‘Making’ of New Delhi ‘Erosion of Memories’ and (re) Settlements (1860s-1920s)

Abstract

The suppression of the Uprising of 1857 resulted into a long and traumatic saga for the people of Shahjahanabad and its immediate neighborhoods. The British officials sought to redesign the city in a manner to keep their security concern at the top, and in the process they did not bother either to preserve or to protect any heritage from the past. Similarly, they were ruthless in evacuating several villages in the neighborhoods to come up with a majestic capital in the form of Lutyen’s Delhi. Thus, an imperial capital came up, while the earlier imperial cities of Delhi were relegated to a poor shadow. The paper seeks to examine the archival records at the Delhi State Archives and the National Archives of India to understand some of these processes.