Excerpts from the reading of "The Transformations of Delhi" -A conversation on Delhi’s rise and fall and rise
To mark the anniversary of Delhi’s 100th year as India’s capital, a few distinguished Dilliwallas sat down in Jan 1st 2011 for a wide-ranging discussion about the twists and turns of the city’s long history and I have brought some interesting excerpts for my interest.
After the events of 1857, and the subsequent devastation of the city, what led the British to move the capital here 50 years later?
William Dalrymple:There’s two answers for that. One is a straightforward British political calculation, because the Bengalis are causing a lot of trouble for the Brits. The centre of political terrorism is Calcutta; you get people putting bombs in the Writers’ Building, and you don’t have that in Delhi. Particularly after the reign of Lord Curzon [from 1899 to 1905], the Bengalis are seen by the British to be troublemakers, political activists, too-clever-by-half babus, and Calcutta itself also becomes unmanageably large and chaotic as an urban space.
Farooqui: And they are helped by the fact that all the Delhi
elites of 1857, the few that survived, are very much collaborating
with the British regime. They are all teaching their
people to be loyal to the British, trying to get into modern
education and reform their community, so to say. It’s a kind
of a reward for their loyalty as well. Delhi, the capital, is
the reward for the loyalty of Muslims who were supporting
the regime.
Delhi had served as a capital for hundreds of years;
Muslims were attached to the city of Delhi; and the
Bengalis were creating a big ruckus. The British are threatened
by the Bengalis—these Indians with English educations,
politically active, quoting Mill and Montesquieu
at them.
So was the development of Delhi driven by the fact that
the government was here? Can we see it as a city like
Washington—which was created from scratch to be the
seat of government?
Dalrymple:
... We have a friend,
a woman from Bombay, who came here in 1989, and she
thought Delhi was out and out boorish, provincial, uncivilised,
full of rude Punjabis... This was a woman who had
grown up in sophisticated Bombay, and she regarded Delhi
as if she had come to Heart of Darkness—as if she had been
sent off to the Third World, as she saw it.
...
Farooqui:
....This is a city where there is now that kind of wealth. And
here, you have these overnight billionaires, people who
have become rich because of a land contract, or some scam,
or some government fixing. In Bombay, that wealth would
have likely come from a certain profession, from a trade
that your family has done for generations. In Delhi, the
two great engines of wealth creation are land and government
fixing. Even if you’re a police inspector, there’s a lot of
money to be made. That’s the difference between the kind
of wealth we see in Delhi and the wealth we see in other cities.
Remember that Delhi, also, is not the highest taxpaying
city in the country—that is still Bombay—so there is wealth
here that is not being taxed, what they used to call ‘black
money.’ Delhi is the heart of black money in India.
So is power the defining element in Delhi today?
Farooqui: Yes, there has always been that kind of power,
but it takes a different form today. In the past, one drew
power from status, from lineage and from education. That
kind of power is no longer unique in Delhi today—going to
St Stephen’s College does not have the same cachet that it
did 20 years ago. But hierarchy still matters a lot more visibly
in Delhi today than in other places—in Bombay, you
could be riding a bus next to a guy who’s a millionaire, but
he doesn’t have to show it. In Delhi it is very important to
show it off.
Delhi became the capital of British India in 1911, but it had previously served that role for a succession of dynasties. Has the city always depended, throughout its history, on the patronage of a government or a ruler, whether the Mughals, the British, or the Indian Republic?
William Dalrymple:
...But in the end Timur does take the city, around 1400, and it is burnt to the ground and contracts again: all of the craftsmen from Delhi are taken off to Samarkand over the Hindu Kush—the ‘tears of the Hindu,’ so named at that time...
.....It becomes a very prosperous city under the British, with the Mughal court as its centre. But then it’s completely destroyed after 1857, and remains a provincial city until 1911. Each of these times it grows and contracts, grows and contracts. No other city I know of, in fact, has this kind of succession of deaths and revivals....
(find the link here for the entire article)
The Transformations of Delhi
After the events of 1857, and the subsequent devastation of the city, what led the British to move the capital here 50 years later?
William Dalrymple:There’s two answers for that. One is a straightforward British political calculation, because the Bengalis are causing a lot of trouble for the Brits. The centre of political terrorism is Calcutta; you get people putting bombs in the Writers’ Building, and you don’t have that in Delhi. Particularly after the reign of Lord Curzon [from 1899 to 1905], the Bengalis are seen by the British to be troublemakers, political activists, too-clever-by-half babus, and Calcutta itself also becomes unmanageably large and chaotic as an urban space.
Farooqui: And they are helped by the fact that all the Delhi
elites of 1857, the few that survived, are very much collaborating
with the British regime. They are all teaching their
people to be loyal to the British, trying to get into modern
education and reform their community, so to say. It’s a kind
of a reward for their loyalty as well. Delhi, the capital, is
the reward for the loyalty of Muslims who were supporting
the regime.
Delhi had served as a capital for hundreds of years;
Muslims were attached to the city of Delhi; and the
Bengalis were creating a big ruckus. The British are threatened
by the Bengalis—these Indians with English educations,
politically active, quoting Mill and Montesquieu
at them.
So was the development of Delhi driven by the fact that
the government was here? Can we see it as a city like
Washington—which was created from scratch to be the
seat of government?
Dalrymple:
... We have a friend,
a woman from Bombay, who came here in 1989, and she
thought Delhi was out and out boorish, provincial, uncivilised,
full of rude Punjabis... This was a woman who had
grown up in sophisticated Bombay, and she regarded Delhi
as if she had come to Heart of Darkness—as if she had been
sent off to the Third World, as she saw it.
...
Farooqui:
....This is a city where there is now that kind of wealth. And
here, you have these overnight billionaires, people who
have become rich because of a land contract, or some scam,
or some government fixing. In Bombay, that wealth would
have likely come from a certain profession, from a trade
that your family has done for generations. In Delhi, the
two great engines of wealth creation are land and government
fixing. Even if you’re a police inspector, there’s a lot of
money to be made. That’s the difference between the kind
of wealth we see in Delhi and the wealth we see in other cities.
Remember that Delhi, also, is not the highest taxpaying
city in the country—that is still Bombay—so there is wealth
here that is not being taxed, what they used to call ‘black
money.’ Delhi is the heart of black money in India.
So is power the defining element in Delhi today?
Farooqui: Yes, there has always been that kind of power,
but it takes a different form today. In the past, one drew
power from status, from lineage and from education. That
kind of power is no longer unique in Delhi today—going to
St Stephen’s College does not have the same cachet that it
did 20 years ago. But hierarchy still matters a lot more visibly
in Delhi today than in other places—in Bombay, you
could be riding a bus next to a guy who’s a millionaire, but
he doesn’t have to show it. In Delhi it is very important to
show it off.
Delhi became the capital of British India in 1911, but it had previously served that role for a succession of dynasties. Has the city always depended, throughout its history, on the patronage of a government or a ruler, whether the Mughals, the British, or the Indian Republic?
William Dalrymple:
...But in the end Timur does take the city, around 1400, and it is burnt to the ground and contracts again: all of the craftsmen from Delhi are taken off to Samarkand over the Hindu Kush—the ‘tears of the Hindu,’ so named at that time...
.....It becomes a very prosperous city under the British, with the Mughal court as its centre. But then it’s completely destroyed after 1857, and remains a provincial city until 1911. Each of these times it grows and contracts, grows and contracts. No other city I know of, in fact, has this kind of succession of deaths and revivals....
(find the link here for the entire article)
The Transformations of Delhi
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