[Reader-list] Thinking about 1857 again

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear all,

apropos of the 'zikr' that I had made of urban planning-cum-military 
maneouvres of 1857 vis-a-vis the Supreme Court's recent deliberations in 
the Nagla Machi SLP matter, here is another reflection, from our 
neighbourhood historian in eminence, Professor Shahid Amin, (Delhi 
University) on the legacy of 1857 in Delhi. This was published today in 
the Telegraph.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060510/asp/opinion/story_6156927.asp#

Enjoy,

cheers, Shuddha

--------------------------------

THE FAST-LANE PRESENT
Delhi’s monuments to callousness
Shahid Amin
The author is professor of history, University of Delhi

The 150th anniversary next year of the 1857 Uprising and the staging of 
the Commonwealth Games in Delhi have begun a rethink on what we — living 
in a fast-lane present — have done to our built heritage. The first will 
bring us face to face with how to relate to monuments that our colonial 
masters erected after the suppression of the ‘Mutiny’. The 2010 
Commonwealth Games will focus the attention of the erstwhile British 
Empire on Delhi, an old city, which emerged as the colonial capital of 
the “brightest jewel in the crown” in the last century. There is already 
some talk about preserving the past and rescuing the heritage of Delhi 
from a callous and oppressive present. A recent poll published in a 
newspaper suggests that while most Delhiites (the word, “Dilliwalas”, is 
now an anachronism) are unaware of the city’s rich cultural and 
architectural past, only one-third of parents feel strongly about 
inculcating a sense of the city’s heritage in their children.

Faced with the failure of the Archaeological Survey of India — an 
organization headed by a bureaucrat for many years and openly 
susceptible to governmental pressure — some have begun advocating the 
setting up of a national heritage commission. At the same time, there is 
no dearth of proposals for a consumerist appropriation of our past in 
the interests of the present. A few years ago, a Union urban affairs 
minister had advocated a veritable ‘Gurgaonization’ of Lutyens’s Delhi, 
while another votary of efficient land-use went on to suggest that the 
Rashtrapati Bhavan be converted into a luxury hotel.

The debate on balancing the voracious demands of the ‘cityjan’ with 
nurturing Delhi’s culture, habitat and built heritage is bound to get 
sharper: how near the Qutub Minar can the elevated metro be allowed to 
run, or need it go underground rather than spoil the view of a world 
heritage site? How much of the natural flood plain of the Jamuna 
(including its floating population) need be ceded to a major temple 
complex, or indeed to the Commonwealth Games village? How many people 
and working artisans (even butchers) have to be shifted out of the Jama 
Masjid area to beautify it as a place of daily worship, and 
simultaneously as a national monument with which all of us (including 
the non-practising Muslims) can identify?

It is common to lament how the majority of Delhi’s monuments — a large 
number dating back to the 13th to the early 16th century — have been 
encroached upon by property developers and squatters. This is an 
important facet of urbanism of post-independent Delhi, and it allows the 
concerned citizen to blame those who have appropriated its heritage to 
private ends. What is remarkable is how the city’s empowered citizens 
and criminal elements have conspired, in very different ways, to 
foreclose access to a lot of the city’s monuments in the normal course. 
A few examples of the fate of some of the key ‘Mutiny’ structures would 
help illustrate how these have become no-go places for the ordinary 
tax-paying public.

Take the Flagstaff, up the ridge from the main gate of the University of 
Delhi. Driven out of the city in the summer of 1857, it was here and on 
the adjacent, narrow strip of the ridge that the retreating British were 
confined in that tumultuous summer; and it was from the Flagstaff and 
batteries at the Chauburja mosque and beyond that the push for the 
vengeful recapture of Delhi was calibrated in the autumn of that 
eventful year. There were ten natives for every European in camp. John 
Kaye, the demi-official historian of the ‘Sepoy War’, paints a 
sympathetic picture of the native cooks and water-carriers, who, 
unmindful of the well-directed artillery fire of the rebel topchis and 
golandazes from nearby Mori Gate, had played khidmatgars to the besieged 
sahibs at the Flagstaff and on the northern Ridge.

The demands of humanity, implies Kaye, suggested that the English be 
slightly more considerate towards their native camp-followers, without 
whom the project of the reconquest of Delhi would have been quite 
impossible. But it was not just the exhaustion caused by war that had 
made the life of natives-in- camp of “less value than that of the 
meanest animals”. For if colonial domination had to be re-established, 
then insensitive as it may appear to some, that structure could not be 
dismantled during the very campaign for the re-establishment of British 
supremacy in India.

A contemporary satire in a Dilli akhbar had lampooned the harassed 
“English Gathering at the Flagstaff”, where the “trousers of Angrezi 
wisdom had slipped all the way down to their socks-full of worries”. Two 
years ago, Flagstaff Road lost its name to B.R. Ambedkar Memorial Marg. 
True, Ambedkar during his Delhi sojourn had lived nearby on Alipur Road. 
But because of the construction of the Metro, that street had been 
closed to the previous prime minister when he visited north Delhi for 
inaugurating the memorial. The adjacent Flagstaff Road was open, and so 
got divested of its historic name in the despotic flurry that precedes 
such prime-ministerial visitations.

Despite a recent renovation, the historic Flagstaff is in a state of 
disrepair. This early-19th-century building is now virtually taken over 
by an open air yoga club. Sundays are reserved for bhandaras, that is, a 
philanthropic halwa-poori feast, with periodic pulmonary check-ups for 
the senior citizens who throng the Ridge for their early-morning 
constitutional. Its circular ground-floor hall is used to house 
mattresses and dhurries in king-size steel trunks. Through a private 
arrangement with the city’s archaeology department, it is unlocked only 
for the duration of the yoga classes — to keep it open at all times 
would no doubt endanger the property of the Yoga club. For the rest of 
the day, the Flagstaff is a closed monument. No notice of its past 
greets the energetic, early-morning walkers: it survives in a 
non-historical present.

A much more serious consideration behind the locking up of Delhi’s many 
monuments appears to be the growing number of rapists that stalk the 
city day and night. The Khuni Darwaza, overlooking the stadium where 
Harbhajan Singh spun India to a famous ODI victory the other day, was 
where Bahadurshah Zafar’s sons were shot dead after their capture from 
Humayun’s tomb in September, 1857. And it was here that a college girl 
was raped not very long ago. This historic gate on one of Delhi’s 
busiest roads has subsequently been fixed with grills and locked. The 
early-19th-century magazine — a simple arched structure which the 
British guards self-destructed to deny the ‘Mutiny’ rebels access to a 
large amount of gun powder — now stands similarly barricaded, although 
it sits in the middle of a traffic island, opposite the city’s General 
Post Office.

The city that killed Gandhi seems to prosper only by barricading itself. 
The Nineties was the decade of private security guards. Policing, the 
message had gone out, had to be private to be effective. Now, even 
medieval city- gates and colonial guard-houses — like the one on the 
northern Ridge — have to be locked-up, so as to protect the women of 
this megalopolis from its growing number of casual rapists. It has been 
said that the aim of heritage is to make all of us proud. It is time we 
realized the cruel, and not just ironic, import of this descriptive truism.