Capital Transformation : Delhi

Capital Transformation: City Exhibition Will Commemorate The Re-emergence Of Delhi

Who could tell from a tour of the present day New Delhi that it hides in its bosom the relics of not one or two but seven different cities? 

Delhi has changed drastically over the last six decades since independence and for a Dilliwallah of yore, it might be a Herculean task to relate the contemporary New Delhi with the Dehli that he or she was once familiar with. 

Be it the print of the lithograph of Chandni Chowk of the 19th century, drawn on stone by a certain Captain Luard, or a photograph of the City of Delhi from 1857, published in The London Illustrated News (courtesy The Alkazi Collection of Photography), Delhizens can now take a reflective dip into the reservoir of national memory at the exhibition titled Dawn Upon Delhi: Rise of a Capital, organised jointly by the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts and the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. 

This frame captures the first jet plane of the Indian Airlines

The exhibition focuses on Delhi of the late 19th and mid- 20th century, bringing to life the glittering but chequered past of a city that was at the heart of the political and cultural developments of the last hundred years in India. 

Some of the photos have unusual angles - such as the Curzon Road Hostel by Habib Rahman

The display has been put together from vintage compilations such as the Alkazi Collection, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) archives, as well as the personal collections of Dhruva N. Chaudhuri (renowned photographer and son of celebrated writer, the late Nirad C. Chaudhuri) and Habib Rahman (one of the most famous architects of the post-1947 India, whose works are now overseen by his son Ram Rahman, who's a famous Delhi-based photographer himself).

As Rahaab Allana, the Foundation's curator in Delhi aptly puts it, the exhibition 'tries to capture the sense of Delhi's gradual transformation not only through the architectural changes, but attempts to convey the political milieu through the lives of the people who lived in these tempestuous times'. 

Allana, who has supervised the cataloguing, documentation and research that went with each of the scintillating photographs, alerts us to a section called 'Imaging Delhiwallas' - wherein captivatingly candid moments from the everyday lives of British civil administrators, Indian businessmen such as the baniyas, poorer folk who migrated to the city in search of work such as dhobis and ayahs who attended the memsahibs, have been permanently framed in time by the earliest professional and amateur photographers. 

The post-independence transformation of the cityscape has been beautifully captured by Indian photographers such as Rahman and Chaudhuri, whose frames of the 1950s and 60s Delhi point towards a city that is rapidly rebuilding itself from the ashes of its colonial past and redefining itself through an avalanche of architectural innovations. 

Besides their historical significance, photos such as the Red Fort's Lahori Gate are outstanding for their technical flourish

However, the murky side to the metamorphosis that Delhi has undergone is deftly pointed out by Ram Rahman, who considers it a 'ghastly state of affairs', going on to state that 'we have lost our sense of visual culture and the intimate connection with the urban space'. 

Ram Rahman is scathing in his criticism of the several renovation projects that the government of India has been carrying out, asserting that "the elegance and eloquence of the buildings have been drowned out in a barrage of cars.

As he sees it, Rashtrapati Bhavan is in a state of 'progressive deterioration' and unless 'we learn to strike a balance between the need to preserve our heritage buildings and the requirement to develop a modern city', it is bound to remain a story of incremental loss of beauty.

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