With a seminar to take in Delhi last Saturday, I decided on a (very) early Friday morning flight so that the afternoon could open up for a wander through Old Delhi. After dropping off my bag in Chhatarpur in the far south, I headed for the incomparable Yellow Line on the Metro and made my way to Kashmere Gate in the far north.

With my head and heart full of Dalrymple-facilitated Delhi-fascinations, having read The Anarchy last year and now lost in a re-read of a re-published The City of Djinns: a Year in Delhi, I wanted to make a few visits (with an eye on adding a few places as I prepare for my new vocation 😀).

a monument
I hired an auto-rickshaw and headed for the Mutiny Memorial on the Ridge Rd. For some decades there was only one war of independence in India, the one that led directly to partition in 1947. But as the prevailing post-colonialist ideology has taken hold, it has enabled some useful revisionist history. Ninety years earlier (in 1857), focused in a pocket of what is now Old Delhi, there was what the British referred to as a ‘mutiny’ leading to the demise of the Mughal dynasty, with the last Mughal emperor smuggled out of Delhi in an ox-cart (the story Dalrymple tells in The Last Mughal ) and exiled to Yangon, where he died and where there is now a tourist site marking the spot.

Anyhow, back to the mutiny in 1857. While it is now known, by Indians, as The First War of Independence the Indians never destroyed the Mutiny Memorial created by the British. That surprised me, initially. However what they did do was more effective than destruction…

Here is the octagonal memorial:

The face, among the eight, which greets you as you walk up the steps is this one:

It is a monument to aid the memory of those on the British ‘side’. This is hardly an unreasonable thing to do at the time: ‘the British remembered the siege and capture of Delhi as one of the great moments of the Empire, one of the golden bulwarks of the Raj … which established Britannia’s rule over the Indian waves’ (WD, City of Djinns, 149). But what is rather crass is that there are seven other sides filled with words and numbers, like this one:

Yes, the ‘striking thing is … (these) statistical tables raised by the British to commemorate the Mutiny’s casualties … (and) the cold and exact set of mind which could reduce the human casualties of a bloody war to the level of bowling averages…’ (City of Djinns, 149-150). No, the Indians didn’t destroy the memorial. They went one step better. They subverted it. In 1972, on the 25th anniversary of Indian independence, they added their own plaque. This is what greets the visitor on arrival now, at street level, as we zoom in:

So provocative. Its great. As Dalrymple says, it ‘intends to set the record right’. My only criticism? This plaque would have far greater impact if it greeted the visitor on the way out, rather than on the way in. Kinda like how the preacher always wants their conclusion to be stronger than their introduction…

a garden
I loved being up on ‘the Ridge’ again. While the undergowth is still reminiscent of the thinning hair on a balding head, the road itself is thick with nostalgia. It was the road daily travelled with Prithipal Singh, in his Ambassador taxi and its DHA 3133 number plate, by a carload of us as we traversed the city to attend The British School in New Delhi’s Chanakyapuri.

The auto took me via Hindu Rao Hospital (where there is a famous building, but I’ll save you that detail!) and then we travelled further down memory lane, sighting both Underhill Lane and Commissioner’s Lane (where our family lived when we moved to Delhi exactly 50 years ago, in 1970). However on this occasion my eye was drawn to somewhere else. Qudsia Bagh, barely 400m from our old home and the focal point of one of the most compelling stories in Dalrymple’s The Anarchy.

Women finding rest amidst the Qudsia Bagh ruins and garden, oblivious to the history – or so we hope.

The chipmunks were not as interested in rest…

The Mughal emperor living through the story of the gradual takeover of India by the East India Company (the essential plotline in The Anarchy) is Shah Alam. At one point in his reign, Mughal Bengal is defeated. He went off to save it, but failed and remained exiled from Delhi, as a ‘puppet-dependant’ of the British. Shah Alam finally returns to Delhi and brings with him a young lad, Ghulam Qadir, from a family he had conquered. (Yes, probably some sort of sexual deviance is going on – but, who knows?). Shah Alam housed Ghulam Qadir in the ‘gilded’ Qudsia Bagh, all of 4.6km from the Red Fort where he himself lived. At 20 years of age, when the emperor’s army is out-of-town, this pampered lad turns psychotic initiating ‘a reign of terror’ that lasts just nine weeks. At one point, exacting revenge for his family, he cuts out the eyes of Shah Alam from their sockets with a knife, leaving him to become ‘the sightless ruler of a largely illusory empire’ (WD, The Anarchy, 359).

a church
Now the auto-driver turned in the direction of the Red Fort, just as Ghulam did all those years ago, but he dropped me off at St James’ Church, barely 2km up the road. With it being so close to our home, we would sometimes come here on Sunday mornings – but I have no memory of entering the church in the intervening 50 years…

The church was the vision of one man, the same man who funded the entire project. James Skinner. He was an Anglo-Indian, an outcome of a relationship between a British Lieutenant-Colonel and an Indian woman. He was a bit of a mercenary, but also founded a regiment known as Skinner’s Horse which still exists in the Indian Army today. Go figure?! Various reports suggest that he had 14 wives – and so when all this is considered, the plaque inside the church might possibly be overstated somewhat…

A couple of concerns emerged with this visit. One is the danger of a church being linked to one family, even one person in this way. The family had their own pew. The fenced cemetery seems to contain only their own people. Skinner himself is buried under the communion table. No wonder I heard someone, on this visit, ask (seriously) whether the ‘James’ in ‘St James’ has more to do with the founder, than with the apostle…

I bet they wished they could just pull a string and turn on a fan back then!

Even though the cemetery is a family-affair, here is a striking collection of four verses for the time of death.

The other concern is to be reminded again of how disturbing I find the mingling of the nationalistic/patriotic and the military – with religion and faith. Why do we have memorials to those who died in battle in churches (like we do back home in New Zealand), of all places? I don’t get it – and I’d need an awful lot of convincing that God is somehow happy with it. How exactly do you reconcile all this with a reconciling God with a heart for all the peoples of the world? It is borderline offensive for me. This St James’ Church has memorials to those who lost their lives as part of this regiment known as Skinner’s Horse.

Once I was finished with the church, I headed towards Chandni Chowk, the ancestral heart of commercial Delhi. What a place. They seem to be turning it into a pedestrian-only promenade. There is always time for aloo tikki from the roadside. I was violently ill 36 hours later, but it was due to the cuisine in a three-star Kolkata airport hotel, not the street food of Chandni Chowk. Plus I am convinced that I have this immunity built up from my childhood…

Looking down Chandni Chowk towards the Red Fort.

Aloo tikki – about to be crushed with all the good stuff heaped on top of it.

a tomb
It was back to the Yellow Line, on at the Chandni Chowk station and off at Jorbagh – for another visit provoked by my reading of The Anarchy late last year. Remember Shah Alam? The exiled, sightless Mughal emperor? Remember that he was eventually successful in getting back to Delhi and on to his throne – but how, you may ask? Well, even if you didn’t ask, I am asking on your behalf… 😁.

It is another compelling story in Dalrymple’s The Anarchy. Mirza Najaf Khan. That is the guy’s name. Dalrymple describes him as ‘one of the greatest generals of the eighteenth century’ (The Anarchy, 276) – and he doesn’t just mean in India, or in Asia – but anywhere in the world. He pops across from Persia and becomes Shah Alam’s military commander. A genius. Najaf Khan builds an army, develops a strategy, takes back the empire, and has the emperor back on his throne in the Red Fort – all in less than four years. After he died, those territorial gains were lost within two years as the Mughal empire, now fatally wounded, limped its way towards its end, in 1857.

And yes, a thunderstorm did strike with full force just as I entered my Uber to conclude my afternoon and head for home for the night. Delhi’s traffic is still as bewildered and made as motionless by heavy rain as it ever was and so I spent almost as much time in a car in New Delhi as I had spent wandering around Old Delhi…

Anyhow not too bad for a solitary afternoon’s excursion and now, as I reach my ‘nice chatting’ stage, I am well aware that it might be just my solitary self that is left.


nice chatting

Paul

PS – it wasn’t all sightseeing. Here is the proof, with the second image providing my case study for ‘listening to the world’. It worked so well! After a stressful week since the Delhi visit (for which writing this post has been a welcome escape), Barby and I hope to fly home tomorrow and straight into self-isolation for 14 days – and so the celebration around the anticipated birth of a new grandchild and the full welcome of a new daughter-in-law will need to wait…