This idea of the emperor’s connection with the people is reinforced by the architectural geometry. A single straight line runs like a thread from the foot of the throne balcony, via the Naqqar Khana and the Chatta Chowk, to the Lahore Gate and beyond, down the principal thoroughfare of the city. It is a line of connectivity, implying the penetration of the emperor’s gaze over his citizens, but also conversely suggesting his accessibility to them.
The scale and the obvious symbolism of this strict geometry raise a question about the buildings situated beyond the throne. Immediately behind the Diwan-i-Am lie the remains of a formal garden, facing the pavilion known as the Rang Mahal. With its carved marble basins and fountains, this large hall was the most luxurious of the palace’s private apartments. It is always described as the principal building of the zenana. But can this be correct? The Rang Mahal stands on the same all-important axis, implying a function connected with the emperor personally. Mughal women are known to have been influential in court politics; but it seems unlikely that this symbolically charged spot was assigned for their use.
The interior of the Diwan-i-Am in the Red Fort, by an unknown photographer, c. 1903
Some of the earliest surviving depictions of the fort perhaps indicate an answer. Views of the palace apartments as seen from the riverside are typical of paintings made by local artists in the early nineteenth century. Often, the names of the buildings, written in Persian, are inscribed in the sky above them. But in these early works there is no ‘Rang Mahal’. The building in question is clearly depicted and is labelled ‘Khas Mahal’, indicating that it was the private apartment of the emperor himself. The adjacent building (the one that everyone now calls the Khas Mahal) is labelled ‘Saman Burj’ (octagonal bastion).
The identification of the so-called Rang Mahal (sometimes also called the Imtiyaz Mahal) as the women’s quarters is accepted by modern authorities, so it is worth investigating how and when this idea arose. The earliest expression of it that I have found occurs in an essay on the buildings of Delhi written in 1846 by the distinguished Muslim reformer, Syed Ahmad Khan. Around the same time (in 1838) the English traveller Fanny Parks was permitted to visit the room. She records that she saw ‘three old women on charpais, looking like hags; and over the marble floor, and in the place where fountains once played, was collected a quantity of offensive black water, as if from the drains of the cook rooms’. English readers might have inferred from this passage (published in 1851) that the apartment was part of the zenana. But Parks was describing life in the palace at a time when Mughal fortunes were at their lowest ebb, with various members of the extended imperial family eking out a squalid existence. She can tell us nothing about the Mughal court in its heyday.
Of course, the paintings don’t date from the heyday either. They were made 150 years after Shah Jahan’s death. But they predate both Fanny Parks and Syed Ahmad Khan and show us what was believed earlier: that the finest of the palace apartments, located behind and in line with the throne, was reserved for the emperor’s personal use.
The other private apartments are strung out in a line that runs from north to south, perpendicular to the axis described above, perched on the ramparts of the fort wall, overlooking the space where the river once flowed. Each is a gem in its way but outstanding in splendour is the Diwan-i-Khas, the hall of private audience. Even though it’s smaller than the hall of public audience, it is no less magnificent and even richer in inlaid ornament. And though equally intended for ceremony and display, this room was also a place of work, where the emperor conferred with ministers and advisers. The nobles were required to assemble here each evening (and were fined for non-attendance) to assist the emperor as he deliberated on affairs of state. On occasion he might have preferred the greater seclusion and privacy of the Turkish baths next door. Indeed the identity of the two adjacent apartments seems to have become conflated, as Bernier calls the Diwan-i-Khas the ‘gasl khana’, meaning bathroom.
The arcades that enclosed a courtyard in front of the Diwan-i-Khas, below the podium, were among many parts that were lost in the wanton destruction carried out by the British after 1857. Earlier paintings may help us reconstruct parts of the palace in our minds, but the many changes carried out then make the complex hard to read. So does the slow pace of modern conservation, as the hammam, or Turkish baths, and the nearby exquisite Moti Masjid, or pearl mosque, are almost always closed. But some traces of the former atmosphere and beauty of the place are perhaps to be found in the Hayat Bakhsh Bagh, the formal garden at the northern end.
The dilapidated state of the complex is surprising in view of the iconic status that the fort holds in Indian hearts and minds. For the Lal Qila has become, at least in the eyes of the city’s residents, a symbol of Delhi—perhaps even of India (after the Taj Mahal). Images of it once featured prominently on postage stamps. But its elevation to that status was not by means of the obvious process. You might fairly think that it could have achieved its iconic role on its own merits: it is an architectural masterpiece built by a great Indian imperial power in a city that has served as a capital for 800 years or more. But in today’s political climate, this particular imperial power can no longer take for granted admiration for its achievements. In 2015, the name of one Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, was unceremoniously removed from a road in central New Delhi. The Mughals alone could not make the Red Fort stand for all of India. They got help of a kind—clumsy or at best unintentional—from the British. Help came in two phases. First of all, the vandalism carried out in 1857 after the suppression of the rebellion made it—if not at the time then later, as those actions were viewed retrospectively—into a site of national resistance.
Compounding the offence ninety years later, in November 1945, the Red Fort was selected as the venue for the court martial of Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem Sahgal and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon. These were three token individuals, selected from the many thousands of Indian officers and troops who had joined the Indian National Army and fought against the British during the Second World War. Initially fighting on the British side, they had been taken prisoner by the Japanese in Malaya, and agreed to change allegiance. Freed from jail, they joined the newly constituted INA and assisted the Japanese attack on Burma in 1945. Many members of the INA were captured by the British during that campaign. The trial of three of the officers, on charges of ‘waging war against the king’, provoked huge public anger, and their defence by a committee established by the Indian National Congress cemented public opinion in their support.
In the light of these events it is perhaps no wonder that the anniversary of India’s Independence, achieved less than two years later, is marked annually by a speech by the prime minister standing on the ramparts of the same Red Fort. Every year on 15 August, the serving prime minister mounts Aurangzeb’s barbican to address the cameras, looking down on a crowd of schoolchildren dressed in the colours of the flag, who brave the drizzle and enliven the tarmac.
On all other days of the year, a greater vibrancy and a stronger connectivity with the past are to be found in the other spectacular monument of the old city, the Jami Masjid, the vast congregational mosque commissioned by Shah Jahan. The present-day imam is a direct descendant of the mosque’s first imam, appointed by the emperor over three and half centuries ago, and he asserts his authority through vocal and not always liberal interventions in social and political affairs of the day. There is rarely perfect harmony between the religious authorities and the conservation bodies who are concerned to preserve the elegant structure from the ravages of time and climate.
The Jami Masjid; photograph by Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh II, c. 1870
The elegance arises from the near-perfect proportions of the prayer hall, the covered space that appears like a detached building standing at the western end of the courtyard. Three large bulbous white domes, finely detailed with thin black vertical lines, surmount the hall where arcades of pointed arches run between the framing minarets and the central portal or iwan. Here l
ies the only point of tension in the composition, for the iwan is so lofty and proud that when seen from directly in front it almost obliterates the central dome. The compromise was perhaps acceptable to the architects because the function of the iwan is to broadcast the qibla, the direction of Mecca, towards the assembled faithful. This primary purpose is especially apparent on Eids or festival days, when the entire courtyard is packed with serried rows of worshippers.
At other times, the courtyard is quieter, and it offers a refuge from the bustling city that presses in on all sides. It always has done, according to Syed Ahmad Khan who describes its outer steps in the nineteenth century, thronged with market stalls, horse-traders, jugglers and storytellers. There is still a clothes market called the Meena Bazaar that obstructs part of the eastern approach. Standing apart is the grave of Maulana Azad (1888–1958), a Muslim scholar and opponent of Partition who became independent India’s first minister of education. Designed by Habib Rahman, the grave is an elegant, modernist take on a traditional chhatri, with a sleek, minimalist white marble vaulted canopy. Nearby, in a line in front of the mosque’s eastern gate, is an unsightly concrete garden, built to replace a slum settlement that was forcibly cleared during the Emergency, but which at least opens up a line of sight to connect the mosque with the Red Fort beyond, and so reminds us that it was along this route that the emperors once came to worship.
When François Bernier wrote his description of Shah Jahan’s new city, its patron was still alive, but incarcerated under house arrest in the fort in Agra. An illness in the winter of 1657 prompted fears of the emperor’s imminent demise and triggered a war of succession among his sons. The victor in that contest was Shah Jahan’s third son Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707). Pious and ruthless, Aurangzeb was a skilled commander and a clever strategist, who soon outmanoeuvred his brothers. Dismayed to see his father recover from his illness, he imprisoned Shah Jahan in Agra (where he died, eight years later, in 1666) and proclaimed himself the emperor in Delhi.
Throughout his long reign of half a century, Aurangzeb nursed an ambition to add the kingdoms of the Deccan to his empire and his ceaseless campaigning entailed long absences from Delhi. The city of Aurangabad became the effective capital of the empire, just as the nearby fort of Daulatabad had been in the time of Muhammad bin Tughluq, 350 years before. But on this occasion, many members of the nobility—especially the less ambitious ones—were permitted to stay back in Delhi, where they kept up a skeletal court. Delhi continued to be acknowledged as the capital. And so it was to remain through the reigns of Aurangzeb’s successors.
The saddest victim of the Mughal civil war was Shah Jahan’s eldest son and appointed heir, Dara Shikoh. A liberal, open-minded man, made in the mould of his great-grandfather Akbar, Dara Shikoh was a poet and a humanist. Before the war, while Aurangzeb toiled on campaign far from the court, Dara stayed by his father’s side in Delhi and read Hindu scriptures such as the Vedas. On ascending the throne, Aurangzeb first humiliated his brother by parading him through Delhi’s streets as a captive and then had him beheaded on a charge of heresy. But his remains were interred on the terrace of Humayun’s grand tomb, and it is some small consolation to think that even in death Dara Shikoh remains a Delhiite, while Aurangzeb died and was buried in the distant Deccan.
Staying On: The Late Mughals
The eighteenth century, a time of great cultural and economic growth in various parts of India, was a depressing era for Delhi. As in the fifteenth century when Timur’s sack of Delhi had weakened the centre but in doing so had given the regions a chance to flourish, so again the gradual disintegration of central authority from Delhi created a space in which new regional powers emerged. These included three so-called successor states: Lucknow in the north, Murshidabad in the east and Hyderabad in the south. In each case, a noble who was initially appointed by the centre to govern a large province of the empire, managed to assert his autonomy and establish his own dynastic succession. All three states inherited and further developed the Mughal court culture, somewhat adapted in form as the rulers of the three new dynasties happened to be Shia rather than Sunni Muslims. Hindu kingdoms old and new also grew in stature in this period. In the west, the Rajput kingdom of Jaipur reinvented itself as a modernized, economically powerful state, while the militarily successful Maratha clan of the Scindias established its domain in central India, later fixing its capital at Gwalior. This is an exciting era for enthusiasts of Indian urbanism, when fine new cities were founded in each of these regions, embellished by vast palace complexes and extensive gardens.
What a depressing contrast Delhi makes at this time! Aurangzeb was followed in rapid succession by a series of weak rulers, who were little more than puppets in the hands of their ministers. Many of them were blinded or killed by nobles or relatives. Court intrigues swung the fortunes of what remained of the empire, and throughout the century the city suffered a series of humiliations along with the court.
The death of Aurangzeb in 1707 signalled another war of succession, but on this occasion the victor, who ruled as Bahadur Shah (r. 1707–12), was already in his mid-sixties when he came to the throne and survived only a further five years. His sons in turn grappled for the throne, but the winner, Jahandar Shah, shocked everyone by marrying a dancing girl and promoting her family. He was soon dislodged and murdered by his nephew Farrukhsiyar (r. 1713–19). The replacement was no improvement: he depended heavily on certain generals and ministers who took control of the Red Fort, kept the emperor under house arrest and finally blinded and killed him. The ministers next tried out a couple of young princes of the imperial family, putting each in turn on the throne but disposing of them unceremoniously when they were deemed unfit. At last their choice fell upon a grandson of Bahadur Shah named Muhammad Shah (r. 1719–48), who lasted longer, not because he was abler or wiser but because he was entirely compliant and was content to leave the administration to incompetent advisers while he stayed in his harem.
This behaviour has done his historical reputation no harm: he is popularly known as Rangila, ‘the colourful’. But the deteriorating situation in Delhi caught the attention of Nadir Shah, the man who overthrew the Safavids of Persia in 1736 and apparently thought the Mughals were ripe for the same treatment. In 1739 he invaded India, quickly overcame the token resistance of the imperial forces and occupied Delhi. He seemed more interested in loot than in staying, and Muhammad Shah still hoped to buy him off. Unfortunately, some of the city’s merchants quarrelled with Nadir Shah’s troops over how much they should pay for grain. Nadir Shah responded by ordering a general massacre of civilians and the burning of houses. After reducing the city to a pitiful condition, Nadir Shah packed up and left, taking with him the contents of the treasury and the gem-studded Peacock Throne, which had been made for Shah Jahan.
Muhammad Shah continued to rule for nearly a decade after Nadir Shah’s departure. Prominent among the architectural embellishments added to the environs of Delhi during his reign is the observatory known as the Jantar Mantar, which was built not by the emperor but by one of the regional rulers, Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II of Jaipur. The forms of the huge stone instruments, which the maharaja designed himself, to modern eyes suggest abstract sculpture, and their meanings to most are likely to be just as obscure. Jai Singh also built four other observatories, one in his own capital city, Jaipur, one on the roof of an ancestral property in Varanasi, and smaller ones in Mathura and Ujjain, cities where he was posted. There’s one here in Delhi partly because Jai Singh had to seek the approval of the emperor to build his observatories and thereby reform the calendar and partly because this too was ancestral land. Largely undeveloped at the time—but now at the busy heart of New Delhi—the area had been acquired by his forebear and namesake Raja Jai Singh I (who served Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb) and was then known as Jaisinghpura.
Muhammad Shah was succeeded by his son Ahmad Shah (r. 1748–54) who followed suit, spending his entire time in his harem, while northern regions of the empire in
cluding Punjab and Kashmir were overrun by the Afghan commander Ahmad Shah Abdali. In his reign too, the major monument added to Delhi was built by a courtier, in this case the vizir or prime minister of the empire, known as Safdarjang, who established the dynasty that ruled Lucknow from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. Prefiguring the highly ornamented architecture of that city, Safdarjang’s tomb is recognizably from the same tradition as Humayun’s tomb (which stands at the other end of Lodi Road), but is a playful, decorated, scaled-down rendering of the same themes. Details like the carved leaf forms that coil around the foils of the cusped arches have tempted critics to call it decadent or rococo. Such terms are unfashionable now, so let us say instead that its exuberant style is typical of its time. Significant of its time too is the fact that this, the last great Mughal mausoleum, was built not for an emperor or an empress, but for a minister who, while overseeing the disintegration of the empire he was meant to serve, carved out a kingdom and established a dynasty of his own.
In 1754 the Mughal emperor Ahmad Shah was blinded by another leading noble, Ghazi al-Din, and replaced on the throne by an elderly cousin who was given the title Alamgir II. This title was a reference to Aurangzeb, whose proper title—rarely used by modern historians—was Alamgir, or ‘seizer of the universe’. Ghazi al-Din perhaps hoped to restore a semblance of order. But he was unable to manage affairs effectively through his puppet because he lacked the funds to pay the army and could not check the rising power and aggressiveness of the Marathas and the Jats, who now controlled the districts around Agra. More seriously, he could not prevent the Afghan, Ahmad Abdali from storming Delhi and looting the city. Like Nadir Shah (whom he had once served), Ahmad Abdali had not come to stay but to pick over the bones. When he left, his booty included a number of Mughal princesses. The noble Ghazi al-Din, fearing that the emperor too might fall into Ahmad Abdali’s hands, coolly had him murdered. He told Alamgir II that a Sufi had taken up residence in Firuz Shah Kotla, the palace complex dating back to the time of the Tughluqs. Ever eager to meet holy men, Alamgir II set out for the spot, only to encounter not a Sufi but an assassin. He was buried in Humayun’s tomb.
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