Delhi's Railway Exhibition (ca. March 1945)

This is a small clipping of the first ever ‘Railway Exhibition’ held at Delhi in March 1945. I came across this through the internet. It was featured in Modern Transport, a British broadsheet newspaper from the 1940s. When I read about the exhibition, I was reminded of Delhi’s National Rail Museum and the fond memories I had visiting there as a child. 

 

In this case, the first railway exhibition (‘India’s Lifeline’) was at best a belated PR exercise at the end of World War Two. I write this because this was the moment heated discussions were taking place about the nature of the Indian executive council and the elections later in 1945-6. So, perhaps to deflect some attention from the tumultuous days ahead and bask in the glory of bringing modern transportation marvels to the Empire, the first ever railway exhibition was held in the imperial capital. 

 

Interestingly, there were full size exhibits of locomotives, old passenger coaches showing engineering progress along with modern ‘air-conditioned hospital cars (coaches)’. All of this was on a ceremonial platform at New Delhi’s railway station!

 

Of course, you can’t mention the railways without commenting on the ‘balance sheet approach’- whether the railways were a benefit of Empire or not, especially since the exhibition has it tagged as ‘India’s Lifeline’. Yes, more railway journeys and passenger traffic did take place at this time and markets were integrated as a result of the railways. However, the flipside is significant; at the time of this exhibition, railways carried raw materials away from inland regions where it was needed the most and despite market connectivity, the railways were not meant to bring relief from famine, for example. As it says, the ‘Lifeline’ tag of the exhibition is perhaps best suited to wartime mobilisation, particularly for the defence services that benefitted from it.

 

See you next Friday.

Sunheri Masjid in the 20th century

I have two (for the second one see below) early 20th century postcards today, both of the fantastic Sunheri Masjid (Golden Mosque) in Chandni Chowk. The Iranian conqueror Nadir Shah ordered the slaughter of Delhi’s population whilst standing here in the 18^th century and the so the mosque has become infamous in that regard. Indeed, the reverse of one of the postcards mentions just that – that the ‘historic’ mosque was where Delhi’s population was massacred. 

 

What I am interested here is what the picture of the mosque can reveal about those who were photographing it (this follows on from my earlier post on postcard studios and publishers in Delhi). The first one, the ‘Historic Golden Mosque’ was photographed by Lal Chand and Sons. a company based in Dariba. The second which I think is actually a much more aesthetically rich picture with the bustling stalls, madrassa students in the background etc. is by M.L. Shagun Chand, another Delhi based company (this also has 'main native street' scribbled at the bottom). Along with postcards, these two studios published short guides on Delhi. They were cashing in on the global demand for postcards as well as the traveller circuit.  However, both these studios were bested by a third agency called H.A. Mirza and Sons. This company was probably the most significant postcard publisher in Delhi and North India (I’m going to hold back writing about H.A. Mirza and Sons. for now, as they deserve a separate post).

 

What is interesting about the two images is that they aren’t part of the ‘monumentalisation’ of Delhi, a process which featured depopulated sites and empty buildings, rather these postcards capture a rich and bustling city and present us with information on its social and cultural life. 

 

See you next Friday. 

Hamdam Dawakhana (ca. 1915)

Today’s post features an image of the Hamdam Dawakhana (loosely translated as ‘Friendly Pharmacy’) from 1916. This image was published in the Urdu language Chashma -e-Hayat (Spring of Life) magazine edited by Dawakhana’s proprietor Hafiz Mohammed Dehlvi in the 1940s. It was a proponent of Unani and Tibb medicine and quite a popular one at that. 

 

Located in Lal Kuan, the Hamdam Dawakhana was one of the ‘big’ pharmacies in early 20^th century Shahjahanabad. The other more prolific competitor was the ‘Hamdard’ pharmacy which is still around and has gone from strength to strength in recent decades. 

 

The magazine in which the image above was featured in is quite tattered but it does give us a sense of the bristling world in which questions about health and hygiene were being debated in Delhi and British India. Quiet presciently, it has sections on cigarette smoking (cigarette nushi) and the lungs and ‘propaganda’ against Tibb medicine for example. It’s pertinent to point out as historians have suggested, that such magazines (and Dawakhanas) weren’t just presenting ‘traditional’ wisdom on medicine but translating Unani and Tibb in a modern idiom for modern audiences. 

 

The Hamdam Dawakhana was at the centre of this process.

 

See you next Friday. 

Stereoscope views, fruits and vegetables in Delhi

What I have here today is a stereoscope image of a Delhi fruit vendor from the early 20^th century. Stereoscopes were viewing devices that would generate a 3D image for the viewer with greater depth and vision. The idea was to experience places and people ‘as if you were there’ and stereoscopy was so popular that it became an early form of mass media that gripped Europe and the Americas. 

 

With their stereoscopic images and accompanying information, the company ‘Underwood and Underwood’ promised the creation of a new culture of travel – even better than actually physically visiting far off places. They produced images of buildings, trades and ethnographic material for eager audiences to view. In the case of colonised lands, the stereoscope had the potential to domesticate a foreign landscape, making it knowable and amenable for colonial control. Of course, as with all colonial interventions, information gathering was incomplete, fractured and transformed by Indians. Historians have written a lot on this.

 

What I am also interested in here is the social side of this story which involves the fruit and vegetable vendors in Delhi. As it says in the description, the vendor in the picture is operating from Chandni Chowk. It’s highly likely that his goods were bought at Sabzi Mandi (main vegetable market) where they were sold through auction sales by dalals (brokers). In some cases, fruits and vegetables were stored overnight in facilities provided by dalals themselves and this vendor may have availed of them. 

 

The Mandi was a hotbed of activity just as it is today but in the late 19^th century there was a lot of debate over the nature of the premises. It was shifted to a new site on the pretext that the original Mandi was insanitary and that dalals were corrupt middlemen and needed to be removed. However, this process was not without complications; opinions differed whether on the one hand, the dalals were mistreating the vegetable and fruit vendors or whether they were an ‘enterprising section’ of the population, involved in an intricate system of exchange. The records are replete with objections from within the government and between it and others like the Mandi traders.  

 

Ultimately, the government relented and the question of compensation came up for the aggrieved parties – the trade of Sabzi Mandi, the dalals and its vendors endured. 

 

More on related issues every Friday. See you next time.