Colonial Delhi: Imperial and Indigenous

Delhi is a symbol of India’s city building. It is the nerve centre of heritage and modernity, conflicts and contradictions, and richness and poverty. In 1911, King George V announced the shifting of India’s Capital from Calcutta and New Delhi was planned as a showpiece of the glory and magnificence of the British. With the coming up of New Delhi, Shahjahanabad, once one of the most beautiful city of the orient was devalued as a dilapidated, congested, dark, dirty and overcrowded city. To improve the Old City the government in 1937 constituted the Delhi Improvement Trust (DIT). The DIT took up various slum clearance and improvement schemes together with industrial and commercial schemes, which covered about 4,000 Ha of area. These were not the showpiece of Raj, like New Delhi but mark an era of transition of Old Delhi towards planned development. This book narrates the tale of the colonial twins- the Imperial (New) abd DIT’s Delhi. It highlights their interconnections, geographies and contrasts.