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DOWN MEMORY LANE

Where Delhi’s soul is enshrined

The Ghaziuddin Madrasa and Delhi College (now known after Dr. Zakir Husain) are two buildings in which a lot of Delhi’s history is enshrined. It was here that writer William Dalrymple first got an insight into the Sufi soul of the Capital from Yunus Jaffery, a great scholar and repository of history and tradition. Some other writers also have taken Dr. Jaffrey’s help in trying to penetrate the heart of Delhi. That makes this place a living, breathing entity like no other in the city. The Madrasa was founded by a powerful courtier of Aurangzeb’s time, Ghaziuddin Khan, who died in 1710. It was his son, Mir Qamaruddin who became the first Nizam. The Madrasa in course of time became the Anglo-Arabic School, then Anglo-Arabic College, later Delhi College and finally Zakir Husain College. The college is now housed in a new building and the old one designated as Anglo-Arabic School.

The building is still a fine specimen of latter day Moghul architecture but it is erroneously believed that Mirza Ghalib was a teacher there once. The great Urdu poet had gone for a job to the college when it was temporarily moved to Kashmere Gate. Since the British principal did not come out to receive Ghalib at the gate, the poet asked his palanquin bearers to take him back home. Certainly job seekers, no matter how well known, cannot expect heads of institutions to receive them at the gate!

The Madrasa has seen history taking shape. The Nizams of Hyderabad had always been good patrons of it, not only because it was founded by their grandsire but also because Ghaziuddin Khan lies buried near the Madrasa. During the uprising the college was the centre of resistance against the British, who converted the building into a police station for some time.

Situated outside Ajmeri Gate, the complex has a three-domed mosque on the West, with arcaded apartments in the centre of the enclosure which are occupied on the ground floor by classrooms and on the first floor by scholars engaged in restoring old manuscripts for posterity.

However one would like to think of the Madrasa as a bastion of old Delhi culture. Sometimes a scholar gypsy left its portals in search of the meaning of life, not found in books nor in the busy hum of men but among those who have discarded society, the Sufis and dervishes, whose interest lies beyond the transitory nature of things.

Part of the rear portion of the building is dilapidated, but the rooms still transport one to the time when students in various stages of growth came to the Madrasa for higher education, which in those days was limited to the study of the classics and religious tomes.

According to Percival Spear, “the plan of the college is a model for other colleges in India, with its mosque and beautiful courtyard”. Though Spear wrote these lines 60-odd years ago, they still hold good. The DDA Heritage Award is testimony if one was necessary.

For those who have had the privilege of studying in the college, the experience is lifelong, for there is not another college like it in Delhi. The less fortunate would relish the dinner parties at this abode of the Muses, when the classrooms were opened to entertain long rows of wedding guests, seated on carpets and eating the dishes popularised by the Moghul aristocracy. The smell of pulao, zarda and korma, of sheermal, biryani and kheer merged with the odour of dusty tomes to create an atmosphere which cannot be found in any restaurant. Perhaps Dalrymple didn’t get to attend these parties, but the delicious stuff “cooked” for him by Dr. Yunus Jaffrey tastes the same.

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