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What makes a city? On one hand, it is clear that people make a city. The way we live,
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the things we do, the languages we speak, the food we eat, all the things we call culture.
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At the same time, our streets and buildings aren't just functional constructions without
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meaning or impact. Embedded within the walls of our cities, traveling through the biolanes,
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and the very air we breathe is a deep history that shapes our culture and our cities. We
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may be unaware of this history, and yet it shapes us in so many unseen ways. Delhi is
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a particularly fascinating city in this regard because it is not just one city but many.
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There have been seven cities of Delhi, perhaps even fourteen, depending on which source you
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believe. These separate cities of Delhi are cities that have stood apart, but that have
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also been superimposed, like layers forming a three-dimensional tapestry, one on top of
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the other. These different cities have carried with them the DNA of various civilizations.
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Delhi is not just an Indian city, but also a Turkish city, also a Persian city, also
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a British city. And this blend of influences from across the world into one organic complex
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beast makes Delhi also a quintessentially Indian city. Because what is India, if not a delightful
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khichri that contains all of the world? I am an occasional visitor to Delhi, and driving
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through these streets of relatively recent vintage, I often see these old monuments all
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around me, these repositories of our past. And I wonder, if these walls could speak,
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what stories would they tell? Welcome to the Scene and the Unseen, our weekly
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podcast on economics, politics and behavioral science. Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to the Scene and the Unseen. My guest today is Rana Safi, author of a trilogy titled
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Where Stones Speak. In her books, Rana takes an affectionate look at architecture and places
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it in the context of the history of the many Delis. And indeed, it is these many Delis,
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as opposed to the one or two most of us know of, which we call Old Delhi and New Delhi,
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that makes this place so fascinating. Before we begin our conversation though, let's take
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a quick commercial break. If you enjoy listening to the Scene and the
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Unseen, you can play a part in keeping the show alive. The Scene and the Unseen has been
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a labor of love for me. I've enjoyed putting together many stimulating conversations, expanding
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my brain and my universe, and hopefully yours as well. But while the work has been its own
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reward, I don't actually make much money off the show. Although the Scene and the Unseen
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has great numbers, advertisers haven't really woken up to the insane engagement level of
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podcasts. I do many many hours of deep research for each episode, besides all the logistics
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of producing the show myself. Scheduling guests, booking studios, paying technicians, the travel
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and so on. So well, I'm trying a new way of keeping this thing going, and that involves
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you. My proposition for you is this. For every episode of the Scene and the Unseen that you
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enjoy, buy me a cup of coffee, or even a lavish lunch, whatever you feel is worth. You can
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do this by heading over to sceneunseen.in slash support and contributing an amount of
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your choice. This is not a subscription. The Scene and the Unseen will continue to be free
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on all podcast apps and at sceneunseen.in. This is just a gesture of appreciation. Help
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keep this thing going. sceneunseen.in slash support. Rana, welcome to the Scene and the
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Unseen. Thank you so much for inviting me. Rana, before we begin talking about your fascinating
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books and the work that you've done, tell me a little bit about yourself. Are you a
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Delhi person to begin with? I'm Delhi's adopted daughter. I never lived in Delhi. I was brought
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up in Lucknow. I belonged to Aligarh. I did my schooling in Lucknow and then college in
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Aligarh. And after that, after I got married, we lived in various cities all over the country,
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as far as Cochin and Pune. And then we went to the Middle East. And it was really one
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of my trips from the Middle East to Delhi that something pulled me to it. And my daughter
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was living here, working here. And that's the first time I really came to Delhi, not
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as a point of transit, but as a visitor to Delhi. And I went to Mehroli on a heritage
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walk. And that's when something inside me urged me to write about it, to document the
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history of Delhi. And were you someone who is generally otherwise into the history of
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cities, like when you lived in all these different cities, you know, did architecture draw you
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and did you notice these things? I mean, the reason I ask is this almost naive question
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is because when it comes to myself, a lot of the city around me, wherever I am, almost
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becomes invisible. It's normalized. So I'm in my own cocoon. I could be, you know, at
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a cafe or at home or in my car and I don't notice stuff around me. So have you always
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been a noticer or did that start happening after you got interested in it?
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Architecture has always fascinated me. I did my masters in history and though I specialized
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in economic history because I was studying in Aligarh Muslim University. But after I
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finished my masters and even before, it was always monuments which fascinated me, though
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I never at that point of time ever thought I would be working on it so seriously. And
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I still remember, I think I was about 14 or 15 years old when I went to Fatehpur Sikri
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and the mystique of that city, a city which was so alive, yet so dead with nobody living
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there, you know, that city pulled me to it. And at that time, I didn't know what it was,
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but I could feel something that there are some, you know, there is a saying in Urdu,
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that the ruins are telling us that our country was glorious. So that is what has always spoken
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to me whenever I've been to these monuments. People see them as ruins. I see them as places
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where people lived and laughed and lived and loved and that each of them has a story. Today,
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of course, there's nobody to tell the story. So I just took it upon myself and maybe it
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was a bit ambitious or whatever you can call it. But I just thought that these stories
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through the books that have been written on them, especially Delhi is very well documented.
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So I went to the 18th, 19th century Urdu books and chronicles and I started documenting
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from there. Then all the gazettes and all the books that have been written under the
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SI, the archaeological reports, all of them document Delhi's monuments during the 19th
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and the 20th century. So I used all of them. And from there, I unraveled the history of
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most of Delhi's monument. I think in my trilogy by now, I must have covered at least three
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Wow. And monuments, not just in the terms of covering the monuments, but placing them
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in the context of history and all of that, which also really fascinated. Are you someone
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who's always been into history in that sense?
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Yes. History has always been my subject and I was not after my masters. I've been teaching
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history also. I taught it at a school level in the senior school, eighth, ninth and tenth.
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I taught it in Jamshedpur. Then I taught it when I was in the Middle East. So I've been
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in touch with history and teaching history.
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And there's this old cliche that goes, like, for example, when people listen to some of
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the episodes I've done with historians, like, you know, our mutual friend Manu and Ira and
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Parvati and so on. And people often say that they make history so interesting and in school,
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it was so boring. Our teachers taught it so badly. And now I'm sitting with someone who
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actually taught history in school. So what was your approach towards sort of then teaching
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I had wonderful teachers of history. So when I taught history, I tried to take it away
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from just the, you know, the dates. Most students are just told, you know, learn this date.
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I tried to analyze it, which is the way I was taught. That history is all about analyzing
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the events that happened and why they happened, not just mugging up the dates. So I would,
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of course, in school, I would give them the dates and I would give them the charts and
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I would give them these, you know, how to learn them. But I would also explain that
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what is so fascinating and interesting about the dates. And then that makes it come alive
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for the student and then they remember it. So I remember a student telling me that history
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was never my subject. I taught him in class eight and sixth and seventh, he had already
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been doing it. And he said that history was never my subject. But now I think I'm going
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When you're possibly, you know, doing the same service to your writings today, did it
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help while you were doing your historical research? Did it sort of help that you could
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read multiple languages very well? Like, you know, you've even got a book of translated
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works from Urdu to English and did more sources therefore come alive for you because you could
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Urdu is the language that I read. And that also is an interesting journey because Urdu
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also I had learned as a child. And then, you know, my knowledge was very rusty. I re-learned
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it because when I decided to start writing and I have this forum called Shire running
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on Twitter, it's still running after 10 years almost. And in that, once I started that,
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I started re-learning Urdu to understand what Urdu poetry is all about. Not just, you know,
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writing it in Roman, but what are the symbols? What is the thought behind the poet's mind?
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And as I went deeper and deeper into it, then obviously you need to know Urdu. So I learned
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Urdu and re-learned, I should say, a language which I had forgotten. And that then helped
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me when I shifted to history. And that has been a big asset to me because as I said,
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one of the two very definitive books which have been written on Delhi, one was in Urdu
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called Asaru Sanadid, which I translated. Another is a three volume book by Bashiruddin
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Ahmed written in 1917 or so called Daadul Hukumat, Delhi Daadul Hukumat. So that is
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the book which I have used as a base because they describe a Delhi which is no longer there.
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A lot of, most of the monuments have been destroyed or are in ruins or whatever it is.
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So I used that as a base to take the stories, some anecdotes from there, then do my own
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research and then place it that, okay, something was here at that time, where has it gone?
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Why has it disappeared? Or what was the way that people saw it in, say, in the events?
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Sarsayid writes, he's writing it at the time of the Mughal Empire. So when he saw the Red
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Fort, he saw it as a working, living palace. We see it today just as a tourist place. So
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then Bashiruddin Ahmed describes it under the British and he says that, you know, the
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room, there's one room, the Khwabga, and he says the British have made this into a Mughal
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room where you can come and savor the same delights of being a Mughal. So you have the
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same sitting arrangement and Shah Jahan's sabha kept there and, you know, the Bahadur
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Shah's hookah kept there. So you come and feel like a king. So these things made it
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very fascinating for me. And that is why in my book, the last book that's come out, Shah
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Jahanabad, The Living City, I have not only described the ruins, I have also described
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as what it would have been like taking material from these books, which are trying to show
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that. And also I translated another couple of books which talk about the culture and
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the people of those days. So I took from all these books to try and recreate a Delhi which
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And how was he experienced that, okay, you go to this monument and it's just an empty
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tourist place and you look around and the first time you're seeing it as an outsider,
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you're a tourist. And then you read a book like this, which, you know, makes it much
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richer and, you know, brings that era alive. And then you go back to that place and, you
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know, does the whole city start meaning different things to you?
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So normally when I go to my first visit, I don't read much about it, except whatever
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I know, because I want that first impression to be my impression. And I photograph everything.
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I videograph it so that, you know, I have everything there that then I come back and
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then I read about it. And then when I read, I look at my photographs and see, okay, this,
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this, this, this is what, you know, sometimes I've taken a photograph, which may not have
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meant anything at that time. But when I come back and read about it, then I realized, okay,
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this is what they are talking about. Then I go back and then that is my final research
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of placing it. And like in the case of Shah Jahanabad, because that, and Mehroli also
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before that, Shah Jahanabad is where people are staying. Then I go and talk to the local
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people and in Shah Jahanabad, I've done a lot of interviews, which I have included where
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what do the people who are living there think about it? So in so many cases, they said that,
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you know, old people think of old Delhi only as a food capital, or they think of it as
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a place where, you know, it is unsafe. So how do the residents who are living there
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for say 200, 300 years, some of them who came with Shah Jahan, some who came shortly after
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that, how do they see their heritage and how are they trying to preserve it? So I've tried
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to collect that also, because I wanted to put all that in one place as a record, document
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And I guess in doing all this one trap you've tried to avoid is a trap that writers may
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have of exoticizing the everyday. So you're writing about a place that is very old and
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has this rich history. And you know, there is a trap of reading too much into it and
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how you avoided sidestep that of course is by taking all these interviews and, you know,
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speaking to kind of local people there. You know, do you often find that people who are
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actually living in the midst of history, as it were, that they are kind of unaware of
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all that has happened around them? And is that a good thing or a bad thing?
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See in Delhi, the problem is that we saw two exodus, especially in Shah Jahanabad, we saw
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an exodus in 1857, there was displacement. And then again, when they did come back, these
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people had lost their inheritance and lived a different life from what they had lived
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under the mobiles. But the whole of Delhi saw displacement and a transfer of population
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in 1947. So when you go to many places in Delhi, there used to be say about 20, 30 years
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ago, there was no sense of association of people who had migrated from Pakistan. For
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them, this was just a place where they had come and they were trying to make a living.
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But today's generation has grown up with these monuments. So the school children, for them,
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it is something that is a part of their heritage. And they are no longer longing for what they've
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left behind, because they've seen only this, that's what they've grown up in. So for them,
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that association is also a very important thing. So when I talk to them, in Shah Jahanabad,
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the families that I talked to have been living there forever. So since Shah Jahanabad was
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made, or maybe, you know, there are sixth generation or seventh generation, fourth generation,
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fifth generation. So for them, of course, it is something that is theirs. But in say
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in, when I did a book called The Forgotten Cities of Delhi, now where we are sitting
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in Hoss Khas, this was the second city of Delhi city made by Alauddin Khilji. Nothing
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of the original city remains except one or two monuments like the Chor Minar and the
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Idga that is here. The people who are living here have no memory of the past. So for them,
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everything they are probably just, you know, going past and wondering what is the strange
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looking monument. They don't know it. But if you go to a place where people have always
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lived and lived with it, they know the history of it. Like say somebody in Shah Jahanabad
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would know what Java Masjid is all about. But somebody living in Hoss Khas would know
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that there is a Neeli Masjid here which was built by a woman and it's a functioning mosque
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even today. Not of course as big, but still a very pretty mosque. But I think they would
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just bypass it. They wouldn't, you know, care about it because it's not something which
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is something that they've grown up with. Children are now interested. Like Chor Minar is something
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that is very fascinating because you can see holes and you have these stories. It's alleged
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that because Alauddin Khilji was fighting the Mongol menace and he was a very trying
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to be, you know, discipline his army and take on it. So of course he had a lot of measures
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in place, some of them which were extremely extreme. And one of them was that anybody
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got, you know, stealing or anybody even invades and measures or anything like that. Then they
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could have all kinds of extreme punishments, including cutting of hands and cutting of
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heads. And this Chor Minar is said to be the place where the heads would be hanged. So
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this is a very macabre and interesting monument. So I think this is something maybe people
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living around it may be fascinated by. I have no idea. But whenever I've come here, you
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know, like Ferocious Kotla is said to be the city that is the famous city of the Jews.
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It's the fifth city of Delhi, Ferozabad. And when you go there, you'll find lots of people
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on a Thursday coming from old Delhi. But the first time I went there and I told I had come
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from Dubai and I took a taxi and asked my driver to take me to Ferocious Kotla. He took
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me to the stadium and I said, no, this is not it. And he said, no, this is it. Anil
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Kumble had taken 10 wickets. So I said, no, there is another old monument where a king
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used to have a castle there. So he said, okay, let us look for it. So, you know, like people
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living in Delhi think of Ferocious Kotla. Of course, that stadium has been, I think,
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renamed now. But they think of it only as a stadium where Anil Kumble took 10 wickets.
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They don't remember that this is the fifth city of Delhi. This is where Ferocious ruled
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from. But on a Thursday, you'll find that people of old Delhi, they come there in, you
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know, in I think in hundreds or thousands or whatever, they come there for their Mannats
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that they make to the Jains. And they'll come with pots of biryanis and Zarda which they
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distribute because their Mannats have been or their vows have been fulfilled. So it speaks
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differently to different people. My own driver, I asked him once, I said, you know, like I
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have access because whenever I go there, sometimes I tell him, I said, you know, I'll be there
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for three, four hours and I can buy you a ticket. Would you like to come in? And he
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says, Khandro mein kya rak hai, madam? So he can never figure out why am I so fascinated
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by these ruins and why do I spend so much time in there? But on a Thursday, Ferocious
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Kotla is just something else again.
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No, and it just struck me, I recorded yesterday with Madhavi Menon, who's written the book
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Infinite Variety, The History of Desire in India. And she was telling me about the Jamali
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Kamali tomb, which you also mentioned in your first book, Where Stones Speak. And it's so
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fascinating to me that that's, you know, known as a gay Taj Mahal. And it's, you know, there's
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this whole history of how Jamali and Kamali might have been same sex lovers or we don't
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know and how the tomb has these characteristics of, you know, both the feminine flat surface
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on top and a sort of dome inside, which is, you know, so these deeper resonances that
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they carry, are they sort of popularly known or do you think that is starting to happen?
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Jamali was a Sufi saint and he was a poet. He wrote some very beautiful poetry and he
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was the son-in-law of another very famous saint, Suharwadi saint, who is also buried
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nearby. And the identity of the second person is not known. So all these histories and all
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these legends have come much after him. None of the contemporary histories mention anything
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So these names, like when you go to Sultan Razia's grave, they'll tell you, this is
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Razia Shazia's grave, because the words rhyme. So there are two graves there, so one is Razia,
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one is Shazia, Rajji, that is what it's called, the sisters. So Kamali rhymes with Jamali,
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but none of the contemporary historians talk of a Kamali or a relationship. There's been
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a book recently, I think about four or five years ago, there was a book on it, which I
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did read on that. And we have no idea what the relationship actually was, but, and he
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lived inside that. So most of these tombs are places where the saints lived and then
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they were buried inside that. So it could possibly have been a relationship between
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the two of them, or he may have just been a disciple, because you do have cases of disciples
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and the relation between the Pir and Murshid, like Hadad Nizamuddin and Hazrat Ameer Khosrow
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bata. It was very, very close. So it could be that also.
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Who were also, according to Madhavi, possibly same-sex lovers.
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Could be. That's what I'm saying. I don't say it wasn't that, but what I'm just saying
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is that it has not been mentioned by anybody.
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Yeah, so it could be like Padmavad that it's just something that came up later.
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So you have, and you have a lot of romantic stories which come up, like for example, Razia.
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Now the story of her, when yesterday also I was talking to somebody and the Jamia people
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had called me for a street lecture series. So I was talking to them about Razia and I
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said, how many of you, when you think of Razia, think of Hema Malini? And almost every hand
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So when we talk of Razia Sultan, made by Kamalam Ruhi, and we think of Hema Malini and we think
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of Dharmendra. But in reality, none of the contemporary sources ever mention a relationship
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between the two. The only thing that is mentioned is that she made him the master of tables.
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So one historian says that when he helped her to mount the horse, he put his arms under
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her, hands under her arms. Now he would do that the same for any other king, wouldn't
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he? Had she was wearing male clothes, she had taken off her veil.
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In fact, as you pointed out in your book, she was named Sultan Razia, not Razia Sultan.
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So he would have done the same for Ilthutmush also. But why then don't we talk of a relationship
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between him and Ilthutmush? Then why only a relationship between him and Razia? So these
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are ways which stories come up, like the Padmavati story also. That has come up. Padmavati is
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an allegory for a Sufi story. So of course, the Piro Murid relationship was very, very
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close and it was something very special. So what it exactly is, we have no idea. But he
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used to live in that. Sheikh Jamali used to live inside that Gujarat. And when he died,
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he died in Gujarat and he had will that he should be buried there.
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And what I also find fascinating is not just that these stories come up, which may not
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often be true, but it's worth then inquiring, what is the instinct that leads to these stories
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being created and propagated and believed? Like they come up because there's something
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in there that attracts people and they want to believe. Like there's another very interesting
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story, which you mentioned in where stones speak, which is about the iron pillar. And
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what you pointed out about the iron pillar is that it is definitely Ilthutmush, we now
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know who got it from Udaipuri and then he planted it again, so to say. But there's also
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a legend about Anangpal having made it in the first place. And then there's a legend
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about how it goes deep into the earth and it rests on the head of a serpent. And I mean,
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it's a delightful story. And one then wonders that what's going on here, this mythologizing
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that is happening. And is it in some senses, a version of the politics of today where you
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want to claim a certain piece of history and you want to change history to suit your ends?
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Yes. And the best way to do it is through stories, through folk stories, through retelling
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of the tale. So, and this, the story that you mentioned about the iron pillar, they
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say that is the reason for the name Delhi also, because the original name was Dhilli
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or Dhillika. So, they say, Killi toh Dhilli bhai, toh mar bhai matheen. So, they say,
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yeh Dhilli jo hai, yeh wahan se aaya hai. And because the Arabs could not say dh, so
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it became Delhi and Delhi. So, these are stories which I just fascinate me and I always put
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them down because I feel that people should know that this is a story, but it's a story.
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Because as much as a history itself, the stories also reveal something because they are just
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a fact that they've survived and they believed. And oral stories also, because oral history
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is again a big source. And when I put it down, I always make sure that I write that this
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is a oral history, this is a story. I have not found any contemporary source to reinforce
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this, but this is there. So that, you know, like it's at least documented that these are
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stories. Some of the stories are so delightful and some of the stories also, you know, they
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tell you about that age, of how did people think.
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Give me an example of stories you like.
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So there's this story in one of the books that I've translated, That City of My Heart.
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In that, the first book, Adilika Akhari Didar, the story is being told, it's written by
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somebody else, Syed Wadid Hassan, but he has a narrator who's called Agai Begum. Now Agai
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Begum is lived as a Mughlani. Mughlani were the seamstresses and the ladies invading or
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whatever inside the Red Fort. So she stayed inside the Red Fort. Now she's telling the
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story of how things happened when they lived in the, you know, when the Mughal kings were
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there. And she describes the Phulwalon Ki Seher. Now Phulwalon Ki Seher is a historical
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event and it still happens. And when she's describing it, she describes an anecdote which
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she says that, you know, like the Bacha would, how they would come all the way from the Red
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Fort and they would come there. And then Kis Tadhe Se Bago Me Pakwan Pakte The. And one
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of the stories is, I'm forgetting whether it is hers or it is, because I translated four
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stories in that. There's another book story there called Kilae Maula Ki Jhelke. And one
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of them, there's a story of how there was this woman seamstress and her daughter-in-law
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is finds a stone that Paras Ka Pathar, which is called Alchemy Stone. And then of course
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she goes and then she calls Begum Zeenat Mahal and then she comes and by that time the stone
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has got thrown away. So, you know, the story is, this is definitely not true, but she's
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recorded it. So this story, I think, is in one of the, one of these short stories that
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I translated. So it's a very fascinating story that then the story describes now the part
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of the Alchemy Stone may not be true, but the way then they describe how Begum Zeenat
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Mahal is coming. Now she's coming with a Pandan, with a hookah, everything comes behind us.
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So the entire story of that. Then the story of the Phool Walon Ki Seher Ke Ek Shakoor
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Kukar Walay The, you know, he hookah leke jate the, then how he would go, how he would
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be so well dressed and unka hookah jab jata tha. And, you know, the entire Bazar scene
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of how people are saying in the, today when we go to Mehroli, of course that Jharna is
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in a very bad state, but they are talking of diving competitions being held there, ke
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waha pe Aam ka Baagh hai, uss Aam ke Baagh mein Pakwan pak raha hai, you know, dahi bade
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mein rahe hai and things like that, you know, the varieties of arms and all that, all this
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describes Andharsai Ki Goliya, which we still have. So it's a continuity also.
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So it's a history told through stories and it's also stories about history and it's
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all of these melding together, which one of the interesting things which strikes me whenever
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I read history is that sitting in the present time, looking at everything around us seems
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to be filled with certainty. So, so many of us like the conception of Delhi, you know,
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so most people, when they think of Delhi, they'll think of Latian's Delhi, where, you
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know, so many of us come or if you think of old Delhi, you'll think of Shah Jahanabad.
#
But Shah Jahanabad is actually the second last Delhi in a series of many, many delis
#
and everything changes so fast and all of what we know as reality is both contingent
#
and extremely recent. And how does it like, you know, when you're writing about Delhi
#
and some of all these delis are sort of superimposed on each other, how do you, how did you develop
#
the gaze to be able to, you know, separate them out?
#
So as I said, that has been done according to Bashiruddin Ahmed's book and Sarsayyad.
#
Both of them have clearly demarcated it. So, and plus, you know, the historical, the saying
#
of that this city was, which city was built by the Tughlaq. So you have very clearly demarcated
#
dynasties here. So that has never been a problem because those monuments are very easy to date.
#
They are all historically documented. So that is not a problem. It's, and most of the tombs
#
that we see today, again, that was something that I learned from Bashiruddin Ahmed that
#
when the Lodhis were ruling here, now before that the slave kings or even the Khidjis and
#
the Tughlaqs, they were from Turkic descent, but the Lodhis were Afghans. Now Afghans have
#
a kind of a tribal system where each tribal king is as important as the next. So earlier
#
while they could not have, each noble could not have such a lavish tomb, the Lodhis could
#
all have their own tombs. The only difference was that the king had an octagonal tomb and
#
the rest of them could have a tomb. So Bashiruddin Ahmed says that there was a thriving business
#
in tombs today, like we have flats. So there would be tombs ready to sell and to be bought.
#
And that the dynasty was overturned by the Mughals and some of the tombs got left and
#
that is why maybe they are empty today. So, you know, we think of life and death as so
#
sacred and, you know, like so many of us are superstitious, but they were building and
#
Well, there wouldn't have been multi-storey tomb blocks where there are apartment blocks,
#
but that's, you know, so let's go back to the origins of Delhi. And this is of course
#
disputed and some of it is even in the territory of mythology. And, you know, one is never
#
quite sure whether Indraprastha, which is supposed to be the first form of Delhi sort
#
of existed here. Now you point out in one of your books that, you know, every city needs
#
basically three things, Darya, Badal or Hakeem. So expand on this a little bit and then tell
#
me what is the impetus behind sort of the early Delhi's that are coming up? What are
#
they? How do they come up?
#
See, the first documented Delhi is the Tomar Delhi of which the surviving monument is Suraj
#
Kund. And they lived on what is today's Mehroli, the ridge. So that was a defensive position
#
that they took. It wasn't a very big city. So they have reservoirs. There are remains
#
of the reservoirs over there.
#
Yes, strategic. So for them, defense was of the most important thing. Then when the Delhi
#
Sultans come and they defeat the Chauhans and they start living there, they also occupy
#
that same space, that same Lal Court. So there's one more thing I'd like to say. Many people
#
I've heard them and I've heard them on TV also say that the Lal Kala was made by Tomar.
#
There are definitely two red forts in Delhi, but the red fort of the Tomars is in Mehroli.
#
And that's Lal Court and the Lal Kala is completely different.
#
This used to be called Kalai Mubarak. It was not called Lal Kala. So now we call it Lal
#
Kala, but this was made by Shah Jahan and the Tomar Lal Court is in Mehroli. And then
#
the difference of 26 kilometers between the two. So there are two separate cities, two
#
So the Tomars lived in Mehroli in the Lal Court and the Delhi Sultans came and also
#
occupied the same space. And you have all the documents of Minhaju Siraj and all those
#
who are talking of crowning coronations taking place inside that area, et cetera. We have
#
a document of Sultan Razia being crowned over there also in the Qutb complex. And they lived
#
very close to that in Qasr-e-Firoza. There's a road running there, but that is where they
#
live now. So when we are talking of that, and then when the Mongols came, they attacked
#
all of central Asia. India is the only place where they were not successful because Alauddin
#
Khilji took them on head on. And then he moves out of Lal Court and builds the second city
#
of Siri. And that's heavily fortified.
#
And where is that in current?
#
Where we are sitting now, Husqas. And Ishyad village. Ishyad village, if you go, you will
#
see the ruins of the walls and heavily fortified walls over there. So you can see that. You
#
can see the bastions. A lot of it has been, you know.
#
And it was like incredibly thick walls. You talk of how there were these chambers.
#
Where you could walk, the soldiers could walk in between. And so the change of guard and
#
And everything would be preserved. And you talk about how, you know, there are accounts
#
of black rice being taken. Rice that has turned black, but is still perfectly eatable within
#
So that is how Delhi kept the thing. And then Tughlaqabad, when Ghais-ud-Din Tughlaq made
#
that, and then he had to abandon it because of lack of water. They did make Baulis inside.
#
And now there's this very famous story about, ya rahe gujar, ya rahe ujar. So now Professor
#
Muhammad Habib says that Hazrat Nizamuddin Aliyah was not so petty as to be cursing like
#
that. And there has to be some other reason about it. So, but this is the popular perception.
#
We all say that Ras-ud-Din Tughlaq died because of a curse by Hazrat Nizamuddin Aliyah, which
#
he says is not true because there's nothing that bears, there's nothing in history which
#
says that, you know, there was this kind of enmity between them. So again, these are all
#
Verses don't kill people.
#
I have documented all that also. I've given, so I've tried to, what I've done is that I've
#
given the popular perception as well as what the historical fact is, so that people can,
#
In fact, you gave some seven, eight versions of how the name Delhi came about.
#
At one point I got really confused. What's the one that you think is most likely?
#
See, Dhillika was the name that came here. They say soft soil. The thing because the
#
soil was soft, so it comes from that Dhillika. And then again, because dha is something that's
#
not in the Arabic language, so it becomes Delhi. Delhi is colloquial and Delhi is the
#
court language, the used in the literary, the Singh register. And now in the, and Hadrat-e-Dheli
#
is what it's called by Haltameer Khosrow. And then when the British come, then as per their
#
phonology, because L could, you know, has to come after H, sorry, Delhi, yes, it has
#
So it becomes instead of Delhi, it becomes Delhi. Now, this is something that was pointed
#
out to me by Shoaib Dhanial, because he does a lot of work on languages and linguistics.
#
So he's the one who told me about this, why it became Delhi from Delhi.
#
Shout out to Shoaib. It's quite an insight. And just thinking aloud, it's also so interesting
#
that, you know, we don't just have to look at historical documents or oral history even
#
to figure out what history is, that in the modern times, there are so many ways of doing
#
it, like in Tony Joseph's book, for example, where you look at genetics or like in this
#
case, we got a clue through language, through linguistics, and it's all of these different
#
sort of sciences and even arts coming together to shine a light on history. What's also kind
#
of interesting to me is that part of what happens as newer Delhi take over older ones
#
and newer rulers take over older ones is that while there is, of course, this syncretism
#
and, you know, your culture is absorbing everything, there's also a lot of violence and both going
#
side by side in the sense that, you know, when Qutub-uddin Abaq and Il-Tutmesh and later
#
the Khiljis, and when they take over from the Tomars, there's a lot of destruction.
#
They destroy all the old temples and they build the mosque instead. And yet the pillars
#
are actually made from the, like you pointed out, the pillars are those Hindu pillars,
#
And the artisans would also be the same artisans as, sir, one of the historians says, I'm forgetting,
#
I think, one of the sources which I consulted, they said it is possible that it would be
#
the same artisan who built the temple who's now building the mosque.
#
Yeah, and it's all melding together. So, you know, the calligraphy has Hindu motifs you've
#
pointed out, you know, you've pointed out similarly in the tomb of Il-Tutmesh how you
#
see this meld of influences. So, it's both that destruction is happening and yet the
#
absorption of culture is happening and, you know, later on we see this replicated in colonial
#
times. You point out in your book about how when the British built the railway lines,
#
they destroyed the tomb of Zebul Nisa, Aurangzeb's daughter, and how Latian's Delhi was actually,
#
you know, a large number of tombs, graves, pavilions, wells and mansions, as you describe
#
it, had to be demolished. Sort of they entombed the tombs in a sense under Latian's Delhi.
#
One can look back and one can see the changes, but a lot of these changes were also accompanied
#
by this sort of violence. Did that also have sort of social implications which last to
#
So, that is the part of the hakim. So, the year was when Firozabad, the fifth city of
#
Delhi comes and is settled near, on the banks of the Yamuna. That's the first city that
#
comes onto the bank of the Yamuna because of water needs. And then the, of course, Din
#
Panna, which is Purana Qila and then Shah Jahanabad, they're all on the banks of the
#
Yamuna because big population, you need water. And the hakim's wind fancies, now which ruler
#
doesn't rule by force? I'm talking of a ruler. I'm not talking of a democracy. I'm talking
#
of a monarchy. Every monarch is by nature cruel, by nature forceful.
#
Even in a democracy, a state has a monopoly on violence and that is always implicit. For
#
example, one interesting thing that struck me, which I was also going to ask you about
#
is, for example, how Lal Court is inside Sanjay One, which I presume is named after Sanjay
#
Gandhi. And that also in a sense is an act of violence that you're sort of, you know,
#
trying to reclaim a piece of the past by erasing it and by putting a contemporary name on it.
#
And there are also these other juxtapositions happening, like you point out in your book
#
how the remains of the Badaung Gate are at Killa Rai Pithora, which are at the Kutub
#
Golf Club. So it's like, you know, the present takes over the past, but that's a different
#
matter as far as a sort of, but anyway, sorry, that's a digression.
#
So the first of all is that whoever, especially the medieval rulers, stamping your authority
#
by the use of religion was always very effective because, and it didn't necessarily mean that
#
those people were using religion as a tool of ruling also. This was just to stamp their
#
authority. So, you know, you dismantle the, or you destroy a temple and you build a mosque.
#
You've told the population or your new subjects that, okay, we are the kings here. It's our
#
rule that is going to be perpetuated, or our rule that is going to be here now. So that
#
is the first thing. The second thing is that when the ruler, the Muhammad Ghori's army
#
comes here and when Kutubudi Nebuchadnezzar starts ruling, apart from the fact, the symbolism
#
of stamping their authority by destroying a temple and building a mosque, the second
#
thing is they want to build a mosque in a hurry. Where do they get everything from?
#
So then you have the reuse. So you immediately reuse what you have destroyed and you deface
#
it and you plaster. Originally the Qutb-ul-Islam pillars were plastered. The plaster has gone
#
away now. So that is how you do it. And that is how they've always done it. And if you
#
see there's this new book that has come out by Richard Eaton, India in the Persian age.
#
He talks of two journeys and he talks, his book opens with the journey of Mahmood Ghazni
#
coming to Somnath and Rajinder Chola going from the south to Bengal. And he says both
#
the journeys are very similar and both of the journeys culminate in destroying the temple.
#
But of course Ghazni destroys the Shivling and the idol in Somnath, whereas the Chola
#
kings brings it back and installs it in his kingdom. So these are again stamping their
#
authority via religion because he was of the same religion. He brought it and he brought
#
it here, but he did not leave it there. And he does attack it. And so these are, you know,
#
symbolism, which religion is a very big symbol. And that is why it's always been used as a
#
tool of oppression, as a tool of sometimes, you know, like empowerment or sometimes to
#
give power also to the people. Like we were talking of stories. One of my favorite stories
#
is a book written by Farhatullah Beg called Phool Walon Ki Seher. I talk a lot about Phool
#
Walon Ki Seher because for me that symbolizes what Delhi was in the...
#
Tell me a bit about Phool Walon Ki Seher.
#
Okay. So Phool Walon Ki Seher starts in the 1820s. There's this, the ruler, Bahadur Shah's
#
father, Akbar Shah II. Akbar Shah II and has a son called Mirza Jahangir. Mirza Jahangir
#
was a very, a favorite of the king, obviously, and very impetuous. And he gets into a fight
#
with the British resident. And that is the time when the British resident was ruling
#
In fact, he tries to shoot the British resident you pointed out from the room.
#
He shoots at him. He calls him a Lulu. So then of course, Seaton is told that Lulu means
#
pearl and he's giving you a compliment. Of course, you know, Lulu means something else
#
in Urdu and Hindi, which is the language spoken by them. So he accepts it. Then he shoots
#
at him and then he's exiled.
#
Orderly dies and he's exiled and sent to Allahabad. And his mother then vowed that if he comes
#
back, I will, you know, walk all the way to Qutb-ud-din Bakhtiar Kaki's Dargah in Mehroli
#
and offer a chadar there. And then at that time Akbar Shah says that, okay, if you're
#
going there, then you must offer a chadar or a chhatra to the temple of Yogmaya. Yogmaya
#
is a Krishnaji's sister that got exchanged in the jail. So that is how it starts. And
#
then earlier it would be that on a Thursday, they would offer the chhatra on Yogmaya and
#
on Friday, they would take the chadar to the Dargah. And that continued. And then the Poolwalo,
#
it's called Sair-e-Gul-Faroosh because the flower vendors also scattered flowers all over
#
the way. And then even today, if you see a lot of floral tribute is paid in any the urs,
#
you have a lot of flowers and a lot of floral tribute of the floral chadars and et cetera,
#
And this Farhadullah Beg records a story of the Singhsair, Sair-e-Gul-Faroosh which happened
#
in 1846 or something during the reign of Bahadur Shah Zafar. He's of course writing in 60s
#
or 70s. And he talks of that time and he says that at the time when of course there was
#
some power left with Bahadur Shah and he talks of it that, you know, like he's describing
#
it and he says that the people come and they pass by Zafar Mahal, which is the palace,
#
the summer palace of the Mughals. And there's the balcony where they would come to watch
#
the procession going by. And he's asked to come to the Dargah. As I said, the Mandir
#
was a day earlier and the next. And he says,
#
So he doesn't go to the Dargah because he has not been able to go to the Mandir as he
#
was not well. So for me, this is what Delhi was. And this is what, what we keep talking
#
of the Ganga Jamne Tahzi or the syncretism. This is what it was. And that is why everybody
#
fought the first war of independence under Bahadur Shah's, the first banner, even whether
#
it was Nana Sahib or Tatya Tope or Laxmi Bhai, it was all under his banner. And when we,
#
this is of course a story which has been written some years later, but Zaheer Dehli when he's
#
writing Dastan-e-Gadar, he's writing it. He of course does also write it later on, but
#
he was an eye witness to all the things that were happening during the, what he calls the
#
Dastan-e-Gadar. And he describes the incident which happened much before 1857, where he
#
says that one day Bahadur Shah, you know, like in the morning they would give Jharoka
#
Darshan and that balcony is still there. The Jihamna was over there. In the morning, the
#
Hindu ladies and the men would come out for their Snan and they would do the Ganga Snan
#
and the other, the non Hindus and the Muslims and all, they would come and they would all
#
assemble under the Jharoka and they would come and see his face and then go about their
#
daily business. Sounds like what happens outside Amitabh Bachchan's bungalow in Bombay. Yes.
#
Something like that. So he comes there and he sees that on the bank of the Yamuna, there
#
are these tents and he asked them, who are you and why are you here? He sent somebody
#
there. And he finds out that these are the butchers and they've been told by the British
#
that you can no longer stay here because of the work you're doing. It's, you know, spoiling
#
the city. And so he calls his, there's not much he can do. He cannot overturn the order.
#
So he calls his wazir and he says, ke mera khema bhi wahi laga do. And of course, the
#
minute his khema goes there and he goes there and his tent is also pitched next to the butchers,
#
the resident, the British resident comes running and says, what are you doing? And he says,
#
I have to stay with my people. He says, after I leave, you can do whatever you want. But
#
as long as I'm there, I am with my people. And he says, he uses the analogy. He says,
#
the flesh can never be separated from the nail. Nakhun se gosht alag nahi ho skta hai.
#
And he stays there. So that happens. And then Rahesh Dalvi says that a few months down the
#
line, the ghosis, that is the doodhwala, the ghosis and the doodhwala, of course the butchers
#
would have been Muslim, but the ghosis and the doodhwala would not have been Muslim.
#
He says the same thing happened and they come and they also come and pitch their tent there
#
and says, they've been asked to leave the city because of the, that whatever they're
#
doing, the work is hampering the beautification of the city or whatever it is that the British
#
are doing. So again, he says the same thing, ke mera khema bhi laga do. And he goes there
#
and when the British come, then he says, you know, you cannot separate me from my people.
#
And as long as I am here, my people will be with me. He says, after I go, tum eed se eed
#
bhaja dena. Delhi ki eed se eed bhaja dena. Lekin jab tak main hoon mere log mere saath
#
rahenge. So this is how he treated his subjects. And when Zaheer Dalvi is writing, the title
#
that he gives is Basha ki Raiya Parwari, that how he treated his subjects. Equal, always.
#
So you know these, and I see no reason not to believe what Zaheer Dalvi is writing because
#
he would have been an eyewitness. He was the Basha's courtier. So he would be going there.
#
He was a kind of a page. So he would be going there every day and he was also his, a poet.
#
So he would go there with his verse and all that. So he would have seen everything that
#
was happening. So this is the kind of Delhi that there was in the late, say in the 1840s,
#
1830s, 1840s, 1850s, till 1857. And the tragedy of history is that eventually he did leave
#
the city on the British ne, as you can say, eed se eed laga di, like, you know, and that
#
happened. And it's also interesting here, you know, going back to that earlier theme
#
about how stories are propagated and myths are made to suit political purposes, that,
#
you know, I grew up learning in school that Bahadur Shah Zafar was a very ineffectual,
#
weak sort of ruler. And these sort of statesman-like qualities are, are just not part of those
#
stories. And, and it all kind of depends on who's telling those stories and where they
#
have come from. How, how would you tease out issues of reliability? Because a lot of sources
#
are people who are close to the protagonists. Some might be writing two centuries after
#
what has happened when you can't be sure whether they'll be correct. In fact, for a certain
#
period you point out that most of the sources are Turkish or Persian. Persian sources, there
#
aren't so many Indian sources about the lives of those sultans. So how does that exercise
#
happen? Because if someone's writing the history of something that happened in the 20th or
#
19th century, I guess there are enough sources that you can collate them all and get a very
#
good sense. But if you're writing about something that happened in the 12th century or the 11th
#
So that is also an area of concern that most of the histories that were written of the
#
Sultans, obviously they were in Persian and they were translated by Eliot and Dawson as
#
history of India as told by its historians. And as many historians have pointed out, they
#
focused only on one aspect of the rulers because they were trying to show that the British
#
are the rulers who've come as saviors of the Indians. So you have, you have a lot of commentaries
#
written on those histories also that this is where they've misinterpreted it. This is
#
where they've gone wrong. So anyone who's a serious student of history goes through
#
the commentaries also to see what is there. You go through more than one translation.
#
I don't know Farsi myself, although of course I read. So Farsi, I have to go through more
#
than one translation. Sometimes I have to go and see the translations, how they've been
#
used and mentioned by other historians, historians whom I rely on and find credible. And as far
#
as the, he's the Helvi is concerned. Now he ran from pillar to post hiding from the British.
#
So his escape is a very, very interesting part of the journey, apart from the story
#
of the other itself. And he, when he's writing it on his deathbed, he is living in British
#
India. So for him to be praising the King who has been exiled by the British, it was
#
an act of bravery and it was also an act of resistance. So I see no reason why he would
#
be, you know, like coloring it because that's where I feel that the history that was written
#
either in the 19th century or in the, by ordinary people, I'm not talking of court histories,
#
or in the late 19th century, early 20th century, there was at that time, not that agenda. See,
#
we are not, we don't have a right or a left or a centrist or a, you know, there's no
#
secular history and liberal history and, you know, religious history kind of those angles
#
that are given to us, the names that we are given today. They are just writing things
#
as they see it and as they perceive it. So those histories, of course, are colored by
#
a little bit of whatever their feelings are, but there's much more truth in what they're
#
writing when they're describing the society.
#
At least they won't sort of get the basic facts wrong if they're writing with that kind
#
of feeling. Even if the facts are not there, actually the thoughts that they're describing
#
has to be there because where else do they get it from? Fair point. Let's take a quick
#
commercial break and talk more about the history of Delhi when we come back.
#
If you're listening to The Scene and the Unseen, it means you like listening to audio and you're
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Welcome back to The Scene in the Unseen. I'm chatting with Rana Safi, the outstanding
#
historian of Delhi and Delhi's monuments. She's written a fabulous trilogy which sort
#
of puts all of Delhi's archeology into historical context and architecture into historical context.
#
What also struck me in a question I had while reading it is that, just as people make the
#
architecture around them, can architecture also shape the people who live there? Can
#
architecture itself, the nature of the architecture, shape a society?
#
Let's take the example of Jama Masjid. I think it does shape. Even today, it's a symbol
#
of old Delhi. When you had the recent protest marches that you had, the Bhimami Chandrashekhar
#
Azad, he started it from Jama Masjid in 1911 or 14, whatever it was, just during the British
#
period. He's asked by the Imam to come and deliver a lecture from the member of the Jama
#
Masjid. Kishchilu is given the keys of the Golden Temple and asked to go there.
#
So this kind of importance and exchange because of the importance of the building. So yes,
#
definitely, Jama Masjid is a Masjid. It's a mosque and it plays a very important part
#
in the roles of the believers, but it's also a symbol of Delhi. And that is why it was
#
confiscated after 1857 by the British. It took a long time and a lot of negotiation for them
#
to get it back. So it was seen as a symbol. So of course, architecture also does shape
#
Then in fact, a quick bit of trivia for my listeners. Swami Shraddhananda, in fact, was
#
also, his name was Munshi Ram and he was in fact given the title of Mahatma before Gandhi
#
himself was. So in a sense, he was the Mahatma before the Mahatma. And this speech that he
#
gave at the Jama Masjid is considered a great iconic moment because to call a Hindu leader
#
like that to speak at the Jama Masjid was sort of an example of that Hindu-Muslim sort
#
of relationship getting so much better at the time.
#
They say that when he finished, there were sounds of Hindu-Muslim Ekta Zindabad all over
#
the mosque. And then again in 1947, after partition, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad speaks
#
to the Muslims from then tells them not to migrate. And he said, this is your country.
#
So again, that is again a very iconic speech where he talks of what India means for the
#
Muslims and why they should stay back here. So yes, it has shaped, it has been a very
#
important part of Delhi and of people's history.
#
So tell me more about the other Delis, you know, in the sense that first of all, how
#
many Delis were there? Because you have also given different versions in your book where
#
you have said maybe there were 14, maybe there were seven. And all I could really register
#
was that, okay, the last two are Shah Jahanabad, which we call Old Delhi and Latian's Delhi,
#
which we call New Delhi. And of course, you know, you have Tomar's Delhi, but I don't
#
know where to place that in the numbering. And, you know, so take me through the, you
#
know, all the Delis that are sort of emerging.
#
So the seven cities of Delhi, I think is a very romantic idea that's come from the seven
#
cities of Rome. Okay. Okay. Because you have this book by Gottenhorn, which is called the
#
seven cities of Delhi. So it's very obviously, you know, inspired by that. But when Sir Sayyed
#
is talking, he talks, and even when Bashiruddin Ahmed is talking, they start within the Prasth.
#
So and they say that, you know, this is a mythological city because the excavations
#
are still going on to prove it.
#
As yet not, but they're still excavating. So after that, then the first reference that
#
we have that Delhi, there was a saying Delhi is in 250 BC, you have Ashoka Addict. It's
#
a minor addict, but in East of Kailash you find it. But the fact that no Buddhist text
#
mentions a city called Delhi or Dehlu or whatever, or Delhi or anything resembling the present
#
name means that it wasn't anything much because they are talking of Mathura where they are
#
going, but they're not talking of this area. So the first references we really get are
#
Which is 1059, you point out as a...
#
726 is the time when Tomars come and Lalkot is settled by Anangpal in the 10th century.
#
There's an interesting anecdote you share about the Indra Prasad times where you talk
#
about how Yudhishthir one day uncovered his food and he found a fly in the food. And he
#
said, enough, you know, this is, I want purity and I don't want this. And then he goes off
#
and lives in the Himalayas. And I, you know, when I read that, I just thought of, you know,
#
the air in Delhi today and what Yudhishthir would kind of think of it. So what would you
#
date as a first Delhi then? The city established by Tomar and then Lalkot.
#
That's the documented history. The first documented city of Delhi is Lalkot.
#
Is Lalkot. And that's, you know, again, Aravali Hills because strategic reasons and all of
#
Then in between, like I've given in my first book, I've given 14 cities. Now these cities,
#
they were the cities like you have Khizrabad and you have various rulers made their capitals.
#
Tughlaqabad and all that.
#
But they were not as such very big cities. There were more of the places of where they
#
lived and places developed around them. So a fully developed city as in with its everything
#
of its own are these seven.
#
And around what time does Delhi become really significant? Because again, you know, today
#
we think of Delhi as India's capital and always such a great city and all that. But as you
#
point out that in the early centuries of the millennium, travelers would not even mention
#
Delhi if they were traveling through the area. They talk about Mathura and whatever, but
#
Delhi never got a mention. Mathura was seems like the big like cosmopolitan of the age.
#
Around what time does Delhi start to become politically significant and as a city it grows?
#
After the invasion of the of Muhammad Ghori. Because even the Prithviraj Chauhan was ruling
#
from Ajmer. He gets it from his grandfather. He gets Delhi, the Kingdom of Delhi from his
#
grandfather Anangpal Tomar. But he is his capital is Ajmer. So it's only when the Delhi
#
sultans come here and they make it their capital and they start expanding or from here they
#
expand their kingdom. That is when Delhi rarely becomes an important city. And then in between,
#
of course, the Mughals, they go to Agra and then it comes back with Shah Jahan brings
#
the capital of the empire back to Delhi.
#
And you know, when you sort of look at the history of Delhi, as a historian, do you watch
#
out for the danger of romanticizing the past?
#
You know, when I first started writing, I had not learned the craft of writing or anything
#
like that. I just wrote very, you know, as it came to me. So these are things which I
#
never realized that I'm doing or not doing. It's only when the reviews of my first book
#
came out and I was very surprised that somebody wants to review my book. And then they talked
#
about this. It's only after two or three books that I realized that these are the traps that
#
I should not fall into. I hadn't been doing it. But yes, romanticizing is something that
#
comes very naturally to somebody who is looking up to a particular period or a particular
#
place or a particular monument. But that is a trap that a historian should not fall into.
#
What are the other traps?
#
Stop being biased. These two things I have to be very careful about. Not to be biased,
#
to try and put everything as carefully as I can and, you know, like let the reader make
#
their own choices based on whatever evidence that you are giving. And the other is of course
#
not to romanticize, though that is something that's a little difficult. But bias is something
#
which I am very careful about. That my own biases should not come into the book. I am
#
documenting history. So I have to document it as faithfully as I can.
#
And that's also complicated, isn't it? Because there's always a trade-off I think historians
#
have, you know, tend to be careful of, where on the one hand you want to chronicle faithfully
#
and let the facts speak for themselves. But on the other hand, if you just chronicle without,
#
you know, it becomes dry. So if you're giving perspective, that perspective will necessarily
#
come from you and what you bring to the project.
#
Then it should be my opinion. It should not be given as a blanket opinion. So these are
#
things that you have to be careful about. We must not be judgmental. That's another
#
thing that has to be, you know, because when you are writing about history, something which
#
happened say 500 years ago or a thousand years ago, we cannot judge them according to today's
#
standards. And that is something which is happening very often today. We say, for example,
#
say we would judge Wat Phirath Chauhan dead or Akbar dead or Aurangzeb dead or Ashoka
#
dead. We can't judge them by what is happening today or by how we behave today. They behaved
#
as they did according to the circumstances of the age they lived in. And that is why
#
I said this book by Richard Eaton, India in the Pashtunate age is a very good book because
#
it places everything exactly the way it is and how you should look at it, how you should
#
In fact, that's a dilemma that keeps coming up, especially in this modern age where we
#
are so quick to pass judgment on the past. And this is not even like the old past of
#
Babur. It's the recent past. We just keep passing judgment based on contemporary values.
#
And one of the things I sort of get from reading history is how it humanizes these people for
#
me. Like, you know, in Iram Akhote's history, for example, I learned about, you know, there's
#
a scene she describes about how when the women in Babur's family are brought to Delhi and
#
he is so excited to meet his wife that he runs out of the palace barefoot and, you know,
#
runs out on the street, which an emperor is not supposed to do. And suddenly this person
#
who is otherwise caricatured as a brutal emperor who demolished temples and all of that and
#
this sort of this human aspect to him. And it's interesting that, you know, when you're
#
writing about sort of you could say in a very dry way that you're writing about architecture,
#
you're writing about buildings, but you're also writing about people. And, you know,
#
how did the way that you look at this city change as you started, you know, delving deeper
#
into it? So it's the, if I'm looking at a monument, that monument has been made by someone.
#
So what was the reason for that? Like say Humayun's tomb, for example, it's made by
#
his wife. It's made by his eldest wife. His favorite wife is Hamidah Bano Begum. But the
#
tomb is not made by his favorite wife. It's made by his eldest wife, who was also his
#
cousin and with whom he did not really get along well because she was very opinionated
#
and very, you know, like wasn't afraid to speak her mind. So, but it's she who makes
#
the tomb, she who stays there and makes it her life mission to look after it. So that's
#
something very important that, you know, like when we think of it today, that we would say,
#
you know, like Hamidah Bano is the favorite wife. She is a wife who's very opinionated,
#
who's, you know, not afraid to speak her mind. So when we think, and Akbar, the son is Hamidah
#
Bano's son. So he's the ruler. So he's the one who's giving the funds or whatever it
#
is that, you know, it would logically, everybody would think it's Hamidah Bano who should be
#
making this tomb, but it's not. It's Haji Begum, Begah Begum, who's making it. So for
#
me, that is again, something very interesting that why is it that she's making the tomb
#
and not Hamidah Bano. So, and there's a lot of confusion at times. People, that's why
#
I've discussed it in my book that, you know, it is not Hamidah Bano. It is Haji Begum and
#
Haji Begum was Begah Begum, who was the eldest wife. That is she who's making the tomb. You
#
know, that's so fascinating. And even in a say, let's say talk about the, or Qutub Minar,
#
because that again is something very fascinating that the Qutub Minar had only four stories
#
and there's a lightning strike in the third one, or the top one falls off. And when Ferocia
#
repairs it, he makes one more. Today's conservationist, if they were to do anything like that, their
#
heads would roll. But when he's doing it, he decides, okay, I must have something here
#
also. So he makes two, two, he makes it five. So these are things which are very fascinating
#
that when you're making the, how the person who's making it is trying to perpetuate his
#
memory also, along with looking, conserving what is there. And the names, like this was
#
called Mazina or the Muizen's tower. They say the Qutub Minar, the word is first used
#
in the 17th, 18th century by a British called Ensign Blunt. And the story is that the Qutub
#
sahab ki laat hai, because the Sufi saint is supposed to have a staff which connects
#
him to heaven. And because Qutub sahab is such an important saint for Mehroli, in fact,
#
they say the name Mehroli comes from his Mehir or his blessing. So of course he has to have
#
a laat which touches the heavens. So Qutub Minar becomes his laat.
#
And this is something people, people often assume the Qutub Minar is named after Qutub
#
Uddin Abug, but of course it's named after Khwaja Qutub Uddin Bakhtiar Kaki. And you've
#
also told a delightful story about where the Kaki part of the name comes from. So kindly,
#
So that is a story that, you know, like all Sufi saints were, jisko faqeerana ek zindagi
#
kehte the, asli mein faqeerana zindagi, us tari ki zindagi jeetate the, ke they would
#
never, especially the Shishti saints would never keep any money for themselves. Even
#
when they got gifts and futu, any kind of gifts, it had to be distributed the same day.
#
So they were always living a hand-to-mouth existence. And Khwaja Bakhtiar Kaki's wife
#
has to borrow money or to, has to be in debt for the, we, the bread that she's taking.
#
And so there are two versions to that. So one is that, you know, he tells her that you,
#
you know, I'm not going to give you any more credit. And so Bakhtiar Kaki says that, you
#
know, it doesn't matter. It will come to you. And then of course the bread starts coming
#
appearing every day for them in a shelf. So these are his miracles and how the name Bakhtiar
#
comes, that ikhtiar jiska hai. So, you know, like, and I am, you know, very attached to
#
the Khudub Sahib because I feel he had a big role to play in my coming to Delhi. I feel
#
that, you know, I had nothing to do with Delhi. As I said, I, Delhi has adopted me. I never
#
lived here. I wasn't from Delhi, but when I came to Delhi in 2012 and I went to his
#
dargah, there's something that pulled me to Delhi. And after that I've been come, I was
#
living in Dubai. My husband was in Dubai. I just packed my bag. He said, okay, you want
#
to go there? You want to write? That's okay. So I packed our luggage, got a container,
#
booked the container. He shifted to a flat. I packed the villa and I came here and shifted
#
here. And then I started living here. Something which I'd always thought that I would never,
#
ever live in Delhi or in NRC. We had always thought if we, when we retired, we'd live
#
in Pune because we'd spent 15 years in Pune and where we had a house.
#
And Pune is of course a very charming city where I studied. Are you then able to articulate
#
what it was about, you know, this that brought you back?
#
This is something that cannot be put in words because Sufism is in something. I've been,
#
you know, like as a Shia, I've been going to Imam Bada's and to Roza's, which is of
#
the Prophet and his, the Imams, the Hazrat Ali and his children. I've been going to that
#
since childhood. I visited almost all the Roza's in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia
#
and in India. And so that was something I've been doing. But Sufism wasn't something that
#
I was connected to, though Hazrat Ali is said to be the first Sufi. So for me, you know,
#
like it was more as a, you know, the Shia part of it rather than the Sufism part of
#
it that it was something that I'd been connected to. So it's only when I came in 2012, I started
#
going on walks with Asif the Helvi who runs Delhi Karwan. So he lives in Mehroli and he
#
is the one who started talking to me about Sufism. And he took me to Qutub Sahib's Targa
#
and there's something there that, you know, that drew me to Sufism. And today I like,
#
of course, I can't say I'm a Sufi because that is a very long journey, but there's something
#
about Sufism that attracts me, the simplicity of that. And I feel it's a natural corollary
#
of since I'm a great believer of Hazrat Ali, that Hazrat Ali and Sufis all take, as I said,
#
they take their chart, their descent from Hazrat Ali. So I feel that it's a very natural
#
journey for me to be able to coming from Ali to the Sufis of Delhi. So there's something
#
about it. I can't explain it, but I feel that it is Qutub Sahib who asked me to stay in
#
Delhi and to, you know, write about Delhi.
#
And you also mentioned that you started learning Urdu again, rediscovering Urdu as it were.
#
And so through this process of sort of figuring out the history of Delhi, and you're also
#
obviously reading a lot of Urdu sources at this time, you're translating these Urdu books
#
on Delhi. Did that sort of deepen your appreciation for Urdu literature and culture? And also,
#
is there a sort of Urdu Renaissance happening? Like I also see Rekhta happening and more
#
and more people are getting interested. The Renaissance that's happening in Urdu is only
#
in the spoken language and the poetry. Okay. It's not happening in the script. I see. Because
#
people who do want to speak, see, we've always spoken in North India, we've spoken Hindustani,
#
which is a soft version of Urdu itself, using a lot of Persian and Hindi words in it. But
#
script, very few people know, and the script is dying. And when the script dies, the literature
#
and the history dies. And another thing that... So in that sense, I would not say it's a Renaissance,
#
because further, a language isn't only about poetry. A language is about, of course, a
#
lot of the literature is again translated into English, but then you lose the nuance.
#
You lose the nuance. And what about the history that's written in that? As I said, there's
#
so much of history in that language. And there are so many, we are losing the dialects. We
#
are losing Urdu on a daily basis. So Rekhta is also only promoting the poetry. The biggest
#
service that Rekhta is doing into my mind is that they have digitalized all the old
#
Urdu text. So they are there, but then you have to know the script to be able to read
#
them. So of course, they're there for scholars, but the common person has their running classes
#
also. But it's, you know, as a language, unless you know the script, the language is endangered.
#
And one question that's always struck me when I've read something translated from one language
#
to another, when I happen to understand both of them, you know, is translation even possible?
#
It seems to me that languages are fundamentally so different from each other that in a sense,
#
you are having to recreate the essence of something. You can't just translate word
#
to word. What was your process of learning how to translate like?
#
As I said, again, I started translating without giving much thought to it. And the first book
#
that I translated was Dastan-e-Qadar. And that is again a very interesting story. I
#
was reading the last Mughal by Dalrymple and he says that the book called Dastan-e-Qadar
#
and I'm surprised nobody's translated it. I said, okay, let me try that. So I took the
#
book and I started. So the first thing was to get a copy of it because I didn't have
#
a very good print over here in, couldn't find a very good print of it in Delhi. So anyway,
#
I was in Dubai, so I could get a print from Pakistan that I got one from Raza library.
#
So I started with that. Now, I think there was recently a debate on fareska, hum dekhe.
#
So on that also something that I was talking, I mentioned that in a couple of my tweets
#
and something that I had written, that any language, any literature depends heavily on
#
the religious iconography of the language that it's writing on. Say for example, P.G.
#
Woodhouse, I'm a big P.G. Woodhouse fan, but when you reach P.G. Woodhouse, if you do not
#
know your Bible, if you do not know your hymns, you will not understand all the Psalms. You
#
don't understand half of what he's writing. You know, like he'll keep referring as pants
#
the heart when heated in the chase. Now that's a hymn. So you have to know all that to be
#
able to understand what he's talking about. So we don't call, you know, these are references
#
which you've grown up with. So similarly, when you're translating from the language,
#
so for Urdu, so though Urdu I was still work in progress, but the culture was something
#
I was very invested in. I knew everything about that, the culture and the language and
#
the religion. So that was the biggest challenge was how to translate that. Like in one place,
#
Zaheer Dahelvi writes, Suraj Sawane Zeh Pe Sawata. Now, in one of the descriptions of
#
doomsday is that the sun will be a yard and a quarter above your head. So you have to
#
know that. So when you're writing that, so when you're describing it, unless you know
#
the reference, now somebody who doesn't know the Quranic reference to how doomsday is described
#
and that is what is there in one of Fez's poem. He describes it exactly the way it's
#
given in the Quran, you know, the fluffs of the saying and what's going to happen on doomsday.
#
So when you're invested in that language, in the culture and the religion, you're able
#
to use that iconography. So that whichever language, whichever writer you're doing it.
#
So when you're doing it translation, for me, it's not how good you are in the language
#
itself, it's how good you understand, how well you understand the nuances. Like one
#
very interesting anecdote, I did a lot of reading for translating Dastanegada to understand
#
what he's trying to do because I've given a lot of notes in that so that people understand
#
what is happening because he's writing it and at times it's erratic and so that, you
#
know, you understand completely what he's writing and I wanted that to be there instead
#
of just translation. So then in one place he mentions, when he's talking of,
#
and all these platoons and regiments from all over the place are coming to Delhi to
#
fight against the British. So he says, now I kept looking at all the maps everywhere.
#
I asked people, I said, where is the Safarmina? Nobody could tell me where there's no place
#
called Safarmina. So then finally I had a whole lot of questions which I marked and
#
for me, any questions I have in Urdu, I go to Professor Shamsur Rahman Farooqi. So he
#
was coming to Delhi, he told me, so whatever you have, you just bring all your questions
#
to me and we'll sit and discuss them. This was before it was the final edit. So I took
#
it to him and then of course he told me this, this, this, and then I asked him, I said,
#
sir, Safarmina kaha pe hai? So he started laughing. He said, that's sappers and miners.
#
So that, because he, and he told me, he said, you know, even I have wondered where it was,
#
but then because he had read somewhere and he could correlate that, you know, sappers
#
and miners had come there and so he had read it in some other book somewhere. And then
#
recently, somebody else told me that in Bengal, there was a sapper and miner regiment and
#
that place was called Safarmina. So, you know, this is how, that is why it's so difficult
#
at times. This is a very simple thing. I could have written Safarmina there, but then it
#
wouldn't have, you know, the reader wouldn't have understood what is this Safarmina. They
#
would have also wondered like me, Safarmina hai ki dhar? You know, things like this when
#
you're translating, like whenever I was translating Asaru Sanadheed. Now Asaru Sanadheed, I, is
#
in two editions. There are two editions of it. The first edition is written in 1846 and
#
the second one is in 1854. And the first one is written, when he writes, he writes, Sir
#
Syed writes it in a very Persianized style. The second one is of course very, it's a simple
#
Urdu one. So I started when I did it because I was using it for my, my own work. When I
#
was just writing the Delhi trilogy. So I was referring to the second edition only. And
#
I had translated most of it for my own notes. And then I said, okay, why not, you know,
#
translate this book? And then while I was translating that, I came to know that there
#
is another edition and that's much more interesting. So that had all the anecdotes and all the
#
spicy stories and everything. So then I hunted for that. I got a copy of that. And the monuments
#
are something which were very easy for me because I had visited all the monuments that
#
he talks about, the 130 monuments. I knew them inside out. So when whatever he's talking
#
about, I could understand what he's saying. But then there is a chapter in that, which
#
is Delhi or Delhi ke log. Now that chapter is supposed to be one of the most important
#
chapters of that book, which he hasn't included in the second edition. Now this chapter was
#
very, very personized Urdu. And in that he talks about, he gives each and every person
#
that he gives them titles. Now those were, you know, they would, they just sailed over
#
my head. So I had a Mufti Saab who would help me with the Persian part of it because he
#
knew Persian and Arabic. So I called him and I said, whenever I had a problem with Persian
#
and Arabic, I would call him. So he came and I said, he started reading and you know, there
#
is no punctuation mark in the book. So it was a Xerox of the time. I hadn't even got a,
#
you know, a fresh copy. So we just could not figure out what are they saying? Where does
#
one title end? Where does the second end? So then I started sending it, taking, you
#
know, a screenshot, sending it to various people. And we were still not, I was still
#
not satisfied with what the answer that I was getting. Then there, one of my friends,
#
she's a poet, Azra Naqvi, I went to her one day and I said, Azra, can you please understand
#
that? So she sat and she said, reading. And then suddenly she said, she said, you know,
#
this is in verse. Wow. So when she got the verse is when we were able to separate it.
#
And then she got all the breaks. So we could then separate that, okay, this title ends
#
here and this one starts here. So after that it became easy. And then when I told that
#
to my mother, then he said, he said, you know, and that he'd already told me. He said one
#
line is in Arabic and the same thing is said in Persian. And it was obviously a very, very
#
hyperbolic kind of a language that was used. So that was very difficult. And where is the
#
part on the monuments took me say two years to do it because I wasn't doing it full time.
#
I was writing my book and doing this, but this part I did dedicated only to that. It
#
took me over a year, those hundred pages. Wow. And that, and then also I had to leave
#
out a lot of portions because the, when he's talking about the poets and the Olimas, he
#
gives their Persian and Arabic and the whatever. So since I don't know Persian, I was translating
#
it from a historical point of view. So I kept only the biographies and whatever I thought
#
was important for a student of history to know. And I've left a note in my introduction
#
that I hope one day some Persian or Arabic scholar will translate the whole thing of
#
this chapter, because I'm sure the Qaseedahs and the description that whoever wrote would
#
be very, very interesting. And in all your studies, when you're reading all these really
#
old documents, are there enough of them for you to then get a sense of the evolution of
#
the language through the centuries? In this book itself, the first book to the second
#
book. The Persianized Urdu. Wow. So from one person. So, okay. So my next question is a
#
slightly complex one in the sense that today, you know, there are so many debates about
#
the idea of India, right? But the India itself is relatively recent. Now through your history
#
of studying all the many different delis that have come up, you have also come across, I
#
don't know what's a phrase for it. I can't call it the many ideas of Delhi, but sort
#
of the many ideas of us as seen from Delhi, you know, the many ideas of whoever lives
#
in Delhi or what they are, what the society is like, you know, is it possible to say that
#
there are sort of different ideologies and philosophies of the state and so on evolving
#
through these centuries? Or is it like very binary in the sense of, okay, we are now the
#
kings, we will destroy everything else, we will do our own thing. Or is there something
#
much more subtle and complex and assimilative happening there? Something much more subtle
#
and assimilative. We have on the one hand, we do have the kings who are destroying and
#
who are rebuilding. But on the other hand, we have a Dargah of Hazrat Zamuddin where
#
Basant is being celebrated. As I said, we have a Mughal king who is offering a chadar
#
at a temple in Mehroli and saying that if I can't go to the temple, I will not go to
#
the mandir. You have Holi, Diwali, Rakhi being celebrated inside the Red Fort. And there
#
is a documented proof that Muhammad bin Tughlaq was celebrating Holi, Ibn Battuta I think
#
talks of it. So you have all this and you have, you know, like, it's so complex. It's,
#
you know, like when you talk of one period or you talk of one ruler, there are so many
#
facets to it. Now, one of my favorite stories again is Muhammad bin Tughlaq. He was a tyrant.
#
He is supposed to be an eccentric genius. He had so many of the masterstrokes that over
#
the change of capital, the currency, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And in between a lot
#
of people died. So when his cousin Feroz Shah Tughlaq ascends the throne, what he does is
#
that he was very fond of his cousin, obviously, and he never thought he'd be the king. Now
#
he becomes the king. So he gets searches for all the descendants of the people that Muhammad
#
bin Tughlaq had killed. And that's a story that's documented. And I think Sarsayed and
#
Bashiruddin Ahmed both have documented. I've mentioned who have documented it in the book.
#
I keep getting so much of information overload that I forget who's documented what. So he
#
then gets these maafi namas from them, from the descendants, and he buries them next to
#
the grave of Muhammad bin Tughlaq. Ho sakta iski maafirat ho jaye and God may forgive
#
him. Wow. Oh, okay. I thought he'd out of remorse, he contacted them to make their lives
#
better in some way, but no, he wanted the maafi namas for his cousin. You know, this
#
is how things happened then. So he's getting that. Whether he didn't make their life better
#
or not, I don't know. He may have, but because he ruled for 50 years and he was supposed
#
to be a good king. But this is how, you know, on one hand you have that. On the other hand
#
you have that Muhammad bin Tughlaq also built the satpula, which is an irrigation system
#
so that the farmers could have, you know, water, easy water. So all this is also happening.
#
And he was a very devoted devotee of Hazrat Nizamuddin Ali. In fact, he is one of the
#
few people who, he held his beer in his funeral. So he had that aspect to him also. He was
#
very cruel also. So you have all this. So every ruler has many aspects to it. And the
#
people who are living also have obviously different. And the other thing is that, this
#
is Sahil Lodhyanvi na kaha hai. Taj Mahal ke paaj unki bahut mashur nazm hai na. Ki
#
when we talk of Taj Mahal, and today is Valentine's Day, so we talk of Taj Mahal, we talk of
#
Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan, of their love for each other. And Sahil Lodhyanvi says,
#
mere mehboob kahin aur mila kar mujhse. He says, unhone bhi toh muhabbat ki hogi, jinki
#
sinnai na bakhshai se aqse jameel, jinke rause rahe be naam un nishan, jinpe jalai na kisi
#
na kandeel. That the artisans must also have worked, those whose, you know, their graves
#
are unknown, nobody. So there are so many levels, so many aspects, and we can just keep on talking
#
about the people who lived here. They are nameless. We don't even know where they are
#
buried, they're dead and gone. The people who actually build the cities, we don't know
#
about them. Now, we do know the architects of Shah Jahanabad, they have muhallas named
#
after them, Ustad Hira, Ustad Lahari. There are muhallas or areas in Shah Jahanabad which
#
are named after them. But what about the people? We don't know them. What about the people
#
who live there? We don't know much about them. We know the areas, we know that there is a
#
paanwala. Paanwala was because they sold bedsteads. And the bedsteads that were bought for jahez
#
were bought from there. Kinari Bazar and Dhariba were the places where wedding shopping was
#
done. Who were the people who got married? Who were the people who had happy marriages
#
or whatever it is? These are things we have no idea about. So we, you know, history is,
#
as they say, written only from one point of view at time.
#
And in fact, that's what my next question was going to be about. But before we go there,
#
let me point out to my listeners, we are recording this on Feb 14th, which shows our dedication
#
to our work that Rana ji has come all the way from Greater Noida to Hauskas to talk
#
about history with me. And here I am recording in a studio far from home. And like you pointed
#
out, you know, in the 20th century and in the 19th century even, it's very easy, relatively
#
easy to get a sense of the lives that common people lived. But earlier centuries, as you
#
said, a lot of the history is written from the point of view of the court and the rulers
#
and whatever. And some of it in fact is actually court history. And you have to then dig deeper
#
to find other reliable histories. But we don't really get a sense of how the common people
#
lived. And the history of all of these delis that you've written about also is not just
#
a history of the tombs of these noble men and these great monuments that they built,
#
but like how much harder is it to then understand the lives of the common people and how they
#
lived and where they lived.
#
So these descriptions come only from those very short stories that are given of, there
#
are a lot of these Urdu books, but written after the fall of the Mughal Empire. Like
#
there's this book called, now they talk about a Kababchi called Ghumi Kababi and Ghumi used
#
to be a cook in the Mughal kitchen and he comes onto the roads after 1857 and he opens
#
up his stalls and how he is very particular about that. Whoever comes has to be in line.
#
He will only serve people as per the time that they've come and how he serves and how
#
So there was a time when Indians knew how to queue up.
#
And today when I, you know, there is a favorite Kababwala of mine, which I go to in Matea
#
Mahal and that is the same area where Ghumi would have sat. And again that Babu Bhai also
#
does not, you know, like people have to queue up there. You may be as sophisticated as somebody
#
or you may be just an ordinary worker or a laborer. He does not differentiate. He will
#
give you only as per the time that you've come there and given the order.
#
So I love that about him. And the fact that he, you know, like he's so very egalitarian
#
about his approach of whom he's serving and how he's serving. And if there's a big rush,
#
he will not talk to you. There's no time for chit chat. Like once I was doing, I was, you
#
know, like scouting around for a food show and I wanted to showcase him and I went to
#
him and he said, see, I don't have time for all this. I said, you know, I said, you will
#
be on TV, you will be shown all over the world. He said, I don't care. I have a lot of work
#
and I don't have time. So there are these kinds of characters also, but who are there,
#
who are part, who make a city. But they, like I try to document as much, there's the Machali
#
wala who sits next to him and he sells fried fish. I have not eaten his fried fish actually,
#
but I've spent a long time talking to him because he likes to chat. So I asked him once,
#
I said, he said, I'm a third generation or a fourth generation sitting here and selling.
#
So I said, when everybody, because that area, a lot of people migrated to Pakistan. I said,
#
why didn't you go? And he said, how will Jamuna go with us? How will Jama Masjid go?
#
How will Qutub Minar go with us? So how will we go?
#
Oh, that's beautiful. So these are stories which I've documented. I find it so fascinating
#
to talk to these people that they are the ones who actually are the, they are the ones
#
who hold us all together.
#
And you know, one of the sort of disturbing things about the current times, very disturbing
#
things, is this sort of caricaturish view of the Indian Muslim, which is being spread
#
by the current political dispensation, mostly by people who've never had Muslim friends
#
or interacted with Muslims in any way, but it's a very caricatured view where it is assumed
#
that all Muslims are necessarily radicalized and they are somehow conflated with Pakistan
#
as if there is, you know, something that wrong with Pakistan to begin with, you know, and
#
is this sort of something that is just of this century? I mean, through the centuries,
#
has there been sort of this kind of caricaturish view of the Indian Muslim, this kind of, because
#
you know, when one looks at the sweep of history, it seems very clear that everything is very
#
syncretic and sure, you have all this violence, which is political violence, which is happening
#
at the level of the ruler destroying things and building things or whatever. But how has
#
society been in all this time?
#
See, this thing started after 1857. The first war of Indian independence has been called,
#
I prefer to call it the uprising because all of India did not participate in it. So when
#
the uprising of 1857 took place, it was termed by the British as a Mohammedan conspiracy.
#
And it's after that that they went after the Muslims because for them, it was the Muslims
#
who rose against them. Although that is not a fact. It was across religion, across religion
#
people who went against him. And if you had Hadrat Mahal, you also had Laxmi Bhai, then
#
you had Kumar Singh. If you had Azeemullah Khan, you had Kumar Singh. You had in Delhi
#
itself, you had so many people and the saying, Vallabhgarh, Raja Nahar, you had a lot of
#
people who were even punished and who were executed afterwards. So that's not a fact.
#
But the thing is that that is what they saw because the head of what they call the rebel
#
of the Ghadar was Bahadur Shazafar. They had crowned him, whom they exiled. So they termed
#
it a Mohammedan conspiracy. So after that, and they also went after the ruling class
#
and the Zambidars. And that is when the actual demonization starts. And there's a building
#
here, which I have mentioned in my book also, there's a building here on the ridge near
#
the university called the Mutiny Memorial. It was put up, I think, in 1864. On that,
#
they give a timeline of the siege of Delhi. And they write on the 14th of September, 1857,
#
Kashmiri Gate is breached. Then they talk of 17th September, the king flees the fort.
#
And then 20th, they say they have captured the Red Fort. And then they say 21st September,
#
the city is emptied of the enemy. Now, when you read Dastan-e-Ghadar, you know that the
#
enemy that is emptying and the enemy that's running away are the Muslim noble or the landowners
#
or whoever it is who are running away from them. And then just below that, you have a
#
plaque written by the Indian government, I think, when 100 years of 1857 were being celebrated,
#
where they say that the term enemy refers to patriots. So it's there they started.
#
That is how it was perceived. And for so many years, they were not allowed, the Muslims
#
were not allowed to come back to Shah Jahanabad. And Ghalib documents that in his Dastan-e-Bhu
#
when he's talking about that. So does, of course, the Heer Daelvi. The Heer Daelvi talks
#
about how he had to, he went to Alwar, then Jaipur and all over the place. And then finally
#
he goes to Rampur. From Rampur, then he gets a maafi naama and he's allowed to come back
#
only, I think, as late as 1864, he comes back to Delhi. Because us time pe ek Delhi
#
Darbar hone wala tha, and then they give a general maafi naama to the Muslims and say,
#
okay, you can come back. But they do not come back into their old positions. And then there
#
is this book called Beg Maat Ke Aasu written by Khwaja Hasan Nizami, which talks of the
#
whatever befell the Mughal prince and princesses where they are now begging on the streets.
#
And there's again a book which has taken the story is also written in Beg Maat Ke Aasu
#
by Ahmad Ali, there's a book called Twilight of Delhi, where he talks of ke Darbar ho raha
#
hai and the king is going out on an elephant and there's this man on a wooden, a cripple
#
on a wooden cart, who's a physically challenged person on a wooden cart, who's begging. And
#
it turns out that he's a Mughal prince. So, you know, these are things which were very
#
much happened after. And then 1811, now this demonization of the Muslims started not just
#
in 1857. It happens much before that. It happens when James Mills writes the history of British
#
India. When he writes that in 1811, he had never come to India. He did not come to India
#
even during or after writing it. He classifies it as Hindu, Muslim and British period. Now,
#
he talks of the Hindu period as the golden period. Muslim is now the barbaric period
#
and the British period are the saviours. And then you have this Elliot and Dawson where
#
I said, it gives the preface itself. They say that they want to talk about how the people
#
of India have been saved by the British. So this is a very systematic thing that happened
#
then during the national movement and afterwards, then this whole thing, there was a lot of
#
attempts to finish that. Gandhiji tried very hard. And as I always keep saying, I said,
#
I grew up in Nehru's India when we did not have this difference of a Hindu and a Muslim.
#
I never ever felt I was a Muslim. Of course, I am a practising Muslim. I pray, do my prayers
#
five times a day, whatever I do. I did that at home. It was never something I wore on
#
my sleeve. But past four or five years, there's never a day when I'm not reminded that I am
#
a Muslim. Before that, my only identity was that I'm an Indian.
#
And you know, with the British, it was obviously the dual imperative of one divide and rule.
#
So it's a strategic thing that you're doing that. And two also, you know, it was a simple
#
narrative which kind of explained a very complex country. So they went along with it that you
#
have Hindu period, Muslim period, and so on. Now, the thing is, looking back in history,
#
you know, I'll just to declare my bias straight away, it is obviously tempting for me to look
#
at history and look at us in criticism and look at our society and say that, you know,
#
Hindus and Muslims have always lived in peace side by side. But equally, you can cherry
#
pick evidence and come to the conclusion that there have always been sort of there are a
#
between the two, you know, and a lot of how an outsider layman like me would look at this
#
history is I would look at through the lens of my own bias, as I stated, for something
#
like this, which is obviously such an emotive subject and which obviously has so much resonance
#
with our current lives and the world that we live in. How do you negotiate this sort
#
of history? And do you feel that there is sort of a clear narrative and the divisions
#
that are there today are perhaps sharper than, you know, I mean, obviously, we've had incredibly
#
sharp divisions during the troubled times of partition and the years before and so on.
#
But if you look through the centuries old history of Delhi, are these relatively new?
#
The divisions were between the rulers and the ruled. They were not religious differences.
#
It was, you know, the oppression was there, but it was of the ruler. It wasn't seen as,
#
you know, that, okay, he's a Muslim, he's oppressing me or he's a Hindu, he's replacing.
#
And that was Nehru's point of view as well. In fact, that a lot of communal differences
#
aren't really religious differences. And if you see the history of communal rights, there
#
were only five communal rights during the Mughal rule that also after the 18th century,
#
out of which the first was in Ahmedabad. And after that, after independence, and here even
#
during the time of Nehru, you've had many, during the Congress rule also you've had so
#
many communal rights. And of course, now you have open division. I will, you know, like
#
I normally am very guarded about what I say because I try to always look on the optimistic
#
side of it, but there is no doubt that there is an all out attempt now to create a division.
#
That otherization is happening and to create the other, you have to make a caricature out
#
of the other. You demonize and dehumanize. And a person like me who keeps, you know,
#
like who fits in well into every kind of this thing. So I do not fit into the narrative
#
of either the right-wing Hindu or the right-wing Muslim. And I am trolled and I'm abused by
#
everybody. So I'm called a kafir by the Muslims and I'm called a buddha paras and a jihadi
#
by the Hindus. So, you know, this otherization is that bad that anybody who talks of syncretism
#
is considered, you know, a person or non-grata in these days. That is what is standing in
#
the way. Both of them, of course, the Muslim right-wing is nowadays very, I should say,
#
is not very empowered because the way that I'm talking of, say, a few years ago, today,
#
of course, they have been very restrained in their responses and it has been taken away
#
as just now in Shaheen Bagh where this, although that news turned out to be false, but initially
#
when there was this report that the Deobandis from some clerics from Deoband are saying
#
that, you know, the Shaheen Bagh protest should stop. And this lady said, ki hum to samvidhan
#
ke liye lara hai, hum mazhab ke liye thodi lara hai, ki hum aapki baat sune. So the narrative
#
has changed. People have taken over and they've taken over from the religious leaders and
#
they're trying to chart their own destiny. But I'm just saying that, you know, this otherization
#
was happening for a very long time. Today, it's happening from the Hindu right-wing.
#
It's happening very, very, it's very fast. Like, how should I say it? Ki mazhab bahut
#
tezi se baara hai. Bahut tezi se ho raha hai. Jo pehle itne halke halke ho raha tha, aaj
#
bahut tezi se ho raha hai, this otherization of characterization. Can you recognize them
#
by their clothes? Yeah, exactly. So how do you recognize them by their clothes? How do
#
you recognize me by my clothes? And even the demonization of biryani, you know, just like
#
my favorite food. So I keep saying, I said the Mughal favorite food was khichdi. They
#
did not eat biryani. The word biryani was not even coined then. The Mughals did not eat
#
biryani. Biryani comes much later in the late 18th and 19th century. And these people would
#
not be wearing the clothes they wear if the Mughals hadn't come. Where do you think Modiji's
#
churidar kurta comes from? India? So pajama itself is brought by them, the jama. But if
#
you see Nuskay Shah Jahan, which has been translated by Mrs. Salma Hussain as I think
#
the emperor's table. Shah Jahan was very fond of cholaika saag, baigan ka bhurta, aloo ka
#
bhurta. He's eating the thing, the word biryani then was called zere biryani. And he's eating
#
paneer ka zere biryani. So all these things are there. But they never ate the biryani and
#
meet the weak thing that they did. They were very fond of khichdi. And they were vegetarian
#
on many days of the week. So Aurangzeb was totally vegetarian. Yeah, as was Hitler. But
#
you know, paneer biryani, frankly, I must draw a line and here I will be judgmental about the
#
paas ki paneer biryani. But you know, and would you also say and again, I don't have to be guilty
#
myself of romanticizing what's happening. But would you also say that what Shaheen Bagh
#
represents, for example, is a combination of the best of all the centuries of Delhi in terms of
#
people coming together in spite of their diversity and their differences. And also a combination of
#
that with this modern India where we have this liberal constitution and we want to live by sort
#
of these values and this idea of India or am I romanticizing it too much? Or do you see,
#
you know, while all this othering which makes you despair is going on, do you also see some hope?
#
I think what has happened in Shaheen Bagh happened very spontaneously. And it's just become such a
#
beautiful movement of inclusiveness of, you know, and because it's controlled by the women, I think
#
it has that certain touch to it where that harshness is not there. And it's just beautiful the
#
way they are doing it, the way they embrace everybody. And I've gone there a couple of times,
#
the way the inclusiveness of including everybody and how everybody is coming and being, you know,
#
like, joining with them across religion. So it's nothing to do with now it is, of course,
#
it is their identity, which is at stake. And when you go there, there is no doubt that the
#
maximum number of things that you see, the most of the people that you see will be wearing scarves
#
and hijabs. But it's, you know, you don't, that's not the thing that comes to your mind. They are
#
wearing hijabs or whatever, but you do not see them as Muslims. You see them as women who are
#
sitting there, very strong women who are sitting there protesting against something which is a
#
constitutional right. So I do see that even I romanticize it. It is something which is just
#
spread all over. And when I was once I was talking to them, I was telling them, I said, you know,
#
that this is the continuation of Sultan Razia. After all, Razia had also stood up for her rights
#
and stood up for her people. And she stood up up to the Jhelgani who were trying to oust her.
#
And her father did say that she is equal to 20 of my sons. So in Delhi, and then you had Jahan
#
Arai, you had Jebun Nisai, you had a long list of women who have been strong. And if we take it,
#
if we do take even Indraprastha as having been here at some point of time, then you have Draupadi.
#
Yeah. And, and that's also interesting, you know, when you look back at Indian mythology,
#
for example, and you look at the stark contrast between Draupadi and Sita and Sita almost seems
#
to represent the ideal Indian women as per, you know, the, the dominant political view today
#
would have it where she's subservient to her husband and she's all of that. And Draupadi is
#
incredibly rebellious and badass and independent and whatever, which kind of shows you that it's,
#
you know, Indian sanskar is not so simple to pin down. It's got all these different strands,
#
you know, even within Hinduism. Also, like, I think the whole of India watched Ramayan and
#
Mahabharat very religiously. There was not a single episode I missed. And in Mahabharat,
#
I must have watched multiple times because I have to love the dialogue, especially of Shri Krishna.
#
So, but recently, I think it's three or four years now that when Amish's book came out on Sita,
#
so there the Sita is very different from the Sita. His Sita is a warrior. She is in fact,
#
the defense minister of Mithila and she's a warrior and she's the Vishnu. So when I read that,
#
you know, it opened a whole new world of Sita to me. Yes, she does accompany her husband,
#
but she's the Vishnu and then she marries Ram and then Ram also becomes a Vishnu. But it is she who
#
is a very strong character and it's a wonderful book. I really love that. They show Sita as somebody,
#
a very, very strong character, not as the submissive character that we were seen,
#
that we saw in the TV serial. So there are supposed to be a lot of versions of Ramayan.
#
There are, I think, 300 versions or something like that. Many versions, yeah. So every version
#
is written from a different and I had met Amish while he was writing it and he said that he is
#
consulting a version that has Sita as the main character in it. That's remarkable and I've just
#
realized that I've taken up almost two hours of your time. So, but before we go, tell me a little
#
bit about, you know, what are you working on now? You know, you've done these books on Delhi,
#
you've translated these books. What keeps you going? What's your next project? How do you,
#
what do you look forward to when you wake up in the morning? I'm working on three projects at the
#
moment. One is a book and two are projects. I normally don't like talking in advance. I'm a
#
little superstitious, let's put it about my work. But the one project that has already, it's finished
#
and about to come is an app which I have done on, for a group called RestBird, which they were
#
outsourced by ASI. It's on monuments. It's where you can read and hear about it. There's a podcast
#
and there are different descriptions. I've curated 12 monuments for them on that. So that is something
#
that I'm very, I worked on the whole of last year. I visited these 12 monuments and I did that. And
#
there are two other projects I'm working on. One is, two are books and there's a third, yes,
#
and there's a third, which is another thing that I'm working on. Hopefully by May there should be
#
more clarity. Cannot wait. And before you go, I'd like you to ask, like my listeners always keep
#
saying that they discover so many books through the podcast and they love it when my guests
#
recommend books that they absolutely should read. So before, without tying you down to a subject
#
like Delhi or whatever, just recommend three books that you think everybody should read.
#
And you can't include your own books because I am recommending those. I think they're absolutely
#
amazing. So one book is Richard Eaton, India and the Persian 8th Age. That definitely everybody
#
should read. And the second book is Manu Pillay's Rebel Sultans. Rebel Sultans, yeah. And third is
#
Ira Mukhoti's, I'll give you four. And third is Ira Mukhoti's Daughters of the Sun. And fourth is Mani Mukhda's Allahu Akbar.
#
That's fantastic because I've already done episodes with Manu and Ira and I am doing an episode next
#
week with Mani Mukhda. So I feel like I've covered much of the material. I shall definitely pick up
#
that Richard Eaton book. Rana, thank you so much for being so generous with your time and more
#
power to all the work that you do in future. Thank you. I hope it turned out also the way
#
you wanted it to. No, no, it's great. And my listeners will tell you that on Twitter that
#
this was such a fun episode. Thank you. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, do follow the
#
links in the show notes and go to your nearest online bookstore and just buy all of Rana Safi's
#
book, especially if you're fascinated by Delhi. But even if you're not, you can follow Rana on
#
Twitter at I am Rana, I am and her name Rana. And it should be noted that she took this handle
#
long before that copycat Shah Rukh Khan took the handle. I am SRK. That is not original. I am Rana
#
is the original at I am Rana. You can follow me on Twitter at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A.
#
You can browse past episodes of The Scene and the Unseen at sceneunseen.in and thinkpragati.com.
#
Thank you for listening and hey, don't stay at home after listening to this episode.
#
Go out, look at the city around you.
#
Did you enjoy this episode of The Scene and the Unseen? If so, would you like to support the
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production of the show? You can go over to sceneunseen.in slash support and contribute
#
any amount you like to keep this podcast alive and kicking. Thank you.
