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The story that a Hindu saint told Mr Ghanshyam Das (G. D.) Birla that if he did not rebuild the Lakshmi Narayan Temple in Delhi he would lose his fortune probably has a basis in fact. Mr G. D. Birla had inherited the Marwari family’s money lending business, expanded, diversified and prospered.
He had become friends with Mohandas Gandhi in 1916 and financially supported Gandhi and advised him on the economic issues facing India. In 1926 Mr Birla was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly of British India. The 1930’s saw an increase in his friend’s radicalism – the salt march, Gandhi’s hunger strikes and riots between Hindus and Muslims.
At the same time Hitler was on the rise in Europe, and Europe and America’s emergence from the Great Depression was not following the optimistic arc predicted. There was political violence and famine throughout much of the world. In January 1933 the Pakistan Movement was officially launched. It was going to be a memorable decade.
Mohandas Gandhi agreed to inaugurate Mr Birla’s rebuilt temple on condition that it be open to people of all religions and castes, especially untouchables.
Mr Birla went on to build temples in many places in India, as well as hospitals, schools and institutes of higher education. The Birla family is today one of the industrial giants of India and continues to support and maintain the temple commonly known as Birla Mandir. For those interested in intricate and dramatic dynastic tales, a review of references to the family by The Times of India over the past ten years is entertaining reading.
The Birla Mandir is, appropriately, dedicated to Lord Vishnu the preserver and his consort Lakshmi the Goddess of prosperity and wealth.
The original temple was built in 1622 and renovated in 1793. The rebuilding between 1933 and 1939, ensured that almost all the gods of the Hindu Pantheon are now represented and, in a gesture of inclusiveness rare in those times, a Buddha shrine was included.
There is something refreshing about a Hindu temple – the combination of blatant commercialism with the crowds of poor whose tiny offerings of flowers and rice reflect the immense optimism of the human race; the open-armed welcome that these temples offer and the flamboyant, complex decoration; the gentility of an ancient religion and most importantly the inclusiveness that is true Hinduism. That this temple is open in the early hours while there is a hint of coolness in the air adds to its attraction.
Observer
19 February 2010 http://www.longline8.blogspot.com
longline8@gmail.com
p.s. Temple hours are 7a.m.-12 noon and 2pm - 9p.m, but always check first.
The Red Fort loomed huge through the haze of heat and dust that was Delhi. During the pre-election days in 2009 security was intense and very visible, yet the people in the street seemed unaffected by this inpending event. Perhaps this had something to do with the history of Delhi, a survivor of invasion after invasion. Its population has been repeatedly driven out, their temples defaced, torn down, built over.
The Mughals were late-comers in Indian history, but reminders of their reign are everywhere stamped on northern India, especially on Delhi, the city of the plain that has existed since prehistory.
History is a means of making events in the past explicable and, sometimes, acceptable. In 1638 Shah Jahan the Mughal Emperor moved his capital from Agra back to Delhi and began to build his new capital Shahjahanabad. One of his wives, Mumtaz Mahal, had died seven years earlier and Shah Jahan had commissioned the construction of her tomb, the Taj Mahal in Agra. In spite of the tales of devotion of husband for this, his third wife, Shah Jahan stopped the construction of the Taj Mahal until Shahjahanabad, The Red Fort and the Jama Masjid were completed. The Taj Mahal in Agra was completed 23 years after the death of Mumtaz Mahal. The new walled and defended capital city was completed in 1648 and the building of the Red Fort, a city within a city was commenced in the following year.
The cities that, until the economic crash of 2008, were springing up all over the Middle East were not modern phenomena, just historical repetition.
Completed in just nine years Lal Qila or Red Fort was twice the size of the fort at Agra.
The Red Fort became the centre of Mughal power. The emperor and his court resided within its walls along with the Mughal administration, a military garrison, arsenal, the treasury, craftsmen and shopkeepers.
Two main gates, one on the west and the other on the south, called Lahori and Delhi gates, lead into the fort. While the walls, gates and a few buildings in the fort are constructed of red sandstone, marble is the material used to build the palaces.
The fort has played a major part in the history of India since the days of Shah Jahan and deserves more than a brief visit. It was from the fort’s main gate, the Lahore gate, so named because from this gate the road lead to Lahore, that the Indian flag first flew on declaration of India’s independence in 1947.
From Lahore Gate the fort is entered through Chatta Chowk the covered bazaar that has been part of the fort since its inception.
In the Hall of Public Audience (the Diwan-i-Am) some of the most intricate stone inlay work outside of Italy is to be seen. The art of cutting and fitting polished semiprecious coloured stones together in a marble bed to give the effect of painting is still carried out in Rajasthan. The floral inlay panels in the Hall of Private Audience (Diwan-i-Khass) are reminiscent of the less intricate work see on the pillars of the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi.
From this hall Shah Jahan’s original Peacock Throne, valued in 1665 by the French Jeweller Tavernier at six and a half million pounds sterling, was removed by the invading Persian general Nadir Shah in1739. This removal was seen as a symbol of the true end of the Mughal Empire although it remained in power in name only for another one hundred and twenty years.
The story of the pillaging by the Persians segued into the convoluted and bloody history of the Koh-i-noor diamond and its continued illegal possession by the British who acquired it when Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877.
The guide who, as a Muslim, had been that morning justifiably proud of the Jama Masjid, grew gloomier and gloomier as the trek through the fort continued, the heat and humidity increased and stories of betrayal, familial violence, destruction, thievery and abandonment compounded by incompetence and greed piled one on the other.
The Moti Masjid, the Pearl Mosque, built by Aurangazeb, Shah Jahan’s son, is a small walled building in one corner of the fort. When questioned about the mosque the guide indicated the high walls around the mosque. Aurangazeb, he said, was a religious fanatic who ruined India. He needed these high walls to protect himself from being assassinated while he prayed.
Aurangazeb, the guide hastened to add, was a genuinely religious man who acted solely from genuine religious belief.
Although made in a moment of high emotion, this statement was probably not far from the truth. Aurangazeb broke the tradition of Mughal rulers’ tolerance of Hindus and had the dubious distinction of being the first Muslim ruler to impose sharia law on his non-Muslim citizens, and reintroduce the jizya, a poll tax on non-muslims. This was a move not designed to make friends outside his own religious circle.
In 1857 the British sacked Delhi, took over the Red Fort, demolished ‘architectural treasures’ and built in their place a solid brick army barracks which stands today.
The Mughals did leave a repository of great architecture. Their fusion of Hindu, Persian and Islamic styles resulted in elegant and practical public buildings that continue to influence designers and architects around the world.
By mid- afternoon the air in Delhi, spiced with that smell of burning plastic that is endemic to the Asian olfactory experience, was thick with humidity. The recurring tales of invasion, repression, plunder and pillage only added to the oppressive atmosphere.
From The Red Fort to Gandhi’s memorial was a relief. As the heat and humidity stabilized in the late afternoon, the violence and turbulence of Indian history was put aside in the contemplation of the simple plinth that celebrates the life of a truly great leader.
Observer
12 February 2010 http://longline8.blogspot.com/ Email: longline8@gmail.com
This journey began in Delhi ten days before the 2009 elections, five months after the Mumbai bombings.
The Jet Air flight from the Gulf to Delhi was full, crammed with workers returning home at the end of their overseas contract. There were two incoming tourists on the flight.
Delhi was hot, humid and very secure, if the sandbag gun emplacements outside the airport were any indication.
The list of places to see was long, the time was short. Adiga’s words from TheWhite Tiger were still fresh:
Let the driver tell you the truth. And the truth is that Delhi is a crazy city. ... all the roads look the same, all of them go around and around grassy circles in which men are sleeping or eating or playing cards, and then four roads shoot off from that grassy circle, and then you go down one road, and you hit another grassy circle where more men are sleeping or playing cards, and then four more roads go off from it. (Adiga, p. 99)
Therefore the Indian Tourist Bureau’s ability to provide a knowledgeable guide and an experienced driver for a reasonable price seemed a good idea.
The trip to India was sudden and unplanned so a map was bought, and plans made over dawn coffee in the hotel.
Maps are wonderful things. They impose the mirage of order on chaos, encourage the traveller to believe in the accessibility of cities. Lay a map of Delhi on the table, pencil over it a grid with Connaught Place in the centre. There, with a little jiggling of the grid, Delhi can be divided up into a few days sightseeing. Simple really.
The guide was a shepherd through the mazes of security screens thrown up around any structure more than a metre high. On this, the first day, Mughal monuments predominated so the guide was an expert in this field. He also provided protection from the beggars, thin on the ground in the heat and dust. Desperate touts formed phalanxes of invaders at the sight of rare tourists. But all, beggars and touts, were remarkably polite - insistent, but polite.
The number of armed police and soldiers patrolling the streets and lanes demonstrated that a safe tour of Delhi had come at an enormous cost to the Government of India.
What a city Delhi is, the outcome of over 3,000 years of habitation, a complex, ugly, noisy city, battened down against attack from within and without, a city of parks and gardens and horrific slums.
Yet Delhi is a democratic city with all the trappings of democracy and the problems and corruption of the developing world. It is a vibrant city where even in those tense pre-election days the optimism among its people was palpable.
It was, however, not politics but historical monuments that were the reason for this stopover.
The driver knew which grassy circle led to which road. And the first road led to the Jama Masjid, Shah Jahan’s Friday mosque, because this was not a Friday, and the mosque was open for visiting before the thick blanket of humidity swaddled the city and turned the mosque courtyard into a sauna.
The Jama Masjid is the largest mosque in India. Entrance to the mosque is free, but a ‘photography fee’ is charged. Women must wear the floral covering provided at the entrance – an article of clothing so ugly that even if Bollywood stars Aishwarya Rai or Bipasha Basu were wearing it there is no risk any man would be overcome with lustful thoughts at the sight of them.
Shah Jahan completed the Red Fort in 1648 and then turned to the construction of a mosque opposite the fort.
This large red sandstone structure was built on a rise on the Delhi plain on a base raised a further ten metres from the ground. It is said that it took 10,000 men six years (1650-1656) to build. Getting mosques up in a hurry seems to have been a aspect of the Mughal reign. Aurangazeb, Shah Jahan’s son and ursurper, built the Badshahi Mosque, the biggest in the world for 313 years, in Lahore, in the two years between 1671 and 1673.
In spite of the fort-like appearance of its exterior the mosque is interesting both architecturally and historically and a good example of the Mughal style.
The three main domes are of white marble with accents of black. The minarets also display innovative combinations of sandstone and marble. The cool, arcaded cloisters with intricate marble facing were occupied mostly by sleeping men and beggars careful not to harass the tourists.
Two bomb explosions within the mosque in April 2006 aimed, apparently, at the then liberal minded Imam do not seem to have resulted in any over-zealous security – or at least what would be called over-zealous in security-minded Delhi.
This Imam was, in accordance with tradition for the Jama Masjid, a direct descendant of the Imam invited from Bukhara by Shah Jahan to inaugurate his mosque on 23 July 1656.
In City of Djinns after a visit to the Jama Masjid for Eid prayers Dalrymple wrote:
...Islam has always been an urban faith, ill at ease with the wilderness; its civilization has always flourished most successfully in the labyrinths of the ancient bazaar towns of the East. Certainly there can be no doubt that Islam looks at its most impressive in a great urban cathedral mosque, ...(p. 251)
His reflections were perhaps inspired not only by the sight of “twenty or thirty thousand” Muslim men at prayer, but also by the mosque’s proximity to the crowded lanes that lead to Chandni Chowk. This former Mughal boulevard lead to the Red Fort. Now it is the hot, noisy, congested main street of Old Delhi, which still leads to the massive citadel of Shah Jahan.
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