Perpetual City by Malvika Singh

Author:Malvika Singh [Singh, Malvika]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789383064618
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
Published: 2013-11-30T05:00:00+00:00

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A new ‘builder’ had reared its head—the Delhi Development Authority (DDA). Established in 1957, it became obviously active from 1967 onwards. The name itself was undemocratic, unfriendly, anti-city, anti-people. It was an ‘authority’, and heaven help you if you questioned it. Heavy-handed, uninitiated in the nuances of architectural styles and the past’s delicate aesthetic sensibilities, the men who ruled the roost from then to now have surely and steadily uprooted and destroyed this fine, fragile and layered ancient city as they raced to create the modern middle-class slums that surround us. These ‘habitats’ are alien spaces, disconnected with the ethos and idea of India and Bharat.

Worse was to come. The last time the city was deliberately brutalized was by the hand of foreigners in 1857 when Britons vandalized Shahjahanabad. This time we suffered at the hands of our own. During the Emergency, Sanjay Gandhi decided to clear slums and ‘beautify’ areas and used the then chairman of the DDA, Shri Jagmohan, to do his bidding. What followed was possibly the worst ever assault on the people who lived in the historic environs of Purani Dilli. Jagmohan rolled the bulldozers across the Ramlila Maidan and demolished Turkman Darwaza, one of the imposing gates of Shahjahanabad, for no rhyme or reason. Ancestral family homes and havelis were razed to the ground and abjectly poor families, who had settled in the surrounding areas, were relocated to the flood plain of the Jamuna, only to suffer each year as their makeshift shacks were submerged during the monsoon. Diseases ravaged the slums. Old Dilliwallahs, proud descendants of the Mughals, suffered in pained silence. They, as the rightful keepers of that enduring legacy, had been alienated, divorced from their roots and insulted.

Images of that ‘authority’ still make one’s hair stand on end. We hoped and prayed that Dilli Darwaza, Mori Darwaza, Kashmiri Darwaza and the others, would not be put through similar humiliation. Our city had been mutilated by our own. We had learned no lessons from history. The ‘respect’ for the local communities by a conquering Mughal power in the past had made life inclusive, creating the palpable, living ethos of Dilli. The tragedy is that the modern Indian state post 1947 disregarded that tradition. The ‘authority’ knew no better as it demolished a valuable chunk of history. It lost the respect of the people over whom it had been mandated to wield its authority, without a by your leave, and it has not been successful in winning the respect back. Land grab, extortion, blackmail and corruption ensued and the land and civic authorities continued to exploit the citizens of this ancient city.

Dilli had begun to lose her many past identities and her ancestry at the heavy hand of the DDA, and two other uncoordinated fingers, the two municipalities—the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). All of them claim jurisdiction over the city, but are quick to evade responsibility when having to deal with its problems.

We just do not know how to conserve and be proud of what is ours.

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