ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 introduces nineteenth-century Delhi and presents the book's methodological framework. It asserts that the Hobsbawm-ian construct of the ‘Long Nineteenth Century’ was applicable to the colonized subcontinent. The period was primarily hinged on the events of the 1857 uprising thus creating pre-uprising and post-uprising eras. The subcontinent's political and cultural conditions were shaped by internal events and by influences arriving from modern Britain. Positioned in this scenario, the historic city of Delhi which had been a traditional seat of authority was caught between the Mughals and the British whose political one-upmanship climaxed as the uprising, with the city as its epicenter. Delhi, whose political and cultural events epitomized the subcontinent's ‘Long Nineteenth Century’, transformed from a Mughal Badshahi Shahar to a culturally hybrid Dilli-Delhi combine and thereafter to a ‘Colonial Modern’ Delhi. The city's evolutionary trajectory is thematicized as four constructs, Marhoom Dilli; Picturesque Delhi; Baaghi Dilli and Tamed Delhi. The constructs are architecturalized and each is represented by a spatial ensemble of built-form types that defined its nineteenth-century character. The constructs are also examined beyond the nineteenth century, in terms of the here and the now, to underscore their significance as cultural assets to be safeguarded and to be mainstreamed in Delhi's current urban development framework.
