Delhi: A hundred years ago, when the children of Daryaganj would run on the ramparts of Delhi’s walled city, they would be able to see as far as the Yamuna river. Their view would be the rubbles of a litter of monuments and forts, each one telling a different tale of Delhi’s past. Perhaps they’d even see the silhouette of the Qutab Minar on a clear day.
Capturing this image and dusting the time off of Delhi’s skyline was the aim behind Vikramjit Singh Rooprai’s Delhi Heritage Top 10 Forts, the second in Niyogi Books’ series on the city’s heritage. Launched at the India International Center on 31 August, the book is a handy guide to the city’s fortified gems.
Historian Naryani Gupta, who spoke at the launch and painted a vivid picture of Delhi’s past, pointed out that the city of Delhi had multiple pasts. And the city’s various forts are the remnants of these layers.
Over the course of 90 minutes, the panel — Rooprai, Gupta, and oral historian and activist Sohail Hashmi — discussed everything from the definition of forts to various historical contentions behind them. And there was even a quiz for the 120-member audience on the forts of Delhi — with 20 audience members getting it right.
Rooprai’s rigorous research took him five years and a crash course in Urdu. He went through all kinds of archives and ran up against red tape only to find unlabelled photographs, which he then had to date and decipher. The decision to include certain forts in his top 10 was worked out through an analytical matrix of all parameters — like the fort’s size, how many attacks it withstood, and how much damage has been done to it.
“I hope the book will shake – or shock — young Delhiwallas with centuries of Delhi’s collective heritage,” said Gupta.
Who built Purana Qila?
Heritage enthusiast Rooprai kicked off the panel discussion with a pertinent question to Hashmi: How does one define a fort?
“Qila, garh, kot, kotla — all are forts. But a qila is a qila,” smiled Hashmi, explaining that the most common sense definition of a fort is a fortified space where a ruler rules from. “But the confusion that [Vikramjit] is pointing to is that there are lots of structures that look like forts but aren’t forts. Which is the story of Delhi.”
Delhi’s history of conquests is best told through its forts, explained Hashmi, because of how unsettled times were. Kings would order mausoleums built for themselves but would order them to be fortified so victors wouldn’t find them easy to plunder.
It brought the discussion straight to a fort — featured in the book — and its origins: the Purana Qila.
Purana Qila has found itself in the center of a historical storm. Was it built by Humayun and Sher Shah Suri, or was it actually build millenia ago by the Pandavas?
Listing Agra Fort and Lahore Fort as having had similar trajectories, Hashmi gave a detailed analysis of the technology used to build Purana Qila. Binding rubble with limestone and mortar — the way in which the Purana Qila was constructed — was introduced to India only in the later 12th century.
“As far as the Pandavas are concerned, first we have to establish if it is history and when it happened. I’m not prepared to believe they existed 5,000 years ago in 3000 BC,” said Hashmi. “I don’t think they were using the same technology used in the 12th century.”
With the Pandavas dismissed as an origin story, the discussion turned to whether Humayun built it or Sher Shah Suri. The answer is both. Humayun started construction of the fort, which Suri took over after he plundered Delhi, and Humayun retook it 15 years later.
“Rubble built structures could not have been built by the Pandavas,” said Hashmi, pointing to the technology used to build other ancient structures in India like Khajuraho and Rameshwaram.
Similarly, other monuments in Delhi are being co-opted to fit a different historical narrative. The Khirki Mosque, for example, is being reinvented as Kharak Singh’s fort.
“As Delhi gets ‘mallified’ and its edges melt seamlessly into UP and Haryana, old towns disappear. It’s difficult to find clues of them as Vikramjit has tried to do,” said Gupta. “Right now we need to be alert to the fact that in the past decade there’s been a sinister quantum change,” she cautioned.
A testament to Delhi’s heritage
Both Hashmi and Gupta talked of their childhoods in Delhi and their memories of watching a metropolis engulf the monuments that used to be the backdrop to their lives.
“I can vividly remember the Chirag Dilli I gazed at in the 1950s,” said Gupta. “It was a solid walled fort. And its tall gates were studded with elephant hooks, the air then – as today — redolent with the scent of evening meals being cooked. Seven-year-old me imagined witches cooking out of the windows.”
Villagers would have built and lived in the walled fort in times of trouble in the 17th century, similar to the gated colonies the same space has evolved into today.
“We have never had a sense of public property, unfortunately,” said Hashmi.
Both Gupta and Hashmi commended Rooprai’s efforts to revive interest in Delhi’s heritage through his heritage walks and now, his heritage books.
“These walks need to be supplemented by watchfulness, a cadre of heritage warriors driven by enthusiasm,” said Gupta.
This book is a result of Rooprai’s extensive work trying to document Delhi’s historical sites through several initiatives like his Heritage Photography Club and the Youth for Heritage Foundation.
But when Rooprai, who comes from an IT background, started the Delhi Heritage Awareness Club, not a single person came. In 2010, he changed the title of the Facebook page to Delhi Heritage Photography Club. Today, it has 24,000 members.
The challenge has always been to help people connect with heritage, said Rooprai. And he hopes his book will function as a guide for people who want to.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)