But Delhi is as capable of a swift brutality as any contemporary metropolis—New York, Tehran, Johannesburg. In November 1993, Ajit Singh’s daughter, son-in-law and two sturdy grandsons aged six and three were all summarily murdered in their apartment in Vasant Kunj.
We shielded our children’s eyes. Tegh and Malta had been friends with my own son and daughter. I quickly contacted my employers to ask if there was housing, any housing at all, available on the IIT campus. In short, typical of my class, I sought an immediate escape route from the scene of carnage. Hamlet in Denmark, also on the subject of familial murder: conscience makes cowards of us all. As a mere tenant, an uninvolved witness, I could invoke one of those several identities that a middle-class life in the city permitted, and simply flee—bag, baggage and children. But who would shield the eyes of Ajit Singh’s wife, a spirited woman who wore glittering diamonds in her ears until the very last? True, she had recently developed cancer but that might have been amenable to treatment. What broke her entirely was the news of the Vasant Kunj deaths. Within a few days, she, too, died, wounded by forces far more ferocious than cancer. Then, in quick succession, another of Ajit Singh’s daughters developed a brain tumour while his son broke a femur. Delhi had managed to strain the endurance of a small, random subset of its citizens almost beyond belief. When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.6
It was literally as if an angel of death had flown over our secluded bylane in Malviya Nagar. The people in the house opposite simultaneously got involved in a property dispute that lead to an old man being shot dead by goondas on a motorbike almost before our eyes. Left behind as evidence: only his twin rubber chappals pathetically separated by a spill of blood on the tarmac. And a few days later, the armed guard parked by the courts outside the house of this old man shot himself in the head—again, no explanation.
Nor was the suspected murderer of Ajit Singh’s daughter’s family—a policeman’s son—held for long. There was insufficient evidence against him, said our systems of justice. To ration and to rationalize the ‘facts’, as I mentioned before, seemed to have been honed to a fine art in Delhi, august seat of the Supreme Court of India. The criticism is valid of course that writing about incidents like the ones above amounts to mere sensationalism. These things happen in big cities—a Jessica Lal or Phoolan Devi shot (‘they deserved it’); bystanders mown down by an admiral’s grandson plying his imported BMW (‘he couldn’t help it’); a whole family, including children, murdered (‘but we don’t know the circumstances’). As for the rest of the events I have narrated, they are mere coincidences, not typical of Delhi in any respect. Sickness, accident, the willingness to go to any lengths over a piece of lucrative property—these are attendants of the human condition. They could happen anywhere. So why drag them into an essay on Delhi?
Logic tells me that I should concede this point, but my gut tells me that it is important to investigate the links between the pervasive indifference of Delhi and the violence that the city generates. After all, it was that same self-serving instinct that made me run from the terrible goings-on in Malviya Nagar and protect my own family rather than stay on and console the grieving Ajit Singh (though I am not so arrogant as to suppose he needed our help). And where did I flee to? It was—predictably—to the safe haven of the IIT, properly protected by corporate security.
Contingent they might be, but in contrast to the brash ‘celebrity culture’ of the city, it is these petty facts about Delhi that seem to me essential—precisely because you and me, indeed anyone at all, can get caught up in them without warning. In the rest of this essay, therefore, I will try and present a thesis that seeks to explain the particular species of alienation that Delhi imposes on its citizens. I would indeed want to argue that I am especially well placed to investigate this phenomenon, for the critics who commented on my Malviya Nagar poem got me wrong all right! I am no brave Sardarni. If someone like me ‘belongs’ to any tradition, it is that of the hated and despised bureaucratic ‘servants’ who rule Delhi from the safety of several anonymous fortresses—walled cities.
‘Bounded in a Nutshell’7
According to the authorities, Shahjahanabad is the walled city of Delhi, its centre the wondrous Chandi Chowk, its eastern boundary the Red Fort, its western landmark Fatehpur Mosque and its northern citadel the Kashmiri Gate. In this essay, however, I will suggest that the tradition of the walled city has taken on amazing new guises in post-colonial Delhi. As all significant concepts do, the ‘siege mentality’ of walls has worked its way into the very fabric of citizens’ thoughts, desires and beliefs. Delhi, in short, is bustling with walled enclosures—some in the shape of grandly visible architectural follies and some in the subtle contours of the systems of exclusion and hierarchy set up all over this highly politicized metropolis.
As the true post-colonial heir of the derelict Englishman in my poem, let me begin by citing those glass walls of language through which class is indicated in the city. For example, it is my simple contention that the imperial ‘colony’ (e.g. Defence Colony), the ‘enclave’ (Sarvodaya Enclave), the ‘estate’ (Lodi Estate) and the ‘park’ (Gulmohar Park) still tend to house the elite and the western-educated, while the suffixes vihar, nagar, pur and puri (Sarita Vihar, Soami Nagar, Shadipur and Govindpuri) imply a more mixed population, ranging from the upwardly mobile middle classes to impoverished tenement dwellers. There are, doubtless, exceptions to these broad swathes of discriminatory nomenclature, but on the whole even the most sophisticated of Delhiites have internalized these distinctions and use words like ‘colony’ to describe the invisible walls that girt their dwelling places with no hint of irony.
A preliminary exercise for the initiated: name seven significant walled loci in modern Delhi—and I must admit I have no reason for fixating on the number seven here, except for a tangential association with the seven legendary cities of Delhi. Specimen answer, below:
The private colonies (complete with clanging gates, chowkidars wielding lathis and midnight curfews; to be found all over the city)
The official residences of Members of Parliament and the bureaucratic boffins (also equipped with impressive gates, armed guards etc. but minus curfews; to be found mostly in Lutyens’ central Delhi)
The ministerial offices and bhavans (‘Leave your umbrellas, bags, arms, sticks and stones here’ says the notice at the entrance to Parliament)
The hotels (marbled palaces of our time, focal points for guzzling, revelry and business intrigues)
The forts, tombs and gardens (haunting reminders of Delhi’s walled past, tucked away in the interstices of its present; e.g. Jamali-Kamali or the Lodi garden and tombs)
The centres of high cultural life and the ever-expanding peripheries of slums (notably the India International Centre or IIC and the India Habitat Centre or IHC in the former category and Govindpuri, Jamuna Pushta, Shadipur etc. in the latter)
The universities and institutions of ‘higher’ learning (Delhi University or DU, the Jawaharlal Nehru University or JNU, the Indian Institute of Technology or IIT and so forth).
Of all these locations, I shall now describe arguably the most ‘modern’ of the walled sites listed above, namely the Indian Institute of Technology. My purpose in choosing the IIT is threefold: one, I live within its boundaries; two, it illustrates well the way in which the concept of a walled space has been adapted to meet the demands of ‘modernity’; and three, it is unlikely that, despite its international reputation, it would figure in anyone else’s litany of Delhi’s hotspots!
Like the castled interiors of Hamlet’s Elsinore, the IITs contain a culture of the intellect that is viewed with envy, desire and pride by its country’s citizens. During the half-century since Independence, the acronym IIT has become a name to conjure with, a mantra of success throughout the country. Although these incantatory letters stand for nothing more electrifying than the staid ‘Indian Institute of Technology’, they summon up an entire myth of modernity. For, the tec
hnologists produced at these premier institutes constituted by an Act of Parliament (next only to an Act of God!) receive a training that seems to equip them to virtually make their world. Epitomes of the tool-using mammal, they may begin as hatchlings in Delhi but their wings are designed to span the globe. The Delhi IIT, in particular, symbolizes the Nehruvian dream of a progressive India in the heart of its capital.
What goes on in any walled city? It is the continuous creation of a self-sufficient microcosm—complete with shops, living quarters, hierarchical divisions, work units, gossip, jealousies, ambitions and shared laughter. When such a walled enclosure exists within the bounds of a greater city, it has a double function. It must let in, or mirror, this external city, as well as retain its distinctive character. In the case of IIT, Delhi, this means that it has to ensure that it is seen as an oasis of calm and ordered activity amidst ringing chaos; strikes, confusions and anger may rend the rest of the metropolis but IIT remains functional. At the same time, the institution must somehow connect with the external contours of Delhi. How does IIT achieve this?
Let’s begin with the look of this campus. Unlike the wild bougainvillea-entranced terrain of the neighbouring JNU with its rocky ups and downs and intemperate nilgai, the Delhi IIT is set amidst flat, manicured lawns. Its 320-acre area boasts no wild beasts, only pretty peacocks and certain other coquettish and superior avian species. Set amid this unthreatening landscape, its Main Structure—or MS, as it is known in the no-nonsense IITian language—is built of reinforced concrete, rfc, a building material signalling strength and functionality. I was told by an architect once to observe the MS carefully. ‘It sits,’ he pointed out to me, ‘atop the landscape, like so many Corbusier-inspired buildings.’ Symbolizing a magisterial ‘ship of learning’, such a structure commands; it does not integrate. It stands proudly apart from the surrounding seas. Blending into the background is not its style, nor are concessions made to aesthetic longings by such an erection. From which it follows that the teachers and students who operate here are drawn willy-nilly into accepting an ideology set in reinforced concrete—an unbending ideology of distance and difference.
In effect, IIT, Delhi connects architecturally with the rest of the city by being a smarter and more efficient version of the government bhavans and administrative ‘blocks’ of Lutyens’ imperial Delhi. One of my students, Ramnik Bajaj, described the mentality spawned by the structural constraints of the walled city of IIT thus:
The otherwise uncommunicative IITian emerges highly opinionated when amongst his peers. The architecture of the IIT hostels ensures the dominance of the ‘wing’. A wing is a group of seventeen rooms that are arranged facing a common closed corridor. Every wing enjoys an identity through the close association of its residents. In fact, a wing becomes an entity to the extent that questions like ‘Should X be thrown out of the wing’, or ‘Should Y be accepted into the wing’ are commonplace at the time of allotment of rooms every year. The wing is the locus of discussion, debate, conference and contention in the hostels.
Questions of identity and difference are quite clearly the staple of negotiations within a walled city, bravely supported by its architecture, that odd blend of the awesome and the plebian.
Another classical feature of this kind of city is its ‘gates’. For instance, the ‘public’ can enter the precincts of IIT—and residents leave!—only through these strongly fortified gates, and sometimes only after being severely cross-questioned about ‘who they are’. Indeed this is the prime raison d’être of any walled city: to reinforce a public-private divide by boldly announcing its power to be both different and—indifferent.
From Kashmiri Gate to IIT Gate—my argument would be that this terminology of ‘gates’ is no accident. It is part of the ongoing history of the creation of walled cities by the elite of Delhi. Few would fail to recognize the landmark of IIT Gate on Outer Ring Road. Those who have actually gone further and visited, or lived, in the place, are likely to arrive first at the aforementioned MS. As I have already indicated, this structure was designed by an associate of Le Corbusier, the same French architect who once famously described a house as ‘a machine for living’. And much the same thought might apply to institutions, particularly those that produce graduates who make their living out of machines!
Any tour through IIT, Delhi, would probably begin with the foyer of its main building—cool, grey, impersonal and clean, a perfect entry point into a technocratic universe. To its right, a large auditorium; on the left, tucked away, the computer facilities.
Between the two, but veering slightly towards the computer end of things, are the lifts—one of the pair of them often malfunctioning. Meant to take perhaps seven or eight people at most, they usually squeeze in considerably more. However, this must be true, I suppose, of almost every lift in India, so our predicament is no more metaphorical in IIT than elsewhere. What’s unusual about the IIT lifts, however, is their situational sandwiching: between the symbolic seminar hall, locale of cultural crosstalk, and the zone of computer activities, powerhouse of the twenty-first century engineer. And then—there is the marble plaque set right next to them.
Given that perhaps the heaviest human traffic in all of IIT, Delhi, goes past its lifts, many entrants into IIT’s walled portals must have absent-mindedly read its engraved words. They bear the legend, both in Hindi and in English:
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY DELHI
THIS FOUNDATION STONE WAS LAID BY
HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS
THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH, K.G.
ON THE 27TH JANUARY, 1959.
Much history is contained in this tacit inscription. The colonial heritage of technology in India is evident from the fact that more than a decade after the final dissolution of empire, the foundation stone for a technological college is still being laid by a Royal Highness from Britain. The date tells us that the Duke did the honours a day after Republic Day was celebrated. Perhaps he was in Delhi for the ceremonies; but whether he was or not, it remains that one is routinely reminded by this writing on the wall about the origins of our most treasured technological learning. Gandhi and Nehru, idealistic architects of the India we now inhabit, would both have noticed the irony.
It’s all very well to say that nobody reads notices on walls and that, anyway, colonial history is over and done with. My point is that we don’t need to read the inscription; it has been subconsciously absorbed. It’s there in the bones. To get at the psyche of IIT engineers—as a removed but representative section of Delhi’s power base—it is not enough to observe them pottering around among the computer facilities, working out spreadsheets, fingering email, mastering FORTRAN and inventing nasty little viruses. Moving on from the modest darshan sthal of the founding moment of IIT’s walled city, let me now supply the reader with another example of the ‘Delhiite’ nature of IIT—a concrete example would be, I guess, an apt phrase to use.
Try, if you will, to fill in an ordinary Travel Allowance (TA) form in IIT. You will be surprised to learn that it queries the amount you are to claim if you happen to be travelling by camel (or, equally bizarre, by canal, in some versions!). It also tells you what the rules are for claiming second-class fare (without meals) on steamers, not to mention distance travelled by trolley! Which era are we in? Well, it doesn’t require much acumen to guess that this form has been handed down practically unchanged from British times. I would conjecture that the same Macaulay who drafted the Indian Penal Code still in use today, was also responsible for these travel rules.
Our clerks of the Government of independent India have simply added air travel to the list of possible conveyances, but changed little else in the cumbersome format of a TA form devised in the nineteenth century. What does this show? It shows that, despite their flirtation with computers, despite that gleaming foyer and the constant talk of efficiency, the ‘IIT boys’ as much as anyone nurtured in an official institute in our country remain in the grip of a bureaucratic mentality. They have to contend w
ith the regime of the paperchase just as helplessly as any of us. The obfuscatory rites of colonial administration, designed to keep everyone out except for those few who hold the reins, are with us still. And nowhere is this malaise more evident than in Delhi.
Why have forms like this not been changed to allow greater transparency? It is not only because of institutional inertia. The reasons could go deeper. One, so indelible is the bureaucratic impression on Delhi’s soul that we appear to have lost the ability even to notice that such forms need drastic changing. Two, demanding simplifications and/or other changes in ‘the system’ could well boomerang. One day when the IIT undergraduate is himself a powerful technocrat, he could lose the wonderful advantages that this walled system provides for those at the top. In short, to make changes in a formally ordered, historically legitimized universe becomes more and more disadvantageous the higher up you are on an official ladder. And if there are a couple of beliefs on which there seems to be universal agreement, they are that the IITians belong ‘at the top’, and that they are no fools. As future technocrats, within the IAS or in charge of any of our massive scientific establishments, they’ve subconsciously absorbed the lessons of history.
Complicated rules, backed up by even more complicated forms, can be a source of great and lasting power. In Delhi, hoary capital in repeated reincarnations, this is always a foundational premise. This is a city whose function is to turn all of us into remote babus, removed by writ from the sufferings of those unfortunates who bang at the gates from the ‘outside’.
City Improbable- Writings on Delhi Page 31