New Delhi marks muted centenary as capital

By Sunrita Sen Dec 12, 2011, 12:16 GMT

New - New Delhi on Monday completed 100 years as the capital of India, but the few retrospective events were muted amid ambivalence over the city's colonial legacy.

On December 12, 1911 King George V of the United Kingdom, then emperor of India, announced to assembled Indian princes that British India's capital would move from the eastern city of Kolkata to Delhi.

For the centenary, official events were limited to a couple of government-organized art exhibitions, a food festival run by the city's Tourism Department, and some independent events at schools and colleges.

But historians say the city has more worth celebrating than the British period. Delhi has existed for over 1,000 years, and served as capital to successive dynasties of Hindu rulers, and to Afghan and Mughal invaders before the British ones.

'Delhi has always been a capital,' historian OP Jain said. 'There are references in ancient literature. Portraying it as a capital for a mere 100 years would be undermining its importance.'

This storied history is the subject of an exhibition of photographs and lithographic prints of the evolution of the capital from around 1200 BC, held by the Indian Council of Cultural Relations, the government's main organiser of cultural events.

And just as the city's importance did not start with its promotion to British colonial capital, it did not end there either.

The sprawling megapolis is now home to an estimated 18 million inhabitants, from the crumbling old quarters with its medieval monuments to the newer suburbs with their glass and concrete high-rise buildings.

The British-built city of New Delhi is now just one district, albeit one that still holds the spectacular president's palace, once the British viceroy's lodge, and the bungalows built for officers.

Perhaps celebrating the British contribution to the city would feel like glorifying colonial rule. After all, India's biggest annual celebrations - Independence Day on August 15 and Republic Day on January 26 - mark the breaking of British fetters.

Sohail Hashmi, a chronicler of Delhi's history, said that of all the rulers who had their capital in Delhi, the British imposed the most alien culture, or 'unknown ethos.'

'They had come to loot and not to live,' Hashmi wrote recently in article on the city on website kafila.org, a website for critical public debate run by a group of Delhi-based academics.

Hashmi said the British built a divided city. 'The masters lived in New Delhi while their servants lived behind a high wall, far away from the clean, plush, modern, forward-looking 'new city', or they lived in hovels in scattered villages that dotted the landscape.'

'The question that needs to be asked here is that why are so many people so keen to preserve this part of real estate that is barely 80 years old, while very little is being done to preserve Shahjahannabad, an entire city, more than 350 years old?' Hashmi wrote, referring to recent laws prohibiting alterations to the British-era buildings.

The city government seemed aware of this public attitude in ts decision not to celebrate the British milestone decision for Delhi.

'Yes, there is ambivalence on what to celebrate and how to celebrate,' Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit admitted in an interview to the Times of India newspaper in early November.

Groups of residents, associations and schools would mark the occasion but the government did not have a central plan, she said.

Most Delhi residents went about their business Monday unaware of their city's so-called birth centenary. Almost all local newspapers had a couple of pages devoted to the city's history and heritage but they were tucked away on the inside pages.

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