At Bikaner House, Delhi’s past unfolds through an exhibition of maps, pictures
The show anchors DAG’s (formerly Delhi Art Gallery) inaugural “City as a Museum” festival, and opened on September 7 at Bikaner House in Lutyens’ Delhi.
“There are other ways to look at Delhi’s historic sites than to put them into boxes of chronological narratives,” said the historian Swapna Liddle on Friday. That conviction animates “Sair-e-Dilli: Chronicles of Change”, an exhibition that charts the city’s great monuments through a sumptuous array of paintings, prints, photographs, maps and architectural plans.
The show anchors DAG’s (formerly Delhi Art Gallery) inaugural “City as a Museum” festival, and opened on September 7 at Bikaner House in Lutyens’ Delhi. It is on view till September 15.
Liddle’s curation pulls Shahjahanabad and Qudsia Bagh, the Red Fort and Jama Masjid, Nizamuddin, Safdarjung and Humayun’s Tomb out of textbook timelines and into lived history.
“Working through DAG’s vast holdings — maps, prints, paintings, plans — I realised Delhi is too often framed through the lens of the seven cities. Everything is slotted into a neat timeline so there are no loose ends,” she said. “But I wanted to explore the same through Indian texts instead of the colonial lens and show that these are part of our past. There are layers to a city -- the monuments that are part of its story and how they have changed over time.”
Visitors are greeted by a vast panoramic “View of Delhi from Jumma Masjid (Jama Masjid)” by Felice Beato (1832–1909). Pieced together section by section, the photograph at first appears to be a simple mid-19th-century skyline.
{{/usCountry}}Visitors are greeted by a vast panoramic “View of Delhi from Jumma Masjid (Jama Masjid)” by Felice Beato (1832–1909). Pieced together section by section, the photograph at first appears to be a simple mid-19th-century skyline.
{{/usCountry}}“There are minute details, very easy to miss,” Liddle said. “Shortly after the Revolt of 1857, Jama Masjid was captured by the British. They had a lot of Indian soldiers staying there. If one looks at the photo carefully, we can note how the open spaces in the masjid had been covered up to make rooms for soldiers.”
{{/usCountry}}“There are minute details, very easy to miss,” Liddle said. “Shortly after the Revolt of 1857, Jama Masjid was captured by the British. They had a lot of Indian soldiers staying there. If one looks at the photo carefully, we can note how the open spaces in the masjid had been covered up to make rooms for soldiers.”
{{/usCountry}}Next to Beato’s sweeping view, Samuel Bourne’s circa-1860 photograph lays bare the stark transformation -- the British had cleared whole neighbourhoods between Jama Masjid and Delhi Gate.
{{/usCountry}}Next to Beato’s sweeping view, Samuel Bourne’s circa-1860 photograph lays bare the stark transformation -- the British had cleared whole neighbourhoods between Jama Masjid and Delhi Gate.
{{/usCountry}}On Thursday, Liddle led a walk-through, guiding visitors through Delhi’s shifting forms. Another tour, with Giles Tillotson, DAG’s senior vice president, is scheduled for Sunday.
As the show moves from Purana Qila and Feroz Shah Kotla to Mehrauli and Jantar Mantar, the city’s ruins feel less like relics and more like companions in the present.
“This exhibition brings together an unprecedented variety of objects that depict the historic sites of Delhi. It also departs from the conventional narrative of the rise and fall of capital cities, instead focusing on the layers of history that make up the various sites — Mehrauli, Shahjahanabad, Nizamuddin, New Delhi and others. It invites the viewer to see the history of the city as an integral part of the lived experience of those who inhabit it,” Liddle said.
The section on New Delhi and the Ridge recalls the British decision to move the imperial capital in 1911. An information panel explains: “In 1911, as part of its effort to reassert legitimacy amidst rising nationalism, the British shifted their capital to Delhi (from Kolkata). The new city they built, New Delhi, combined modern planning ideals with references to the city’s past….”
On the wall hangs a framed “Imperial Delhi: Index Plan of Layout”, its crisp lines still suggestive of colonial ambition.
“The early plan of Delhi that had been laid out in 1912 shows that there is a huge section around KG Marg labelled as educational Institutions. The British had thought they would make this a university enclave,” Liddle said.
“That did not happen though. Back then, St Stephen’s, Ramjas, Hindu and Indraprastha College were located near Kashmere Gate and the students would regularly protest there. The British must have thought to themselves: “We do not want these students in the middle of the city”,” she added, laughing.
