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.