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BA (Hons.) History
University of Delhi
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History
Sahajhannabad background
The site chosen was protected from the north-west by the Ridge, and was linked to the east by a bridge across the Jamuna, a glorified moat at the back of the Palace. The city was doubly fortified by the Palace and the city wall. Architectural and engineering skills designed the town with an eye to aesthetic appeal as well as to provide, for a limited population, military security, efficient tax-collection, an adequate supply of water and a functional drainage-system. Plots of land were allotted to noblemen, merchants and people of other professions
Bernier, who lived in the city soon after it had been built in 1638, was struck by the extent to which the economic and social as well as the political life hinged on the monarch, the court and the umara. There were numerous karkhanas for craftsmen under the patronage of the aristocracy, but Bernier commented on the absence of men of ‘the middle state’. He saw great opulence and an abundance of provisions, but also great squalor.
The city had some stone and some brick palaces, ringed by mud-and-thatch houses. The merchants worked in and often lived in second storeys of the buildings and arcades along the two boulevards radiating from the palace—Faiz Bazaar and Chandni Chowk. The other roads were asymmetrical. Bernier explained this by their probably having been built at different times by different individuals, but the more likely reason was that this had been done deliberately to make ingress more difficult for invading troop
Katras developed around nuclei deriving their names from provincial groups or commodities (Kashmeri Katra, Katra Nil), and mohullas and knchas were named after commodities sold there or prominent men who lived there They are like the album of a painter,’ Mir, one of Delhi’s great poets, said affectionatel
Bernier used the word ‘suburbs’ not in the modern sense but to describe the ruins of old cities near Shahjahanabad, and the pockets of habitation around wholesale markets. These were akin to the faubourgs of Paris and were separated by large royal or aristocratic preserves, gardens or hunting lodges, particularly Jahannuma in the north-west and Shalimar in the north.
Delhi was fed from the Doab and from the grain emporia east of the river in Shahdara, Ghaziabad and Patparganj were linked to the intramural market near the Fatehpuri mosque; vegetables and fruit came from the north-west and weresold in the wholesale market of Sabzi Mandi in Mughalpura,
●) construction activities
Masjids, temples, houses, markets, streets and gardens were laid out by individuals at different times. Maliwara and Chhipiwara,and suburban Teliwara originated in the period of Maratha control, as indicated by the Marathi suffix ‘wara’.
Faiz Bazaar, which he saw as ‘a long street of very miserable appearance’, of a piece with many houses which were ‘low and mean’.7 The disparity of status noticed by Bernier was also apparent to Forbes, who said that the houses of the nmara and the rajas were on a larger scale than those of nobles in Europe,
Heber in the 1840s, who said the houses at Delhi‘far exceed in grandeur anything seen in Moscow’.
In the north, Rajpura Cantonment was separated from the city by large royal gardens rich with fruit trees The army’s bazaar was located at ‘Khyber Pass’ on the Alipur Road. Though Mughal power declined, this did not lead to any exodus of Muslim families from Delhi, for the numbers of Muslims and Hindus remain fairly consistently equal
Delhi was chiefly remarkable for its aadmiyat, its polished urbanity.~ chronicler
camaraderie between Hindus and Muslims, at the Court and at Delhi College, at the gatherings in Chandni Chowk and Sa’dullah Chowk, around the dastan-gos, at festivals, especially Basant (when the whole city was ‘dressed like a bride’) and the Phulzvalon Ki Sair. Weekly mushd’aras were held at Ghaziuddin Madarsa (where Delhi College classes were held) and on those nights Ajmeri Gate was kept open late into the night
The spirit of the age has been described as having been characterized by three addictions—to mysticism in Islam, to a frenetic gaiety, and to the salons of the courtesans
●》RENAISSANCE IN DELHI
In Delhi, this half-century saw the establishment of the first Indian press for Persian
Palace, and his revenue to the income from territories north-west of the town of Kabulpur, which was farmed out and was under the management of the Resident. The Emperor and his family received regular but frugal pocket money, and nazars on the occasion of festivals The British succeeded in making the Emperor politically functionless, but the mystique of the court kept Delhi essentially a Mughal town.
Shahjahanabad was the chief city of Delhi Territory, which was acquired by the East India Company from the Marathas by the Treaty of Surji Arjungaon in 1803. It comprised Delhi and Hissar Divisions, which were sub-divided in 1819 into the districts of Haryana, Rohtak, Panipat, Gurgaon and Delhi
●》NEW DIMENSION TO CITY
new concept was one spelt out by Governor- General Amherst in 1823, that town duties be earmarked for local improvements’, and that even direct taxes might be levied for this purpose. The follow-up action on this in Delhi was that a Committee was set up to administer town duties
Its work was made easy by the very comprehensive report prepared by Fortes- cue in 1820, cataloguing the customs and town duties prevalent in Delhi But before the experiment had got under way, the Committee was disbanded by the masterful Charles Metcalfe, and the nascent Municipality crushed under the weight of his centralizing policy. Charles Trevelyan, in his Report of 1833, criticized town duties, which, he held, had made Delhi decline as a trade-centre, just as their absence had helped Bhiwani, Rewari andShahdara to flourish.
●》maintenance of the city, road repair and traffic regulation
Seton undertook to replant trees along the Chandni Chowk at his own expense.
In 1830 Trevelyan spent his own money to establish a small suburb outside Lahore Gate
The city wall was kept in good repair and well fortified with bastions and glacis.
The shortlived town committee used the duties to repair drains and bridges and the Canal which had been reopened two years earlier. In 1822 the taiul, waqf, zabt and nazid properties held in trust by the British Government for the Emperor were
removed from the control of the city Kotwal and put under a special daroga.
Bishop Heber noticed in 1828 that the Jama Masjid was repaired by a special grant from Government (he wasin error, for the grant was from waqf funds); it was a measure which was very popular in Delhi.
Issues
The Delhi Gazette frequently complained that the city roads were neglected; this referred not only to cantonment roads but also to areas of the ‘native city’. It was insinuated that only the ‘exhibit’ roads were kept in repair, and that the lanes and back slums [sc. were] worse than Edinburgh
It criticized the Hindu residents of the road from Shahbula-ka-Bad to the Chidiyakhana, who would spend thousands on a wedding but would balk at giving forty rupees to repair their road. In 1837 the local authorities tried to induce prominent local men to subscribe towards improving roads. The response was poor, being limited to Raja Hindu Rao and Ahmad Ali Khan Rajas of Pataudi and Ballabgarh are known to have made generous grants.
The local merchants and bankers agreed in 1856 to raise a loan for building a permanent bridge over the Jamuna which would enable the railway line from Calcutta to be extended to Delhi They were also enthusiastic about a project to introduce steam navigation between Delhi and Mathura
Questions of public health
the early nineteenth century the British only imperfectly understood Indian diseases and problems of Delhi—cholera, malaria, and the ‘Delhi Sore’, were thought to be caused entirely by water borne contagion,transmitted through running water, brackish well water and water-logged pools.
A proposal was made to drain the Najafgarh Jheel in 1817, but this was not done,probably because of the expense involved.
The Ali Mardan Canal had dried up. Soon after the British conquest, MrMercer offered to reopen it at his own expense, if he were given the canal revenues for the next twenty years.
History
Course: BA (Hons.) History
University: University of Delhi
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