‘Only 12 people knew Delhi would become capital’

December 30, 1911: This month’s Coronation Durbar and transfer of capital to Delhi are the biggest feathers in Lord Hardinge’s cap at the end of his first full year as Viceroy. As the year draws to a close, he lets readers in on some backstage secrets from the last 13 months spent in preparation.

The Durbar turned out to be a perfect show. Are you satisfied?

Very. I am also surprised, because our dress rehearsals were a fiasco. Even on Durbar day — typical of Indian methods — the last few nails were being driven into the red carpet only two minutes before my escort rode up. But finally, everything worked like clockwork. Even the weather held out bright and sunny although there was a deluge of rain just 30 miles from Delhi.

Is it true you started planning the arrangements before starting for India?

Not at all. The first I heard of His Majesty’s decision to convene a Durbar in Delhi was by telegram on landing at Bombay, on November 18 last year (1910). Everything’s been done in these 13 months.

What did you make of Delhi on your first visit?

When I first came here at the end of winter, 20,000 people were at work on the grounds, water supply, lighting, drainage, the amphitheatres etc. But Red Fort was a picture of neglect. Diwan-i-Aam, Moti Masjid and other incomparable buildings were littered with rubbish, bricks, stones, refuse etc, and the fort was surrounded on one side by a wet marshy jungle on the riverbank, which I was told bred and harboured the most poisonous kind of mosquitoes. I gave orders for cleaning up the inside of the fort, and laying it out as a garden. As for the jungle, I had it cut down, drained and turned into a park.

In the early months, plans were repeatedly altered from London. How did you stop that?

I had to put my foot down as the rains were near. The meddling stopped after I conveyed it to His Majesty that while camps covering 25 square miles were laid out, 40 miles of roads, 26.5 miles of broad-gauge and 9 miles of narrow-gauge railway, 50 miles of water mains and enough lighting for two fair-sized towns were still being built.

There was also some awkwardness about the crown…

From the start, we assumed His Majesty would bring his crown. So, when we were told the crown could not leave English shores, and a special one ought to be made for the Durbar at Government of India’s expense, we were shocked. Then, there arose concerns about safeguarding the new crown, as its falling into the hands of rebels in another Mutiny would be politically disastrous. It has now been decided to house it in the Tower of London with the rest of the Regalia.

How cooperative were the native princes?

I would say extremely cooperative, barring, of course, Baroda’s misconduct at the Durbar. They did not upset the government’s plans but some of their demands did unsettle us for a while.

Such as…

Well, one prince wanted to bring two tame tigers to the camp. I reasoned, and finally forbade, the attempt on the grounds that the cats would keep the entire camp awake at night.

Talking of animals, you had strong views against the king’s horses.

The steeds were chosen on purely practical grounds, but from the beginning I believed they were not worthy of the king. My own black thoroughbred looked so much statelier than the horses he used here. In fact, I had wanted his horses to be brought from England, but His Majesty turned down the proposal. Finally, he made do with a small, dark brown horse of no noticeable appearance that was selected entirely for its calm nature. 

In hindsight, don’t you think the king should have ridden an elephant during the state entry?

Absolutely. During the parade, His Majesty himself told me that he was disappointed at his non-recognition by the people. I also noticed that the people did not recognize the king, who after all is a small man, and was dressed in a red coat like the other generals and was riding a small horse.

London almost expected an assassination attempt on the king during his visit. What special security arrangements were made?

I personally supervised and assumed full responsibility for all measures taken. The day before His Majesty’s arrival, 300 dangerous characters in Delhi were comfortably locked up for the 10 days of his stay here. But the chief danger in my opinion lay in Chandni Chowk, where the procession was to pass almost under the windows of houses. So, I ordered that nobody but British troops should stand on the pavements that day. I brought in 4,000 police from the provinces and stationed an officer at every window. Nobody was allowed on the rooftops, and Indian troops guarded the back lanes of houses. The procession passed through Chandni Chowk at 11am, but the street was put under curfew from 6am. And during those five hours, every house was thoroughly searched.

The transfer of capital to Delhi was the Durbar’s masterstroke. When was the idea conceived?

The move away from Calcutta had been coming a long time. Lord Lawrence had earlier expressed favour for Delhi, and even Lord Curzon wanted the capital removed to Agra.

But when was the decision taken?

I mailed my proposal to the secretary of state in July, and received his entire support and full authority to proceed, in a telegram on August 7. In November, I learnt the India Council in London had favoured the scheme, and it was accepted by the Cabinet a few days later.

   

Yet the news remained a secret till the end…

We ensured that it was known to only 12 people in India till the last minute. His Majesty did not share it even with Queen Mary. She was completely surprised when I broached the subject on board the Medina, on their arrival in Bombay.

It was one thing to keep the secret within our circle but another to suppress it while preparing and printing the gazettes and flysheets for the ceremony. We created a special Press Camp, complete with printing machines, and board and lodging for the workers. The staff was brought in three days before the Durbar, and a cordon of troops and police ensured that neither man nor word got outside.

Amongst all this cheer, how’s Calcutta taking the news of transfer?

The native population does not mind, but the English trading interests there can’t stop carping. One English newspaper recently published a leader titled HMG, which I thought meant His Majesty’s Government, but later found to be an acronym for Hardinge Must Go! I have since informed one of its editors that I will, but only from Calcutta.

       

(Adapted from Lord Hardinge’s India memoirs)

Mazhar Ali Khan's panorama of Delhi in 1846

Red Fort’s vaunted Diwan-i-Khas and its famous boast — if there be paradise on earth, this is it… — are a short walk away from Salimgarh Bastion, where King George V arrived for his Durbar on December 7, 1911. But the State Procession that followed his entry hurried the king away from the hall, out of Delhi Gate and into the city.

Riding a horse under the winter sun, George V had time merely to mark the fort’s sparse grandeur and discrete pavilions, and wonder why it had been called the noblest palace in the world for so long. What he probably didn’t know was that most of the ‘Exalted Palace’ travellers raved about for two centuries had been swept away. Gone was the sparkling canal that divided the very road he took out of the fort. Houses of the salatin (royal descendants) had made way for the new lawns to his right. Razed palaces, arcades and cloisters had left behind the long, empty brackets of space to his left.

The Red Fort George V saw was like a poem with most of its lines missing. It’s the same with us, who wrap up a visit in under an hour to spend four shopping in Chandni Chowk. Returning to the fort’s heyday is not possible, but a new book offers a glimpse into the palace of the last Mughal and the surrounding city that Zauq and Ghalib loved and lived in.

JP Losty’s Delhi 360º (Roli Books) reveals the Red Fort and Shahjahanabad of the Mughal dynasty’s dying years through artist Mazhar Ali Khan’s panorama, “A Picture of the Imperial City of Shahjahanabad Drawn from the Lahore Gate of the Exalted Fort”. Acquired by the British Library at a country auction in 1981, the painting is signed November 25, 1846, and is an important historical record.

The Mutiny happened in 1857 and by 1863 the British had cleared a large swathe of the city that lay within firing range (450 yards) of the fort walls. Most of the palaces and buildings within the fort were also demolished in the name of security. So, Khan’s panorama captured the fort and the city in their swan song, and in massive detail.

Measuring 66.5cm high and 490.8cm wide, the panorama is the equivalent of a 455-megapixel shot when printed at 300 dots-per-inch photo quality. The only way to produce such a photo-real historical record in the 1840s was by faithfully recording every line of street, roof and pillar with brush and paint.

From his observation deck under one of Lahore Gate’s chhatris (cupolas), Khan swept his gaze first north (towards the ticket counters) and then clockwise, till he had traced a unique 360º view. The roughly 5-metre water colour panorama was painted on five sheets and pasted together as a scroll longer than an average apartment bedroom.

More than its age, the panorama is important for what it shows. The fort is fully built up. It is no longer true to Shahjahan’s aesthetic, but a living, thriving space nonetheless. Outside, the city is more orderly built and leafy than what you see today. Trees ring it from the north all the way to Fatehpuri Masjid on the west. There are trees even on Chandni Chowk’s median. Of traffic there is little, and squalor none, but the last may be the artist’s disinclination to sully his canvas.  

At first glance, nothing but the fort’s august gates is recognisable. There is so much between them that no living person has seen. For instance, the very intricate decorations of Chhatta Bazaar’s walls. They are now lost under layers of white paint. Immediately to the right is a spread of houses for the salatin. Moving on, the Naqqarkhana has a large, enclosed court with three-arched gateways to the north and the south. In fact, gates, arcades and cloisters regularly frame, link and also curtain the fort’s different quarters. Another surprise is the white Diwan-i-Aam beyond Naqqarkhana. The hall’s pearly plaster finish was stripped off early in the last century, exposing its red sandstone.  

The painting also shows Shahjahanabad in relation to the older relics. Monuments such as Kotla Firoz Shah, Humayun’s Tomb, Purana Qila, and the farthest, Qutab Minar, are duly marked out.

Studying Khan’s panorama will leave you a little wistful, for the lost splendours of Red Fort, the city’s easy pace, its leafy environs, the Yamuna’s wide expanse — and the horizon. Once upon a time, earth and sky met all around Delhi.

Judicial probe's findings

Qutab Minar’s slippery and uneven steps were as much to blame for the high death toll as the power failure that plunged the tower into darkness on December 4, 1981. The inquiry committee that examined the causes of the accident criticised both the power utility DESU and the Minar’s custodian ASI in its report.

The probe panel headed by district and sessions judge Jagdish Chandra started work a day after the tragedy and submitted its report a month later, on January 6. The following were its key findings:

1) Power failure inside the tower was one of the major causes of the stampede. The fault was on the part of Delhi Electric Supply Undertaking.

2) The stampede started when a girl slipped somewhere below the Minar’s eighth ventilator.

3) Deaths from suffocation occurred due to the pressure of human bodies lying one above the other.

4) Almost all the steps inside the tower were slippery and uneven, and had dangerous depressions and contours. Poor condition of the steps led to the girl’s slipping below the eighth ventilator. Archaeological Survey of India was to blame for the dangerous condition of the steps.

The Day Qutab Minar 'Burst'

Exactly 30 years ago, on December 4, 1981 , Delhi heard that Qutab Minar had “burst”. It was a misunderstanding, but the outcome could not have been worse had the Minar really collapsed. A stampede inside the tower had left 45 dead and 24 injured. It was the most terrible accident in the Minar’s 800-year history, and one of the blackest days in post-Independence Delhi.

Later that day, a Delhi Administration order was hung outside the tower: “The Qutab Minar will remain closed till further notice”. And it has remained closed to the public ever since. Two generations have grown up without once walking up or looking inside the Minar. The facts of that fateful day are forgotten but hearsay and unfounded theories have made an urban legend of the accident.

So, what really happened that Friday? Why was the city’s grandest living monument reduced to a cold souvenir from the past? I dug through old files for answers.

When the accident happened in 1981, unrestricted access to the 72.5-metre Minar was already a thing of the past. Since 1955, visitors had been allowed to go up to only the first balcony — 29 metres and 154 steps above the ground, which is as high as an eight-storey residential building. While the Minar’s ‘tilt’ and consequent repairs are often blamed for the restrictions, frequent suicides from its upper balconies were the real consideration. Even after the top four storeys were sealed and the entry of unaccompanied visitors prohibited, suicides from the Minar continued at the rough rate of two per year.

But more than these deaths, what the Minar remained famous for was its breathless climb, fantastic views and windy galleries. The diary of British agent Thomas Metcalfe’s daughter, Emily, records fond Qutab memories from the 1840s: “Many a time have I, with Colonel Richard Lawrence, taken a basket of oranges to the top of the Kutab pillar, two hundred and thirty eight feet high, to indulge in a feast in that seclusion…”

That happy era went out with the lights inside the Minar on December 4, 1981 . The blackout happened just after 11.30 am, when 300-400 visitors were already squeezed inside the tower and a crowd was pushing on from outside to gain entry. The rush was especially heavy because the entry to monuments used to be free on Friday in those days. Amongst the visitors were 58 students from an industrial training institute in Ropar, Punjab; 130 schoolchildren from Pali and Bhankri villages in Faridabad and some other students from YMD College, Nuh.

Power cuts don’t make news in Delhi , but in the Minar accident case three causes were reported. The first was a conspiracy theory: some miscreants had molested two foreign women tourists at the balcony level and then tripped the lights to trigger chaos. The second: someone had touched an exposed live wire. And the third: a truck had knocked down a power pole outside.

Although the Minar looks like a long, closed shaft from the outside, some light streams in through the balconies. The masonry also has some gaps for ventilation along the steps, and a little light gets in through these. But on that day, the stampede plunged the Minar’s inside into complete darkness. As the screaming started, people who were at the top, crowded close to the balcony window, cutting out most of the light. Those who were near the outer edge of the stairway pressed themselves against the wall to avoid being pulled into the turmoil, and cut out whatever little light that could have come in through the ventilators.      

The painful cries were either absorbed by the Minar’s thick walls or ignored by those outside, for even as the trapped tourists tried to push their way out, climbing over fallen bodies, the crowd at the doorway did not give way, and pushed on to gain entry. They were finally stopped by the inward opening main door that became immovable with the pressure of the desperate crowd behind it.

It was all over in a few minutes, because by 11.45 am the first SOS had been flashed across to the police’s flying squad (it’s another thing that the first cop reportedly showed up at 12.15 pm and the fire brigade only at 12.40 pm). Most of the victims had no outward injuries. After the last autopsy at 1.30 am next day, doctors declared that almost all deaths had happened due to internal crushing and traumatic asphyxia (suffocation). But journalists who looked inside the tower immediately after the accident reported finding blood, broken bangles and glass all over.

With the main door jammed (some said it had been locked up by a guard to stop entry) and the Minar’s tight staircase — 1.5 metres at the bottom, narrowing to 1.2 metres at the first balcony — pitch dark, the rescue effort got delayed. Finally, rescuers got in using a maintenance scaffolding rising up along the Minar’s wall, and drew out bodies through the ventilation ports. There was no telling the living from the dead. Passing vehicles were stopped and the bodies rushed to AIIMS and Safdarjung hospitals, where the Emergency wards resembled mortuaries. It was a traumatic sight, and the cop who mistakenly flashed the message “Qutab phat gaya hai” acted on the only plausible explanation that came to his mind.

A day later, a judicial probe started into the causes of the accident. More witnesses were heard. Some said the stampede started when a child got electrocuted and the lights went out. Others maintained that women who were molested at the top of the stairs started screaming and tried to rush down in the blackout. But the most plausible explanation was also the simplest: the lights went out, and somebody near the top of the stairs fell. “We then heard ‘gir gaya ’...”

A tourist had tripped, but in the darkness everybody thought the cry meant Qutab Minar was falling.

abhilashgaur@yahoo.com

Babar

Zahir-ad-din means ‘protector of the faith’ and it was the name Babar’s father gave him. However, Babar’s maternal grandfather Yunis Khan, a Mongol, could not pronounce the letter Z, so he gave the boy another name - Babar - which means tiger.

--When Kings Rode to Delhi by Gabrielle Festing; Chapter VII – The prince who went to seek his fortune

Firoz Shah seeks pardon for Muhammad's excesses

‘His first act was to seek out the heirs of all those who had been executed by Muhammad, and all those who suffered mutilation by his command, and make compensation to them. Each was asked to sign a deed declaring that he had received satisfaction, and these deeds, duly witnessed, were placed within the grave where Muhammad slept, in his father’s mausoleum, “in the hope that God in his great clemency would show mercy to my late friend and patron, and make those persons feel reconciled to him.”’

--When Kings Rode to Delhi by Gabrielle Festing; Chapter V - Saints and Kings in Delhi

Firoz Shah Tughlaq

1. Firoz Shah was a cousin of Muhammad bin Tughlaq.
2. He was trained in statecraft by both Ghiyas-ad-din and Muhammad.
3. He was governor of a fourth part of Delhi’s territories at the time of Muhammad’s death.
4. The nobles chose him as king, as Muhammad had left no son.
5. He disliked war but was an ardent hunter. He once lost his way on an expedition to capture elephants and was not heard of for nine months.
6. He also loved his drink. “He persisted, despite the law, in drinking wine of different colours – some yellow as saffron, some red as the rose, some white."

Parentage

When Ghias-ad-din Tughlaq was governor of Dipalpur, he decided to marry his younger brother Rajab to the daughter of the local Hindu chieftain Rana Mal Bhatti.

The Rana took affront and refused the proposal outright. At this, Tughlaq ordered the Rana to pay up the year’s tribute at once, in cash, knowing that the chief would be unable to do so.

When Naila, the Rana’s daughter, came to know why Tughlaq had placed such a heavy burden upon their people, she implored her father to give her away to the Turk. “Think only that the Mongols have carried off one of your daughters,” she said.

Firoz Shah was Rajab and Naila’s only child.

--From When Kings Rode to Delhi by Gabrielle Festing; Chapter V - Saints and Kings in Delhi