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Birth of the capital city

Karan Pradhan

"Calcutta was a natural choice for the British as site for a capital city in India," begins one of the very first chapters in the luxuriously laid out volume that is New Delhi: Making of a Capital, as it develops the scene to explain just why the British decided to head to Delhi and turn it into their capital in India. In light of the partition of Bengal and the Indian famine of 1905, it was said, as the chapter quotes, in one of the earliest statements about a shift in the capital, "The removal of the Government of India from Calcutta is a measure which will materially facilitate the growth of local self-government on safe lines" on the reason that "the capital of a great central government should be separate and independent" and not occupy the same site as that of a provincial government — in this case, Calcutta. Coupled with the historical associations of Delhi, this fact led King George V to proclaim Delhi as India’s capital on December 12, 1911.

What follows in Malvika Singh and Rudrangshu Mukherjee’s painstakingly created 240-odd page book is a journey through the creation of the nation’s capital between 1912 and 1922 and the conflict and disagreements that went along with it. From Lord Curzon’s proclamation that "Personally I think the removal of the government from Calcutta is much more injurious to the government than it will be to Calcutta" to the building of Government House (known now as Rashtrapati Bhavan) and the differences of opinion between architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, the book is dotted with anecdotes, copies of telegrams and letters, blueprints and maps and carefully preserved sepia photographs from Pramod Kapoor’s collection.

The British had been very clear that the architecture of Delhi was to be their imperial stamp and would be designed to strengthen the Empire’s grip on India and such, splashed out the then gargantuan amount of Rs 13 crores on the city’s buildings. They wanted the capital to send out a strong statement that showcased the best of what the Western civilisation had to offer. At the time, Lutyens and Baker were under the impression that the architecture that had been hitherto brought to India by the British, left much to be desired. They disliked the mish-mash of the neo-gothic and Mughal styles in Shimla, Calcutta and Bombay (now Kolkata and Mumbai), for instance.

The story of how the North and South Secretariat Blocks were built at a height, so as to allow the bureaucracy to rule India from an exalted position, far apart from common citizens, is merely an example of how much of the British psyche went into the design of the capital. The period of time over which Delhi was designed and built coincided with the shift in architectural mindset across the globe. The artisan style was slowly giving way to the mechanical workers style of creating buildings. And Delhi was fortunate enough to see both, with carefully created marble bannisters being mechanically fitted across staircases, for example.

One of the most intriguing facets of this book is by far the fact that nearly a third of the book focusses on the execution of the architectural plans and ideas. It perhaps helps that one of the authors (Malvika Singh) belongs to the same family as Sujan Singh and his son Sobha Singh who were the senior-grade contractors for most of the buildings being created at the time. For South Block and India Gate (then called the War Memorial Arch), Sobha Singh was the sole contractor.

Sections of the book show the various buildings in different states of construction in the vast gamut of photographs and while being pretty to look at, they are really put into context by the detailed explanations of how Lutyens and Baker’s plans become a reality. The telegram exchanges between Baker and Lutyens are equally fascinating and help breathe a sense of life into what could have easily become a history textbook about Delhi’s architecture.

There’s a section towards the end of the book titled "Eastern Inspiration" that brings everything back full circle and shows how in their effort to create a powerful symbol for the British Empire, Lutyens and Baker ended up drawing inspiration from a variety of Eastern styles, like the jaalis — stone lattice work screens — found throughout Rashtrapati Bhavan and the two-tone Mughal mosaics on floors. As a sit-down-and-read book, it’s littered liberally with news clippings from the time and the narrative, as it were, never loses steam and rattles along at a lively pace.