The Purana Qila in 1928

 

This is a wonderful little photograph of the ‘Old Fort’ (Purana Qila) of Delhi circa 1928. It was taken by a German traveller to Delhi at the time. If you look closely, you can see the faint outline of Humayun’s Tomb in the background. Today the area draws throngs of visitors interested in Mughal monuments (incidentally, the Sunder Nursery heritage complex lies in the middle of the tomb and the Purana Qila and is well worth a visit in case you are planning to see the other two).

 

What we can also see in the foreground of the picture is habitation. Cast your eyes at the thatched roof huts in the centre. This indicates that people lived inside the area of the Fort. Of course, you won’t find that today and this is often missed out in the lionisation of ‘monuments’ (conversely, it comes up as a story of their ‘encroachment’). It is likely that the Archaeological Survey of India carried out clearances around this time in the late 1920s-30s with the inauguration of ‘New’ Delhi. The other example is Delhi’s Lodhi Gardens which were created by clearing villages during Lord Willingdon’s tenure in the 1930s. This was done so that visitors could view old buildings and ruins in a garden setting. All this was the culmination of a long process of ‘monument making’ that began in the 19^th century under colonial rule. 

 

Now, the rationale that underpinned this process of eviction and monument-making changed over time. For a while I had been interested in of the men who initiated this, someone called Sir Thomas Metcalfe. Metcalfe was the Resident at Delhi under the East India Company in the early 19^th century and was very dismissive of Indian practices of building use e.g. the whitewashing of old mosques/tombs. However, Metcalf is hard to pin down as a stereotypical official for several reasons. He commissioned the ‘Delhie Book’ which contained paintings of different sites within and around the city. He set up what was the first archaeological society in the Delhi in the 1840s and finally, (and quite bizarrely) converted a 17^th century tomb into his weekend retreat (!) So, clearly a lot to unpack with Metcalfe and his monument-making intentions at that time. 

 

I hope to deal with Metcalfe’s archaeological society in next Friday’s entry. See you then.