The Red Fort Delhi India

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