DELHI BY HEART

by Raza Rumi

  However, sections of the media, vigorous citizen’s groups and professional historians keep on challenging these poisonous trends. And a dalit politician recently led the largest state of northern India, Uttar Pradesh, so all is not yet lost. How could Nehru and Gandhi disappear from the innards of contemporary India so soon?

  This is why, in my 2008 visit, I noticed in the newspapers, that only a small gathering was present at the ceremony to bequeath Gandhi’s ashes to the Ganga.23 The man who taught India to be simple, self-sufficient and non-consumerist does not fit into the Delhi malls.

  Perhaps, this is why I am sometimes pensive while walking around in Delhi.

  4

  The Sultanate’s Ruins

  O

  n each Thursday of my Delhi sojourn, Zeenat Aunty, Sadia’s mother, would take us to Mehrauli, a township now considered part of suburban Delhi. Devotees of the Chishti shrines have to present themselves at the dargah of Khwaja Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, whether it is the initiation of a pilgrimage to Ajmer or a culmination of prayers at Hazrat Nizamuddin’s shrine. Quite appropriately, the dargah is close to the Qutub Minar in the quintessentially medieval Mehrauli.

  Khwaja Kaki is the ‘Qutub-ul-Aqtaab’ or Qutub of all Qutubs. In Sufi parlance, a ‘Qutub’ is the perfect guide for a heart; literally it means a hub or axis.1 A leading disciple of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, Khwaja Qutub Kaki mentored both Baba Fariduddin Ganjshakar of Pakpattan and Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya and therefore has a central status in the Chishtiya line of Sufism. Khwaja Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki was born in 1173 in a town called Aush or Awash in Transoxania.2 His original name was ‘Bakhtiyar’ and the addition to his name ‘Kaki’ was attributed to him because of the legendary miracle that he performed. ‘Kak’ was a kind of bread popular in medieval times (perhaps a precursor of the bakhar khani still sold in old Delhi) and the saint, as oral and written accounts record, created this bread for hungry visitors and devotees.

  Khwaja’s dargah is more sombre than Hazrat Nizamuddin with ambience transported to medieval time. The unchanged architectural character is a rare treat—the alleys, tombs and arches are all reminiscent of the Sultanate or early Mughal style. The mazar compound has four banyan trees at each corner of the square and a canopy, resting on marble pillars, protects it.

  It is also more formal than Hazrat Nizamuddin which has a more populist feel. Timings here are strict and I have to wear a topi before entering. Women are not allowed inside the courtyard, thanks to the patriarchal clergy. So there is a melee of women, old and young, burqa-clad and burqa-less, who stand by the screens and pray from a distance.

  Just before sunset, the dua e roshnai commences. A local attendant comes in with offerings of flowers, incense and chadars for the grave and recites in mellifluous Persian laced with Hindustani words—‘He is the leader of saints and servant of the poor’. I find this secular devotional mode quite astounding. In Pakistan the secular khuda hafiz has been thrown out by Zia ul Haq’s Arab-centric Islamization, leading to a sort of a cultural purge in the dear homeland. While life and linguistics have also changed in India, there are still little enclaves where the old world exists. Invisible to many in Delhi this is a forlorn, quirky old world.

  Luckily, the tomb is not crowded and we have moments of peace. I sit in a corner outside as the doors are closed for the sunset prayer. There are endearing old men here, who must have sat here for decades. Next to Qutubuddin’s tomb is the resting place of his famous disciple, Qazi Hamid Nagauri, who is remembered for his continuation of the inclusive ethos of the Chishti saints. Qutubuddin’s wife, a pious woman who renounced the world along with her husband, is also buried in the vicinity adjacent to the grave of Khwaja’s wet nurse. They lie in an enclosure where men are not allowed.

  Zeenat Aunty, our twenty-first century follower, has adopted a hujra that she has restored. It was once the meditation room of Sheikh Hafiz Jafar, who served at Khwaja Qutub’s dargah for over fifty years as an Imam of the mosque and happens to be the father of one of her family’s spiritual mentors. Passing through the Sultanate archways, little entrances and simple pavilions we reach the hujra. It is a little room with a hexagonal ceiling and the walls have little alcoves where candles or lamps must have been lit each evening.

  Zeenat Aunty, Sadia and I sit there for some time in the medieval ambience. A little later, local residents of the dargah, who know aunty well, bring in the langar or communal meal, comprising of a well-brewed spicy yellow dal cooked on slow heat and rotis.

  A qawwali begins as we are leaving the tomb. Legend has it that Khwaja Qutub was extremely fond of the Sama3 and was in a trance for four days before his death or ‘reunion’ with Allah. The qawwal enacts this tradition with his two young sons. The qawwal children of Delhi, waiting for small tips, have contributed to centuries of Indian music and have no connection with the hi-tech urban studios of the metropolis.

  As we walk back, we encounter beggars, mystics and lost souls and finally find our shoes. The same path is now dark because there are no street lights or amenities, only sewage spilling out from open drains. We see dimly lit carrom-board clubs full of Muslim boys. It is a ghetto, charming for its medievalness but pretty dismal otherwise.

  As we are driving back, Sadia shows me the posh outlets of Delhi designers and haunts of artists who have bought properties in the area. A popular chic Italian restaurant is also located here where we plan to go on my next visit.

  My next visit to the dargah is in broad daylight. I discover an old mosque, Moti Masjid or the Pearl Mosque. Sadia tells me that this mosque was built by Emperor Shah Alam in 1709. The little hidden gem is closed but we manage to see a portion of it. And, of course, we walk over to the Zafar Mahal. The abandoned empty summer palace of the last Mughal emperor is covered with graffiti. A few goats have also found a home there.

  On another visit I enter the calm little mosque. Next to it is a cluster of graves screened off by a carved filigree screen of white marble. These are relatives of Zafar and there is one striking empty space—this is where Zafar wished to be buried. But events after the Mutiny of 1857 took him to Burma where he died in oblivion. An oft-quoted verse in Urdu that I grew up with emerges on the horizon like a forgotten season:

  What an unfortunate man Zafar is, for his burial

  He could not find two yards in his beloved land

  Zafar Mahal displays the later Mughal aesthetic. There is a huge gate built by Zafar known as the Haathi (Elephant) Gate. Zafar Mahal was used by the royals during the festival Phoolwalon ki sair, a multicultural event that involved Hindus, Muslims, mullahs and pundits all in one go. The wide ramp leads to the main palace, a series of structures made of marble, red sandstone and thin lakhori bricks, a speciality of the Mughal era. Few things are intact and most of the splendour has vanished.

  Close to the palace are the ruins of Jahaz Mahal and the still functioning Hauz-i-Shamsi. The hauz was made on the orders of the second king of the Slave Dynasty, Sultan Iltumish, in 1230 AD. We saw some residents washing clothes in it, though the original hauz had sacred value. The hauz was a key marker in the historical Phoolwalon-ki-sair festival that still takes place. This colourful procession of flowers, faithfully followed by the later Mughals, was a multi-religious event, which invited public participation and became an aesthetically charged, slow-paced marathon of medieval times. Starting from Chandni Chowk, Delhi’s elite ministers and court officials would pass by various landmarks of the city, offering flowers at Hindu temples and Muslim shrines and then would end up at a grand cultural event at the Lodhi-era Jahaz Mahal. The Mahal is surrounded by a narrow moat and must have served as a royal pleasure resort in the summers. Although one of its walls has collapsed completely, it still is an elegant feature in the crowded heart of Mehrauli.

  A plastered dome near the gate dates back to the fifteenth century with additions from later centuries. There are features inspired by European designs, such as a fireplace, in one of the walls. The staircase to the balcony is wide wit
h low steps, surely modern in concept. A far cry from the slippery ancient stairs of Purana Qila where Zafar’s great-grandfather Humayun fell and lost his life.

  The procession of flowers, made more festive with music, would then march towards the dargah of Khwaja Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki and the Yogmaya temple next to it. For two centuries, from the time of Akbar Shah II to Bahadur Shah Zafar up until the British stopped it in 1857, every king of Delhi went to the tomb of Khwaja Bakhtiyar and also to the Yogmaya Mandir. Ghalib described it well in one of his letters:

  In this city is a festival called the ‘flower men’s festival’. Everyone, from nobles to artisans, goes off to the Qutub Minar. All the shops in the city of Muslims and Hindus alike stay closed throughout this time.

  I was told that this procession was restarted by the government of India in the 1960s though it may have lost its earlier symbolism and mass participation. I was not managed to attend one.

  No place in Delhi displays as much historical and cultural ambiguity as Mehrauli. Signs of ancient habitation have been found here but the recorded history of the area begins from the ninth and tenth centuries when the Hindu kingdoms of the Tomars and later the Chauhans made this their seat of power. The legendary Prithviraj Chauhan of Ajmer also ruled Delhi from Mehrauli. There were about twenty-seven temples as some historians have recorded.

  Around the first century, Ptolemy of Alexandria recorded the existence of a city he called ‘Daidala’, also referred to as ‘Dilli’, a small town perhaps until the Tomar Rajputs adopted it as their capital in the eighth century. The Tomars built a number of monuments, including the fort of Lal Kot. The Chauhans expanded Lal Kot and rechristened it Qila Rai Pithora.

  However, things were to change as numerous warring kingdoms and absence of a central power made India an easy prey for Turkish soldiers of fortune. The most infamous was, of course, Mahmud of Ghazni who supposedly ‘invaded’ India seventeen times, though twelve seems to be a more verifiable figure. Mahmud, filled with the zeal of his new faith, Islam, had little empathy for the ancient religious practices of India, and thus, his looting of temples, most notably Somnath Temple in Gujarat, has become the fulcrum for historical revisionism. He was neither interested in consolidating domestic power nor in establishing an empire; rather, India’s wealth which he took back was enough to glorify him back home. He did end up creating governorships in Lahore and Multan that were always vulnerable to local insurgencies and thus he returned again and again to maintain his hold.

  As historians have shown, the looting of temple wealth was not a Muslim practice per se. Local rulers also indulged in this. Power and control are not really fuelled by religion or compulsion of faith; however, the legitimizing of power is almost always bestowed by an eager and ever-ready clergy. The divine right to rule, govern and, if needed, plunder, has always been the comfortable refuge of ambitious men and sometimes women.

  At the end of the twelfth century, it was Mohammad of Ghaur who finally established Turkish rule in Delhi by defeating Prithviraj Chauhan and thus became the pioneer of a tale that was to unfold and swirl over a millennium of Muslim rule, with numerous eccentric characters seeking and sustaining power. The Turks, their slaves of Central Asian descent and later the direct descendants of Tamerlane, better known as the ‘Mughals’, were primarily politicians, generals and rulers; their faith was almost always incidental barring a few examples such as Emperor Aurangzeb and his efforts to impose the Shariah.

  Qutubuddin Aibak, appointed commander by the Turkish ruler, Mohammad Ghori, captured Delhi and became its ruler in 1192. However, he did not live long. Ghori also did not live long. Though many of the Mehrauli landmarks such as the Qutub Minar and water reservoirs were initiated by Aibak, for strategic reasons his main interest was Lahore where he had to contain the Mongol threat. Aibak’s favourite pastime, playing polo, took his life way too soon and power fell into the hands of another ‘slave,’ Iltutmish.

  Under Iltutmish, Delhi received much importance. The ultimate sanction by Baghdad for the establishment of a Sultanate in Delhi meant that the Islamicate had been established there. But he also did not live long and a war of succession led to his famed daughter, Razia, becoming the first female Muslim ruler of Delhi. She was killed shortly afterward by court intriguers and powerful nobles (courtiers who exercised tremendous influence and authority). Razia is ostensibly buried close to the dargah of Shah Turkman, a thirteenth-century Sufi of the Suharwardi order.

  The line of slave rulers continued and Delhi underwent transformations and expansions with each of the Sultans. During the late thirteenth century, another Delhi was created by Kaiqubad (he of the watery death), the son of Balban who ruled in relative peace and stability despite the constant fear of Mongol invasion. Kaiqubad was not the best of rulers, but he built a fort-palace, along with a surrounding township and called it Kilugarhi. The name has since been corrupted to Kilokri, a village near Maharani Bagh.

  Another Delhi emerged in the early 1300s, when Alauddin Khilji chose Siri as the site for a fortress. Timur, the legendary Mongol, reported in his memoirs after he invaded Delhi, that Siri was a fairly well-developed and populated medieval town. Today, Siri is just another large ruin with the fairy-tale fort walls disappearing piece by piece.

  The Tughlaqs who ruled Delhi created Tughlaqabad. Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq (whose unusual fortified tomb stands opposite the Tughlaqabad Fort), created this city in over four years. However, he died shortly after Tughlaqabad was settled. Ghiyasuddin was a competent administrator and a builder with a keen eye for aesthetics. He was succeeded by his whimsical son, Mohammad-bin-Tughlaq, who, not content with his father’s urban expansion, ordered the creation of another city to be named Jahanpanah. This was a grand urban complex which encompassed bits and pieces of the older fortifications, such as Dilli, Siri and Tughlaqabad.

  History was to repeat itself as a predictable script when the third Tughlaq, Feroze Shah Tughlaq, designed and built Ferozabad in 1354. This was at the site where the present Feroze Shah Kotla exists north of the Red Fort. There is not much there either except the ruins and some clear marks of an urban centre.

  Until 1533, little was added by the later Sultans to the urban landscape of Delhi. The main reason was that Delhi remained a constant attraction for Mongol forces. The later Sultanate dynasties—the Saiyyads and the Lodhis—were therefore more concerned with saving what they had inherited. However, under the Lodhis, several architectural innovations took place.

  It was under the Mughals that Delhi was yet again reinvented, first by Humayun who chose the ancient site of Indraprastha to settle the capital and then a little more than a century later, by Shah Jahan who built a city after his name that survives as a Muslim ghetto today—Old Delhi. The succeeding occupants of Delhi, the British, ventured to create the ‘New Delhi’ of today. Since the end of British rule, there continues till date, the migration of job-seekers from other parts of India in a new invasion of Delhi.4 Old constructs of Delhi remain layered in Mehrauli while the new Delhis are being assembled elsewhere.

  It is not surprising that Mehrauli and its surrounding areas are littered with the tombs of kings, queens, princes, princesses, generals, saints and poets. It became a statement of continuity, in the political sense, to create a tomb, as well as for a personal quest for immortality that a striking building ensured. Sometimes the mausoleums were erected and adorned even before death embraced the elites.

  Many tombs are not clearly marked and this perhaps helped to augment oral histories. The takhti and the kalam shapes of the graves tell us if the person buried is a male or female—the kalam, a longitudinal shape indicates that the person buried below is male, while the takhti, a flat, rectangular shape signifies female.

  In Mehrauli, I find the tombs of Iltutmish, Balban and Alauddin Khilji. However, Razia’s neglected grave is far away from Mehrauli and located in a cul-de-sac in the narrow streets of Old Delhi. Much of this heritage lies by the wayside, crumbling, neglected, at the mercy of a whim
sical conservator, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

  Delhi’s monsoon sun constantly flirts with the polluted horizons as it does in Lahore. But as I get to the Qutub Minar the air becomes most enchanting. Qutub Minar has signs and numbers of all kinds. Believed to be created through the materials of several temples, the adjoining Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque, the later addition of Alai Darwaza and some other smaller monuments defining the edges of the Qutub Complex are eerie and intriguing. If on the one hand they tell a long story, on the other, they also narrate a tale of tragic neglect. Even though the ASI has taken several steps, the maintenance of the monuments is far from satisfactory.

  The Delhi Gazetteer provides intricate details of the Qutub, measuring it at 238 feet and one inch, with 179 steps leading to the top. In 1803, an earthquake damaged the cupola that adorned the top of the minar. It was replaced with a Mughal pavilion by Major Robert Smith but that was found to be so out of character with the rest of the monument that Lord Hardinge ordered it to be replaced with the iron railing that one finds there today.

  Architecturally, it is an oddball. It is a mosque on the platform of a temple. Animal shapes pop out with Islamic calligraphy while a sacred temple iron pillar stands in front of the mosque entrance. It is simply wondrous and a subject for detailed study. Each addition to the complex made from the time of Aibak to the Khiljis reflects the evolution of Indo-Islamic architecture. I could well understand, even as I stood there wonderstruck, how the songs of the Bhakti poets resonated with this fusion. The place epitomizes the synthesis of faiths and beliefs, thus creating a newer version of composite India and adding further diversity to the land.

  It is clear that the area was not abandoned until the early Mughal era. I move on after staring at the minar for some time and then find Adam Khan’s tomb. This lonely structure, dating back to 1562, represents a twilight zone between the noisy outer market of Mehrauli and the ghost-like calm of the Delhi Ridge. Like several Mughal monuments, it is peaceful and more centred in its design, showing that the Muslims had established themselves and were no longer daunted by the richness of indigenous traditions. The enormous dome and heavy walls are simple and less decorated than what the Mughals were to create later.