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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Reporting & Essays |
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Essay |
A Capital Century
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| After 100 years as India’s capital, what forces are shaping the city’s development today? |
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Published : 1 January 2011 |
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| The architects of New Delhi drew inspiration from
Buddhist religious complexes on the one hand, and Mughal
buildings on the other.
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“We are pleased to announce to Our People that on the advice of Our Ministers ,
tendered after consultation with Our Governor-General-in-Council,
We have decided upon the transfer of the seat of the Government of India,
from Calcutta to the ancient Capital of Delhi...”
| W |
ITH THESE WORDS, King George V
delivered a sensational surprise to his
subjects in Delhi on 12 December 1911.
The significance of the announcement
was barely concealed by the pompous
royalese in which it was phrased: from that moment,
as the new political capital of India, Delhi would gradually
displace Calcutta, which had been the nerve
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centre of the
British Empire in Asia since the 18th century.
Over the course of the next 12 months, there will be many
commemorations of the centenary of Delhi’s designation
as India’s capital—and the monumental process it put into
motion. But the significance of the initial decision is today
largely taken for granted: many Dilliwallas are surprised to
learn that the city has not always been the centre of political
power in India.
When I asked friends and acquaintances when they
thought Delhi had become India’s capital, one common response
was that it had been so “from ancient times.” For
many—as it had been for George V—the notion of Delhi as
the perennial political capital of this region of the subcontinent
is an old and abiding one: several people cited the Mahabharata
myth about the capital of the Pandavas, Indraprastha,
having been located at Purana Qila. Others pointed
to the extraordinary monuments that have survived in
Delhi—testimony to a long litany of medieval kings and emperors
who made Delhi the capital of their empires—from
the 11th century Lal Kot in Mehrauli to the still splendid Lal
Qila and Jama Masjid of the time of Emperor Shah Jahan.
Another common response was that Delhi had become the capital of India only on 15 August 1947, at the moment of independence;
many people believe that the city assumed its
political role only after the founding of the republic.
| THE ALKAZI COLLECTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY |
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A view of the camps erected for the Delhi Durbar of 1911, at which King George V announced that India’s capital would shift to Delhi. |
As we have seen from the heated debate over the Babri
Masjid, perceptions of the past are often at variance with
historical fact—and no less strongly held as a result. The
danger in such thinking arises when a notion or idea about the past becomes so prominent that the real history fades
from consciousness. My admittedly casual survey of knowledge
about Delhi’s history suggests that a similar dynamic is
at work today: the idea of the city as the capital—a place that
embodies the nation or represents nationhood—rather than
as a cultural centre or a living urban habitation with specific
and distinguishing characteristics, is very strongly and perhaps
detrimentally embedded in people’s minds. Narayani
Gupta, a historian of Delhi, refers to this when she argues
that “the national is crushing the city.” “Tilak Nagars and
Nehru Roads proliferate,” she laments, while hardly anyone
pays attention to the city’s historic culture, as enshrined in
the poetry of Mir and the witticisms of Mizra Ghalib.
When I met Gupta to talk about the city, where she has
lived most of her life, she posed her own question to me:
could I point to any roads in Delhi named after Taqi Mir or
Ghalib? There are none, of course—but there are two Vivekanand
Margs.
Historians like Gupta—who has written about the saga
of Delhi’s reconstruction as India’s capital after 1911—must
experience a certain sense of deja vu when contemplating
the fact that many today are surprised that their city’s role
as India’s capital emerged not from antiquity or from the leaders of independent India, but from the King of England.
That decision, after all, was an astonishing surprise to Dilliwallas
at the time.
In the months prior to King George V’s astonishing announcement
in December 1911, there were few clues that
history was about to be made. A grand gathering of India’s
British rulers, Indian princes, nobles, troops, and related
panoplies of the powerful had been organised in Delhi to
celebrate the coronation of the king, and to participate in
an imperial assemblage proclaiming him the King-Emperor
of India. Memorably described in Ahmed Ali’s classic
novel Twilight in Delhi (1940), preparations for this durbar
had been personally choreographed by the Viceroy,
Lord Hardinge. Some 84,000 Europeans and Indians were
brought from different parts of India to 233 camps covering
40 square kilometres under 16 square kilometres of canvas.
From the spring of 1911 onwards, around 20,000 people
had been at work on these camps. Alongside, 64 kilometres
of new roads were constructed; 80 kilometres of water
mains and 48 kilometres of water pipes for the distribution
of water in the camps were laid; farms with herds of cows
and dairies, as also markets for meat and vegetables, were
set up. Clearly, the guests who gathered in Delhi were adequately
housed, fed and watered.
Delhi was used to such gatherings. In 1877 a similar durbar
had been witness to a proclamation that Queen Victoria
was Empress of India. Again, in 1903 a durbar in Delhi celebrated
the coronation of Edward VII as Emperor of India.
Unique, though, was the presence in the third British Imperial
Assemblage of 1911 of the subject of the proclamation:
George V showed up in person with his Queen Mary dutifully
in tow. Their appearance added a new and altogether
different aura to this Coronation darbar.
The royal couple arrived in Delhi on 7 December on an
imperial train from Bombay, making their state entry in a
procession that lasted for some five hours. Just as ‘undesirable
elements’—the Indian babuism for the poor and the
unkempt—are removed from sight before sensitive events
like the Commonwealth Games, some 300 ‘dangerous characters’
were arrested and remained in prison until the king
left Delhi. Large contingents of police were posted at sensitive
spots along the processional path. At Chandni Chowk,
where their highnesses and their retinue passed almost under the windows of the houses of a curious and perhaps
bemused citizenry, a police officer was posted at every
window and nobody was allowed entry into or egress from
their house after 6:00 am.
| THE ALKAZI COLLECTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY |
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King George V and Queen Mary of England survey the Delhi Durbar from their thrones at the pavilion. |
The durbar itself was held five days later in a purpose-built
amphitheatre in northwest Delhi, with seating for 4,000
special guests. Also in attendance were 35,000 troops and
70,000 spectators, who watched this human circus from
a huge semi-circular mound. Suresh Kalmadi could have
been drawing inspiration from this durbar, for the last few
nails were being driven into the red carpet only a couple of
minutes before the Viceroy’s escort rode up. Not that anyone
noticed in the flourish of trumpets and drums that followed.
The durbar proceedings involved much kneeling as
well as the customary bowing and scraping before the king,
including the kissing of ‘His Majesty’s’ hand—by Hardinge
and the members of his Council, by the Indian chiefs and
princes, and by many others.
At the last stage of the durbar, the king sprang a surprise
on his audience. As Hardinge finished announcing
the boons conferred in commemoration of the accession of
George V, he handed over a document to the king. Standing
before his principal durbaris, the king read aloud a carefully
prepared statement announcing the transfer of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi, the reunion of Eastern and
Western Bengal and other administrative changes.
The announcement was greeted by “a deep silence of
profound surprise” among the unsuspecting listeners,
Hardinge writes, followed by wild cheering a few seconds
later. Such surprise was natural. Notwithstanding its hoary
past, at the time that this unsought-for elevation was thrust
upon Delhi, it was a provincial city of modest dimensions.
Unlike the discontented Bengalis—who began resisting the
partition of Bengal from 1903 (when it was announced by
the Viceroy, Lord Curzon) and had been fighting ever since
for its revocation—Dilliwalas had neither asked nor agitated
for any such status. Above all, George V’s announcement
astonished everyone because it had remained a closely
guarded secret.
The decision that the transfer announcement would be
an important gift for the king to carry with him to India
had been formalised as long as six months earlier. It was
known only to a dozen people in India and about the same
number in England. Even the gazettes and news-sheets
carrying the proclamation, and distributed simultaneously
with the king’s announcement, had been printed in the
utmost secrecy. Much like India’s annual budget exercise
nowadays, a press camp had been organised in Delhi where living accommodation, along with printing machines, was
provided for secretaries, printers and their servants. Offi-
cials were placed in this camp three days before the durbar,
with a cordon of troops and police ensuring that nothing
could go in or out until the actual moment of the durbar. So
Hardinge was justified in describing the announcement of
the transfer of the capital to Delhi as one of the best-kept
secrets in history.
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Readers' Comments |
Total Comments
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sravanth
23 January 2011
05:06 PM
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extraordinary
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