Looking back at — and beyond — The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad

 Looking back at — and beyond — The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad

Text of the talk delivered at CEPT, Ahmedabad, 

21 September 2024

https://images.app.goo.gl/niPzM9MYhJw7TNZB7

Reading, writing, researching — how do they enrich and extend our understanding? And how does this in turn influence conceptions of time and space and ideas of design? This is what I’m going to talk about briefly, and I’ll explain this primarily through the example of architecture. I’ll begin with quoting something I have written earlier about the value of reading:

‘Reading prods, informs, inspires. Ultimately, it provokes thought. So, it is important for everybody, not just designers. But, it is especially important for designers…it not only feeds the imagination but also equips one to visualise personal images of other people’s experiences and buildings. Since, invariably, architects (unless they are enormously rich) have to design for other people than themselves, reading gives one empathy for other people’s needs and views, and also enriches one’s imagination by being able to summon up appropriate images that can be translated into specific designs for those people. Secondly, it helps to communicate better, which is equally important since design is as much about understanding the client’s requirements and translating it into a workable satisfying solution, as it is about communicating that design to the client.’

Reading thus allows you to observe a variety of contexts and characters. In a sense it allows you to inhabit different worlds — and not limit yourself to only your direct experience. Apart from imagination and empathy, it therefore helps to sharpen observation and perception — two other attributes which I believe are important both for design, and for research. Indeed, for any profession, since finally we are all trying to make sense of the world as best we can.

What about writing?

‘Just as the process of making drawings is a way of clarifying the design as an architect proceeds in evolving it, similarly the process of writing is a way of clarifying one’s thoughts and giving them a structure and physical shape. Finally, it is only when you are clear about what you think, that you can clearly state this to others. So, writing is an essential part of clarifying and communicating to oneself—and to others. When we write, it is first of all, a dialogue with ourselves that we initiate. So, our thoughts, instead of being half-formed ideas that flit in and out, take tangible form. We commit ourselves on paper, as it were, and literally see ‘what’ and ‘how’ we think.

A good piece of writing, like a good piece of architecture, needs to have a satisfying base, a discernible middle and a well-knit conclusion. Both require intuitive as well as analytical practice.’

And what about Research

The origin of the word Re-search is ascribed to late 16th century French from re- (expressing intensive force) + cerchier ‘to search’. It is defined as ‘the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.’ The driving force of research is to question. The connection between research and the acts of reading and writing, is part of a systematic intensive search to reach appropriate conclusions and logical answers to those questions and to reach out to others. 'Writing enables one to ‘speak’ to a greater number of people than those in the immediate vicinity, and reading allows you to ‘listen’ to a greater number of voices than those in your immediate neighbourhood, or even in your own lifetime.’ 

Looking back at The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad 

As far as my own trajectory is concerned, reading and writing have preceded active formal research. Subsequently, the process of research, has involved not just a lot of reading and writing, but also how I look at design and ways of living. I have to clarify here that I read not just specific sources on my subjects of research, but also a lot of other stuff, especially fiction and books on science, ecology, and economics. I find this helps me in understanding different contexts — historical or contemporary — as well as helping me to convey these learnings in my own writing.

How does my research specifically on the Red Fort of Shahjahanabad bear this out? For this, I’ll go back to my first visit to the Fort — which was when I was in my third year of Architectural School. What I recollect most vividly is my sense of perplexity. I could not understand how the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, or for that matter anybody, would have lived within the Fort. What I saw on site did not seem to add up to any coherent plan. Though I could — just like anyone else who visits it — experience the proportions, volumes, and forms of its buildings; their elegance, delicacy and craftsmanship; the light and space within them; I could not decipher it as a place that could accommodate the functions of life.

That led me to search for explanations on the Fort and Mughal architecture, and I found that no one had addressed this at all. They had only written about, or commented on, or researched on specific, separate portions of the Fort or just in terms of architectural styles. But no one had asked this question — how was the Fort lived in? When I tried to find the answers myself, I discovered that 1) there was very little portion of the original planned form of the Fort that still existed on site. And 2) that there were very few records of this original plan of the Fort. Since my primary sources — the architecture on site — were so little in amount and what remained of them had changed so much, and since the secondary sources too, were very few and fragmentary, often contradictory, and were scattered all over the world, there were many missing blanks in the story of the Fort. I have written about this extreme challenge in researching the Fort in the very first chapter of my book, as well as in later chapters. 

So it was not surprising that I had been so perplexed on my first visit. What was more surprising was, that there was no information at the Fort to tell visitors this fact that what they see today is so incomplete, and that this was so because the British destroyed more than 90% of it after 1857. What I also discovered, as I continued to study the Fort, was that the way of life within it was very different from the way we live today. So much so that even if the missing parts of the Fort still existed, we would not be able to make sense of it. So, these attributes that I mentioned: observation, perception, imagination and empathy, had a big role to play in helping me visualise and reconstruct in my mind — and finally in my writing — what were the original spaces, forms and functions of the Fort. 

I would also like to underline that it was familiarity with the primary record of its architecture, incomplete as it was — through close scrutiny of not just its explicit forms, but of the entire canvas of the implicit systems within it, which furnished me with clues about how to excavate its memories. By undertaking a variety of geometrical, spatial and proportional studies, and accessing very diverse sources — court-histories, miniature paintings, accounts of flora, fauna, food-habits, festivals, drawings, maps, diaries, letters, local proverbs, government orders, archival panoramas — I could uncover a relationship between the architectural traces that remained, and fill in the gaps in the sequence of extant Mughal structures, to recover the likely location of missing buildings.

Looking beyond The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad

The book contains enough detail about my discovery and interpretation of the original attributes of the Fort. So what I am going to speak about is how the process of research and writing has helped me — not just to understand the Fort, which was my objective — but beyond that. It has led me to critically analyse design processes today, both my own and those I see around. It has guided me in devising methodologies to analyse architecture, regardless of whether it is labelled historic or otherwise. It has made comprehensible essential themes in the design of the Red Fort and its city of Shahjahanabad — which are not apparent today on the surface — as well as the biases which condition our cities today. It is these last two aspects that I will enlarge upon. 

As I now see them, 3 main themes as design objectives underly the visual representations and written descriptions of the Fort and city.

1. Permeability 
2. Energy 
3. Equity

Let me explain how. Permeability in the sense of both spatial permeability and social permeability, is manifest: 

1. In the very choice of the main building elements used in the Fort and city: such as colonnades, jalis, pavilions, gardens, forecourts, verandahs, chattris; 
2. In the very siting of the Fort and city — in their overall location, as well as in the location of different functions within them;
3. In the very configuration of these building elements within their locations on site, in the relationship and juxtapositioning of built and open space, and how they are surrounded by and connected to each other. 
4. And finally in how this choice, siting, and configuration of building elements and functions, grants opportunities for mingling of sensory experiences of sounds, scents, sights that flow between them, and for different sections of society to come together.

This pattern of a fluid building typology, composed of sequences of walled courtyards-verandahs-halls-pavilions: has been tried and tested in the Indian subcontinent from Harappan times, and some of its finest examples are visible within the Red Fort. As for Shahjahanabad, large havelis — around which smaller habitations clustered — were located throughout its different precincts. Architecturally, these havelis echoed on a smaller scale the pattern of buildings within the Fort: set around and within fountain-courts or gardens of orange, pomegranate, and other fruit trees. Fountain-courts and small orchards similarly formed the theme around which smaller homes in the city were arranged.

Like an Escher painting, as you zoom in and out of the city and Fort, different variations and scales of this interlinked pattern reveal themselves, simultaneously simple and complex; repeating the motif of social and spatial permeability.

How is this aspect of permeability related to energy? 

A porous urban structure through permutations of typologies that use a minimum number of buildings, ensures that construction costs and operational costs are kept low. These costs are also minimised by using open space intelligently so that there is least interference with geology, landform, or nature. We see this even in the richest and most expensive parts of Shahjahanabad. Additionally, the other device of making a permeable city — by maximising the use of gardens as open spaces, and maximising tree plantations in these gardens — also significantly reduces embodied and extended energy use. 

So, trees lined Chandni Chowk and Faiz Bazaar: the two widest and most ceremonial streets in the central east-west and southern part of Shahjahanabad, where the maximum amount of traffic and activities were centred. Canals drawing from the river-system flowed down their length. Large public gardens — which were essentially orchards — were located adjacent to these streets, and formed the grand finale around their junction with the imperial chowks right in front of the Fort. These tree plantations worked as bio-mass heat sinks: cooling tempers, shading the ground, recharging ground-water levels, filtering dust, and creating places of beauty. Narrower inner lanes were shaded by flanking buildings and could dispense with trees, which were instead planted within private and public gardens and courts in these areas. Other aspects of good practice we see in the design of both the Fort and Shahjahanabad reinforce efficient and egalitarian use of energy: through correct orientation of built structures; the use of shading devices in buildings and in open spaces; incorporating non-wasteful water-features such as shallow canals, fountains, wells; and celebrating the river. 

How does this achieve Equity? 

First, such a typology ensures there is enough public space and infra-structural provision for people to mingle among themselves throughout the city. The great number of open and semi-open spaces that punctuate different parts of Shahjahanabad in a well-thought out layout, allow both planned and spontaneous activity of a diverse kind, which is one of the hallmarks of urbanity. These spaces occur as shaded chowks, step-wells, ghats, colonnades along the streets, pavilions, public gardens, orchards, canals. Sources from different times record how people meet, stroll, play, picnic, watch spectacles, feast, swim, and participate in performances here. 

Such activities rooted in social equity are present in earlier cities too, as we learn from court descriptions of people gathering on the river-bank at Agra to enjoy the sight of the Yamuna decorated with tiny floating lamps as part of the celebrations of the wedding of Dara Shikoh. And as we see in miniature paintings like this which show the procession bearing nuptial gifts for his wedding. However, it is in the Red Fort and Shahjahanabad, which were conceived and created together that these activities are so thoughtfully provided for in a formal linked urban scheme. There is also designated space and time to intercede with the Emperor directly — in the Hall of Public Audience inside the Fort, or below his private balcony on the river bank. 

Additionally, the design of the city and Fort fosters climate equity, by allowing the cooling effects of the river to penetrate deeper into the city, so that as many people as possible share benefits of climate-protection. We see in different renditions that the urban landscape along the river-front is not blocked or clogged by a high density of buildings, but instead features many orchards amidst which are set a very few buildings. Possibly as part of this permeable design, the western parts of the Fort and the city, farthest away from the river, have a relatively denser built-mass and enclosing walls, while the Fort’s imperial pavilions and gardens as also many rich noblemen’s havelis and gardens, are located directly along the expanse of the Yamuna. They overlook green fields beyond the Yamuna banks, which is not built upon. 

Availability and ownership of space in Shahjahanabad was not reduced to a single denominator of wealth, but revolved around an overlapping basis of multiple affiliations. Thus, within the walls of the Fort, space was organised not merely for imperial use but for a multiplicity of interlinked functions from karkhanas to kitchen-gardens to courts of justice, and for many users including administrators, soldiers, attendants, craftspeople. Similarly, the home of each nobleman or prosperous trader or important official in the city, did not just house their families but also included around them various other homes and families with whom they had a mutually dependent relationship of patronage and service. The device of inner courts and gardens, and layers of space with their surrounding verandahs and halls, allowed multiple domains of privacy for these different groups.

Poorer people were not rendered invisible, or pushed to the outskirts. They were a part of each precinct and neighbourhood; key contributors to the economy and functioning of the city. Neighbourhoods, mohallas and katras were organised according to shared trades and professions, and accommodated many income and skill levels related to those communities of trades, who produced and created hand-crafted artefacts right in the city. So, spatial and functional equity were applied with sense and sensibility, unlike today when even things of everyday use, are made far away in different countries or continents.

Giving space to people

Let me expand on this. On first glance, it may seem that it is an inevitable and unfair benefit of privilege that the Emperor occupies the river-side, ringed around by trees and orchards. But such urban and architectural planning is not merely a situation of using power for personal benefit. There is an idea of ecological equity in such a siting. 

The Emperor and his family may have one of the best locations in the new city, but they do not monopolise this privilege. Instead, they use it to allow less affluent people in the city, access to both the physical space of the river-bank, as well as the climatic effect of the river. Thus, there is a daily morning ritual mentioned in Mughal-histories as well as people’s accounts, where the sandy river-banks in front of the Emperor’s private palaces on the eastern walls of the Fort are open to the populace of the city and empire: to get darshan of the Emperor, to be seen by him, and even to intercede directly for justice.

The decision to construct a small proportion of built structures close to the river, by locating rich patrons here who follow a typology of constructing not the maximum but only the optimum number of built-structures in the form of havelis with fore-courts, big orchards and pavilions, helped to reduce temperatures in two ways. First, the gardens, as part of the noblemen’s havelis, increased the bio-mass in the vicinity of the Yamuna; secondly, the configuration of a few buildings amongst gardens and orchards, channelised the micro-climate created by the Yamuna deeper into the city. It thus ensured that the breezes and cooling effect of the Yamuna were not just confined to the imperial palace-pavilions, or colonised by those lucky enough to be located next to the river. I call this the jali effect: the planning version of the architectural device of  the perforated screens that interspersed and connected the Fort’s imperial pavilions, especially along the river banks. 

Neither was the riverfront taken over entirely by private, or even by imperial functions. Though the Red Fort did command a swathe of the central river-view towards the eastern end of the city, and its high fortification walls came between the main Chandni Chowk street and the Yamuna; on either side of the Fort, the view opened up through public gardens. There were many public ghats too. Flanking the banks on the city-edge beyond the Red Fort, they had airy pavilions and chattris which stepped down along wide steps to the river itself. These ghats, accessible river-banks, and orchards, made the river-front both spatially and visually accessible to many people and permeable to cool river-breezes.

Imagine if instead of these, a dense collection of small, opaque, buildings had been positioned on the eastern edge of the city close to its river-banks. These would have obviously blocked both the river breeze and the river view. They would also have impeded public access to the banks. If we look at Shahjahanabad, pre-1857, before the British destroyed so much of it, we also see that even those of its parts located away from the Yamuna, were devised with an ever-present awareness of the river and its canals and feeder channels. Water was a central part of planning and living in the city; topographical routes, natural courses to the river were not interrupted, built upon or polluted.

Despite the appropriation and apportioning of many gardens and open spaces, and incursions into the physical and social fabric of the city by the British, a fair number of these still remained till 200 years after the Fort’s founding— as shown in records such as paintings of its river-facade from the 1820s, or the detailed 1846 map of Shahjahanabad, or photographs from a little before 1857. After 1857, the careful planning and ecological sensitivity of Shahjahanabad were reversed by British engineering, who among other things, covered over the central canals of Chandni Chowk and Faiz Bazaar, and turned important channels in the city into drains, including the one from Kabuli Gate.

Reading between the Lines

The observation and perception of these underlying themes of permeability, energy and equity, allows us to read between the lines, and beyond our prejudices and those of chroniclers of records. One of the principles of good research is to access diverse opinions, especially those who may seem to have an opposite point of view. 

One such was the French traveller, Francois Bernier, an inhabitant of Shahjahanabad, who gives us a picture of it  shortly after its establishment in the mid 17th century. Bernier as a European visitor writes ‘that the capital of Hindoustan is not destitute of handsome buildings, although they bear no resemblance to those in Europe’.9 

It is this lack of resemblance that seems to get in his way of understanding the logic of Shahjahanabad. He avers that ‘there are no streets like ours of S.Denis’, and ‘[t]hat which so much contributes to the beauty of European towns, the brilliant appearance of the shops, is wanting in Delhi. He observes that the ‘two principal streets of the city’ have ‘open shops, where, during the day artisans work, bankers sit...and merchants exhibit their wares’. He writes disparagingly about ‘the five streets apart from the two principal ones’, amid which are ‘dispersed the habitations of Mansebdars, rich merchants and others’…[i]ntermixed with these different houses is an immense number of small ones, built of mud and thatched with straw, in which lodge the common troopers, and all that vast multitude of servants and camp-followers…’. Indeed, Bernier cannot shake off his disapproval of the many 'wretched mud and thatch houses’ that are seen throughout the city. Bernier’s bias of believing mud and thatch to be inferior materials, is not necessarily shared by either the citizens or the rulers of Shahjahanabad. They are accepted as climate-friendly, easily renewable materials to be used as occasion demands especially when required for deferring capital expenditure. Even the walls of the city and imperial Shalimar Bagh pavilions are first constructed in sun-dried brick.

While noting that the ‘dwellings of the omrahs, though mostly situated on the banks of the river and in the suburbs, are yet scattered in every direction’, he writes of the shops, where: ‘For one that makes a display of beautiful and fine cloths, silk and other stuffs striped with gold and silver, turbans embroidered with gold, and brocades, there are at least five and twenty where nothing is seen but pots of oil or piles of butter, piles of basket filled with rice, barley, chick-peas, wheat, and an endless variety of other grain and pulse, the ordinary aliment not only of the Gentiles, who never eat meat, but of the lower class of Mahometans, and a considerable portion of the military.’

If we leave aside his conviction about the superiority of streets and cities in his own country, we can read between the lines in Bernier’s record, to see what they reveal about the physical form and social structure of the city. So, we see

• How it is designed to be inhabited by the rich and poor alike; 
• That it is the richer inhabitants who travel out (to their large estates, private gardens and baghs in the suburbs), while the very heart of the city makes space for the poor; 
• That there is an endless variety of people who throng the market in front of the Fort and the 'royal square’ adjoining it — the same space, where at night are encamped the Rajas who are assigned guard-duty for the Fort, and where the royal horses are exercised in the morning; 
• That the main entrance streets of the city have markets — not empty promenades or un-peopled vistas; 
• That these markets do not just display expensive 'lifestyle' wares (as in the malls today) but also basic grain and staple food for all, including the less affluent;
• And that these markets additionally accommodate artisans too, the mainstay of the economic system and the industrial base of the city — i.e. they make space for skills and knowledge as well as goods. In other words, the economic, technical, industrial, commercial, recreational aspects of the city are seamlessly integrated.

Thus, it is not as if the Fort and the city lacked formal and grand ordered and structured avenues, forecourts and gardens. But these were not segregated into manicured, superficial showpieces. They instead allowed and encouraged multiple functions by varying users. As one moved into the residential areas from these avenues and public gardens, greater degrees of architectural freedom and territorial adaptation of spaces were permissible. 

Such an urban character — democratic despite a political dispensation governed by a monarchy — is worth applauding and emulating. All the spatial and architectural clues of an inclusive city are here — if only we have the sensibility to see them: multi-functional flexible spaces catering to mixed-land use and mixed income groups; a proliferation of public open areas used differently by various people at different times of the day.

A city that makes the rich (who can afford it) travel out to the periphery of the city and keeps the centre accessible and inviting even for the less rich while creating opportunities usable by all classes and kinds of people; a city that organises market and support activities on main travel nodes. A city that celebrates the river it draws life from; that gives back to the earth to stands on. A humane, equitable and ecologically responsible city. 

Increasing Perception and Empathy

In my under-graduate years at the School of Planning and Architecture at Delhi, I was unaware that the Yamuna flowed practically under our noses — even though we were located on its erstwhile banks, just a few kilometres south of the Red Fort. In the late 1980s and early 90s, the intimidating width of the Ring Road and the looming bulk of the Indira Gandhi Stadium, obscured all sight or sense of the river — as it does even more today.

The river — the very reason for continuous inhabitation in the region of Delhi from pre-historic times — did not also figure in the academic design exercises set to us by our galaxy of distinguished faculty. The Yamuna did not have any presence or role in developing our design thinking, unless we had family or personal associations with it. Many of us came to SPA from different parts of the country. For us, the Yamuna was rendered invisible and superfluous in the planning of the city. Perhaps that is why it continues to evade the collective imaginations of generations of graduates and practitioners even from reputedly one of the premier institutes of architecture and planning in the country.

In contrast, when I was re-reading The Shahjahanama of Inayat Khan recently, (this is an abridgement of the court-histories of Shah Jahan by his librarian, Inayat Khan) I was struck by this statement.

 ‘Several years before, the thought came to his Majesty’s omniscient mind that he should select some pleasant site on the banks of the aforesaid river, distinguished by its genial climate, where he might find a splendid fort and delightful edifices.’

The process of research, analysis and writing on the Fort and city, including its spatial and geometrical analysis, makes me appreciate the significance of this statement. But most people today would be unable to match this quote to the place: that the ‘aforesaid river’ mentioned above is none other than the Yamuna in the heart of the NCR, the National Capital Region of Delhi.

The decision 400 years ago to ‘select some pleasant site on the banks of the river, distinguished by its genial climate’, for ‘a splendid fort and delightful edifices’ shows us that site selection was a matter of careful concern based on appropriateness for habitation, particularly from the point of view of climate and geology. What is unmistakable in the vision of the city, is that the river permeates its very conception. As The Shahjahanama of Inayat Khan records:Shah Jahan]‘] ‘envisioned that streams of water should be made to flow through the proposed fort and that its terraces overlook the river’. 

Celebrating the River

As I re-read Bernier’s records of his stay in Shahjahanabad, I understand that his note ‘Excepting the side where it is defended by the river, the city is encompassed by walls of brick,’ should not be read as just a stray comment or a tardy response to defense — which is what Bernier presumes and which we may accept as an obvious conclusion — but appreciated for its value in making the city permeable for climatic and social benefit.

And so, as I look beyond the Fort at activists highlighting how the pollution in Yamuna is at its worst today, I understand that the first step in making rivers live again, is to release their banks from colonisation by large buildings, power stations, bus parking, tarmac, concrete, high fences, noxious use. To make them visible and permeable as they were in Shahjahanabad. It is because the river and its nahrs and channels have been covered over, hidden or pushed away from people, that have hastened its transformation into a sewer. The ritual occasional use for visarjan or shraddh bring this pollution into view and close contact for brief periods, and are forgotten or ignored again after that.

Yet, like Bernier, our references for urban models are increasingly based only on those that generate an impressive public appearance and show, or are characterised by imposing and awe-inspiring regularity. The Dutch educator and architect, N J Habraken, in his masterly analysis in The Appearance of the Form, explains the different world-views and ‘fundamental collective images concerning shared space’. These govern both the role, and therefore, the form of public space. In Western contexts, these are generally inviolate and cannot be questioned. Thus, predetermined geometries and fixed boundaries define and present public space with authority. In many eastern cultures, however, public space is an arena as well as an outcome of negotiation. There is less obsession with creating form. Instead the emphasis is on a complex web of relationships, which in turn generates particular social and territorial patterns in an economic and efficient manner.

To put this in context, imagine for a moment that the India Gate vista leading up to Rashtrapati Bhawan has colonnades for formal markets and spontaneous pop-ups; for craftspeople to work; for tailors, watch-repair stalls, food vendors. Not prim lines of trees but orchards and public spaces — free and open for musicians, story-tellers, artistes and orators to practise and perform. Imagine the effect of planting native fruit and medicinal trees and shrubs; of garden groves along roads. Of planning for people rather than vehicles. Of cleaner air and happier citizens. Imagine the city as a place of learning and healing. If that seems difficult, instead invest in an effort of memory. Think back to a summer, when despite the ominous virus and the devastation, cities were cool and non-toxic, streets and skies were unprecedentedly welcoming of vegetation, birds and animals. You may then perhaps be able to imagine that transformation that Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel sing about when they say: ‘I'd rather be a forest than a street’. And through a combination of imagination with empathy, observation and perception, maybe we all can get the forest back in our streets and cities — as it perhaps was once in the Red Fort and Shahjahanabad.