by Raza Rumi
Out of 33.60 lakh households in Delhi, 1.79 lakh live in rural areas.4 Lucky Peck, author of the book, Delhi: A Thousand Years of Building, notes that during the colonial era, the expansion of the city swallowed up nearly fifty villages and during the first decade after Independence another fifty were pulled into urbanization. Some of the villages like Malcha and Raisina survive only as street names. Raisina, of course, was shifted to build the Vice Regal Lodge, later re-named Rashtrapati Bhawan. The exact site of the village is said to be where the Delhi Press Club houses busy journalists.
During the construction of New Delhi, the British cleared away entire villages. Post Independence, the city expanded and was planned around these villages. The villages remained, while the farmlands sprouted residential apartments instead of crops. Vasant Enclave next to Vasant Gaon, Khirki Extension next to Khirki Village and Nizamuddin West next to Nizamuddin Basti were all villages that are now core constituents of metropolitan Delhi.
Similarly, the villagers of Kotla Mubarakpur, next to South Extension I would herd their cows to graze in what is today the coveted and bustling Defence Colony. The residents of Shahpur Jat village, now a hub of chic designer boutiques and basement workshops, had their farmlands spreading from today’s Hauz Khas and Andrewsganj to as far as Greater Kailash and Malviya Nagar. These developments were similar to that of Pakistani cities. For instance, Lahore city also spreads out into rural hinterlands and even posh areas such as Defence Housing Authority were very much rural in their origins.
The case of Defence Lahore is another story. Given the high demand for real estate by Pakistan’s new-rich classes and expatriates, it has now expanded towards the Indian border. Serving and retired army officials, once wary of such a location, are keen to be there and promote the housing. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, former prime minister of India wrote in a famous poem, ‘Now there shall be no war.’ Cynics in Pakistan ask which Pakistani general would risk a war when he has so passionately built his farmhouse or plush bungalow in such close proximity to the Indian border?
Coming to know Dr Shreekant Gupta, a former director of the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA)5, and a thorough Delhiite has been fated by the stars. My meeting with Dr Gupta who allows me to call him ‘Ali’ (a testament to his composite Delhi identity), was initially arranged on email. Earlier, I had read his letter to the editor published in the UK-based conservative Economist magazine. The writer, a political leader of Britain, in an article in the magazine, a harbinger of doom for Pakistan, had described the country as ‘The world’s most dangerous place.’ I was not surprised. I was struck by Gupta’s empathy and directness:
Sir, the title (of your article) by your leader about Pakistan—The World’s Most Dangerous Place, January 5, confirms the old adage in journalism: when it bleeds it leads. Yes, Pakistan is going through trying times, but it is far from being the world’s most dangerous country. Having just returned from Pakistan, which I traversed without hindrance, with my Indian passport and Hindu name, I can say emphatically that its people are warm and friendly and passionate about democracy and the forthcoming elections.
Parts of my own country (and Nepal and Sri Lanka) are racked by Maoist guerrilla warfare and violent separatist movements. I do not recall you designating India as the world’s most dangerous place when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated during electioneering or Indira Gandhi for that matter. The latter’s killing was followed by a brutal and murderous pogrom against the Sikhs and Delhi burned for days. The truth always contains shades of grey.
I made a note of it but never remembered to follow up. Then Dr Gupta visited my blogsite Jahane Rumi and left a comment. We corresponded and developed a cyber friendship that turned into a real one within months. Exchanging ideas, stories and anecdotes were our cyber, and sometimes, real pastime. As a fellow South Asian, Dr Gupta’s proud challenge to western perceptions appeared to me a testament of his intellectual honesty. In Dr Gupta I found a friend, but more importantly, my country has another well wisher in the neighbourhood.
Another piece written by Dr Gupta, based on his visits to Pakistan, was entitled Dholaks Drown Gunfire and had these memorable lines:
… if there was one country in the world where I could blend and not feel out of place and where I was welcomed with open arms it was Pakistan. Having been there on four previous occasions, once with a group of students from the Delhi School of Economics, traversing the country for two weeks, I had ample experience of the legendary Pakistani hospitality.
One of his accounts was of a Pakistani (Punjabi) wedding saying how he had to remind himself that he was not in Delhi. He wrote:
As the evening air acquires a nip and woollens gradually start appearing, houses in Pindi and Lahore and Delhi and Amritsar are echoing to the sound of dholaks… female cousins are busy every evening practicing Bollywood dance numbers for mehndi night. I am told that the most popular number to be choreographed this season is ‘maujan hee maujan’ from the recent Bollywood hit Jab We Met. A couple of years ago it was ‘kajra-re’ from Bunty aur Babli (and at a mehendi in Lahore I had to remind myself I was not in Delhi)…
[In Pakistan] … people are going about their daily lives and marrying and meeting and yes, trying to have a bit of enjoyment in their lives. While columnists and think-tanks dissect the events and pontificate over the future of Pakistan it is the people who are affirming their resilience and that of their nation. Indeed, the sounds of the dholak may yet drown that of guns.
Dr Gupta holds that as the world becomes increasingly urban, South Asia will account for five of the world’s ten biggest cities by 2015, namely, Delhi, Dhaka, Karachi, Kolkata and Mumbai. By then, a total of about 700 million South Asians will live in towns and cities, a colossal number by any yardstick.
Shreekant Gupta had an eventful stint at the NIUA. After 1962, the government prepared the draft of Delhi’s Master Plan–2021, and issued it for public comment in 2005. A little over a year later, Dr Gupta led a team at NIUA that presented an alternative called Perspective Plan for Delhi. Delhi Development Authority (DDA) was rattled by the alternative as it challenged the notions of conventional official planning. Earlier too NIUA had sent in its comments which were not given much importance. It therefore concluded that the proposed master plan for Delhi had become ‘a compendium of concessions and amendments rather than a lucid and tenable road map for the future development of the capital of India.’
Dr Gupta and his associates noted that the draft Master Plan–2021 failed to address the on-ground spatial and physical character of Delhi—its size, built form, settlement patterns and ways of life. In so many ways, it had ignored the innate purpose of a master plan, namely to ‘establish an evolved system of spatial and physical order as a manifestation of the needs and aspirations of city-dwellers and constrained resources that are a natural fallout of unplanned urban expansion.’
Delhi in the twentieth century finds itself littered with illegal constructions, encroachments on public land, crumbling infrastructure and local bodies and agencies with conflicting mandates working in a haphazard manner. And of course, the all-pervasive corruption reported in the media. Land-use planning has been neglected by the DDA and the actual use is nothing like the planned usage.
Dr Gupta was keen to prepare a base map of the ground conditions in Delhi using satellite imaging. Such an investigation revealed that almost 60 per cent of the total land area of NCT Delhi (148,300 hectares) was built up. Covert land transactions and market forces had converted most agricultural land into built-up areas. Dr Gupta says that Delhi is nothing compared to what was envisaged in the land-use plan of MPD ’62 and its amended versions. ‘More than 75 per cent of urban development in the city is in violation of the Master Plan. DDA’s land use plan is an abstraction in that it matches reality only in terms of the road network and the layout of planned colonies.’
The quality of the life of Delhities had been impacted in this process. For instance, the area at the northern tip of East Delhi, shown
as a green belt is actually a concrete jungle. Likewise, in the south-west, the mini city of Najafgarh is shown as vacant space in the land use plan!
The possibilities of new and newer Delhis are ever-present in the metropolis. In this faster-than-life pace, defined by fast-moving urban frontiers, conservation and protection of heritage must find a space. Not just in Delhi but in Lahore, Dhaka, Karachi and Kolkata. Otherwise anonymous cities will continue to emerge whetting the ahistorical ethos of globalized greed.
The Delhi Metro had commenced its services when I was in JNU. From chaotic New Delhi, it is now possible to travel to the back-lanes of Old Delhi in a few minutes. To reach Ballimaran I had used the metro. The old-world Shahjahanabad residents were quite indifferent about the futuristic metro beneath the ground that they stood on.
Delhi’s Metro is now a multi-line network that connects the huge city or the National Capital Region and is still expanding. Sites are always dug up somewhere and road signs announce that the metro will pass hither very soon. This has been a capital-intensive success though its critics are many and doubt whether it would help the congestion in a city where about 30 per cent of commuters still walk.
Travelling to Old Delhi was quite comfortable, fast, clean and efficient. It is a separate matter that when one leaves the metro at Chandni Chowk and takes the back alley that has still to adjust to the metro age, horses and their smelly leftovers greet us with an alarming reality.
Initially the Delhi Metro was financed by the Japanese Development Assistance to the tune of 60 per cent, but Indianization of the system and its adoption by the government seems to have worked out. Pradip Krishen, a tree lover and author-photographer of the acclaimed book, Trees of Delhi—A Field Guide, has complained in an interview:
… I don’t know, when the history of New Delhi is written I wonder whether the building of the metro will go down as a major cause of the destruction of thousands of trees. The metro pushes on and one day it’ll be appropriate to take stock of what it achieved and the price that was paid. I really don’t have a handle on the number of trees that were felled for the metro, but it’s a little bit like going into denial. Besides, I think in some ways the worst is still to come… I’ve just seen a horrific plan to build an underground highway through Sundar Nursery that will uproot over a thousand trees. I went and counted the trees that lie in the zone of destruction—114 species, more species than the most carefully cultivated patch of garden in the whole city, Lodi Garden. It’s appalling!
It is only after browsing through the excellent compendium Trees of Delhi that one marvels at Delhi’s uniqueness. It is a city that borders the edges of the desert and yet the number and diversity of trees is mind-boggling. Over the centuries, Delhi has been home to over 252 species. Krishen informs us that New York only possesses a maximum of 130 species. The range of tree species in Delhi makes one forget that it is not a part of a rainforest, nor perched on the Equator but sits in an arid zone. Admittedly, there are several exotic trees, grafted from other climes by its foreign rulers and planners. This is what Delhi shares with Lahore—a thousand blooming flowers and myriad species of trees that refuse to die despite all the machinations of time and urban changes. I still have to undertake a tree-walk to spot Delhi’s trees along the hilly ridges of Dhaula Kuan, Vasant Vihar and Tughlaqabad ravines. But the comfort zone of Lodi Gardens has quenched my curiosity to a great extent.
There is an unspoken acceptance of the Dalit6 reality in India. The caste system, with a history of more than 3,000 years in India, has deepened the social segregation rooted in the dehumanizing principle of purity and impurity. Dr Ambedkar had postulated that the caste system came into being long after the different races of India had co-mingled in blood and culture. Caste divisions are not distinctions of race and to view them as such would be an unforgivable perversion of the historical process.7
The caste system is not restricted to Hinduism as is commonly believed. Muslims, Sikhs and Christians also practice it as it is a deeply ingrained social system. In Pakistan, Punjabi and Sindhi villages have another version of the system, based on different names with different excuses but follow a similar principle. Kumhar (potter), Chamar (hide-worker), Choora (janitor), Mochi (cobbler), Nai (barber)—are still derogatory terms common in elite parlance. Menial jobs are still reserved for the lower tiers of society while land-tillers and land-owners are exalted in social hierarchy. Islam and its egalitarian ethos have not been able to dilute these divisions.
Dr Ambedkar was instrumental in outlawing the practice of untouchability formally through the Constitution of India in 1950. Still, Dalits continue to be subjected to extreme forms of social and economic exclusion and discrimination. Dalit reality in India mars India’s achievements and casts a shadow over its potential future.
The Dalit population, a few years ago, had been estimated at around 16 per cent of the total population of India. More than one million Dalits are said to be manual scavengers who clean public latrines and dispose of dead animals (we have a similar underclass in Pakistan). The data also shows that the overwhelming majority of Dalits live in rural areas who are more often than not landless and work as casual labourers.8
‘Dalit’ in Marathi literally means ‘broken’ or ‘cracked’ but Dalits are now redefining the word and with it their struggle. They are making sense of their existence through political struggle, education and activism. In the past few decades Dalits have crossed several barriers and have articulated their political position in a most unequivocal way. Nevertheless it requires decades for rural India to overcome centuries of embedded segregation and the associated violence.
A few months earlier, I had read a moving poem, ‘Which Language Should I Speak’, by Arun Kamble, a Marathi poet:9
Chewing trotters in the badlands
my grandpa,
the permanent resident of my body,
the household of tradition heaped on his back,
hollers at me,
‘You whore-son, talk like we do.
Talk, I tell you!’
Picking through the Vedas
his top-knot well-oiled with ghee,
my Brahmin teacher tells me,
‘You idiot, use the language correctly!’
Now I ask you which language should I speak?
Visiting the famous Dalit Colony, close to Gole Market, in Delhi, was quite an experience. Other than wanting for myself the much-talked-about Dalit experience, my interest had been piqued due to Gandhiji. Mahatma Gandhi used to live here during 1946–47. He had selected this place so that he could live alongside the ‘untouchables’. The small room where he stayed hosted crucial meetings of the Congress. It was here that the Cabinet Mission met the Mahatma. But I was more curious about the present than the past. Popular Dalit voices are not too flattering about the Mahatma’s word ‘Harijan’ (People of God) for the Dalits who saw it as his rather diluted resistance to mainstream Hinduism.
Unlike its past state, today this locality has apartment blocks, a paved road and a fairly well-sized park for children. Much to my surprise, the place seemed to be an ordinary middle-class Indian locality rather than anything else. This was not what I had expected. Pictures of India’s Dalits living an abject life of desperate poverty were rudely challenged. I met a couple of young men sitting on the pavement. They introduced themselves with only their first names and I, on my part, did not insist on their full identities. I confess I was a little uncomfortable when I uttered the D word and was not sure how the boys would take it. And I did sense a little discomfort among them but it was just a ripple that soon disappeared. I was reassured by their laughter.
But the surface ‘normalcy’ of the Dalit Colony that I initially sensed gave way to cynicism. The opportunities for many young men and women are limited as my subsequent visits informed me. But India is changing and has come a long way with Dalits championing their causes through the ballot box and by winning ‘reservation’ in government jobs. We in Pakistan have invisible Dal
its too. Among the Sindhi Hindus, among the Christians and Muslims as well. Casteism is not dead in South Asia and India is not the only country where is persists. Pakistan’s hierarchy of biradaris and village society still maintains old divisions despite the Islamic faith and its emphasis on equality.
Lower caste people and Muslims have been allies in Uttar Pradesh. The Dalits are quite out of the Hindu-Muslim communalism politics. I heard about a popular anti-communal song Mandir-Masjid composed by a Dalit poet, which essentially reminds how God stands divided in temples, mosques and gurdwaras and how human blood is often sacrificed to win religious arguments and struggles.
But V.S. Naipaul, whose views are unfortunately widely heard, holds that there can be no reconciliation between Islam and other faiths on the subcontinent. He writes: ‘There can be no reconciliation. Islam is a religion of fixed laws. This goes contrary to everything in modern India. Also, the convert’s deepest impulse is the rejection of his origins.’
My friend Mayank has a vast collection of magazines and books. He gives me several articles on or about Naipaul. While reclining in the back seat of a Delhi cab, I read an intriguing interview. Naipaul on the ‘fractured past, fissured present’ of India corrects the interviewer and calls India’s past a ‘calamitous millennium’ that commenced with Muslim invasions: