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 It is an ex-library copy—from the East Sussex County Library, U.K., withdrawn from the Brighton Reference Library. “Withdrawn” in this context means ‘discarded.’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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