The building of New Delhi

From research to trivia, everything you wanted to know, and see, about the making of India’s capital By Kishore Singh

In a coruscating letter written on July 4, 1922, Sir Edwin L Lutyens, chief architect of the city of New Delhi, accused his colleague and co-architect on the project, Herbert Baker, of “a colossal artistic blunder” — that of locating what is now Rashtrapati Bhawan atop Raisina Hall — on “levels upon which you have insisted and which render the whole approach to Government House ridiculous”. Baker, writing ten days later, said the blunder was one “for which you must share the responsibility”.

For decades since, architects have debated the merits of Rashtrapati Bhawan’s peek-a-boo, becoming visible only as one starts riding up the hill from Vijay Chowk. An imperial power might have wanted to bask in the pomp of its architectural might, but democratic India weighs the gradual manner in which it is revealed as a deliberate ploy and not the “colossal” blunder that Lutyens and Baker make it to be. Lutyens blamed it squarely on Baker, for designing it “on a Kopje”, or elevation, as Baker was used to doing in Africa, where he was based and where the plans were drawn, instead of for the plains, as Delhi might, and Lutyens did, demand.

“I used to count you as one of my best friends, and a man I held in great affection, but I cannot help feeling that a great deal of my work in Delhi has been wasted and spoilt because I trusted to your loyal co-operation; and that this trust has been misplaced,” Lutyens cribbed. Baker’s rejoinder was that the letter was “full of mis-interpretations”, and he pleaded with Lutyens to “cease flogging a dead horse, so that nothing may prevent us concentrating our full energies on the vital interests of our work together at Delhi, which have suffered by this controversy”.

Delhi’s citizens are so spoilt for choice of both history and architecture, few take the time and interest to study how Lutyens’s Delhi was planned and built. It is fortunate, therefore, and at considerable expense presumably, that New Delhi, Making of a Capital has been produced with materials — old photographs, drawings, press clippings, correspondence — from the British Library, London, the Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, the Royal Institute of British Architects Library, London, the Mary Ewans Picture Library, London, and numerous private collections.

When “sepia-junkie” Pramod Kapoor began to unearth the rich lode in London, he knew it had the makings of a book and a way to bring back “a small fraction of the piece of history related to the making of our capital”. Two writers assisted him in his endeavour. The first was Malvika Singh, writer and editor, but also grand-daughter-in-law of the chief builder of New Delhi, Sir Sobha Singh; the second, historian and also editor, Rudrangshu Mukherjee.

Mukherjee writes about the shift of the capital from Calcutta to New Delhi, following the Delhi Durbar in 1911 when King George V said he was “pleased to announce to Our People” the decision taken “on the advice of Our Ministers”. The reason behind this was historical — Bengal was bleeding because of protests following its partition in 1905, launching in its wake the Swadeshi Movement, and though it lost some of its steam over subsequent years, it was agreed to have been ill-conceived. Calcutta was “ill-adapted”, Lord Hardinge wrote, “to be the capital of the Indian Empire”; as to the alternative, “Delhi is the only possible place,” he emphasised, and it was this announcement the King-Emperor would make to the Indian people at the Imperial Durbar in Delhi. So, when the princes were done with their genuflections — “they bowed, bent low, salaamed, did namaskar, or placed their swords on the ground” — the announcement of the shift of the capital was read by the viceroy. “The news and its significance soon sunk n and there was loud cheering.”

Announcing the shift was one thing, building a new capital quite another. “As a ruling colonial power, one that was, in fact, in the throes of decline, there must most certainly have been a feeling of nervous confusion, verging on a sense of trepidation to get it right,” observes Malvika Singh. Interestingly, the first choice for the city’s architect was Henry Vaughan Lanchester whose submission of a link with the existing city of Shahjahanabad and the incorporation of the Jamuna as an important element proved contentious. When the commission did not come his way, he proceeded to create the Umaid Bhawan in Jodhpur as a building that would— and probably does — rival Rashtrapati Bhawan.

The choice of Lutyens and Baker was interesting for another reason – Lutyens’s wife Emily was the daughter of India’s first viceroy, Lord Lytton. Where Lutyens was critical and hyper, Emily was “thrilled by the glorious colours of the bazaars”, explored adventures from which she returned more native than British, and was probably among the first to comment, “I wondered why the English should bring their British dishes and British cooking to a land of such wonderful cuisine.”

As plans were drawn (for which Lanchester was at least to remain a sounding board for Lord Hardinge, and whose interventions would make Lutyens “angry”), it became evident, Singh writes, that New Delhi “did not emphasise the creation of a ‘city’ but rather, the superimposition on a stark, uninhabited and sprawling landscape of an imperial borough, designed to house the ruling, alien power and accommodate its administration”. Enough has been said before of Lutyens’s scorn of Indian cities — “personally I do not believe there is any real Indian architecture or any great tradition” — and also of the assimilation of several such traditions to create a language for New Delhi that was the apogee of a style that was to to become known as Indo-Saracenic. As it evolved, writes Singh, “the sensibilities of the ruler and the ruled were finally becoming parts of a whole”.

Before Lutyens could hand the city, and Government House, to Lord Irwin, when “for the first time in 17 years the house closed on me”, he had to grapple with “the work ethic of this secure and age-old culture that had seen many dynasties come and pass on,” notes Singh. “He told Emily his reservations about the people he was working with, his impatience with long-winded bureaucratic delays, his annoyance with having to deliver in an alien working environment,” she writes. “Shoddy workmanship was an anathema to Lutyens which is why he often got angry and irritated with workmen who invariably left some small portion or element undone” — not unlike their workmanship even now, but with many more of the disadvantages of lax administrations as New Delhi prepares for another climactic building marathon in preparation for next year’s Commonwealth Games.

That the idiom that evolved (and unfortunately perished) within Lutyens’s city confines was driven by vision and passion becomes evident in Baker’s obituary on Lutyens, in 1944, where he records “a friendship which survived the sunshine and storms of a long association”. Presciently, he writes, “In day-dreams I even fancied how splendid it would be if we could work together on some imperial building of monumental character: day-dreams which were providentially realised when we were appointed architects for New Delhi.” Of their dissensions, he wrote, “I can see more clearly that our personal differences had their roots in our natures and outlook on our art. He concentrated his extraordinary powers and immense industry on the abstract and intellectual values to the sacrifice sometimes, I considered, of human and national sentiment and its expression in our buildings. Is it not a natural difference of outlook and one which is inherent in an eternal conflicting dualism in all the arts?”

NEW DELHI: MAKING OF A CAPITAL
Authors: Malvika Singh & Rudrangshu Mukherjee
Concept and Visual Research: Pramod Kapoor
Publisher: Roli
Pages: 240
Price: Rs 1,975