Excuse me for wearing a wet blanket to a party, but didn’t a chap called Shahabuddin Mohammed, more familiar to us as Shah Jehan, builder of the Taj Mahal, make Delhi the capital of India in 1638?
The current enthusiasm for December 12, 1911, the day on which King George V decided that his Raj would be better managed from the Mughal capital than the colonial epicentre, Calcutta, looks odd. The Government has sponsored a year-long splash of festivity and celebratory literature that seems to suggest that the British gave Delhi its prime status on our political map. The Raj, in fact, devastated Delhi in 1857 and killed more than a million Indians in a frenzy of revenge after its narrow victory in our first war of independence.
If 1857 was the year that Mughals lost the city, and 1911 the moment of British arrival, Delhi has not been capital of India for only 54 out of 373 years. We could have waited till 2038 to enjoy Delhi’s 400th birthday, but even a yogi might tire of such a demand on his patience. One could argue of course that Delhi became the capital of the Sultans after the victory of Muhammad Ghauri in 1192, and stayed at the centre of Indian history till Babur moved to Agra after 1527, but that would be a trifle pedantic.
Even if the British narrative is more acceptable to contemporary India than the Mughal one, facts insist on a variation. King George only inseminated a project, and it would be a very long pregnancy. Shah Jehan took 10 years to build the Red Fort; it would take Lutyens 15 before he completed the palace, now known as the Rashtrapati Bhavan, that became a Viceroy’s home-cum-office. The Raj did not actually govern from Delhi until Lord Irwin, Britain’s only vegetarian viceroy, turned up in 1926. He is principally remembered for negotiating the beginning of the British end with Mahatma Gandhi, over the famous talks that followed the suspension of the salt satyagraha. The British ruled for only some two decades from Delhi after having exercised power effectively and expansively for 16 decades from Calcutta. Perhaps the right way to go about it would be to start a year’s celebration in Calcutta – to mark a centenary of relief from British rule.
Would Delhi’s self-congratulatory mood be more justified if we shifted the focus from ‘capital’ to ‘India’? This suggestion implies that the Mughal Empire was merely Mughal while the British created a city that became the hub of a united nation. This is certainly the argument encouraged by a host of right-wing English historians, who tend to get touchy about nationalist narratives. Once again, facts interfere. For at least a century and a half, the Mughals ruled a much larger geography than the British did during the nine decades between 1857 and 1947, the apogee of their period. The British were a pre-eminent power, but not the only presence.
But upper crust Delhi is festive about something, of that there is no doubt. What is it? Is it that New Delhi sounds and looks “modern” while Old Delhi is psychologically closer to an ancient ghetto? It is logical for the upwardly mobile to identify with the former. It would probably shock today’s elite to learn that Akbar, Jehangir and Shah Jehan were far wealthier than their Tudor and Stuart counterparts in London, and that in 1750 India had 24 per cent of the world manufacturing output as compared to Britain’s 2 per cent. But it is not their fault. No one mentioned this at school.
I suspect that today’s aspiring India feels an emotional continuity with the Raj not because of British rule but because of the English language. Farsi, the court language of the Mughals, has disappeared completely, while English is on the verge of invincible dominance. The British were never as powerful as the language they left behind. The heirs of Mirza Ghalib might get their chance in 2038, if there is anyone left to claim his inheritance.
Does all this matter? Not if it is an excuse for some much-needed fun, a birthright of the ruling class. Delhi, in all its myriad manifestations, has always loved the present far more than the past it reinvents, or the future it cannot foretell.
The columnist is editor of The Sunday Guardian, published from Delhi, India on Sunday, published from London and Editorial Director, India Today and Headlines Today.
