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Many of these handsome and costly structures which have defied
the stormy times continue to exist in their timeless spirit
echoing not inharmoniously the times when Delhi was really
Delhi, evoking the memory of the past tinged with sorrow.
A recital or
enumeration of the buildings, however beautiful, is not a
satisfying experience. The author rightly resurrects and
reconstructs the past of the Red Fort, its design and structure,
its development and transformation. Because of the historic role
the fort has played, naturally its history submerges into the
history of Delhi and India.
Mukherji does not
study the Red Fort in isolation but links it up with the history
of Delhi and the country. Being a strategic and administrative
place of great importance and carrying with it memories of the
past, Delhi’s importance in the history of India is
unquestioned.
By examining
closely the existing buildings in the Red Fort in the light of
enormous historical literature, Mukherji has tried to build up
her story. To recover the pristine glory and splendour of this
fort is difficult because a great deal of it was pillaged,
ransacked and destroyed in the 18th and 19th centuries by Nadir
Shah, Ahamad Shah Abdali, the Marathas and the Jats. The British
too converted it into a cantonment in 1857. By a comparative
evaluation of the Red Fort and other buildings erected in the
ancient and medieval periods, Mukherji emphasises that the Red
Fort, by assimilating various elements of Hindu and Muslim
architecture, represents the finest values of India’s
"composite culture," bearing the "stamp of
eclectic tastes" untrammelled by any sectarianism and
narrow-mindedness.
The author
maintains that the site of the Red Fort was determined by
astrologers, which is interesting. But one wonders whether Shah
Jahan’s consultation with the astrologers is a speculation,
hearsay or reality in the absence of any evidence in support of
such a contention. The Red Fort was inaugurated in the 21st year
of Shah Jahan’s reign, and its master builders were Ustad
Hamid and Ustad Ahmed assisted by talented and experienced Hindu
masons. Hindu planning lay behind the fort.
Professor M.
Mujeeb thought it absolutely inappropriate to associate anything
of the military with the Red Fort as more than half of its area
is occupied by gardens, added to which are the public and
private quarters that are vulnerable to infiltration from
outside. He was disappointed with Diwan-i-Am, which he regarded
as pompous and garish.
To the author, the
Diwan-I-Khas is "an example of the purest form of the
pavilion typology," and the "vaulted Chatta Bazar, the
noblest entrance known to belong to any existing palace,"
and further, Shah Jahan’s Palace "the most magnificent in
the East."
Mukherji shows how
Aurangzeb’s stern puritanism destroyed the cultural life
within the fort, and the glory of the fort was gone by the end
of the 18th century due to the invasions of Nadir Shah, Ahamed
Shah Abdali and the civil wars raging in the streets of Delhi.
There sat on the Mughal throne a mock ruler, Bahadur Shah, a
British pensioner who was banished, and the British converted
the Red Fort into a cantonment.
Towards the end of
the book, Mukherji offers some constructive suggestions for the
restoration of the former glory of the fort, which are worth
consideration.
In this work it
may be worth combining the introductory chapter with the other
chapter entitled ‘The City Within’ to avoid repetition. This
scholarly work based on extensive primary sources and intensive
fieldwork could go as standard work on the Red Fort.
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THE
Mughal Empire had great passion for building palaces, forts and
gardens. Shah Jahan was the wealthiest of the Mughal rulers who
built whatever he could on a grand scale. Constructing such
buildings may denote self-expression, a gratification of enormous
personal vanity, and a disposition to bequeath a legacy to posterity
as a token of adulation and administration. As a dire necessity,
Akbar had to build the town of Fatehpur Sikri as his headquarters.
Jahangir moved up and down Agra, Delhi, Lahore and Kashmir. Shah
Jahan built his capital known as Shahjahnabad, mainly due to
scarcity of water in Fatehpur Sikri.
