City Improbable- Writings on Delhi

by Khuswant Singh

  The Building of New Delhi

  SHEELA BAJAJ

  Portions of this essay first appeared in Delhi Diary magazine.

  On 12 December 1911, at the magnificent Coronation Durbar in Delhi, the city found itself raised at one stroke to the capital of the subcontinent: as the new seat of government, Delhi held sway over territory that extended from Kashmir to Colombo and Calcutta to Karachi. This momentous transfer from Calcutta to Delhi was announced by King George V: ‘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 …’ When the decision was announced, the assembly was ecstatic and there was a spontaneous burst of joy from the Delhi crowd that moved the King to tears. This historic decision was regarded as one of the best-kept secrets in the history of India. Few were privy to it; even the Queen was unaware of it before the royal party arrived in India.

  J. Renton-Denning, editor of the Morning Post of India, in an article published in the book Delhi—The Imperial City, refers to the elaborate Durbar preparation in Delhi: ‘In view of the forthcoming Royal Durbar and the increasing needs of Delhi city, the Municipal Committee had to undertake many large schemes for public works.’ Extensions of water works were carried out to secure an adequate and constant supply during the Durbar, for which the Government of India sanctioned Rs 90,000. Civic improvements were done at a furious pace. To make the city worthy of its old ‘Imperial’ title, and to provide housing for the vast numbers of visitors, was a herculean task. Renton-Denning says, ‘The Government of India arrangements for the accommodation of visitors from Home have been carefully made and if one can secure room in one of the sumptuously furnished “visitor’s camps” he may be congratulated upon having won half the battle.’

  The Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, had done everything to ensure that nothing but the mightiest display would welcome his king and queen. The Royal Pavilion, with two thrones on an elevated position, was placed below a shining golden dome. Among the notable events lined up for Durbar Week was a parade of 50,000 British and Indian soldiers where the formation stretched in a line four miles long. It included the Nawab of Bahawalpur’s exotic Camel Corps, and the Maharaja of Jodhpur’s lancers. Expectedly, a large number of people descended on Delhi to witness the events. While the official Durbar camps catered for 300,000 visitors, it was estimated that the city’s population increased by three-quarters of a million. The British government in India spared no expense, nor did the many Indian rajas who came to Delhi for the Durbar. Commenting on the regal event, the Times of India wrote: ‘It was probably the most magnificent and dazzling spectacle of its kind that the eye of a mortal has ever beheld.’

  Two days after the Durbar, at a special ceremony, foundation stones were laid to inaugurate the restoration of Delhi as the capital of India. The conclusion of festivities, after the royal couple sailed away in the Medina, put an end to half a century of discussion and agitation over the shifting of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi.

  The selection of the eventual site was not all that simple. Protracted debates were to follow; protagonists would put forward compelling arguments in favour of the northern and southern sites and many egos would clash before the final decision. The activity behind the scenes, relating to the eventual selection of Raisina Hill, made for fascinating drama—the great pulls and pressures that went into the creation of the greatest icon of the empire.

  A three-member committee was appointed to plan and build the new city. The initial names recommended by Sir John Jenkins, House Member of the Viceroy’s Council, met with resistance. The inclusion of the Deputy Commissioner of Punjab, the Superintending Engineer of the Jumna Canal and the Consulting Architect to the Government of Bombay was not acceptable to a senior member of the Council, Sir Guy Fleetwood Wilson, who dismissed these nominees as ‘nonentities’. Comments such as these were indicative of the wrangling that went on even for the appointment of members to a crucial committee which would eventually decide the planning of New Delhi. In his note of dissent, Fleetwood Wilson was supported by Harcourt Butler and Carlyle. Other opinions were put forward as well. For instance, the Commander-in Chief suggested that town planning and sanitation experts be brought from England; this was also Syed Ali Imam’s view, highlighting the need to get the services of experts from outside India.

  And so began Lord Hardinge’s task of identifying experts from Britain who would meet the expectations of the Viceroy’s Council. John A. Brodie was chosen as the engineer and Captain George Swinton as the non-professional head of the committee. But the selection of a specialist on the committee, who would combine competence both as an architect and as a town planner, was by no means easy.

  Among the motley crop of names that came up for final selection were Henry Vaughan Lancaster and Edwin Landseer Lutyens. Of the two, Lutyens eventually made the grade in preference to Lancaster who was considered brusque and irritable! On 12 March the King accorded his seal of approval to the committee’s composition as ‘excellent’ and their fees and departure date were set.

  Before leaving for India, Brodie, Lutyens and Swinton were briefed at Buckingham Palace. The King ‘instructed them not to consider themselves committed to the site of the foundation stones he and the Queen had laid and to regard the Ridge at Delhi with its historic memories of the Indian Mutiny as sacred.’

  The Delhi experts, as the committee was called, sailed eastward on 28 March. Their canvas for planning a splendid new capital in India was the ultimate prize any architect could dream of. But they were not very well prepared. Only Swinton had been to India. The mandate given to them by the Viceroy was to settle on a site as quickly as possible. Two major decisions had to be taken: one, the selection of the site for the future capital and, second, the general planning of the city on the chosen site. The first decision in particular needed a host of considerations to be taken into account. These included health, security, room for expansion, cost, water supply and drainage, electricity and transport as well as ‘the relationship of the new city to Old Delhi and the cantonments’. With this massive brief, Lutyens and his compatriots began work.

  In his book Indian Summer, Robert Grant Irving states that ‘deciding upon the appropriate tract for New Delhi was an agonizing process’. The Delhi experts committee’s schedule was taxing and rigorous. Setting off in Ford Landaulette or De Dion cars or even on elephants, they had to survey the terrain in the gruelling Delhi weather. In between cups of tea at the Maiden’s Hotel or cold baths, days were spent in discussions and correspondence. Much of the country to the north and south of Shahjahanabad and on the east bank of the Jumna was wild and rugged. In the process of selecting a suitable site, they encountered buck, baboons, monkeys, jackals, hare, porcupine. Sometimes the heat became so unbearable that tempers ran high.

  Eventually, after weighing the pros and cons of both the northern and southern sites, it was the latter that was chosen. It was suitable in all respects: altitude, water and health. It also had a number of key advantages in the area of good natural drainage, the plain was not too populated or encumbered with ruins, railway communications could easily be effected, the land could be acquired at moderate prices without displacing any business or manufacturing centre, and there was plentiful land for future expansion.

  The site had the support of Lord Hardinge. In his book My Indian Years, he writes:

  I then (after rejecting the northern site) mounted and asked Hailey, Commissioner of Delhi, to accompany me to choose the site, and we galloped over the plain to a hill some distance away. From the top of the hill there was a magnificent view, embracing Old Delhi and all the principal monuments situated outside the town, the Yamuna winding its way like a silver streak in the foreground at a little distance. I said at once to Hailey: ‘This is the site for Government House’, and he readily agreed.

  Lutyens now had to get on with the exciting task of designing a capital
that would reflect the glory, might and vastness of the British Empire. He was ably assisted by his friend Herbert Baker. Lutyens designed the Viceroy’s House with its fountains, the waterways and the King’s Way, the Record Office and the general layout of the city streets. Baker designed the Secretariat, Council Chamber and the All India War Memorial. Two landscape architects, Mustoe and Walter George, were appointed for planting trees in the New Delhi area.

  Herbert Baker records how one evening he and his two friends stood on the ridge looking down ‘the deserted cities of dreary and disconsolate tombs and wondering how the new city would rise. The sky was overcast and it rained intermittently. Suddenly, the clouds lifted and the sun broke through. A brilliant rainbow formed a perfect arch on what was destined to be a great vista, where Lutyens’ memorial arch now stands. We acclaimed it was a good omen.’

  And Delhi was set for yet another transformation.

  Ballimaran and the War Fund, 1942

  CHAMAN NAHAL

  This extract is taken from The Triumph of the Tricolour.

  This was the drill. The constable would knock at the door and the British officer make the appeal—in Hindustani. The donation had to be in cash, since back in Whitehall they could understand only money in cash—messy though the Indian coinage system was. By the time the teams came to the mohallas, the men wouldn’t be home; they would have left for work. Wavell was not only bypassing the bazaars, he was bypassing the men as well. The men might argue but the Indian women had been for centuries trained only to submit. So it was generally the women who opened the door when the knock was made. If it happened to be a man—another idler sitting at home when he should be at work—the first sentence remained the same. ‘Good morning. Hum chanda ke liye aya hai.’ At Scotland Yard, Griffith was good at languages, and in these months had mastered quite a bit of Hindustani. He was however shocked to see the effect his words produced. This was the first Muslim mohalla in Delhi they were visiting; so far they had been doing the rounds of the Hindu mohallas. And there the women invariably fainted. Griffith wasn’t sure what his misdemeanour was. Very often the women would have slumped to the ground before he had quite finished his sentence. Those few who stayed on their feet went into hysterics. ‘Chanda? There is no Chanda here, hazoor!’ they pleaded before him. Others said: ‘Has that scoundrel been up to it again! What’s it this time—rape or murder?’ And they began to beat their forehead or pull the hair on their head.

  Griffith was utterly confounded. What kind of people were these! What had he said or done? ‘Good morning. Hum chanda ke liye aya hai’—what was mysterious about it? It’s the sight of the police, sir, the Indian officials said to him—the women are scared. ‘No, no, no,’ he explained to those who said, ‘There is no Chanda here.’ ‘Hum Chanda admi ke liye nahin, chanda rupaya ke liye aya hai (We are here not for Chanda the man but for chanda meaning donation).’ To those who said, ‘Has that scoundrel been up to it again!’ he said, ‘No, no, no. Your man no scoundrel. He good man. He’s done nothing.’ When the women had understood what Griffith wanted, and that their men or their families were safe from the wrath of the police, in relief they ran inside and returned with whatever money they could muster. Some brought back a lot, some only a heap of coins. The money was put into the cashbox, an entry of the house number and the name of the donor was made in the register, Griffith again raised his cane to his cap, and the team moved on to the next house. By now the urchins—why weren’t they at school?—would have collected around him and started their chorus: ‘Toady, toady, toady.’ Or the women from other houses would be peering down from their windows. There was no reply to his knock from several homes, but the constables kept pounding at them until they were opened. They also tried to shoo away the urchins. ‘Toady, toady, toady,’ the children kept shouting, following the team a few steps behind, and stopping their chorus just for a while to hear Griffith’s Hindustani in a strange accent, ‘Good morning. Hum chanda ka liye aya hai,’ and going into peals of laughter at this.

  Griffith had been cautioned. Muslim women were not as docile as the Hindu; they could even be aggressive. He shouldn’t underestimate the veils with which they covered themselves. Fiery hearts beat inside those black veils. He should be on guard. And he was—he added a thin smile to his opening sentence.

  Mohalla Ballimaran is located in the labyrinth labyrinthorum of the maze that the old Delhi is. Lane after lane after lane of narrow, winding pathways, where everything looks confined, cramped and inhibiting. Most Muslim men don’t go long distances to work. They have factories just around the corner—making tools and sports goods, or ornaments and jewellery, or refinements such as gold and silver leaves to be eaten along with your food. There is a constant music of chiselling implements and small hammers that greets you as you enter such a mohalla. Then there are innumerable peddlers, khoncha-walas, which is a speciality of the Muslim mohallas. Muscular men, their eyes lined with kohl, their sleeves rolled up or with chaders wrapped around them (depending on the weather), would be selling hot puris, hot halwa, hot tea, hot bread, hot eggs (full boiled, no scrambling or omeletting). Charcoal was lit under a wide skillet over which the food was neatly arranged; smoke from these fires invaded you before you had even entered the mohalla. People would emerge from their houses, buy the stuff from the khoncha-walas, and rush back inside. And they ate hot puris and hot halwa and hot full-boiled eggs even during the burning hot months! Their choice. Who was an outsider like Wayne Griffith to crib about it? He was not here to reform their culinary habits or their lifestyle. He was here for the war fund. And he had been forewarned. About the volatile Muslim temper. The men—my, they were walking detonators. And the women—they were no less.

  The burqa-clad woman was elderly and dignified. She showed no panic at the sight of the police, and to Griffith’s request, she asked in an even voice: ‘Chanda for what?’ Ah, thank God, someone was talking, there could now be a dialogue, and warming up to the occasion, Griffith replied in Hindustani: ‘For the war, madam. For the great war.’ The woman momentarily lifted a part of her veil, which peeled off like banana skin, and Griffith stepped back in shock; he found the ghost of his dead mother peering at him in that harsh look and that deeply lined, stern face. ‘Is there a war on?’ she asked, opening her compressed lips a little, just to let the words out. ‘Madam …!’ Griffith exclaimed in disbelief. Were there people in this land who had not heard of the war? The woman shouted out to a nearby khoncha-wala. ‘Iftikar mian.’ A dark-skinned, hefty man with a massive moustache, who was selling halwa, answered in reply: ‘Yes, bibi?’ ‘Is there a war going on?’ the woman asked him, aiming a little saliva red with betel close to Griffith. ‘War? What war, bibi?’ the man answered, giving a quick shove to his halwa with his skimmer and turning it over several times on the skillet. ‘There is cholera on, there is a famine on, but I didn’t know there was a war on too.’ Griffith would have thrown up but for his good British manners. The red saliva had barely missed him. And here was an oily peddler with oily skin and oily hands disclaiming all knowledge of anything but his halwa. He swallowed twice or thrice and stared blandly at the old woman.

  The news about the door-to-door collections had been reported in the vernacular press. When the team comes to your door, Abha doctorni had told them, you offer nothing. By now she had the statistics. Two hundred and thirty people died of cholera in Mohalla Ballimaran, one hundred and seventy-five in Lal Kuan, eighty-six in Hauz Qazi, two hundred and seven in Jama Masjid Bazaar, ninety in Turkman Gate, fifty-five in Kinari Bazaar, fifty in Dariba—eight hundred and ninety-eight, say nearly a thousand, and all within a radius of one mile from Jama Masjid where the Muslims lived in density, and all within two months—to say nothing of the dead in Bengal. And now they were coming for donations! Slam the door in their face, Abha doctorni had advised them.

  Which is what the old burqa-clad woman did. ‘No chanda,’ she scowled and—bang!—the door was closed.

  At each door Griffith knocked, the rep
ly was the same. ‘No chanda.’ Some even added—‘Begone!’ And the door was banged shut on Griffith. The children were now running into various alleys of the mohalla, shouting ‘Toady, toady, toady!’ The mohalla spread into the interior like a huge honeycomb. The honeycomb began to throb with excitement.

  Strong, brawny men, with muscular arms and tough workers’ hands, came out of their factories and little shops and stood lining the narrow street. They did not interfere with Griffith’s team; they just stood menacingly, watching Griffith knock at door after door. Most doors were opened by elderly women. In some cases, younger women too appeared there. They were invariably veiled. Or the face was covered by the muslin dupatta, leaving only the eyes visible …