The cities called Delhi

How Delhi has always been a work in progress, its story never quite complete

The Shortest History of Delhi

By John Zubrzycki

Published by Picador India

214 pages ₹479

 Delhi, with its multiple identities and contested pasts, is like a scratch card. Look below any surface and a story reveals itself. It is a city where centuries coexist, where empires have risen and fallen, where conquerors have built over — and often alongside — the ruins of their predecessors, and where the past has a habit of hobnobbing with the present. To capture its history in just 214 pages, introduction and index included, seems an impossible task. Yet John Zubrzycki manages to pull it off, offering through The Shortest History of Delhi a remarkably rich and engaging introduction to one of the world’s most historically complex cities.

 

 

There is, of course, no single history of Delhi. There is its political history, its architectural history, the cultural and social histories, and the countless stories of those who have inhabited it, shaped it, destroyed it, and rebuilt it. Mr Zubrzycki, who holds a doctorate in Indian history from the University of New South Wales, served as a diplomat at the Australian High Commission in New Delhi, and has written five other books on India, including The Shortest History of India, skillfully bringing these strands together.

 

The book is part of a series that attempts to present vast subjects through compact narratives, with titles ranging from economics, China, and Egypt to football, music, migration, and the universe.

 

Described variously as “the Rome of Asia”, “the foundation of the eighth heaven”, the “Persepolis” of the British, among others, Delhi has inspired travellers, poets, and chroniclers such as the Moroccan explorer Ibn Battuta and the Sufi poet, scholar, and musician Amir Khusrau. Referencing them,

 

Mr Zubrzycki begins by examining the city’s origins, particularly its association with Indraprastha, the legendary capital of the Pandavas in the Mahabharata. He distinguishes between mythology and archaeological evidence. While excavations at Purana Qila (Old Fort) have yielded pottery dating to around 1,000 BC, no conclusive proof links Delhi to the legendary city. Yet the belief in Indraprastha became so firmly embedded in Delhi’s identity that even the British invoked it when justifying their decision to shift the imperial capital from Calcutta to Delhi in 1911.

 

The first historically documented city called Delhi emerged much later, in the 11th century, under the Tomar Rajputs. Their fortified settlement of Lal Kot was later expanded by Prithviraj Chauhan into Qila Rai Pithora. Then came the Delhi Sultanate, the Khiljis, and the Tughlaqs, and the new capitals such as Siri, Tughlaqabad, and Firozabad. The Mughals added further layers —Humayun’s Din Panah, and Shah Jahan’s spectacular Shahjahanabad.

 

Mr Zubrzycki takes the reader through this succession of dynasties without reducing the history of Delhi to a catalogue of kings and battles. He tells the story often through personalities — for instance, Qutb ud-Din Aibak (1150-1210), the founder of the Delhi Sultanate who rose from slavery to become one of Muhammad Ghori’s most trusted generals. His extraordinary ascent was accompanied by ruthless military campaigns and destruction, which the author offers a graphic account of: “... after a particularly gruesome battle that saw the Yamuna River ‘turn the colour of blood’, Aibak took control of Delhi from the Chauhans.”

 

The city’s fortunes took another devastating turn with the decline of the Mughal power, invasions by Nadir Shah and others, and eventually British control. Particularly vivid is Mr Zubrzycki’s recounting of the aftermath of the 1857 revolt, when large parts of Shahjahanabad were systematically demolished. Muslim properties were confiscated and the Red Fort occupied by British troops. He quotes historian Narayani Gupta, who observed: “Delhi was made to forget that it was a Mughal City.”

 

The British subsequently sought to impose their own imperial vision through New Delhi, designed principally by Edward Lutyens. But then Delhi isn’t known to allow a permanent seat to anyone. With Independence, and Partition, that vision too would change as refugees arrived, carrying memories of the cities they had left behind.

 

Mr Zubrzycki suggests that more than any other event, Partition marked the birth of Delhi’s culture as we recognise it today.

 

Photographs, informative pullout sections, and maps support the narrative, as does a chart of how Delhi’s population has grown, which brings the reader to the final chapter, aptly titled “The Contradictory City”. This section, arrived at after travelling through centuries, delves into concerns over the present. Mr Zubrzycki is highly critical of Delhi’s chaotic expansion, its crumbling infrastructure and the repeated failure of urban plans. He is equally unsparing in his assessment of the Central Vista redevelopment.

 

The builders of Tughlaqabad, Shahjahanabad and Lutyens’s Delhi all imagined their built heritage would last. Today, a lot of it is in ruins, others are decaying and still others have been appropriated by successive ruling classes. Why should the present be any different, he wonders. Delhi, after all, has always been a work in progress, its story never quite complete.