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Searching for life in relics
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There is much more to Mehrauli than Qutub Minar. Almost every king from Altamash to Bahadur Shah Zafar had his bond with the place, says R.V. SMITH
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The Qutub plain is dotted with monuments - the relics of past civilisations which flourished in Delhi for 750 years as sultan after sultan came and went his way. In these structures even the lizards seem ancient as they glide slowly over the crumbling walls, quite at home in their weird surroundings. The arches of these monuments, some of them said to be models of the perfect arch, are now uneven and broken, through which bats fly in and fly out like so many Draculas on their eerie mission.
And yet in some of them rest the mighty figures of the medieval period like Altamash, Balban and Allauddin Khilji. Balban was a slave who rose to prominence at a time when Altamash's youngest son Nasiruddin - a saintly man whose rightful place was in the mosque and not at the head of a turbulent empire - was on the throne. Fate willed it otherwise. But he was lucky to have a Minister like Balban to help him.
Balban's popularity was the envy of the other nobles and they managed to get him ousted. But the resultant chaos forced Nasiruddin to recall him. That was in 1255. Eleven years later the king (who reminds us so much of Bahadur Shah Zafar) died and Balban seized the throne and ruled from 1266 to 1286 with an iron hand.
The last Moghul
Came the Khiljis, the Tughlaks, the Sayyids and finally the Moghuls, all of whom left their mark on Delhi. The last of the Moghuls, Bahadur Shah Zafar ascended the throne despite stiff opposition from his stepmother, who wanted her son to succeed Akbar Shah II. But as subsequent events proved, Queen Mumtaz Mahal-II's wish could not be realised, because Bahadur Shah Zafar was destined to be the last lamp of the house of Babar. To Zafar goes the credit of maintaining a tehsil in Mehrauli.
Why did Zafar need the tehsil? One of the reasons is that he felt suffocated within the confines of the Red Fort, with all its intrigues and counter-intrigues in the zenana. He was a man of open spaces in his younger days, hunting deers across the Yamuna or spending time in Mehrauli with his friends and acquaintances.
He was fond of mangoes and in summer they tempted him to stay there. Another reason was his attachment to Hazrat Qutubddin Bakhtiar Kaki, the saint whose shrine he loved to visit - not only on Thursdays when the qawwalis were sung but on other weekdays too. Zafar had great faith in the miraculous powers of the saint, one thing which he shared in common with his stepmother, for she too was a great devotee of Qutub sahib.
After he ascended the throne, Zafar did not stop his visits to Mehrauli. As a matter of fact, he went there with his court for long periods especially during the rainy season. It was in the gardens of Mehrauli that his youthful queen Zeenat Mahal played hide and seek with her maids and Zafar composed his soulful ghazals.
Most of the buildings in the tehsil were built by him after the death of Akbar Shah. The Baradari was the result of his distaste for the structure earlier erected by him in the Sawan Bhadon pleasure pavilion in the Red Fort, and which is now in a sorry state of disrepair.
Urgent need
The new Baradari was a far better architectural achievement and more in keeping with Moghul heritage.
Its imposing gateway and some other buildings are still there and in urgent need of being saved from colonisers.
The Delhi Conservation Society has made hectic efforts in this direction, along with INTACH, as it is in the fitness of things that Bahadur Shah Zafar's constructions are preserved for posterity. For are they not reminders of the last flowering of the Moghul architecture?
A pity that Zafar himself couldn't find his final resting place in Mehrauli but in distant Rangoon.
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