Delhi: Layers of Capital and Empire

Many Delhis

Delhi is not one historic city preserved intact but a landscape of successive settlements, capitals and neighbourhoods. Sultanate rulers built fortified centres in different locations; Mughal emperor Shah Jahan founded Shahjahanabad in the seventeenth century; and British imperial planners created New Delhi in the twentieth century. The modern metropolis contains traces of all of these political worlds.

Mughal city and colonial capital

Old Delhi grew around the Red Fort, Jama Masjid, markets and dense residential quarters of Shahjahanabad. In 1911 the British announced the transfer of the imperial capital from Calcutta to Delhi, and New Delhi was developed as a monumental administrative district. The juxtaposition of these urban forms is one reason the city can feel historically layered even over a short distance.

Partition and a changing population

Partition in 1947 transformed Delhi demographically and socially. Refugees arrived from newly created Pakistan while many Muslim residents left or were displaced. New colonies, institutions, markets and political networks emerged, making the post-independence city substantially different from the colonial capital that preceded it.

Documentary context

The archive should treat Delhi as both a national capital and an everyday city. Government buildings and monuments are part of the story, but so are markets, transport, neighbourhoods, religious sites, workers and the migrations that continually remake the metropolis.