PAST PRESENT CONTINUOUS

SOHAIL HASHMI, Film maker and history buff visits places and lets us in on little known secrets,
which you can look out for when you reach there.

 

History behind modernity

Delhi’s Kashmiri Gate even today opens onto several treasures visible in everyday life,
but those that are little talked about and even less visited

In my last piece on Kashmiri Gate, I had talked about some of the structures and events centred around the areas, more specifically the Nasirganj Road, as it wound its way from Kashmiri Gate to Kauria Pul. In this piece, I follow Lothian Road from Kashmiri Gate to the Lothian Cemetery, to the point where the Lothian Bridge used to stand. While this will still avoid discussion on the many structures that ran along Hamilton Road (now named after a certain Lala Ram Lal), and structures like the Kachehri, a remarkable circular building located behind St James Church, but then I am talking about buildings that I have had some association with or have memories of and not all the buildings along and around Kashmiri Gate.

We will begin with Saint James Church, without any doubt the most imposing structure in the Kashmiri Gate area. The church was commissioned by James Skinner, born 1778, the son of a Scotsman and a Rajput woman, who was the daughter of a zamindar. The church was built as a result of a vow that he had taken in 1800 while he lay grievously wounded in a battlefield in Rajasthan. He promised himself that he would build a church if he got out alive; he did, except that he got round to building the church only in 1826, a good 26 years later. Probably, it took him that much time to raise the money to buy the land and to save enough to build the church. The church took 10 years to build and cost Rs 50,000 at that time; according to some other accounts, notably by Bashir-ud-Ahmad, it actually cost Rs.90,000. Whichever was right, it was a princely sum in those times. A small book A Living Witness, brought out by St, James Church and reprinted in 1999, states that the cost estimates of Rs 90,000 had shot up to almost Rs 200,000 by the time the church was consecrated 175 years ago on November 21, 1836.

The church came under heavy fire during 1857 when a canon ball pierced its dome and causing substantive fire damage and many of its records were lost. As a result, while it is difficult to say who actually designed the church, what is certain, however, is the fact that two Captains – Robert Smith and De Bude – both belonging to Bengal Engineers, were closely associated with its construction. The church is built on a cruciform plan with three porticoed porches and a central dome, currently painted in the typically colonial colour scheme of yellow and white; it was apparently earlier painted in pink and white.

The church complex can be accessed through two gates that open on Lothian Road; however, the entry to the church proper is through its west face while the altar is placed to the east. Most of the fittings and pieces of furniture in the church, the cabinets, the lectern and many of the ceremonial pieces date back to the early days of the church, a testimony both to the sturdiness and fine craftsmanship of the pieces and to the great care that has been taken to preserve the church and all that it contains; lessons that today’s managers of religious structures of historical and heritage value need to learn.

Behind the altar, there are two large stained glass windows – one depicts the Crucifixion and the other the Ascension of Christ. A third stained glass window, located inside the vestry, depicts the scene of soldiers terrified at the resurrection of Christ. All three windows were presented to the Church in the 1860s. Some of the glass panels were damaged over time and have since been restored. These three windows and a most incredible 112-year-old pipe organ, that should be fully repaired and fit for use hopefully before the 175th anniversary of consecration, are things that are not to be missed at any cost.

But these are not the only things that should take you to St James Church, There are a large number of graves, some extremely remarkable, both in their design and workmanship, and others that commemorate individuals who were a part of the history of our colonisation and deserve at least one visit, if not more.
One of the memorials facing the main entrance of the church is a large stone cross, with inscriptions in Urdu, Persian and English on its side. The cross marks the burial site of Mr Beresford, the manager of the Delhi Bank and his Family. The bank promoted by Lala Chhunna Mal, an acolyte of the British, was targeted by the rebels, probably because it was run by a whiteman and Mr Beresford’s entire family was killed in the clash. Immediately in front of the stone cross is the grave of William Fraser, a very close friend of James Skinner. Fraser was a Major in the Skinner’s Horse, a cavalry regiment, and the British Agent to the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi. Fraser was assassinated on March 22, 1835, by a sharpshooter on the orders of the Nawab of Firozepur Jhirka, who he had slighted. James Skinner got him buried in the grounds of his church in front of the main entrance in a marble topped grave guarded by two marble lions, with the entire structure enclosed in an iron fence.

The sharpshooter and the Nawab of Firozepur Jhirka were eventually arrested and executed, and came to be looked upon by the citizens of Delhi as great heroes. Despite what contemporary writers have written, Fraser could not have been very popular among the residents of Delhi because in 1857, the rebels paid special attention to his grave and broke the entire structure into pieces; one of the large marble tiles that survived the desecration and which has a beautiful green stone inlay in the shape of a tree was later placed in the floor of the church in front of the high altar and can still be seen there.

The grave of Thomas Theophilus Metcalf (1795-1853), is also located in the grounds of the church. Metcalf is known for commissioning a series of paintings of several prominent historical buildings, a collection that came to be known as the Metcalf Album; for converting the mausoleum of one of Akbar’s commanders, Quli Khan, into a summer retreat; and for building the Metcalf House, that now houses the offices of India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation, located on the banks of the then Jamuna.

Skinner, the builder of the church died at his substantial jagir in Hansi, between Hisar and Rohtak, on December 4, 1841, and was initially buried there. His body was later exhumed and brought to Delhi and his remains were interred in front of the altar on January 19, 1842. A marble slab narrating this movement marks his memorial close to the tile from the broken grave of his friend, Fraser. Skinner had also built a haveli in Kashmiri Gate, It was located to the south and south west of the church; in fact, originally the church and the haveli were located on the same property, It was much later that with the coming up of the Lothian and Nasirganj Roads, this property was trifurcated. Skinner’s haveli was later bought by Lala Sultan Singh and it was from here that the Hindu College began to function in 1899, when it moved from Kinari Bazar in Chandni Chowk to Kashmiri Gate.

 

Dara Shikoh’s Palace and Library

Across a narrow street that runs along the south wall of St. James church is the present campus of the newly started Dr B R Ambedkar University, This large piece of land, fronted by shops along the Lothian Road, has seen many educational institutes come and go. Some of the buildings that existed here before the existing set of structures came up, were also schools or institutions of learning, for it was here that Dara Shikoh, the heir apparent of Shahjahan, lived. He as a man of great intellect and wisdom, and as a true inheritor of the tradition of his great-grandfather, Jalal-ud-Din Mohammad Akbar, Dara Shikoh engaged religious leaders and scholars from diverse faiths into serious dialogue.

Dara Shikoh translated 50 of the Upanishads from Sanskrit into Persian and called it Sirre-Akbar (The Great Mystery), He also authored Majma-ul-Bahrain or the confluence of two oceans, about the philosophical traditions of South and Central Asia, and their coming together in a syncretic discourse. Dara Shikoh was the owner of a fairly large collection of books. One must bear in mind that at that time all books were hand-written and each work was unique; very few works existed in more than one copy and so each book was a treasure. Dara Shikoh had many such unique books and he had a library to house his collection.

Dara Shikoh was killed in the struggle for power between the sons of Shahjahan, but his library or at least parts of it survived. Thus, when Madrasa Ghazi-ud-Din started in late 17th century before going on to become the Delhi College in early 1792, the library was placed under the care of the college. The Delhi College was the first educational institute to offer English as a subject and was therefore a target of the ire of the rebels in 1857. As a result, the library was looted and set on fire; apparently all English books were thrown away and they littered the streets for days. Manuscripts in Urdu, Persian Arabic and Sanskrit were taken away and bought by men of means to be later acquired by the British, eventually reaching museums in England. It is one of the ironies of history that Delhi College, which was targeted by the rebels for teaching the language of the firangis, was also later targeted by the British, because many of the members of its faculty had sided with the rebels and at least two of them were executed.

The building of Dara Shikoh’s library was converted into the official Residency after the battle of Patparganj, with the addition of a verandah with a frontage of Roman pillars. David Ochterlony, as the first resident of Delhi, moved into it during 1803. Ochterlony lived in the style of a Mughal noble and was known to have married 13 times. He had strange ways of regularly moving in a royal procession in the company of his dozen plus wives, a penchant for organising what were known as nautch parties and dressing up in flowing robes. This earned him the name Akhtar Loony, a play on his original name but also meaning mentally unstable. While the Residency now houses the offices of the Delhi Archaeology Department, the original structure of Dara Shikoh’s haveli can still be seen at the rear of the building.

The Library of Dara Shikoh (1637) has gone through many incarnations over the last 370 years. It housed the Government College till 1877, became a district school between1877 and 1886, and a municipal board school between1877 and1904. The open grounds around the palace were built up later to house the Kashmiri Gate Polytechnic and then the Delhi College of Engineering functioned from here for decades. And, when it moved out, the newly formed I P University was housed in the complex that has subsequently been taken over by the Dr B R Ambedkar University.

As you step out of the campus, you will see two oval-shaped traffic islands to your right; to the left of the island, the Lothian Road, now Sham Nath Marg, continues towards the Lothian Cemetery while to the right, the Hamilton Road, now Lala Ram Lal Marg, runs parallel to the railway lines all the way to Baraf Khana, probably the first ice factory in Delhi, near Bara Hindu Rao.

The traffic islands house two imposing gates, repaired a few years ago after decades of neglect. There is no building behind the gates; there is nothing behind because the structure that existed there were blown up by the soldiers and officers of the East India Company as the rebels were going to storm the place. The blown-up building was earlier an ammunition depot, set-up initially in Mughal times and used for the same purpose by the British. The area where the actual magazine existed is now occupied by the Kashmiri Gate Post Office, probably the first major post office built by the British in Delhi.

Adjacent to the post office is the Lothian Cemetery, the first cemetery built by the British in Delhi; the cemetery was in use till 1855. The Lothian Cemetery was encroached upon in the following years and the government has only recently been able to get it vacated only. Some remarkable memorials that were rather badly damaged in this period are now being restored and the cemetery is now open to the general public and is certainly worth a visit.

The Lothian Cemetery is adjacent to the railway lines leading to the Lothian Bridge, the third railway bridge built in Delhi; the first two being the Old Steel Bridge across the Jamuna and the other the Railway bridge at Jamuna Bazar that was built after breaking down a section of the Red Fort. All these bridges were completed in the 1860s. In fact, the Delhi Railway Station had become completely functional in the lifetime of Mirza Ghalib, who died in 1869.

The railway bridge and the railway station were to permanently alter the focus of the city from the Red Fort-Masjid Fatehpuri axis to the railway station-Town Hall axis. The coming of the railways also led to the expansion of Delhi to the west beyond the Kabuli and Lahori Darwazas, where those displaced from the residential localities near Sarai More, the site of the station, were rehabilitated. The new areas that were colonised came to be known as Pahar Ganj, Sadar Bazar, Kishanganj and Bara Hindu Rao. It also signalled the birth of a Delhi that would witness even more metamorphical change in the coming days.