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The secret chambers of Jadoo Ghar
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What is inside the Jadoo Ghar in Qudsia Garden? Find out with R.V. SMITH
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Going past the Jadoo Ghar in Qudsia Garden does send a chill down the spine for it is Delhi’s oldest Masonic Lodge hidden among tropical creepers. There is another lodge in Janpath which runs a charitable dispensary, but it lacks the aura of th
e one in the garden named after the 18th Century dowager queen.
Old Kishori, who used to serve in the bungalows of Ludlow Castle Road in the pre-Partition days, had built up a formidable lore about the goings on in the Jadoo Ghar. He had never been inside it, of course, but what he lacked hard facts was made up with a fertile imagination, of sahibs dressed in black going to perform their “magic rites”.
Somehow he linked the nearby graveyard with the Jadoo Ghar and swore he had seen shrouded figures hurrying across the road to the hall where the sahibs were in session. Initially, it was only Englishmen who were members of the lodge but slowly some Indians also joined it – both Hindus and Muslims, though their initiation was kept a secret from their families. Believe it or not, a nawab whose wife discovered that he had become a Freemason got so scared of him that she sought talaq. When family members tried to reason with her, she exclaimed: “How can I share the same bed with a man who is into devil worship which goes against the tenets of our religion”. However, saner counsel prevailed and the begum was persuaded to stay on. “It’s just a gentlemen’s club which does not go public with its activities. As for the devil he is as far from the lodge as he is from mosque, temple, church or gurdwara,” remarked the relieved nawab.
Air of mystery
Suspicions about Freemasonry are still deeply rooted in society not only in India but in other countries too, so much so that the Catholic Church does not permit Freemasons to be its members. Whatever may be the prejudice, the lodge still guards its secrets well to add an air of mystery to its activities.
Secret societies conjure up cloak-and-dagger stuff. Freemasonry is perhaps the oldest of them all going back over 3000 years to the time of Solomon the magnificent and the builders of his temple who adopted the plumber’s bob as their symbol of faith. Balzac has written a vivid account of a secret society of France whose members were sworn to defend the honour of their brotherhood and of how they took revenge on those who broke its vows. The vows were graded according to the severity of the breach of promise and carried penalties like cutting off the tongue, disbowelling, tearing out the scalp and pulling out the heart.
Some of these tortures were perpetrated on the enemies of Qudsia Begum’s worthless son Ahmad Shah who was eventually blinded and imprisoned after a short reign. Pulling out of the tongue was not unknown in Moghul India. The most sensational case was that of Qazi Shushtri whose tongue was pulled out from the neck on the orders of Jehangir for an alleged blasphemy against Sheikh Salim Chishti. People were also skinned alive on royal command; and in the case of Ghulam Qadir Rohilla the heart was torn out as punishment for his equally ruthless act of blinding Shah Alam.
Kishori could very well invest the Jadoo Ghar with all these horrors. He used to sit on the boundary wall of Qudsia Garden – one eye on the cemetery and the path leading to the lodge wondering what the sahibs in black were up to. Kishori is long gone but the Jadoo Ghar is one building in Delhi whose mysteries, if any, are still left to the imagination.
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