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New Delhi A century old saga
Delhi is considered one of the oldest serving capitals in the world having an uninterrupted history going back to over 5,000 years and the first mention of the city as Indraprastha founded by the five Pandavas is made in the epic Mahabharata. Although nothing much is known about those days, according to the epic, five barren villages were given to the Pandavas as compromise by their cousins who were fighting over the empire and thus began the story of Delhi. The creation of Indraprastha by the Pandavas and the transformation of this barren gift of the Kauravas into an idyllic haven is part of the epic.
After the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857 which was called the first War of Independence against the English by Jawaharlal Nehru, the British Crown had taken over the governance of the conquered country erstwhile India from the East India Company. Calcutta which has now been rechristened as Kolkata comprising three villages and bought by Job Charnock became the first capital of British India. However, the foreign rulers were rattled when not only the then Bengal but also the entire nation rose in one voice to protest stubbornly against the partition of the state into two.
The violent agitation continued and could not be suppressed despite several draconian measures. King George V therefore came to Delhi in December 1911 to be crowned emperor of India at an elaborate durbar in the walled city. He was the first reigning British monarch to step foot on Indian soil. After several days of ceremonies at a temporary city consisting of some 40,000 tents and a railway system which were put in place for the Emperor and his consort Queen Mary, he made two important announcements related to India. Firstly, he revoked the partition of Bengal, an act that had unleashed a violent anti-British agitation. Secondly, he announced the creation of a new city in the vicinity of Delhi to replace Calcutta as the imperial capital. King George V hoped the new capital would be a fusion of Indian and European architecture but a 16 years after New Delhi came into being the British had to leave India bag and baggage.
Two eminent English architects were assigned the task of building New Delhi after its foundation stone was laid by the Emperor on December 12th, 1911. They were Herbert Baker and Edwin Lutyens. Their task was to design much of the new city comprising villages far from the Yamuna, the river which has witnessed the rise and fall of at least eight empires as per recorded history. Baker had previously worked in South Africa where he had become a disciple of the arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes. Lutyens had earlier mostly designed English country houses. He had prejudiced outbursts against India. It is stated that in a letter to his wife, Lutyens described Indian architecture as “essentially the building style of children.” He had not appreciated the Taj at Agra and was of the view that it was a “small but very costly beer.” Both men jumped up with joy after they were given the assignment to create a monument to imperialism. Baker wrote to Lutyens shortly before sailing for India saying “you should feel like the Greek warrior Alexander the Great when he crossed the Hellespont to conquer Asia”. They were so contemptuous of India!
| King George V hoped the new capital would be a fusion of Indian and European architecture but a 16 years after New Delhi came into being the British had to leave India bag and baggage. |
Now everybody is in agreement that despite their prejudices, Lutyens and Baker have created a remarkable assemblage at New Delhi that melded European and Indian architecture into an innovative whole. Lutyens’ Viceroy’s House had a dome modeled after the Buddhist stupa at Sanchi which was commissioned in the third century B.C. by Asoka the Great .To withstand Delhi’s blazing summer heat, Lutyens adapted Mughal techniques for indoor cooling by installing rooftop fountains that cascaded into the interior of buildings. Baker laced his classical Secretariat blocks with Mughal-style domes, cupolas and cornices. For other elements of their city plan, they took cues from Washington, Paris and Canberra besides Fatehpur Sikri and Jaipur.
But the buildings and the excessive expenditure incurred for these had become an object of resentment among the educated Indians and intellectuals. They started questioning the motive for spending enormously when the country lacked minimum basic facilities and the people’s abject poverty. Indians were more interested in the gradual political reforms as promised by the British. Architect Baker further angered the Indians when he said “Liberty will not descend to a people. A people must raise themselves to liberty. It is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.” The engraving remains at the gateway of the North Block which houses the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Lutyens built the Viceroy’s House covering larger areas than Versailles in France. He was assisted by a many attendants, including several whose job was to shoo away pigeons. New Delhi emerged as a rigidly ordered and segregated city with spacious bungalows for British officers in the south and poorly ventilated tenements for Indian peons in the north.
There was protest by Indians against the cost and extravagance of the new capital in the legislative assembly but the British had not taken note of this. One legislator had gone on record bemoaning that Indians had no right to feed our aesthetic sentiments at the expense of the poor tax-payers of India. There could not be any justification whatsoever why we should think that we should be better housed. Although the then Government had not listened to the criticism, it faced a resource crunch and had to abandon several projects. Among these was the proposed extension of the city’s processional boulevard, now known as Raj Path, up to the Yamuna River. Indian nationalists had taken a harder line on the taxpayers’ money being spent on the construction of the new city for the benefit of the foreigners.
New Delhi was officially inaugurated on February 13, 1931 by the then Governor General Lord Irwin comprising 42.7 square km. The city remains incomplete. British officials had to keep inaugural ceremonies to a bare minimum due to people’s outburst at expenditure which was in marked contrast to the 1911 Durbar. The power dynamics in the new city were starting to shift. Its center was a new Council House built for India’s expanded Legislative Assembly. As the Raj was forced to make further political concessions to the nationalists, the Council House is now India’s Parliament. It has become the hub of the country’s political life at the expense of the Viceroy’s House.
The new capital christened as New Delhi boasts of two UNESCO’s heritage sites - Humayun’s Tomb and Qutub Complex besides Jantar Mantar, Lodi gardens, 134 foreign embassies and high commissions as well as museums and theatres.
The Viceroy’s House decorated with stone bells that were never meant to ring and thereby never to herald the end of the empire is now Rashtrapati Bhawan where the President of India resides and where some of the offices are located. The statute of King George V has been removed from the eastern end of Raj Path. Raj Path which connects Rashtrapati Bhawan and the Government of India’s two secretariats called North Block and South Block are important landmarks of New Delhi. Thousands of people gather on two sides of the majestic thoroughfare to greet the personnel of the Indian Army, Indian Air force, Indian Navy, para military forces and Police along with scores of children as they march past the saluting base of the President on the occasion of the Republic Day every year on January 26th.
