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Hindustan Times
3 days ago
- Hindustan Times
I-Day Special: When Delhi's monuments became shelters
In the months after Independence, as trains crammed with refugees screeched into Delhi, the city's most iconic landmarks became unlikely shelters. At Purana Qila, thousands of refugees lived in makeshift tents under military watch, queuing daily for food and water as the fort's ancient walls became a fortress of survival; Left: Around 10,000 people settled at Kingsway Camp in a sea of tents that stretched across open fields. (Bettmann Archive) Humayun's Tomb, Purana Qila, Tughlaqabad Fort, Safdarjung's Tomb – the postcard icons of Mughal grandeur in Delhi – turned into vast refugee camps. Beneath marble domes and along crumbling battlements, tents flapped in the wind, cooking fires smoked, and families huddled under thin blankets through one of the coldest winters in living memory – or at least that's what it felt like to them. In 1947, these monuments were not backdrops for heritage walks like they are today. They were the frontlines of Delhi's post-Partition upheaval. 'It was a turbulent time,' recalled Sohail Hashmi, author and chronicler of the city's layered past. He remembers family stories of how Partition carved up not just maps, but daily lives. Muslims heading for Pakistan gravitated to Humayun's Tomb and Purana Qila – as both were within walking distance of Nizamuddin railway station, the departure point for trains bound west. Hindus and Sikhs arriving from the Punjab and Sindh provinces were steered to other camps, including Tughlaqabad and Feroz Shah Kotla. 'A fairly large settlement came up outside the Red Fort,' Hashmi said. 'People stayed wherever remains of the old city walls existed and wherever there was any shelter.' Hashmi recalled that his mother's family – her parents, three brothers, sister, sister-in-law, and two young children – were among those adrift. They set out for Pakistan, but never made it onto a train. When they returned to Purana Qila, they found themselves erased from the camp's register. 'They were told to go to Humayun's Tomb instead, but not to say they were coming from the Old Fort,' Hashmi said. 'They had to say they had just come out of hiding.' For months they moved between the two monuments, trying to keep dry in leaky government-issue tents. Hashmi remembers one story his mother told him vividly: 'She described to me the cold freezing winters they spent there. My maternal grandfather, a Persian poet, huddled in a corner during a downpour, hugging his manuscripts to keep the ink from running.' A city under strain The refugee influx swelled almost overnight. Violence erupted, pushing Muslim families from their homes in the old city toward monuments that could offer space and some measure of safety. Then came the waves in reverse – Hindus and Sikhs fleeing across the new border, in need of shelter until permanent housing could be found. 'Many of these monuments had been lived in before,' said historian and author Swapna Liddle. Purana Qila, she pointed out, still had a village inside its walls until the 1920s, when residents were relocated to make way for landscaping projects during the construction of New Delhi. 'So, when people suddenly needed housing again, it was instinctive to use these spaces.' Sites near the Yamuna, with ready access to water, became especially prized. Safdarjung's Tomb was set aside for women and children who had arrived without male relatives. Old Fort, with its massive courtyards, became a semi-permanent settlement. Markets, latrines, and even makeshift shops sprang up inside the walls. 'In some cases, people stayed for years,' Liddle said. 'When they finally left, all that construction was torn down.' Ratish Nanda, CEO of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, has pored over photographs from the period. 'You see rows of tents stretching across the lawns of Humayun's Tomb, right up to the plinth of the main chamber. These weren't temporary in the way we think of it now – they remained there for a long time.' Life between domes A 2023 research paper by Deborah Ruth Sutton, from department of history at Lancaster University, titled 'Masjids, Monuments and Refugees in the Partition City of Delhi', reconstructs that world in granular detail. She wrote that in February 1948, more than 17,000 people were living in and around Humayun's Tomb. When a fire ripped through Kingsway Camp later that year, displacing 10,000, the tomb was thrown open again to accommodate them. By January 1949, some 3,000 people remained, surrounded by hastily built latrines, bathing facilities, and brick-walled shelters. Then at Feroz Shah Kotla, Sutton found, occupation spilled beyond the official camp, creating an informal settlement in the fort's southern enclosure. And the government did not limit its commandeering of open space to ruins: even the manicured gardens of Lutyens' Delhi bungalows – including those belonging to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, and Rafi Ahmad Kidwai – sprouted tented encampments. NDMC officials, Liddle notes in her book Connaught Place and the Making of New Delhi, were 'horrified' at the thought of Humayun's carefully landscaped lawns being dug up for latrines. But at that moment, necessity overrode aesthetic preservation. The memoir In Freedom's Shade by activist-writer Anis Kidwai, originally published in Urdu, paints a searing portrait of life in these camps: the shortage of blankets, the sweep of pneumonia and influenza through tent rows, shrouds cut too short because cloth had run out, unclaimed bodies awaiting burial. These were not just shelters, but stages for grief, improvisation, and endurance. The census tells the larger story: Delhi's population surged by 90% between 1941 and 1951, transforming the city's social and physical fabric. Some refuges, however, were far from the main axis of heritage tourism. Historian Rana Safvi recounts how Khwaja Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki's dargah in Mehrauli became a stopover for those crossing into Delhi. On January 27, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi arrived for the shrine's annual urs. According to his aide Pyare Lal Nayar, Gandhi was 'devastated' to see the dargah damaged in the violence, with refugees from Pakistan camped nearby. He urged them to help rebuild it and pressed Nehru to allocate ₹50,000 for repairs – an enormous sum at the time. Before leaving, Gandhi delivered what would be one of his last appeals for peace: 'I request Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs who have come here with cleansed hearts to take a vow that they will never allow strife to raise its head, but will live in amity, united as friends and brothers. We must purify ourselves and meet even our opponents with love.' From camps to colonies It would take years before the refugee population moved out of these improvised shelters. Government-planned colonies like Lajpat Nagar, Rajinder Nagar, and Jangpura eventually absorbed many of those who had once slept beneath Humayun's great dome or in the arcades of Purana Qila. The makeshift markets and shelters inside the forts were dismantled, lawns relaid, and walls patched. Yet the episode left an indelible mark on the city's monuments – and on the families who passed through them. Today, a visitor to Humayun's Tomb might pause at the symmetry of its gardens, the cool echo of its chambers, the stillness of its sandstone. Few would guess that in living memory, this quiet was once broken by the clang of tin utensils, the crying of infants, the muffled weeping of the bereaved. The marble still bears no visible trace of 1947. But for those who were there — and for the city itself — the memory remains etched, in stone, and in the stories handed down by the people who were there.
New Indian Express
4 days ago
- New Indian Express
Rooted in two soils
"We stay in Rajouri Garden," she said with a warm, easy smile. I nodded, knowing the next question would come. "So are you originally from there as well?" Her smile faltered, just for the smallest moment. Almost nothing, but I caught it. "We are originally from Swat in Pakistan," she said, her voice steady, though something else rested just beneath it. Like so many Punjabi families who had come to Delhi after Partition, I assumed her story was one of displacement inherited from an earlier generation. But Padma Makhija, forty-five, had moved to India only in 2004, when she married. Her parents and siblings still live in the Swat Valley, one of the last threads in the small Hindu community that remains there. "I had visited India before, because many of our relatives live here," she told me. "But now I am an Indian citizen, while my family is still in the valley." Her words stirred something I had not expected. My surprise was not born of the well-worn tensions between our two countries, but from meeting someone who was young enough to remember the land my own grandparents had left behind. She was not a sepia photograph in an album, nor a story softened by retelling. She was a living bridge to that place as it exists now—the scent of its earth after rain, the sharpness of its winter air, the rhythm of its seasons. "Every time I visit the mountains with my family, my thoughts drift to the Swat Valley and its breathtaking beauty," she said softly. "It takes me back to the home where I grew up, to the landscapes etched in my memory. There is a beauty that binds both places, a beauty that feels whole and eternal, and yet they are worlds apart, held back from each other by borders and the politics between them." Her husband, Anil, came to Delhi much earlier. He was eighteen when his family left Mardan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the early 1980s. Today, the two of them run a business in the labyrinth of Sadar Bazaar, but the flavours of home travel with them. Many of the dishes they cook are shared across the border, but some are rooted so deeply in that region that making them is almost an act of remembering. Anil described his kadhai mutton—just meat, tomatoes, ghee, green chillies, and salt—slow-cooked for hours until the flavours sink into one another. "Kadhai is so common there," he said, smiling at the thought. "I remember how we would all sit together and polish it off. That memory we keep alive here too." While Anil's family is now entirely in India, Padma's heart moves between here and the valley she left. "I fondly remember the mote chawal ki khichdi with desi ghee that my mother would make for us. That is the smell of home for me. Whenever someone visits from there, I always ask for mote chawal and makke ka aata. It is what I grew up on." "People are not bad anywhere," she said quietly. "It is situations, shaped by politics, that push them away from each other." Her home is here now. Yet it is also there, where her family still lives, in the folds of mountains I have only known through stories. And perhaps that is the truth about home—it can live in more than one place, and sometimes, painfully, in the spaces between them.
The Hindu
4 days ago
- The Hindu
Nepal waives climbing fees for 97 mountain peaks
Nepal has waived climbing fees for 97 mountains, officials said on Wednesday (August 13, 2025), hoping to steer people to its lesser-known peaks and boost local economies. Climbers pay for permits on Nepali peaks and the fees vary depending on the mountain's height and popularity, with heftier charges for those such as Everest. The 97 mountains, ranging in height from 5,870 metres (19,300 feet) to 7,132 metres, are located in the western Karnali and Sudurpaschim provinces. "We hope it will bring our hidden treasures in the limelight and diversify the mountains Nepal offers," Himal Gautam, of Nepal's tourism department, told AFP. It follows a busy spring climbing season in Nepal during which the government issued 1,168 climbing permits. Over half of those were for peaks above 8,000 metres, including Everest, the tallest in the world at 8,849 metres. In contrast, others saw little climbing activity and generated minimal revenue from so-called royalty fees. "These remote areas have immense tourism potential and we hope the local economy can benefit," said Gautam. Nima Nuru Sherpa, president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, welcomed the decision but said much more was needed to drive interest in remote mountains. "Royalty fees alone is not keeping mountaineers [away] from these areas. We need to develop the infrastructure and manpower required for running expeditions there," Sherpa said. Nepal is home to eight of the world's 10 highest peaks and welcomes hundreds of climbers every year during the spring and autumn climbing seasons. A boom in climbers has made mountaineering a lucrative business since Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa made the first Everest ascent in 1953. In February, Nepal increased permit fees for Everest from $11,000 to $15,000 starting next spring, hoping it will help tackle pollution and boost safety.
