; we take in more details about sound and smell than we normally would. As our brain records more memories, we tend to believe Checkthat new experiences last longer. Throughout history done while taking the quotations of case studied books: countless voyagers have trotted across the globe, recording their incredible journeys. In olden times, with limited connectivity and inter territorial conversation, these travelers were important members of the society. Carrying messages over large distances passing through multiple kingdoms and societies, they were few in the world who had seen and experienced settlements and spaces of multiple cultures. Their records were extremely precious to leaders and scholars of those times as they held a wealth of information about lands near and far away. Much of these records have survived to this day, acting as some of the most important primary sources of history available. Apart from giving insights into the courts public events and military developments, travel accounts also provide valuable and detailed descriptions of daytoday activitiescommon habits and customs that the locals consider unremarkable. (Maxwell, 2013) Traveler's accounts throughout history, around the world, thus, give detailed and vivid accounts of experiences. They are rich repositories of information that document personal, file:///C:/Users/Divya%20Chand/Downloads/Plagiarism%20Checker%20_%20Viper%20%20Free%20Plagiarism%20Checker%20and%20Scanner%20…
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