Representations and Realities: Tracing Missing Bits and Misconceptions -- The Case of the Red Fort

Keynote Address to Conference on 'Remembering Architecture, Excavating Memory’

Department of English, Ramjas College, Delhi University

24 February 2023

Thank you for inviting me to an exploration of the connections between architecture, memory and literature. And the opportunity to re-visit my own thoughts on this. The very idea of re-visitation is central to what I have to say — the keynote of my address on ‘Remembering Architecture’. 

We approach the past through memories. 

Memories are recorded in our minds. And in myriad ways in words, or by hands: as texts, as drawings, as pictures, as sculpture and as architecture. But these events, however immediate they seem, are mediated by external and internal senses of perception. We know this not just from abstract texts on philosophy, or even from crime fiction where the unravelling of the mystery depends on the detective ploughing through testimonies of different ‘witnesses’ to the crime, but also from daily experience. Memory alters both perception and recollection. No two independent versions in newspaper reports of a current event, presented by two different people even if observed at the same time, will be identical. They can, in fact, be very dissimilar. What we may call the ‘Rashoman Effect’ that Akira Kurosawa demonstrates for us so brilliantly and disturbingly.

So, which version do we believe? In other words, how much can we rely upon representations of memory to convey the realities of what they aim to record? This is the question that especially confronts us in the case of past events that we cannot approach physically or observe ourselves — though it is a moot point how much reliance we can place upon our own senses. Can we pronounce with certainty that what we may have retained is the essence, and what has perhaps been thrown away — like coffee grounds — is insignificant? Physicists and philosophers remind us that all our attempts to register anything, are quite literally re-presentations, since by the time it travels to our senses: however infinitesimally small that time may be, the moment or sight or sound is already past. Taken in this literal sense, no event and its recording can ever be simultaneous or present in the same moment — and each is a memory.

Even if we disregard the implication of such minute allocations of time, our knowledge of events — whether through records made by someone present at a particular time in the past, or later — are re-presentations in another way. They are impressions filtered by not just the organs of perception, but also by the conceptions, abilities or intentions of those who make them. It would seem then that all records of the past are secondary sources. The only ones that may be termed primary sources are those we can still come close to perceiving in a primary way: those of architecture and archaeology. Archaeological records are however, more fragmented than historic architecture, and are often simply not open-to-view. They may be underground, or far from their original settings. In contrast, it is more difficult to dislocate architecture, though not impossible. 

The record of historical architecture — where it exists — also differs from all others, in that we can experience it through not just one, but practically all our physical senses. We can view and touch it, be enclosed and encompassed in it, hear the sound of our voices and footsteps as we walk within and around it — in similar even if not in exactly the same ways as did those who created and inhabited it. In other words, we can interact in various ways with architecture — which is not just the setting or record of events of life, but also the event itself. There are multiple levels at which we can engage with it and multiple layers of information contained in it. The act of creating architecture, even when done with the objective of commemorating a stated purpose, contains more than that. Conversely, even when there are no stated objectives of memorialising, we can trace in the way architecture is built, lived in, and transformed, a record of what people held important, what they remembered or wish to remember, what were their craft, technology or management skills. In The Order of Time, Carlo Rovelli, ‘the poet of physics’ as he has been called, explains how ‘the second principle of thermodynamics…is the only equation of fundamental physics that knows any difference between past and future. The only one that speaks of the flowing of time.’ This equation, he tells us, provides the mathematical definition of the variation of entropy of a body: the sum of the quantity of heat leaving the body at a temperature. He goes on to say: 

’the growth of entropy distinguishes the past from the future for us and leads to the unfolding of the cosmos. It determines the existence of traces, residues and memories of the past. We human beings are an effect of this great history of the increase of entropy, held together by the memory that is enabled by these traces.’

Though we can see architecture as the most direct manifestation of such ‘traces, residues and memories of the past’ and of their effect on us as ‘human beings, held together by the memory enabled by these traces’ — especially since certain kinds of architecture can last through several human lifetimes — yet it is also precisely because it contains so many memories of so many interactions that it is easy to be led astray in interpreting what we perceive of such architecture, even through our own senses. Especially when we have missing bits to contend with.

So, how do we read this primary resource, so that we may extract the memories encoded in it? I would like to explore this general question through the specific example of what has been variously known through different times as: the Qila-e-Mualla, Qila-e-Mubarak, Lal Haveli, Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, Dilli ka Lal Qila etc. From the epithet of ‘The Most Magnificent Palace in the East’ by James Fergusson, to the brusque and noncommittal title of ‘The Fort’ that it was called in British official records after they took over in 1857, these different names, and how and which we remember or use, reflect the different associations of this complex piece of historic architecture. I will also, through a couple of examples, hope to partially touch upon how far its representations match its reality — within the constraints of the time we have today. Please bear in mind, that my reading of the Red Fort, is inescapably coloured through my own filter.

Reading the Red Fort: What is — and What may have been

The Red Fort is a particularly good example for our purpose, because of its iconic reputation and role in the political and cultural sphere of the subcontinent — in fact of the world; as well as its sheer size, complexity and the great degree of transformation it has been subject to. Though its towering red walls loom large on the cityscape and the imagination of Delhi, very few structures from its original conception remain with us today — only about 10 percent. Inevitably then, its walls and gateways are practically all that leave an impress upon our memory, even after we have wandered or walked within it. When I first visited the Red Fort, incoherent as its interior seemed to be, 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. At the same time, I could read the absence, albeit in a confused way, of what was not there: from my memory of what ought to be attributes of Shahjahani or Mughal architecture, and equally from my professional training about what a place that accommodated the functions of life, ought to be. I could also tell that the British barracks were evidently later intrusions, even though there was no information on site to help realise how much of the Fort was destroyed in 1857 and after.

To give an analogy from literature, the Fort may be likened to a large book, whose seemingly intact hard-bound cover is moth-eaten around the edges. When you turn the cover, you discover that most pages inside are missing. In the few that remain, the text has been so erased that only some scattered words of the original story are visible: in a half-familiar script that is not completely legible, crossed-out and overlaid by insertions in a different language and a different hand. How do we then read such an incomplete manuscript? This is the challenge posed by the erasure and reordering of so much of the primary record of the iconic Red Fort. 

To continue the analogy: it is evident that first, we must glean what we can from what remains of the book itself — by becoming as proficient as we can in the original script that it uses, to gauge the quality of language used, and understand what it describes. My being a Dilliwallah and my training as an architect helped to an extent, but finally it was only my repeated revisits to the Fort that allowed me to glimpse its many stories, plots and sub-plots. To put it simply, I knew that Shah Jahan had got the Red Fort built, and had lived here. But it was difficult to reconcile its disconnected isolated structures, with the regal splendour associated with Shah Jahan and his other magnificent acts of patronage. It was also impossible to understand how he or anyone else could have lived in it — which as an architect, was my main question. Thus, the primary record of the Fort yielded clues to what it was, as well as what it may have been. Even the absence of certain architectural features on site furthered my understanding. The realisation that they were missing-bits, directed my search to other sources: but only because I had some of the primary record of the few extant structures of the Red Fort, and I kept these in sight as reference. These kept me on track, and steered me away from incorrect conclusions. 

Whose Perspective

If you’ll forgive the pun, I’d like to illustrate this through some drawings of the Red Fort by British artists in the mid-19^th century. These drawings figure in different collections. They appear realistic; and are from all accounts, based on actual observation on site. They show the Fort from the vantage point of the ridge across and beyond the river, drawn during or just before the momentous events of 1857, which saw scenes of intense battle in and around Shahjahanabad. As we know, the Red Fort’s outer walls and inner structures suffered extensive damage by shelling in 1857, and unabashed looting and destruction after the British forces moved in to the Fort, as the symbolic seat of the Mughal empire. We also know that as a consequence of the palace demolition order carried out in 1863, most of the structures within it, and stretching around its boundary walls upto a distance of 500 yards, were ordered to be reduced to rubble. On the face of it, these drawings, showing as they do, an unbroken Fort and its inner buildings and outer adjacencies drawn realistically according to the rules of perspective, seem invaluable in re-constructing its reality just before its large-scale and violent destruction and re-modelling by the British authorities in power. 

However, a comparison with existing Mughal buildings in the Fort, as well as with maps, drawings and other descriptions, reveals that these views of ‘Delhi and its surrounding countryside’ re-order the configuration of the Red Fort’s built-form. Firstly, they greatly transform its outer profile, its neighbourhood and other parts of Shahjahanabad. Secondly, they completely eliminate the numerous pavilions, forecourts, gateways, enclosed gardens and arcades within the Red Fort. Thirdly, they reduce the interior of the Fort to a couple of towering buildings, depicted within an open area entered through a wide driveway flanked by trees and shrubbery. It is not a record of what really existed, but an Orientalised image of a stately European or English home.

Despite this rather glaring mis-representation, the preface to an official publication of the Kolkata Victoria Memorial Hall containing this and similar artworks by European artists, claims that ‘these paintings reflected images as in a mirror’ whose ‘credibility and fidelity remain above board’. We are urged to see these as ‘study-based endeavours in which no room is left for the imagination’. Such acceptance of ‘eye-witness’ records, without comparing them with what they purport to depict, leads us twice astray. First, it makes us see them as the ‘true’ reality of what existed. Secondly, it effects our perception, by making us see in these the standard image for monumental architecture. And therefore, the desirable template for making architecture, even in our times. As I mentioned in the beginning, memory alters both perception and recollection. 

The rendering of the Red Fort into re-presentations by British artists, may have been an unconscious act affected by memories of grand edifices in their own culture. But we must also remember that regulated access within the Red Fort to visitors and to residents of Shahjahanabad, was possible in many but not all areas. Entry to its inner, private areas was especially restricted. It is unlikely that these artists would have had the opportunity to therefore actually enter many parts of the Fort. Unfamiliar as they were with the very different forms, scale and layout of the indigenous tradition of architecture that the Red Fort was a development of, and the culture and world-view it emanated from, it is not surprising then that they depict it not as it was, but as best they could make sense of what they could see of it.

Apart from drawing on their individual skills as well as the store-house of memories of what they were used to and their expectations of an imperial residence, these artists were also recording for viewers back home, a simplistic image of unfamiliar architecture, seen as exotic if effete and inferior. Many Europeans stereotyped Indian rulers as decadent despots, and imagined the Red Fort as a den of vice. For instance, John Dryden, considered the greatest English poet of the later 17th century, themed one of his most successful plays on Shah Jahan’s Court, filling it with intrigue, improper amour and imaginary characters. That, Dryden, poet laureate in 1668 CE was also appointed royal historiographer of England in 1670 — and that his play Aurangzebe, first staged in November 1675 for the King of England, continues to be described as ‘the last and most intelligent example of the genre’ of a heroic play — shows us that literary merit and historical authenticity may be two different things, but can still be confused for each other.

To come back to the visiting artists, they were responding both to the prejudices and principles of where they came from, and reacting to the very different principles of architecture in the Red Fort. One important difference was in the way open space was articulated, and its relationship with built structures. For instance, the many forecourts, enclosed gardens, colonnades, pavilions and verandahs that the artists omitted from their drawings, were not part of their way of life. These were, however, integral to the form and functioning of the Fort where space, as it were, flowed effortlessly between inside and outside along with views, smells and sounds.

The Distortion of Singular Memories 

Along with such inherent limitations of secondary records, there are also instances where these deliberately reinforce a particular memory — as in the way in which physical remnants of the Fort were presented to a European audience to memorialise the British version of what occurred in 1857, and to justify their violence towards the city of Shahjahanabad and its people and ruler. One such is Felice Beato’s much reproduced photograph of the Forecourt of the Naubat Khana or Naqqar Khana, captioned: ‘Inner Gateway of Palace, with the tree under which the Christians were massacred’. As Narayani Gupta notes: ‘The account of this cowardly deed was to be so highly exaggerated that, when the British forces captured Delhi in September 1857, many of them slaughtered children and women in what they thought was retribution’.

The photograph deliberately highlights this much recounted tragic episode. The visual composition and the wording of the title, makes the Naqqar Khana — reduced to the ambiguity of the ‘Inner Gateway of Palace’ — recede so much in the background, that the fact that the photograph is an invaluable record of the presence and proportions of an important part of the Fort demolished by the British, escapes attention. This is the effect not just on those whose interest is in memorialising the incident, or on a casual observer, but also on many researchers. That I registered the presence of these vital architectural components and could use these in tracing and visualising the original conception of the Red Fort, is again only because of sustained engagement with the primary resource of its extant Mughal structures.

I would like to give you another example of how familiarity with the primary record of architecture, through close scrutiny of not just explicit forms, but of the entire canvas of implicit systems characteristic of architecture from specific times and places, may furnish clues to ways of excavating its memories. Through undertaking a variety of geometrical, spatial and proportional studies of the Red Fort, I was able to literally fill in the gaps in the sequence of the extant Mughal structures, and thereby recover the location of its missing bits. This spatial reconstruction was corroborated by a fortuitous discovery of a plan made by the British, documenting what they intended to demolish. Again, it was through a realisation of something significant being absent, and of uncovering a relationship between the architectural traces that remained, that I could in the first place, position these missing parts. And consequently, recognise the value of the document that recorded evidence of this vital relationship, when I accidentally came across it in the ASI archives.  

Literary records

We have so far looked at instances of visual records, dating from two hundred years after the Fort’s establishment. What of literary records? Those contemporary with its founding such as official court-histories, are often called primary sources. They cannot however, really be termed so because they refract the three-dimensional experience of architecture into words, through the gaze of the one who is recording or writing. Given this caveat, let us look at a portion of the Badshahnama commissioned by Shah Jahan. This, the combined work of Abdul Ahmed Lahori and Muhammad Waris in Persian, available in partially published form, covers the time that the Red Fort was established (i.e. between 1639 and 1648 CE). The translated description of the Fort’s founding, undoubtedly helps to picture the detail and decoration of its original buildings, as well as their dimensions and materials. However, it does not, by itself, help to understand the basic fabric of the Fort.

This is because the Badshahnama— illustrated with formal miniature paintings of portraits or framed views of selected areas — does not cover all of the Fort, even the private imperial domain and the formal entrance sequences leading to it, with which it is principally concerned. The authors of the Badshahnama rhapsodising about the ‘grandness and beauty of this mighty Fort’, write that ’Its structures are beyond imagination. Its every corner is dazzling and every direction full of heavenly gardens…The qualities of these buildings are so high that none can elaborate on them’. The writing — whether poetic, eulogistic, or recording specific dimensions of the plan or structures — does not describe or convey the spatial quality of the Fort, which, as I mentioned, was an elegant permutation of inter-linked built and open space. It is, in any case, for literary ability in coining phrases or sentences in a manner that appealed to the Emperor rather than architectural knowledge, that Lahori — coming after a succession of writers given access to exhaustive data pooled from different parts of the empire — was chosen as the author of the Badshahnama!

Neither the text nor the miniatures cover the parts of the Fort where the attendants and soldiers lived or worked — even though these are integral to its original conception as a city-within-a-city and its subsequent functioning. In other words, the official record of the founding and original form of the Fort also has ‘missing bits’. We deduce the existence of these missing bits and understand their diverse complexity from other sources: maps, drawings, travelogues, earlier Mughal Forts etc. What this also tells us, is that rarely is a record complete in itself. It is by looking at multiple frames of reference and memories, that we come close to a more complete picture of the reality we are trying to understand. And, as I hope I have shown, it is only by revisiting the primary record of what remains on ground — and consciously recognising the absence of what does not — that we can trace the essential attributes of these records from earlier times. And realise the many misconceptions in which we see, conserve, or write about them today. 

On revisiting and examining the primary record of the Red Fort, we realise that its refined resolution of space, was in many ways, the grand finale of a tradition where buildings were not used as sealed objects sitting in space, but interlinked with open areas and each other: permeable, efficient and adaptive to different seasons and multiple use by a wide number and variety of people across the social spectrum. Such an expression of architecture was the embodiment of the underpinnings of life in the sub-continent with coexisting plural and spatial identities, and multiple affiliations. Yet, despite this fact of an inclusive philosophy central to its creation and functioning, we paradoxically reinforce the appearance and use of the Fort set forth during its colonial occupation. It is now an exclusive, aloof and barred space, occasionally used as a stage-set and backdrop for celebrations that ironically dwell on its memory as a symbol of resistance to colonial British rule — while continuing colonial concepts of rigidly keeping people out.

The Red Fort like all architecture, is an act of community. It is particularly important for us to dwell on this in a conference themed on ‘Remembering Architecture, Excavating Memory’. Architecture cannot be built single-handedly. Nor conceived as the outcome of one mind, however unique it may appear. We bring forth architecture through a coalescing of recollections and practices internalised through training or temperament; through the play of cherished memories of light and space, constituted equally of places we have inhabited or visited, as of real or imaginary places we have read about and visualised. The more diverse and varied these spaces and thoughts, the richer are our memories, our minds and our lives. The Red Fort, like other architecture from times before us, bears the imprint of many lives, spaces, embodied knowledge-systems and skills. It is in our own individual and collective interest, to comprehend these memories and knowledge-systems, and discover through these the ‘unfolding of the cosmos’ as it were.

Thus, the Naqqar Khana, is the scene of tragic events, and happy ones. The setting for court-musicians marking with drums and cymbals the presence of the emperor on the throne in the Diwan-i-am, it is also the place where some emperors lost their lives. It is the final element in a dramatic spatial sequence, the point where noblemen, visiting ambassadors and everyone not of imperial Mughal blood, dismounted before passing in — and where the British official Francis Hawkins had the temerity not to: and consequently had the palace affairs removed from under his jurisdiction. It is a way of seeing how buildings were constructed three-hundred years ago, and a lesson in how something may be simultaneously a marker of space, a gateway, and a music-chamber. It is an exercise in proportions, a configuration of arches that are both structure and decoration; it is the panels of carved red sandstone flowers, the delicate underside of the dome under which you pass. And so much more. What it, or the Red Fort that it is a part of, evokes in us and how we remember it, ultimately reflects what we are. What I have analysed so far is how I see it through my filter, even as I base it on direct experience of its physical form. 

I end with a different filter: a poet’s evocation of the realities and remembrances that the Red Fort constitutes for him. A testimony to the ability of history and architecture to fire imagination and empathy — this is the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, originally in Bengali and here, through my imperfect translation in English. 

You have gone away

Emperor, today;

Your empire like a dream has flown. 

In pieces lies your throne; 

Your soldiers, whose marching feet 

Made the earth ring and beat,

Their memory carried on the wind today  

Flies after the dust of Delhi’s streets. 

Within your walls are songs no more;

With the Yamuna no longer does the naubat roar; 

The sound of the anklets your perfect women once wore 

Dies away with the crickets’ drones,

In the corners of your broken palaces 

As the night-sky mourns.

Even so, your messenger ever high,

Unsoiled, untiring,

Above the ruins of empires rising, 

Above the turn of life and death, 

Through time and after in a breath

Of bereavement infinite

Avers without respite 

“Beloved, I have not forgotten, nor will I.”

Revisiting the Red Fort: Looking again at the Lal Qila

Online Talk Recorded for the India International Centre, New Delhi  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoyFZf7j21Q&feature=youtu.be 

The Most Magnificent Palace in the East: The Red Fort of Shah Jahan, the King of the World

The Most Magnificent Palace in the East: The Red Fort of Shah Jahan, the King of the WorldThe lecture delivered at the ATTIC, New Delhi 11 November 2008
By
Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

Good Evening. I would like to begin my talk today on the Red Fort of Delhi, once called ‘The Most Magnificent Palace in the East’ with an image, which most of us present here―if not all of us―will instantly recognize. In fact, so would four year old children across the country who have just entered formal school!
This image is a part of the Red Fort’s outer walls—the Lahori Gate, to be precise, atop which the Indian Flag proudly waves. Each Independence Day, it is this view of the Fort that we salute, that is telecast through the country and routinely printed on the front pages of our newspapers. Ironically, however, this overwhelming focus on the Red Fort as a national icon bound so inseparably with the identity of independant India and its struggle for freedom against British rule, has actually directed attention away from its unique design. A design which has inspired at different times and varying levels, all manner of art and architecture within and beyond the Mughal Empire—Sikh religious buildings, Rajput palaces, residences of noblemen and of ordinary people.

Nonetheless, today, despite the fact that the ‘Lal Quila’ is so deeply symbolic of not just Delhi but also of India—used to advertise products from basmati rice to restaurants in Soho in London—for many of us the 15th August view is all there is to the Red Fort. We literally and figuratively stop short at its Lahori Gate, rarely bothering to proceed within it or.wonder about its long and chequered historical existence. For instance, how many of us realise that even the familiar view with the mound and the ramparts from where the Prime Minister addresses the nation, is actually the antithesis of the Fort’s original design?! The original entrance to the Lahori Gate built three hundred and fifty years ago in the reign of the 5th Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, was straight and open to view. It was not hidden by a wall or by a mound, in keeping with Shah Jahan’s actual and metaphorical accessibility to his people. The outer wall in front of the Lahori Gate which we see today in fact, reverses the very notion of the Fort’s original function and appearance. This wall—as well as that in front of the other main public Gateway into the Fort, the Delhi Gate—was made on the orders of Shah Jahan’s son, Aurangzeb, shortly after he defeated his brothers in the battle for the Mughal Throne, and imprisoned his ailing father at the Agra Fort. Shah Jahan is reported to have then written to him, ‘Dear Son, you have made the Fort a bride and put a veil upon her face’.1

All representations of the Fort since then, whether in drawings of 19th century Delhi that we just saw, or the Delhi Tourism’s official calendars in the 20th century, have been defined by this forbidding veil in front of its public Gateways, which was made even more opaque by the British during their takeover of the Fort. This occured in 1857, a little more than two hundred years after the founding of the Fort. I would like to draw aside this veil, which has obscured not just the physical view of the Red Fort’s interior, but also changed its relationship with its city of Shahjahanabad, and take you within the huge Fort today. To revisit the spaces in it and give you some idea of what it contained originally, what it symbolized in the Mughal way of life, why the pioneering British historian-explorer James Fergusson termed it ‘the most magnificent palace in the East’, what is its relevance today and how it should be regarded and conserved.

This understanding of the Fort that I am going to present has been pieced together after sifting through the various depictions of its past existences available today—including the Mughal dynasty’s court routine recorded in official court chronicles and Mughal miniature paintings, and personal diaries of individuals associated with the Fort, European travelogues, photographs and drawings—and after studying the original Mughal structures that presently exist in the Fort.

Interestingly, a map dating from the eighteenth century exists in the Oriental and India Office Collection at the British Library which serves as a fairly accurate illustration of the current incomplete perception of the Fort. It also appears to eerily foretell the Fort’s tragic future. In this map, the artist has chosen to draw only the Fort’s outer walls (simplified into a rectangle) enclosing a blank open space inside! We can only surmise about the reasons for doing so. Perhaps it is an incomplete drawing based on a fleeting visit with no time for detailed observation? Perhaps the artist was disallowed from entering within the Fort yet was sufficiently impressed with the sight of its vast red circuit to record it willy-nilly in some form? Perhaps the artist was more interested in recording the Fort’s boundaries and the gardens around it?

Whatever the reasons for representing the Fort in this manner, the interior of the Red Fort has changed so radically since then, that today, it resembles the empty space in this map to an astonishing degree. The actual profile of the Fort and the density and variety of the original spaces and structures within it, may be seen in a map of the mid-1840s, one of its most detailed representations. Unfortunately, only a miniscule number of these original elements of the Fort exist today, as you may see in a redrawn version from the same map, where the extant structures have been highlighted.

This radical transformation of the Red Fort occured a hundred and fifty years ago, perhaps at a time when our great-grandfathers or our great-great grandfathers were alive. In a culmination of the repeated plunder that the Fort suffered due to its position as the foremost seat of the Mughal Empire and the fame of its decorative and material riches, the British, after their victory over the last Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar in 1857, indulged in deliberate desecration at an incredible scale. In 1860, a little more than two years after they took over the Fort, they passed an order to demolish not only all buildings within 500 metres around the Red Fort, but also more than eighty percent of its original pavilions, colonnades, gardens, gateways and courtyards. Barracks for the British army stationed within the Fort were made in their place.

The transformation that this act caused can be understood more clearly when we compare the number of structures and the manner in which they exist today, with the original configuration. The built structures have been shaded black in the plans of the Fort, before and after the destruction. A photograph of the area from the top of Jama Masjid shortly after the demolition also shows the empty spaces around the Fort, making it an island severed of its connecting links to Shahjahanabad.

Within the Red Fort, the few Mughal structures that escaped total demolition, were looted of their valuable and decorative effects. Stripped of their gilded copper domes, the precious stones inlaid in their walls, their carved marble panels, they were used as military prisons, canteens, refreshment rooms, mess lounge, hospitals. Even after first being restored in the early 20th century, to present the Fort as a showpiece to visiting British royalty and aristocracy, they were mere shadows of their former selves. They continue to exist today as a strange mélange of a few forlorn pavilions amidst stern barracks, temperamental lawns, groups of trees, tarred roads and stagnant water. Thus, even the Fort’s custodians today may find it easier to relate its official title of Qila-i-Mubarak, the exalted fortress, with the earlier Mughal Forts such as those in Agra and Lahore which seem more imperial. It is only by resolutely ignoring the later intrusions and carefully examining the original components of the Red Fort, that one can discern and appreciate their beautiful proportions and the remnants of their stunning and intricate craftsmanship.

Compare these views to the vibrant reality of the Fort’s appearance and functioning even two hundred years after its founding, under the later Mughal rulers. These panoramas of the Fort, now in the OIOC Collection of the British Library were probably drawn in the fourth decade of the nineteenth century. The first slide shows the southern part of the Fort, and the entrance from the Delhi Gate. The second shows the ceremonial Chatta Bazzar entered from the Lahori Gate, leading on to the audience-halls and imperial pavilions beyond. In both the views, the Fort’s proximity to the Yamuna river is clearly visible, as is its interface with the city and the multitude of activities and
structures in it. We may do well to remind ourselves that these date not from Shah Jahan’s time but from the early decades of the nineteenth century, almost exactly two hundred years from the date when the Red Fort was inaugurated by Shah Jahan. At this time, the fortunes and power of the later Mughal rulers were vastly reduced; their resources and empire were a fraction of Shah Jahan’s.The Fort’s appearance when it was inhabited by
Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb thus, would have been many, many times more fascinating.

How was it that the Fort’s designed form and function continued virtually unchanged for two hundred years? That, even when its buildings were shorn of much of their trappings and decoration, their formality diluted with additional structures constructed in an inferior architectural style, when their ruler was in many ways just a figurehead with little money or actual authority, they were still impressive enough to be widely admired? Not only the inhabitants of the city for whom the Fort symbolised much more than its physical appearance, but even the marauding British soldiers intent on plundering it in the days after its last Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar was defeated and imprisoned, regarded it with awe. Some of these soldiers later recorded their memory of its ‘gorgeous domes and minarets’, ‘the vast size of this castellated palace with its towering embattled walls’, just as Lady Emily Bailey, the daughter of the powerful British Resident, Sir Thomas Metcalfe who first saw it in 1848, recollected its ‘sublimely beautiful buildings’. These images of the palaces and pavilions in the Fort, which she unreservedly praised as‘exquisite buildings of white marble ...in the style of the Taj’ p. 168 were commissioned for her father, Sir Thomas Metcalfe, barely a decade before it was destroyed. Photographs of these buildings from the mid-nineteenth century also show the complexity, density and beauty of the spaces in the Fort.

Before speaking of the attributes of the Fort’s design which allowed it to retain its original form for all these years between its founding and these pictures, we need to first comprehend the circumstances and times in which it was established, and its importance in the Mughal empire.

To begin with, we must realize that right from its conception, to its construction to its functioning, the Red Fort is unrivalled anywhere in the world. It was designed and built as a holistic venture along with an entire city—the only such urban Mughal palace complex of its kind. The construction of the Fort was finished in just 10 years. In itself this is a huge venture, as I am sure we can all appreciate especially when we compare this to contemporary construction. Imagine an entire city and palace being constructed in 10 years today, even with the aid of modern technology! However, apart from the remarkable managerial and construction skills manifest in the building of the Red Fort, the fact that it and Shahjahanabad were planned and built at one time, allowed Shah Jahan’s builders to not only address all the problems of access, or overcrowding in the earlier, older Mughal cities and Forts such as in Lahore and Agra but also to plan for future expansion and to provide a magnificent enough setting befitting one of the richest and most cultured medieval kingdoms in the world. All the earlier forts established by the Great Mughals, whether at Agra, Lahore, Allahabad, were built over the reigns of different Mughal rulers and were therefore amalgamations of various styles and modes of construction. The architectural forms and spaces which had been experimented with in the earlier Forts, were thus brought to fruitition in the design of the Red Fort.

2. The Red Fort may therefore be said to be the grand finale to imperial Mughal forts, just as the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan’s most famous act of patronage was the grand finale to imperial Mughal tomb-gardens. The Fort set the trend for domestic as well as ceremonial architecture all over the Mughal empire; and for subsequent and contemporary kingdoms in the sub-continent. In fact, in its original form, many parts of the Red Fort had the same quality of refined luxury as, the Taj Mahal still does. Like the Taj, the Fort was crafted and built with perfect proportion and detail, by an imperial array of master-craftsmen, master-masons and overseers. When the Fort’s foundations were marked out on the 29th of April 1639 AD, during the second decade of Shah Jahan‘s reign, its design was reportedly led by the master-architect Ustad Hamid and his brother Ustad Ahmed Lahori, who, some sources claim was associated with the building of the Taj Mahal too. Records show that the best craftsmen and designers decorated the Red Fort with Fatehpur Sikri sandstone, the finest Makrana marble, glass imported from Allepi, and a range of semi-precious stones, gold and silver from all over the trade centres associated with the Mughal empire. The same care that Shah Jahan commanded his trusted aides, master-masons and artists to expend on the mausoleum of his beloved wife, was used to craft his living areas and those of his family. Shah Jahan’s official court-histories record how he often made detours in his administrative or political visits, so that he could inspect the construction at the Fort.

3. In fact, it is often forgotten that the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort were
contemporary acts of building. The Taj was finished barely two years before Shah Jahan grandly celebrated the completion of his magnificent Red Fort in 1648. Both the Fort and the Taj were thus, created at the peak of Shah Jahan’s patronage, a period universally recognized as one of the pinnacles of world art and architecture. They represent the highly evolved design consciousness of Shah Jahan and his team of architects, artisans, craftsmen and artists.

4. However, the Fort was simultaneously far more complex and intimate than even the Taj Mahal. While the Taj was essentially designed as a mausoleum set within a Mughal garden, with its mosque and ancillary supporting buildings, the Red Fort was composed of many more kinds of buildings, gardens, spaces and functions. Not just a tomb or a garden, or even a mere imperial residence, which is the ordinary western conception or definition of a palace, the Red Fort was like a city within a city. It was designed to function simultaneously as a showpiece of the Mughal empire, the residence of the Mughal imperial household, an administrative centre, recreational space, as well as a cultural focus for Shahjahanabad. To put this into context, we can compare the Escorial, one of the largest palaces in Europe, constructed in the reign of Philip II in the mountains above Madrid in 1563, about eighty years before the Fort. Its size at 204 metres by 162 metres (670 feet by 530 feet), made it closer than most other renaissance royal buildings to the scale of a small city. Yet it was five times smaller in area than just the inner palace of the Red Fort.

5. The Red Fort thus contained palace pavilions, imperial gardens and art objects to cater to the daily needs of the Emperor, his queens and his daughters, as well as administration halls, courts of justice and formal halls of audience. Additionally, it also housed more prosaic functions such as offices, retail markets, mosques, kitchens, elephant and horse stables, orchards, living quarters for the resident soldiers, maids and attendants who worked within the Fort, and karakhanas and workshops for skilled craftspeople who made objects specifically for imperial use. Kings, noblemen, petitioners, soldiers, ambassadors, stone-setters, jewellers, maids, weavers, even the poorest of the poor residents, came to work, to seek justice or to pay audience to the Emperor as part of the daily ceremonial custom at Shah Jahan’s court. The true significance and the scale of these activities can be appreciated when we realise that this is akin to it being a combination of the Rashtrapati Bhawan, North and South Blocks, Parliament House, Supreme Court, Secretariat, Cantonment, Crafts Museum, etc!

5. The Fort was actively and almost continuously used as an imperial Mughal Fort for almost two thirds of its life—Shah Jahan chose to live in the Red Fort for a greater part of his remaining 10 year long reign, till he was deposed by Aurangzeb. Most of his later descendents too stayed here. All through these years, the multifarious activities within it continued to work practically as they were originally designed, without intruding on each other. Despite the huge daily traffic of visitors-great and small, from within the city and beyond the boundaries of the empire–nobody got into each other’s way within this mini-city.

6. This was possible because the Fort was thoughtfully designed to accomodate public, semi-public, semi-private and private spaces. The public ceremonial areas were clearly and centrally positioned, marked out by straight axes, with formal courtyards that increased in size and magnificence, a succession of compelling gateways which no visitor could miss or ignore. On the other hand, the private areas, whether those of the Emperor and his family or of his attendant work-force, were located such that they were practically invisible. Shah Jahan’s living areas and palaces were atop the river-side wall, furthest from the Lahori and Delhi Gates of the city. Instead of being conventional huge towering vertical complexes, they were single-storeyed pavilions, their imperial status signaled not by size but by their proportion, refinement and detailing. His private entrance to the Fort was also from the banks on the river, which was an important recreation and transportation space. In fact the siting of functions throughout Shahjahanabad celebrated the presence of the river. The Fort’s imperial pavilions on its riverside were not only located to afford stunning views across and cool breezes from the river; they were equally part of a grand spectacle from the river, their privacy unimpaired behind intricate marble jalis. This river-views were continued in the large havelis of noblemen and Princes, public and private gardens, and ghats, all of which lined the length of the Yamuna.

In contrast, the living and working areas of the craftspeople and attendants were located beyond the high entrance streets off the Main Gates in the shadow of Fort’s towering outer walls adjacent to the city. They were densely built around twisting streets, resembling parts of the city outside the walls of the Fort, yet positioned in such a way that they were shielded from the view of state visitors and even of the Emperor who, despite being the lord of the entire Fort—as indeed of the entire empire—never needed to go into these parts of the Fort which could thus develop freely. These drawings show the areas of movement of different categories of people within the Fort‑the Emperor, a nobleman, a Mughal queen, and an ordinary inhabitant of the city. The Fort was thus a microcosm of the Mughal way of life–not merely the Imperial Mughal way of life.

7. Each sub-area within the Fort had its own courtyards bounded by gateways and continuous arcades that not only provided shaded areas to work, sit or walk in, but also privacy from the other spaces around them. The open courtyards and gardens also had the advantage of flexiblity; if there were more crowds such as on the Fort’s inauguration ceremonies or at Shah Jahan’s birthday celebrations or during festivals, by spreading canopies and qanats, more covered area could be easily and quickly obtained. Thus, open space was fashioned and designed such that it was used as an extension of built space—and built space shaded or enclosed open space so that it could be used effectively in all seasons. It was also because of these open areas sited in between built areas, that many of Shah Jahan’s original pavilions could stay virtually unobstructed and untouched, despite a greatly increasing population in the Fort during the times of his descendants. It was around the boundaries of some of the main courts and gardens or within many of the less visible ones that the later Mughal rulers and their sons and daughters got more structures built.

The built spaces too, whether the grand entrance forecourts and gateways, or the Emperor’s own pavilions were multifunctional in use. Thus, the Lahori and Delhi gateways contained living quarters for soldiers, the Naqqar Khana Gateway not only provided a regulated entrance but also contained chambers for musicians. The Emperor’s Hall of Private Audience from wheer he dispensed justice also doubled up as a reception on the occasion of private celebrations. All these buildings that the Emperor stayed or worked in were not enclosed buildings but pavilions, a series of verandahs, which could be hung with carpets and covered with qanats, or left open to let the river-breezes in.

8. Thus, the location and orientation of the buildings, gardens and courtyards that housed all these different activities, as well as their size, height and overall proportions, had ecological, functional, and aesthetic reasons. They were designed not only to impress a viewer or a user but also to be easy to maintain and to be lived in during the different seasons. They were practical as well as beautiful. As the Fort’s original design shows, the proportion of open spaces in it is far greater than the amount of built structures A large amount of these open spaces were gardens, which were designed to provide pleasant and cool spaces; they are described by contemporary historians of Shah Jahan as being planted with, ‘...fruitful trees of diverse kinds...interlaced with each other in such a way that they sky is not anywhere visible from under them’. They were not just beautiful to see and to use, but also provided fruit and vegetables for the kitchens. In fact, Shah Jahan is recorded to himself go and pluck fruit from his gardens with his page boys early in the morning as a diversion from his more onerous administrative duties.

All these qualities make the Fort not just an epitome of urban architectural patronage in Shah Jahan’s reign, but also represent one of the finest examples of a sustainable way of planning, building, and living. Why do I say that? What can we learn from the Red Fort’s design that is relevant to our cities and towns today?
First, that despite being the favoured residence and the prized patronage of the richest ruler in the medieval world, the Red Fort was planned and detailed to be socially inclusive–It was designed not just as a residence of a monarch but as a miniature city with all the positive opportunities for economic, social and cultural interaction that a city affords. Everyone, even the poorest of the inhabitants was a stake-holder in the Fort. Visually, and spatially too there was no bar between the direct axis linking Shah Jahan to his people–instead of the ramparts and barbicans that block the Fort from the city today, originally a bridge lead straight from the Chandni Chowk to the Lahori Gate, and further to the Emperor’s Throne of Justice in the Diwan-i-Am.

Secondly, the Fort’s design was ecologically and environmentally considerate–there was no unnecessary wastage of resources-instead of the stretches of high-maintenance lawns that pass for gardens today, the Fort’s vast gardens were essentially orchards; they worked as productive areas as well as places of pleasure, entertainment and repose; they moderated the micro-climate and used only the optimum amount of precious water. Even the water in the fountains used to cool and decorate the Fort’s pavilions and its gardens, or in the imperial bathing chambers was recycled–either for irrigation, or for watering animals, or for cooling the public parts of the Fort. The palaces of the Emperor and his family as well as their grand entrance sequences which were a succession of forecourts and gateways were all multifunctional in use–they could equally be used for people to gather, for administrative work, for court ceremonial, as well as circulation spaces.
Thirdly, the Fort’s design was an example of further development of the traditional indigenous courtyard typology; where not only were the proportions of the built and open spaces of the highest order but where utilization of space was maximized despite constructing a minimum number of built structures.

And finally, the Fort’s design displayed those qualities which make design truly great, where no element is superfluous or extraneous. None of its structures and spaces was designed as simply utilitarian or purely decorative. Each component of its design—whether the form or detail of its gardens, pavilions, forecourts, gateways or colonnades was both useful and beautiful; the form, structure and decoration in them could not be separated from each other.

These are some of the original attributes of the Red Fort, beyond just its immediate form, that need to be recognized and conserved. Conserved not just as empty shells but as an act of celebration that restores the same qualities of inclusiveness, of concern for people, for the environment and for material and human resources that Shah Jahan and his builders did. While the different layers of history which have left their mark on the Fort, make it a site of great historical interest, its principal value in terms of world and Indian heritage continues to stem from the cultural, architectural, associational and artistic value of its original design. It is thus imperative to
ensure that the potency of its original design is physically conserved and communicated. In fact, the Fort’s ingenious planning and detailing have important lessons for not just for architectural and art historians, but also for contemporary designers and their clients, as well as for anybody who lives in this part of the world.

Till this appreciation is confined to a few academics, there will never be any sustained support for the Red Fort, which above all, was a celebration of life–in its establishment, in the ceremonies that marked the Emperor’s sojourn in it, in the artists, painters, poets and singers that it patronized, in its gardens and in its trees that made life beautiful and pleasant even in the sweltering summers of Delhi. We need to reinstate all these aspects of the Red Fort’s past and its status as a cultural, architectural and artistic icon.

What we need is a new method of conservation that involves people by presenting to them all the information that has so far been the domain of the scholar or the bureaucrat; that is planned and implemented in a manner that includes instead of disregarding the citizens of this country—whether as professionals, as visitors, as artists, as inhabitants, as students. We are—or should be—equally the stake-holders as well as the guardians of our history. Perhaps then we may be able to fulfill at least a part of the wish of the makers of the Red Fort, inscribed in good faith on the walls of the Khwabgah or the House of Dreams–Shah Jahan’s own sleeping chambers in the Fort.

May the Emperor of the world, Shah Jahan by his good fortune,
The second lord of felicity
In the royal palace with great magnificence,
Ever be like the Sun in the Sky.
As long as foundation is indispensable with the building,
May the palace of his good fortune touch the highest heaven.



© Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

Image Credits:

1. Photo: Lahori Gate, Red Fort, 1997
© Snehanshu Mukherjee
2. Plan: Lahori Gate
© Nikhil Joshi, Anisha Shekhar Mukherji
3. Mid-19th C drwg. of Lahori Gate By a native artist (From the Dehli Book commissioned by Sir Thomas Metcalfe)
4. 18th Century Plan of Red Fort
Courtesy: The Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library (Add.Or.1790)
5. Plan: The Red Fort
Extant structures highlighted in a detail of the Map drawn by an Indian artist in the mid-19th century
© Anisha Shekhar Mukherji
.6. Plan: The Red Fort
Showing proportion and profile of built and open structures before and after the destruction by the British in 1857
© Anisha Shekhar Mukherji
7. Photo of Red Fort and its environs from Jama Masjid, c. 1870, Courtesy: OIOC British Library, photo 2/3 (76)
8. and 9. Panorama of Red Fort Drawn by Mazhar Ali Khan, Courtesy: OIOC British Library
10. Portrait of Bahadur Shah Mid-19th century, (From the Dehli Book commissioned by Sir Thomas Metcalfe)
11. Interior View of Diwan-i-Khas (From the Dehli Book commissioned by Sir Thomas Metcalfe)
12. Aerial View Lahore, Agra, and Delhi Forts, Courtesy: Google
13. Detail: Diwan-i-Am Ceiling, Red Fort, Courtesy: Victoria and Albert Museum, London
14. Detail of decoration: Taj Mahal and Diwan-i-Am, Red Fort, Courtesy: Victoria and Albert Museum, London
15. Miniature of Red Fort, Luckhnow artist, 18th century
16. Red Fort: Riverside View (From the Dehli Book commissioned by Sir Thomas Metcalfe)
17. Rang Mahal, Red Fort: Emperor Muhammad Shah celebrating Holi, Courtesy: The Bodleian Library, Oxford
18. Mid-19th c Plan of Red Fort: Open spaces shaded Black © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji
19. Photo: Diwan-i-Am, 1997
© Anisha Shekhar Mukherji
20. Superimposed Plan, Red Fort
Original courtyard and gardens superimposed on later barrack and road construction, © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji
21. Shah Jahan’s Portrait 18th century watercolour