Gopal Krishn's sketches in 'Delhi in Two Days'

 

I came across some fascinating sketches of Delhi’s transport forms from the 1940s in a guidebook, the cover of which is featured above. This was authored by Gopal Krishn and published by ‘Odel press’ in Delhi. It’s from the 1940s because the foreword mentions American soldiers arriving in the city during the Second World War and so the guidebook was perhaps capitalising on a new market (this is a timely released third edition). I have mentioned about the impact of these new visitors to Delhi in earlier posts.  

 

Anyhow to return to the sketches featured by Gopal Krishn, these include myriad forms of transport such as trams, buses, ekkas (one horse carriages) and rickshaw pullers which are dotted through the guide. These are featured alongside the more conventional pictures of ancient monuments and architectural pieces and I suspect that these fed into a broader impulse of cataloguing transport forms and trades which travellers were interested in at the time. Delhi’s own modernity on full display. 

 

The guide is also pretty standard in terms of its categorisation of Delhi’s history into ‘Hindu’, ‘Muslim’ and ‘British’ periods which was  commonplace by the 1940s. 

 

Here's leaving you with some of these images (below). See you next Friday. 

Madame Sakoilsky’s Drapery, Millinery and Dressmaking at Mori Gate

 

This is an early 20^th century advertisement placed for European travellers in Delhi. I found it in a tour guide from the time issued by Maiden’s Hotel. As can be seen, Madam Sakoilsky’s business was specifically targeted at European women and aside from Delhi it was in Mussoorie- catering to the latter’s summertime influx of Europeans. 

 

Madame Sakoilsky was a Russian émigré to Delhi and set up her clothing shop sometime in the 1900s. Her ad gives us a fascinating insight into imperial sartorial cultures and the role of immigrants, particularly in Delhi, in facilitating these. Preservation of the body in hot climes was an imperative for Europeans and specifically, English women. Guides for women travelling to India often suggested that they carry their own materials which would then be stitched by European shops. Sakoilsky alludes to this in the advertisement where she suggests that ‘lady tourists requiring any little work done, could be executed immediately’. Her European shop perhaps also aimed to alleviate any fears of the material being ruined by native darzis (tailors) who were often blamed for incompetence. This narrative of course, was laced with racial undertones. 

 

The records at the National Archives in India suggest that Sakoilsky’s story is a little more complex that it seems. Her application for a naturalisation certificate as a British citizen was rejected on two occasions in 1919 and 21. This was done in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and would have left her in a precarious situation. This is all I’ve been able to piece together on her so far. As for her Mori Gate shop in Delhi, I’m assuming this is long gone but if anyone has information, please get in touch!

 

See you next Friday. 

 

The re-creation of Roshanara Bagh

 

I'm following up on a post I wrote a little while ago on 'monuments' in Delhi. In particular, this post is to do with Delhi's Roshnara Bagh, the garden/s built by their namesake Roshnara Begum, Emperor Aurangzeb's sister. I haven't been able to find a picture of the gardens from the colonial period so in its absence we have a print of Roshanara Begum above. This was made by the French traveller and author Antoine Prevost in his history of the world 'Historie general des Voyages' (1746 and 59).

To return to the garden/s, these were was created in 1650 and Rosharana Begum was intered there upon her death. In contrast to what exists today, the gardens were much bigger and without any defined boundary. We know that when they were created, the gardens were surrounded by water channels, trees and orchards of various descriptions, redolent in their display of paradisiacal imagery. Roshanara's tomb was of course, the centrepiece of the gardens. However, and this is where it gets interesting, the gardens were also created for the sustenance of the local area. For example, the residents of Sabzi Mandi and the locality of Mughalpura would frequently use the site and its facilities. Moreover, the gardens gave various entitlements to land and trees such as the Sardarakhti, which allowed cultivators to take their produce to wholesale markets like Sabzi Mandi without harassment. The latter meant that a cultivator or Sardarakhtidar was responsible for the maintenance of trees in a garden and could not be ejected from the land until the trees stood there. A small amount in rent was payable to the proprietor if fruit trees were involved. To return to the point, the gardens were essential to the livelihood of the local area and not a 'monument' in the sense they exist today. 

For want of a better word, the first step in the 'monumentalisation' of the gardens began in the 1870s when they shrank, became formally defined 'gardens' and their Sardarakhti entitlements were removed (the latter took ages however, because of the way these were assessed and the resistance of the longstanding sardarakhtidars who wanted better terms). From that point on, the Roshanara Bagh was treated as an idyllic retreat for those who wanted to enjoy the sight of a Mughal tomb in the midst of manicured gardens. More on this another day. 

See you next Friday.

Delhi's 'Trevelyanpur' featured in The Saturday Magazine, c.a. 1837

 I thought I’d write today’s post on Delhi’s first ‘extra-mural’ (or what some might call ‘suburban’, although I use it with some reservation given that term originated in a particular spatial and urban context) experiment under British rule – Trevelyanpur.  The image above isn’t of course of Trevelyanpur but it is of an 1837 British Magazine that carried an article with reference to it. Instead, a lithographic print of Delhi’s Salimgarh fort and the Yamuna river are its featured images. 

 

Trevelyanpur was named after its founder Charles Trevelyan, the East India Company official who is also infamous for his handling of the Great Famine in Ireland. A young and ambitious Trevelyan was posted to Delhi sometime in the 1820s as an assistant to the commissioner Charles Theophilus Metcalfe. The urban initiative of Trevelyanpur was situated outside the Lahore Gate of Old Delhi/Shahjahanabad on 300 bighas of ‘waste’ land. It was supposedly financed by Trevelyan himself for the 'poor of the city'. This is how the magazine references the new quarters in 1837:

 

“The centre, a large quadrangle, called Bentinck Square, is entered by four streets, opening from the middle of each side. The who extent of the streets, where are 90 feet in width, and the façade of the square, present an unbroken front of Doric columns, supporting a piazza behind, in which are the commodious shops and dwelling-houses, ranged with great regularity. The four triangular spaces at the back, formed by the arms of the cross, are intended for stable and court-yards for the cattle and bullock-carts belonging to the inhabitants. The whole forms a very striking contrast with the ancient ruins by which it is surrounded.”

 

While there are no traces of Trevelyanpur as an urban initiative today, I’ve found some interesting evidence on how its construction influenced East India policy over town and customs duties. An old article from an Australian newspaper in the 1850s carries the suggestion that Trevelyan experimented with Trevelyanpur to devise a proto ‘freeport’ - a tax-free haven without transit duties or customs.  It suggests that from Trevelyanpur ‘sprang the abolition of transit duties’. Its namesake found these Mughal duties frustrating and from the experiment, he urged William Bentinck, the Governor General (Trevelyan also named the square after Bentinck, as you have read above) to reform or remove these across East India territories. Therefore, Delhi’s Trevelyanpur became part of a broader thrust to reshape the urban and economic landscape of Indian cities. 

 

Well, that’s all I have on this so far. Will see you next Friday for more on Delhi…