Delhi : The First Report
A rare three-volume report of the Delhi Town Planning Committee contains the first detailed accounts of the choice of the site for building New Delhi
Delhi was not founded in 1911 as several
newspapers and TV channels have been telling their readers and listeners through the
last some weeks. Delhi was already there when the
Coronation Durbar of that year was held. What the
British founded was New Delhi which was in early
days called “the New Imperial Capital” and “the new
Capital city.” That is how the new city is called in the
three-volume report of the Delhi Town Planning
Committee published in 1913. These volumes contain the first and the earliest detailed accounts of
the choice of the site for building New Delhi. This is
an absolutely rare report. I do not know how many
copies of the report exist or how many copies of it
were printed. The report was by “His Majesty’s
Stationery Office for presentation to both houses of
British Parliament". Copies for sale to public at large
were also made available in all British coloniesa,
including India, and also in the United States, in different European countries and elsewhere too. So a
large number of copies must have been printed but
I have not come across many copies during all these
years I have rummaged through the heaps of books
at secondhand and rare bookshops of the world or
at antiquarian bookshops. I do not know why. With
so many copies printed quite a number should
have survived.
It is possible that many
copies have perished
because the paper on
which the report was
printed was not acid free
and was rather thin paper
of ordinary school notebook sort of paper of the
old days which browns,
foxes and crumbles rather
quick. I, however, have a
copy that is as new as new
can be. It is an ex-library
copy—from the East Sussex
County Library, U.K., withdrawn from the Brighton
Reference Library.
“Withdrawn” in this context means ‘discarded.’
Libraries the world over
keep reviewing their
stocks, changes in readers’
requirements and tastes
and keep adding or discarding books accordingly.
These books enter the secondhand book trade.
Ex-library copies do not
make collectors’ copies because collectors with discretion and taste do not
like such books. An ex-library copy is rather something infra dig for a collector to have. However, if
the subject or author of a book is interesting and
copies of it rare in the market, many might consider
buying even an ex-library copy which they may
themselves discard, that is, sell off to a secondhand
bookseller or another collector when they find a collectable copy of the book.
The Delhi Town Planning Committee Report I
have spoken off is not really a collectable book for a
general collector. It may, however, be of great value
to a town planner or an architect, or to a lover of
Delhi history. The three volumes of the report contain several maps of the city of a hundred years ago
and of the lands around. Where did I buy it? Frankly,
I do not remember. May be, I bought it from Pablo
Butcher, an English bookseller who used to have an
establishment at London’s Portobello Road at one
time but now lives in south of France like many
Englishmen fed with the tax laws, health service and
dismal urban environment and operates mostly
through the internet. May be, I bought it in Spain
from a bookseller who specialises in books and maps
relating to town planning around the world. It is just
possible that I picked it from Francis Edwards in
Hay on Wye in Wales. He keeps all sorts of books in
huge numbers and prices his books very reasonably.
I do not remember how much I paid for it either.
There are two or three different price figures written
here or there in pencil on the end papers and I cannot guess which one shows the price I paid. It would
not have been very large, anyway, because if it had
been I would remember it.
I never opened these volumes until today when I
thought of writing about them in this column. Did I
find them interesting? Not initially, at last. But as I
leafed through some of their pages and glanced at
the text here or there I did find some quite interesting things like the fact that at first the new city was
proposed to be sited on the northern side where
Kingsway Camp and Model Town are now, and
beyond.
Perhaps, the most interesting aspect is that even
at the very beginning, southern side of the old city,
that is, the present south Delhi was preferred
because the environment here was estimated to be
healthier, drainage better, soil superior and, believe
it or not, land cheaper than in north and northwest
Delhi where most of the land required to be acquired
for the new city was already being used for vegetable growing and orchards that supplied fruit, flowers and greens to the people of the then Delhi. These
were called baghs and the names of many of these
such as Roshanara Bagh, Rana Pratap Bagh, etc., are
current even today
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