Chabutras in Delhi

I've long been fascinated by this picture of a dye maker on a chabutra (a raised platform) in Shahjahanabad and thought this would be worth a post. This is from the 1920s-1930s and comes from a photo album made by British visitors to Delhi. I don't know where in the city this was taken but it forms part of a series of images on Delhi I came across over a decade ago.

Anyway, what I really want to write about is the chabutra, more specifically. There is the famous Kotwali Chabutra (police chabutra) in Chandni Chowk but if you think about it, chabutras dot the landscape of Mughal Delhi (and otherwise), particularly outside shops. They are also often in the news because municipal authorities are keen to 'regulate' their construction.

What I came across during my research is the history of this long battle with 'chabutra regulation' that began in the colonial era. From the 1860s, there was a concerted effort to regulate these platforms but they blighted the administration. The Delhi Municipality (the forerunner of the MCD) which took over the Mughal city in 1863 labelled them as 'encroachments' since all land was 'public' and now under their control. However, there were chabutras of different ages and sizes, constructions and use. Some were leased out to peddlers or small traders to sell their wares. Others were actually in the form of foldable doors - the door of the shop would be kept as chabutra. As you can imagine, all this meant there was never a full-proof way of dealing with chabutras. Here's a quote from 1883-4 by a member of the municipality on the chabutra:

Evidence [of such encroachments] is forthcoming in almost all the bazars of the city to a careful old observant and to the most idle eye in suburban wards of our own town and almost all the towns of the Delhi Division. The usual way of additions and encroachments is by allowing a little rubble outside the shop, then to add a few stones to it, evidently as a foot-step for going and coming out of the shop; then on some rainy day to make it into the form of a chabutra as wide as the breadth of the lane would permit; then by permission or otherwise on the pretext of repairing turn the existing chabutra into a pakka one; then to protect the chabutra by a thatch, and then to make a pakka slanting cover or to enclose the chabutra into the shop itself, and finally to add a new chabutra in the same way as before till they render large and wide streets narrow enough for cart traffic.

Thus, despite new colonial cultural sensibilities, the chubutra endured. More on Delhi's chabutras and other things next week. 

Bela Plantation on the Yamuna

So, I was asked whether this blog is really a history of Delhi’s transport and whether the tram and car posts are leading up to something. In short, no. This isn’t just a blog on trams or cars in Delhi. In fact, these didn’t feature prominently in my thesis and subsequent book and I’ve been meaning to write about them. I expect to take up various themes connected with Delhi’s history that I am interested in, and perhaps, the reader is as well. 

 

That brings me to my current post on the creation of a Kikar (Prosopis Juliflora) Plantation in Delhi which was created on the river bank (Bela lands) of the Yamuna. I came across material on this when doing my research in the archives in Delhi and they make a fascinating read. 

 

For the greater part of the 19^th century the Kikar trees that lined the north of Shahjahanabad became a huge topic of debate. They were planted as timber was needed to fuel the railways since the cost of importing coal from England was prohibitive. Anyway, there were all sorts of problems between who was going to manage the Bela Plantation, as it was called. Colonial officials began to accuse each other of dilettantism and mismanagement, agencies came and went, as the archives attest. Delhiwallas were also incensed about there being a barrier to their use of the river. The bathing and burning ghats (area and steps leading to the river) were barred for ritual purposes so petitions were filed and requests made to restore entitlements. 

 

And of course, there was Malaria. Despite discovering that the anopheles’ mosquito was the vector for transmission, for a while the authorities hung on to the notion that Shahjahanabad’s residents were fouling the river and therefore causing malaria -instead of the breeding grounds that were the Bela Plantation. Even Maulvi Zakaullah, one of Delhi’s famous residents couldn’t help but complain of malarial sickness in his reminisces of Delhi. Eventually, the Bela was removed, just in time for the Durbar of 1911! 

Here is a page from my book with an image of the area kept for the Bela Plantation. More on related topics in the future...

Cars and motoring in Delhi

 

I thought I'd post something on Delhi's tryst with the motor car this week. I have often wondered about the introduction of the motor car (given their ubiquity in Delhi!) and came across newspaper reports of early motor car races around the city after 1903. As I mentioned in my previous post, the Durbar of 1903 was 'the' big occasion for the motor car. Louis Dane, the then Lt. Governor of Punjab showed up in one with great fanfare. It seems though that just after this, motor car races (motor car trials, as they were called) had begun across the country and Delhi was on some sort of grid for people testing these new forms of transport.  

Now, on the one hand, the car was a way of conquering the Indian landscape, this argument is valid. I have a picture here from the 1920s where you can see the juxtaposition of the 'old' and 'new.' The new car in the foreground and the 'old' Jama Masjid (the main congregational mosque in Delhi) in background. The photograph is a way of capturing that powerful contrast and imprinting this form of technological (and colonial) dominance on the onlooker. 

However, from what I've read in the newspaper reports, it seems that Indians were also involved in driving/racing motor car races at an early date. This perhaps contradicts the point that this was an exclusively European or imperial venture. Specifically speaking, Indian princes were keen on racing cars and were involved in these races around Delhi. So, overall, it's a bit complicated. 

Anyway, the car also becomes a subversive medium of transport technology for the colonial government. There was a growing uptake of cars over time. I came across a newspaper report on the growth of 'gambling dens' in Delhi's motor cars in 1931. This was paranoia around the popularity of cars and the threat they posed to the colonial government- you couldn't always see what was behind these mobile doors, it would seem. 

Well, I will post something more on cars in due course. Watch this space. 

Trams in Delhi

Given my background picture is of a tram, why not start with trams in Delhi? I found this picture on the internet a while ago. It's likely from the 1930s but I can't tell where in the city this was taken. 

More generally, trams in Delhi were part of a package of technological interventions that came in the wake of the Durbar of 1903. The motorcar, tramways and electric lighting were all buttressed by narratives of civilisational superiority and the Durbar became a launchpad for these (I think I will take up the case of cars in another post).

While that is one side of the story, trams caught on as a mode of transport quite quickly. This was also to the ire of some of the early nationalist leaders in Delhi such as a firebrand called Syed Haider Raza (not the artist of the same name), who chastised people for using the tram network. Raza tried (in vain) to get people off trams and wrote commentaries in newspapers about the practice being un-swadeshi (swadeshi referred to manufactured goods made in India from materials also from India). As one can imagine, colonial censors went into overdrive and hounded him out of a job - he was a teacher at St Stephens College in Delhi. The last traces in the archive that I found of Raza were to do with him leaving for England (he was at a St Stephen's party for the King Emperor with the labour leader Keir Hardie!!)

Trams were last seen in Delhi in the 1960s and there seems to be some discussion about their re-introduction as part of the Lt. Governor's plans for Shahjahanabad's redevelopment. Here is the image once again: 

Hello! I've had this blog for a while but it's taken me a long time to get it up and running. So, welcome to my first post!

Hidden Delhi is inspired by research that was conducted for my book ‘The Ungovernable City’ (2020). 'Hidden' here is a way of recovering the multiple histories of the city, particularly between the19th-20th century. 

 

While my original work was based on archival records, I am fascinated by the visual and hope by using such material, this blog might provide a way of engaging with different audiences.   

I aim to post weekly (Fridays) so if you have a minute, drop by. 

 

I also welcome suggestions on how to improve the blog, so please get in touch. 

Thanks,  

Raghav Kishore