12. Delhi

From the ruins of former settlements around Old Delhi, with its location on the Gangetic plains on the banks of the Yamuna River, Delhi was at the head of the trade routes of north-west India.

Seven cities have risen and fallen near and around this site.

For example, the Mughal Shah Jahan had moved the capital of his empire from Agra to Delhi creating the city of Shahjahanabad where the Red Fort was the grandest of Mughal Palaces.

But as empires decay and decline, so did the old city until the next wave of influence led by the British East India Company in the Punjab.

The city was shaped by the new Military Cantonment and separation of accommodation of the European and Indian populations along the Civil Lines and new railway lines were constructed.

As the British Crown took over, the tradition of ceremonial Durbars was held in the city with the Princes of the Princely States in attendance.

With the problems in Bengal and partition, the British decided to move the capital of India from Calcutta to Delhi and for that purpose to establish a planned new capital of New Delhi on a site between the Delhi Ridge and old Purana Qila.

With the focal point on Raisina Hill, a new Governmental Secretariat was designed by Lutyens in Indo-Saracenic style along with Viceroy’s House, now Rashtrapati Bhavan, that dominated the principal axis, the ‘Rajpath’, towards the War Memorial, India Gate, crossed by the perpendicular ‘Janpath’.

With a geometric grid of overlapping hexagons, the city was planned with different sectors with housing areas laid out and allocated according to ‘warrants of preference’.

New Delhi, accordingly, was a planned city – an administrative capital, a seat of government, and designed for the projection of power.

However, for not much longer since after completion during the 1930s, its imperial power was to wane and post World War II, India attained its independence.

At midnight on 14th August 1947, the Union Jack embossed with the Star of India was lowered at Viceroy House to be replaced by the three coloured Tiranga, with the central Ashoka Chakra.

“Delhi celebrated with lights. The austere, hard-working capital was ablaze with them. New Delhi’s Connaught Circus, the narrow alleys of Old Delhi, were hung in green, saffron and white lights. Temples, mosques, and Sikh gurudwaras were outlined in garlands of light bulbs. So too, was the Red Fort of the Moghul Emperors. New Delhi's newest temple, Birla Mandir, with its curlicue spires and domes hung with lights… In the Bhangi sweepers’ colony, among whose Untouchables Gandhi had often dwelt, independence had brought a gift many of those wretched people had never known – light”. *

Thereafter, huge transformations countrywide were to occur with movements of population following the partition of West and East Pakistan, and the Union Territory of Delhi was formed in 1956 eventually to be renamed National Capital Territory (NCT).

The second half of the 20th century led to great changes with the formation of new Indian States under the ’States Reorganisation Act’ along linguistic lines and creation of several new State capitals.

Delhi itself has grown enormously under high rates of in-migration from rural areas and as national capital has seen its population soar.

In consequence, whilst its infrastructure has been developed, its residential provision and basic services has failed to keep up with demand.

With new expressways and ring roads, and ten new lines of the Metro system, development is continuing all around the periphery.

New areas such as Faridabad and Noida, Ghaziabad and Gurugram in particular are new satellite centres that are acting as poly-nodal growth centres around the periphery of the National Capital Region which now accommodates approx. 40 million persons and is extending out into neighbouring Haryana and Punjab States.

Whilst the centre holds the federal Government of all the Indian states and union territories at the new bicameral Parliament building that accommodates both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, the scale of Delhi and its surrounding National Capital Region has been transformed through continued urbanisation into one of the world’s largest megalopolitan agglomerations.

*Dominique Lapierre & Larry Collins – Freedom at Midnight – Vikas Publishing House, 1990.