Thomas Crowley - Deepani Seth - Fractured Forest, Quartzite City - A History of Delhi and Its Ridge-SAGE Publications - YODA Press (2020)

Fractured Forest,
Quartzite City
A History of Delhi and Its Ridge
Thomas Crowley
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Fractured Forest,
Quartzite City
A History of Delhi and Its Ridge
Thomas Crowley
Illustrations by deepani seth
se ec se ec
Copyright © Thomas Crowley, 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
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First published in 2020 by
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SAGE YODA Team: Amrita Dutta, Sandhya Gola, Arpita Das and Ishita Gupta
Contents
Acknowledgmentsvii
Seeds: Introduction 1
Chapter 1. Stones: Shifting Geologies of the Ridge 21
Chapter 2. Soil: Mobile Ecologies, Hybrid Histories 61
Chapter 3. State: Warfare, Pageantry, Politics 121
Chapter 4. Surplus: Production, Consumption, Speculation 209
Chapter 5. Spirits: Transcendence, Sacred and Secular 271
Notes324
Bibliography337
About the Author351
Acknowledgments
I first encountered Delhi’s Ridge a few weeks after moving to the city
in 2010, when a friend suggested I visit the “monkey park” near my
North Delhi flat. It has been a decade between my introduction to
the Ridge and the publication of this book. During these years, as the
scope of the book expanded in fits and starts, I ventured into many
areas quite far from my limited realms of expertise, attempting to
synthesize large amounts of primary and secondary literature on the
city and its ridge. In this attempt, I’ve gone out on many limbs, and
it seems inevitable that some of them may support my weight better
than others. Those branches that stand no doubt do so because of
the strength of those supporting me. Their intellectual generosity,
patience and support has made this book possible. (Naturally, any
breaking branches and falling limbs can be blamed only on my own
overreaches.)
P.T. George at Intercultural Resources (ICR) in Delhi made all of

this possible by hiring me as a researcher and encouraging my work on
the Ridge. I first began to sketch out the current book during two stints
in the City as Studio residency organized by Sarai at the Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). A large chunk of the manuscript
was written while I was a Social Science Fellow at the Akademie Schloss
Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. These institutional and financial sup-
ports were absolutely vital for the creation of this book.
From my time at Sarai, I made lasting friendships that also trans-

formed my work on the Ridge. For a time, this took the form of a
possibly fictional but extremely generative artist collective, “This is
Not Us”. TINU, this book is for you.
Ujjwal Utkarsh, a fellow-traveler both figuratively and literally,

read through early writing attempts and encouraged me to find a
voice for the text. Rashmi Munikempanna helped me think through
the political stakes of writing about the Ridge. Agat Sharma pushed
me to think artistically about the Ridge, and gave me the invaluable
opportunity to incorporate my research into creative workshops at
Pearl Academy in Delhi and Noida.
Deepani Seth, who created the indispensable illustrations for this

book, has seen this project through from start to finish. Our collab-
oration started with planning a game in the Ridge for Sarai (thanks
to Gabe Smedresman, my game guru, for inspiration on this!) and
then expanded to all corners of the Ridge and to far-flung markets,
chai stalls, restaurants and parks in Delhi. From working on illus-
trated articles together (some of which found publishers, some of
which remain in publishing purgatory) to debating all things Delhi to
conducting workshops together in Noida and Stuttgart, deepani has
been there with me as a research collaborator, critic, discussant and
dear friend.
In Delhi, a series of flatmates not only made the city a home for me,
they also put up with—sometimes even encouraged—my obsession
with the Ridge. So a big thank you to Samuel Buchoul, Tanveer Kaur,
Nandini Sarkar, Mehrnoush Rezaie, Anjali Pathirana, Mithu Biswas
and Rajeeb Kari. Thanks also to Vidhya Raveendranathan for early
reading suggestions and pushing me to think about labor, caste and
nature in the city. Once I began writing the book, Nehru Memorial
Museum & Library (Teen Murti) became my home away from home.
The informal community of research scholars and friends there
(and the nearby Mysore Cafe) made it possible to write this book.
Thank you to Snigdha Kumar, Aban Raza and Amita Rana for the
many talks over lunch and far-too-weak chai, and for friendship and
support that extended well beyond the walls of Teen Murti.
I am extremely grateful to the scholars, activists and civil society

leaders in Delhi who took the time to meet with me and share their
encyclopedic knowledge of the city and the Ridge, especially when my
research was still quite green (naive, not eco-friendly!). I benefited
greatly from the insights of Ravi Agarwal, Aastha Chauhan, Narayani
Gupta, Sohail Hashmi, Revathi and Vasant Kamath, Pradip Krishen,
Ranjit Lal, Mahesh Rangarajan, Dunu Roy, Kush Sethi, Bhrigupati
Singh, Shashank Saini, Anita Soni and Vikram Soni. I am especially
grateful to Amita Baviskar for her support for this project over
the years and her in-depth, careful reading of the manuscript; her
feedback has greatly strengthened and transformed the book.
viii Fractured Forest, Quartzite City

The staff at the Delhi State Archives helped me access the byzantine
files of the erstwhile Deputy Commissioner’s Office. Thank you to
Janaki Nair at Jawaharlal Nehru University for allowing me to audit
her class on “The Modern City”, which helped me conceptualize many
of the questions I address in this book. Many thanks to the professors
and scholars in Delhi and beyond who gave me the opportunity to
present my work to a wider audience: Naveen Chander and CACIM’s
workshop at Sambhaavnaa (and Lalit Batra, Julia Corwin and Tom
Cowan for their input there and after); Diya Mehra at South Asian
University; Rohit Negi at Ambedkar University Delhi; Amit Ranjan
at St. Stephen’s College; Renny Thomas at Jesus and Mary College,
University of Delhi; and Marie-Hélène Zerah at the CSH-CPR Urban
Workshop Series.
This book was nearing completion when I joined the PhD program
in geography at Rutgers University. The intellectual community there
has given me the strength to finish the book and navigate the world of
publishing. Many thanks to my adviser, Asher Ghertner, whose work
on Delhi informs the politics of this book; and to his lab group, past
and present, for the perfect balance of critical feedback and comradely
support: Sangeeta Banerji, Ben Gerlofs, Stuti Govil, Wei-Chieh Hung,
Sadaf Javed, Hudson McFann, Priti Narayan, and Devra Waldman.
For helping me conceptualize this project in book form, and giving

me insights into the publishing world, thank you to Daniel Levin
Becker, Fazal Rashad, Anita Roy, Gavin Steingo and Jonah Walters.
At SAGE-Yoda, Arpita Das has been an incisive editor and a generous
supporter of the book; and Ishita Gupta has expertly and kindly
overseen all the adventures of completing the publishing process
across borders.
And finally, I must give profound thanks to my earliest and most

exacting editors—Paul Crowley, Resha Crowley and Tara Crowley—
and to Meghana Arora, who was my reason for being in Delhi in the
first place and who came around to the Ridge in the end.
Acknowledgments ix
Seeds
Introduction
Urban Mirages
Delhi. A chilly mid-November morning in India’s capital city. Still
groggy from sleep, I step out onto my terrace. Big flakes of snow are
falling gracefully in looping, swirling arcs. But something is wrong.
The snow is gray and black, and it leaves dark stains on the tiled floor
of the terrace. The “snow”, I suddenly realize, is sooty, half-burned
newspaper, drifting onto my terrace from a nearby garbage fire.
Delhi has not always been this polluted, I am told. Especially

not Mehrauli, the area where I live. Mehrauli is Delhi’s oldest
continuously inhabited neighborhood, home to human settlements
since the eleventh century, and perhaps even earlier. In traditional
Delhi lore, it is said that seven cities have risen and fallen in Delhi.
Mehrauli is the first.
Although Mehrauli lost its role as a center of imperial power in the

late thirteenth century, it remained a popular place of residence, in
part because of its verdure and natural beauty. It is located on the low,
undulating hills of the Aravalli mountain range, and the contours of the
land make for dramatic views, with Qutb Minar1—the world’s tallest
brick minaret, and India’s most visited tourist site—as the focal point.
The neighborhood was particularly prized by the Mughal emperors,
whose own capital city was located roughly fifteen kilometers away.
The Mughals saw Mehrauli as a pleasant refuge, a peaceful green
getaway from the hubbub of city life.
The epitome of this pastoral beauty was a place commonly

known as the jharna (waterfall). Built in 1700 by a Mughal nobleman,
the jharna channeled overflow water from a huge man-made lake. The
water tumbled down an immense wall before passing through the per-
forated roof of an elaborate sandstone structure. An admiring observer
described the waterfall at night, when lamps illuminated the structure:
“it seemed as if someone had set the water on fire, as if there was a
heavy shower of melting gold.”2 The water then flowed into an intricate
series of canals and pools before reaching a dense mango orchard. In
one spot, the water was diverted so that it poured down a smooth flat
stone, which was used as a makeshift water slide.
In its heyday, the jharna, with its orchards and pools, its slippery
stones and its magical roofs, was frequented by the nobility and the
common citizen alike. When I visited it in 2012 though, it was eerily
quiet and empty. No water flowed through the canals; they were
choked with garbage-filled sludge.
Behind the jharna, there actually was running water, in the form
of a small stream flowing around the base of a low hill. The stream
gurgled pleasantly, but its banks were caked with sewage and plastic,
the water oddly discolored. Beyond the stream was a small working-
class settlement. From a distance, it looked like a village, with tiny
picturesque huts on the hillside and trees in the background. But this
too was an illusion. The houses were largely made of thin, crumbling
brick, with tin roofing and makeshift plastic sheeting to shore up
leaky walls.
The sooty snow, the stagnant, putrid stream: Delhi’s landscape is

mocking its citizens, or shaming them. It presents an ironic inversion
of idyllic rural scenes, with seemingly beautiful natural features that
reveal themselves to be dangerously toxic. This is the paradox of
Delhi: it is the world’s most polluted green city.
It has the highest levels of air pollution in the world, at least accord-
ing to much-publicized 2014 World Health Organization findings.3
It’s not just the air. Delhi has dangerously polluted water bodies,
unnerving noise pollution, overflowing landfills and mountains of
electronic waste.
And yet Delhi is also remarkably green, especially for a mega-

city with a population of 17 million, as of the 2011 census (and this
is almost certainly an underestimate). The city has an expansive
network of small neighborhood parks and big public gardens. The
centerpiece of green Delhi is an eighty-square-kilometer zone that
the government has set aside as Reserved Forest. This zone is clus-
tered around the Aravalli hills that cradle Mehrauli and several other
historic sites in Delhi. It is referred to colloquially as “The Ridge”.
2 Fractured Forest, Quartzite City

Exploring the Ridge
What, exactly, is the Ridge? The book in your hands is an attempt to
answer this seemingly simple question. When I started researching
the Ridge in 2010, I thought the answer too was simple: it’s the city’s
green lung, its ecological lifeblood, a much-needed forest in the midst
of an ever-expanding megacity. The newspaper reports I read gave a
clear-cut account of the Ridge’s benefits: it purifies Delhi’s air, protects
it from the hot desert winds of nearby Rajasthan and provides an
escape from the madness and speed of urban life. Because of its crucial
ecological functions, the Ridge must be preserved “in its pristine glory”,
to use the words of the government’s Master Plan for Delhi.4
But this is not the full story. The more I learned about the Ridge,
the more complexities I encountered. The seeds I had planted with
my initial research began to put down tenacious roots, and to sprout
interlocking, entangled branches. The research project was becoming,
I feared, an impenetrable thicket of ideas.
A chief confusion was how to define the Ridge. Government

reports and environmental groups have emphasized the Ridge’s func-
tions as a forest, but the very name of the Ridge suggests that it is, at
its core, a geological phenomenon. And indeed, most of the Reserved
Forest zone in Delhi corresponds with the Aravalli hills. But there
are discrepancies. For instance, there are parts of the Delhi Aravallis
that host no trees, let alone a full-fledged forest. Perhaps the most
obvious example of this is Mehrauli, which now houses a population
of roughly 250,000, packed into multi-story apartments that line
labyrinthine streets.
Poring over Ridge-related documents, I began to realize that

phrases like “pristine glory” and “the harmony of nature” are serious
impediments to understanding the Ridge, since they imply that
both its ecology and geology have remained unchanged since time
immemorial. The problem with this line of thought is not just the
existence of centuries-old settlements like Mehrauli. The problem is
also that the forest itself, where it exists, is generally quite new and
is dominated by invasive species. What is more, the densest stands
of present-day forest are largely located on a pockmarked landscape
where, for many decades, quarrying gashed holes in the hills.
Seeds 3
The problem, in short, is history. To invoke a timeless balance of
nature on the Ridge is to erase its history. But it is precisely in the realm
of history that one can discover how the Ridge’s geology and ecology
have co-evolved, and, even more crucially, how the Ridge and the
city of Delhi have shaped each other over the course of hundreds and
thousands of years.
My aim, then, is to recover the lost history of the Ridge, and, in the
process, to tell a story of Delhi that puts its environment front and
center. While there has been no dearth of writing on Delhi, the city’s
chroniclers often ignore its ecological features. But Delhi looks different
when viewed from the heights of its hills, or from the depths of its old
mining pits, or from the thickets of its newly grown woodlands.
Every city depends on its geological and ecological foundations,

but Delhi’s relationship with its Ridge has been particularly long,
complex and fraught. Because of the unique breadth and depth of
Delhi’s history, the tale of the Ridge is one that resonates far beyond
the boundaries of India’s capital. At various points, Delhi has been
a crucial hub of politics, warfare, trade and religious expansion on a
regional and even global level. The Ridge offers a crucial vantage
point for viewing these historical and geographical interconnections.
A thriving city with millennia of history, Delhi has long attracted

people from all over the world, myself included. In an age when
refugees are demonized, when xenophobia is on the rise, the history
of the Delhi Ridge offers a lesson about the value, and indeed the
absolute necessity, of migrants for building a vibrant metropolis.
It is an oft-noted fact that Delhi is a city of migrants. This is largely a
reference to the flood of refugees who came to the city in 1947 during
the trauma of Partition and gave the city its post-Independence
flavor. But the proliferation of migrants to Delhi, and specifically to
the Ridge, has a much longer history—even into paleolithic times,
100,000 years ago, when the first humans (technically, hominids, but
that’s a story for a later chapter) ventured into north India, continuing
their ancestors’ journey out of Africa.
The migrants drawn to Delhi have been a motley mix, including

warrior yogis, star-crossed lovers, bandit shepherds and Sufi stoners.
And that’s just the humans. There are also mischievous monkeys,

thirsty foreign trees, and—if one has a taste for the supernatural—a
wide range of ghosts, spirits and demons. These migrants have been
an integral part of an increasingly complex set of systems—geological,
ecological, political, economic and religious (the subject matter of
Chapters 1 through 5, respectively)—that have intertwined to create
the Delhis of the past and the present.
The Ridge has played a crucial role in all these systems. Though
its ecological functions may be foregrounded today, these are just one
part of a much larger whole. The Ridge’s trees can’t be separated from
the stones below them, nor the cities that rose and fell around them.
Environmental and social history blur. Only with this perspective
does a clear picture of the Ridge, and of Delhi as a whole, emerge.
A Tour through the Ridge’s History

Those who focus exclusively on the Ridge’s ecology usually do so to
argue for the protection of its Reserved Forests. In this context,
the Ridge’s “pristine glory” is frequently evoked, though often more
rhetorically than literally. Delhi’s environmentalists recognize that, in
a real historical sense, the Ridge is far from untouched. They seem to
realize the shakiness of the “pristine glory” logic.
And yet this logic keeps on reappearing in discussions about

the Ridge, not least in crucial court cases and powerful planning
documents. The persistence of this logic suggests the necessity of
refuting it, especially since the language of untouched glory is easily
appropriated by the state to justify, for instance, the demolition of
informal, low-income housing that has “sullied” the pristine Ridge
(an all-too-common phenomenon).
A whirlwind tour through Delhi’s history is enough to show the

flawed logic of “pristine glory” in the Ridge; it also has the added benefit
of showing the bewildering complexities of the Ridge and the city. Such
a tour brings home a profound truth: there is no static baseline to which
we can return. Only by recognizing this, and dropping the rhetoric of a
pristine past, can the Ridge be sustained in a just way.
Our tour begins in the 1930s, when Mirza Farhatullah Beg, an

author from noble Mughal stock, bemoaned the degraded state of
Seeds 5
Delhi’s environment. Beg described Mehrauli’s idyllic jharna with
great nostalgia, contrasting its glory days with its twentieth-century
state of disrepair. His lament is a familiar one:
Now, the pleasantness no longer exists.... No longer does the

water trickle down. The canals have dried up. The cisterns are
filled with the rubble of the ruined buildings. Trees bear no fruit
and most of them have been cut down. The slippery stone has
broken into pieces. Only a few buildings still stand. In a few days,
however, even those will be gone.5
Perhaps Delhi’s environment was better in the nineteenth century?

A report by a prominent environmental organization has traced the
Ridge’s fall from grace to the establishment of the British New Delhi
in 1911: “with the transfer of capital of India from Calcutta to Delhi
during British times, developmental activity started in the city. The
Ridge... started losing [its] natural state... The perfect balance and
harmony of nature had been disturbed.”6
But it is hard to discern any balance and harmony in nineteenth-

century Delhi. Most obvious are the traumatic events of 1857; in that
tumultuous year, the British government, after repressing the great
anti-colonial uprising with considerable difficulty, cut down trees
on the Ridge and throughout Delhi. This was both a form of revenge
and a way of ensuring clear lines of sight for surveying the rebellious
population.
Maybe the good years were before British rule and the violence
of imperial interventions? But then, in pre-British Mughal times, the
pressures of urbanization in Delhi were immense, and must have
taken their toll on the environment. At the beginning of the eighteenth
century, the population of the city and its suburbs touched 400,000.
By the end of that century, Delhi was surrounded on all sides by eight
to twelve kilometers of intensive cultivation, necessary to feed the city.
When the British first surveyed the land that they had taken over from
the Mughals, they were dismayed to find a largely denuded landscape.
Going further back, we find that historical records of deforestation

in Delhi are almost as old as historical records of the city itself. The

fearsome warrior Timur cut down trees around the northern section
of the Ridge in 1398, as part of his deadly invasion of the city. The
great Sultan Balban cleared the forest around Mehrauli in the 1260s.
And on and on.
Then we enter the murky realm of mythology. It’s not very encour-
aging for nature lovers. Since the time of the epic Mahabharata, the
Delhi region has been associated with tree felling, forest fires, and
unrepentant animal slaughter. Consider this passage from the epic,
relaying, in alarmingly celebratory tone, the role of heroic Arjuna and
Krishna in burning the Khandava forest on the outskirts of the city of
Indraprastha:
The two tigerlike men started a vast massacre of the creatures

on every side.... As the Khandava was burning, the creatures in
their thousands leaped up in all ten directions, screeching their
terrifying screams. Many were burning in one spot, others were
scorched—they were shattered and scattered mindlessly, their eyes
abursting.... When they jumped out, Arjuna cut them to pieces with
his arrows and, laughing, threw them back into the blazing Fire.7
It is difficult to draw straightforward connections between myth

and ecological history. One does not want to follow the road paved
by Hindu nationalist historians and suggest that Delhi is literally
Indraprastha (more on this danger shortly). However, several scholars
have argued that it is possible to read the Mahabharata and related
texts, not for literal truths, but for suggestions about how northern
India was transformed during the time the epic was composed.8
Specifically, these grisly scenes may be allegorical references to

a phenomenon affecting broad swaths of land, including the Delhi
region: the use of fire to turn forests into pastures. This strategy was
used by livestock-rearing groups to expand the zones favorable to
their lifestyle. In doing so, they found themselves at war with those
who considered the forests their homes: the hunter-gatherers who
kept no cattle and tilled no fields, but roamed the land seeking new
sources of sustenance from day to day. The livestock-rearers (or, to
use the technical term, pastoralists) won the fight, and set the stage for
the use of Ridge-as-pasture, a role that it played for many centuries,
Seeds 7
and that it still plays today, at least in isolated areas. But this bloody
victory, though celebrated in the pages of the Mahabharata, brings
us no closer to Delhi’s golden past.
Perhaps it existed before the incursion of pastoralists? After all,

the domestication of animals, along with the domestication of grains,
ushered in the so-called Neolithic Revolution, which some see as an
ecological watershed—one to be mourned, not celebrated. The scholar
Jared Diamond has dubbed the Neolithic Revolution “the worst
mistake in the history of the human race”.9 Besides the ecological
consequences of the revolution, Diamond points to other undesir-
able consequences: plummeting quality-of-life indicators for human
communities; the slow development of social classes, and oppressive
states to rule those classes, all made possible by the unequal hoarding
of agricultural surplus; and an increasingly uneven division of labor
between the sexes.
Other scholars, though, have questioned Diamond’s fall-from-

grace narrative of the Neolithic Revolution. Some doubt whether it
was really even a revolution at all, since the ill effects that Diamond
catalogs do not necessarily follow from the domestication of plants
and animals, at least in any immediate sense. For instance, with
regards to economic inequality, “while agriculture allowed for the
possibility of more unequal concentrations of wealth, in most cases
this only began to happen millennia after its inception.”10 Humanity’s
ancient history, ecological and otherwise, was marked by contingency,
variability and a diversity of paths, with no easy generalizations made
about uniform decline. Taking the case of gender in the ancient Middle
East, for example, David Graeber and David Wengrow argue that
some “Neolithic societies look strikingly egalitarian when compared
to their hunter-gatherer neighbours, with a dramatic increase in the
economic and social importance of women, clearly reflected in their
art and ritual life.”11
What, then, was the case for Delhi’s hunter-gatherers, the ones
driven away by pastoralists and their ilk? We have little evidence to go
on, besides the Paleolithic stone tools that will be discussed in the next
chapter—but the sheer profusion of these tools suggests a complexity
and intensity of production that belies the Edenic idea of a people in
easy harmony with nature. Further, we should not assume that the

pastoralists disrupting life in northern India were the only ones who
harnessed fire to transform the environment; on the contrary, there is
evidence that hunter-gatherers have used fire to shape the landscape
for at least 400,000 years.12
Finally, then, we could look to the pre-human past to identify

Delhi’s golden days. Certainly, in the present age of environmental
crisis, there is an urge to idealize earthly life sans humans; this, in fact,
is the premise of the wildly popular book The World Without Us.13
And a long lineage of environmental thought has placed humanity
outside nature, celebrating the harmony of natural systems and ruing
their disruption by ill-considered human intervention.
But here too we run into problems. Even before humans spread
around the globe, nature did not exist as an undisturbed whole, in
perfect balance. To take just one apposite example, the formation of
the Aravalli mountain range 1.5 billion years ago was hardly a balanced,
peaceful process. It was a dynamic, radical change in the landscape, full
of violent ruptures and volcanic flows and unexpected metamorphoses.
The Ridge has long been the site, not of pristine glory, but of
“discordant harmonies”, to borrow a term introduced by ecolo-
gist Daniel Botkin.14 A belief in “the balance of nature” seems deeply
ingrained in the human psyche, but Botkin insists that this metaphor
is increasingly incongruous with the findings of ecology, and needs to
be set aside. Instead, we need to accept that many species, including
humans, actually thrive on change, and that a complex, unbalanced,
sometimes random set of processes has nonetheless produced remark-
able harmonies and stunning diversities.
Following Botkin’s advice, we can abandon the search for Delhi’s

idyllic past. But recognizing the ever-changing nature of Delhi’s envi-
ronment does not mean accepting uncritically all human interventions
in Delhi’s landscape. Asserting the inevitability of change does not
mean blithely assenting to all change. As the evidence of deforesta-
tion in Delhi suggests, humans have, for many centuries, introduced
changes that have devastated the region’s ecosystems—changes that
were far too fast and far too reckless, and that thus cut off the possi-
bilities of creative adaptation that have characterized more positive
environmental change.
Seeds 9
But not all changes in Delhi have been so destructive. In the
fourteenth century, the sultan Firoz Shah Tughlaq planted trees
around his hunting lodge on the Northern Ridge; centuries later, the
Mughals created elaborate, lush gardens and networks of streams
and wells to revive a parched city; and both the British and post-
colonial governments embarked on massive reforestation efforts.
The very existence of the modern-day Ridge forest, after so many
centuries of deforestation, points to the malleability and resilience of
the landscape. It also suggest that humans are, for better or worse, an
integral part of an ever-changing, dynamic set of ecologies.
Pristine Glory of Another Kind

Perhaps I am so wary of the “pristine glory” logic because it has
uncomfortable, if largely unintentional, resonances with another
kind of nostalgia: not environmental, but religious. These two brands
of nostalgia employ strikingly similar metaphors. In both versions,
there is, somewhere in the distant past, a unified, balanced whole,
and this utopia is broken into pieces by an unwanted intruder.
In the ecological version, this intruder is the human race, or the

agriculturalist, or the imperialist, or the capitalist (depending on
who is telling the story). In the religious version, the intruder is the
Muslim.15 This, at least, is the history advanced by strident Hindu
nationalists, who nurture the idea of a harmonious past when Delhi
was free from turmoil and conflict. In this view, Delhi is equated with
mythical Indraprastha, and the downfall of Delhi is pegged squarely
on the year 1192, when the Hindu King Prithviraj Chauhan was
defeated by the Muslim invader Mohammad Ghori. This is one of the
ignominious defeats that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is alluding
to when he intones—as he often does in his speeches—that India has
endured more than 1,000 years of slavery.16
At present, the Hindu nationalist view of Delhi is not the dominant

one; Delhi is a popular tourist city, and its most visited sites are
the intricate architectural marvels from the days of Muslim rule.
And yet, in these days of ascendant Hindu nationalism, there are
worrying signs. In December 2014, soon after the Hindu nationalist
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power, M. Venkaiah Naidu, the

Urban Development Minister, suggested that Delhi’s official name
be changed to Indraprastha. Such recent moves have historical
precedent, sometimes overlapping in uncomfortable ways with the
history of the Ridge and its preservation. The most striking example
of this is Jagmohan, the iron-fisted bureaucrat who expanded the
Ridge areas under state protection in 1980 and who, later in his
career, promoted an increasingly aggressive glorification of Delhi’s
Hindu history, including the construction of a statue of Prithviraj
Chauhan in one Ridge park in the early 2000s.17 (More on him in
Chapter 3.) In this pursuit, he was aided by the then Home Minister
and powerful Hindutva leader, L. K. Advani, who inaugurated the
Prithviraj Chauhan statue, and later launched a spurious attempt to
claim the Qutb Minar as a Hindu monument.
A nuanced history of the Ridge undermines this Manichean under-

standing of Delhi and its pasts, as we will see. Just as Delhi’s ecology
has been complex, fragmented, and ever-evolving, so too have its
human societies, from their religious practices to their social norms
to their economic strategies. Hinduism has not been a timeless, stable
entity, nor has Islam, nor any of the other faiths that have mixed in
Delhi’s soil—sometimes in violent conflict, sometimes in peaceful
syncretism. Exploring the social and ecological processes that have
unfolded on the Ridge can help foreground Delhi’s religious diversity.
Anti-Ecological Environmentalism
If one of this book’s main aims is to help the Ridge regain its multifac-
eted history, the other is to situate it more firmly in its geography—or,
more precisely, to sketch out its interconnections with local, region-
al, national and global geographies. Both these aims are animated
by the same purpose: to broaden the way we think of Delhi’s envi-
ronment, and to reconnect the humans of Delhi with the ecological
lifeblood of their city.
Just as a narrow insistence on the Ridge’s “pristine glory” dilutes

the region’s complex history, a narrow focus on “clean and green
Delhi”, a favorite rallying cry for the city in recent years, diminishes
the Ridge’s complex dependencies with human and non-human
systems that span the city, the country and the world. This myopic
Seeds 13
view obscures the root causes of Delhi’s environmental crisis, and,
even worse, ends up blaming those who least deserve it.
My meanderings through dystopian Mehrauli could, at first glance,

support this view: just next to a dilapidated basti was a garbage-filled,
sewage-choked stream. Were the basti’s inhabitants responsible for
the pollution? This, in fact, is the knee-jerk response of much of
Delhi’s elite, deeply shot through with class and caste bias: the poor
are the dirty ones. At best, this leads to the conclusion that the poor
need to be uplifted, both for their own sakes and for the sake of the
environment (this is usually what the government says it will do).
At worst, it leads to the conclusion that the poor are irremediably
dirty and polluting, and must be removed from the city by any means
necessary (this is usually what the government actually does).
This has been the dominant way of thinking about Delhi’s environ-
ment, especially in the post-Independence period. Over the past several
decades, there have been many waves of demolition drives, which have
swept away hundreds and thousands of poor Delhi residents. At least
since the 1990s, these demolitions have been justified with explic-
itly environmental rhetoric. To give just one prominent example: in
April 2004, more than 150,000 people were uprooted, their homes
destroyed, because they lived on the banks of the Yamuna River, and,
according to the Delhi High Court, were responsible for dumping
sewage water into the river.18
But who is really responsible for polluting the Yamuna? A study

by the non-profit organization Hazards Centre showed that the
demolished settlement had only been responsible for a scant 0.5
percent of the effluent discharged into the river; the vast majority of
pollution came from 22 drains that dumped untreated sewage into
the Yamuna.19 These drains snake through much of Delhi, collecting
waste largely from middle-class and upper-class residential areas.
If the poor are dirty, it’s because they’re forced to live in the filth that
the rich have created.
As with the Yamuna, so too with the Ridge. The city’s “green lung”
is often touted as a carbon sink, which can mitigate the ill effects of air
pollution and the production of climate-altering emissions. Following
this logic, many settlements on the Ridge, deemed encroachments,

have been bulldozed into oblivion. But what is the root cause of Delhi’s
air pollution? Road transport is responsible for more carbon emissions
than any other sector. But vehicular pollution is the responsibility of
a relatively small, elite section of the city’s population; the 2,000,000
cars on the road belong to only 20 percent of the city’s households.20
The hypocrisy of a shallow environmentalism, which demolishes

slums while promoting car ownership, has been noted by many.
Academics analyzing this phenomenon have given it many names:
bourgeois environmentalism,21 anti-poor environmentalism,22 middle-
class environmentalism,23 and so on. Conceptually, its chief flaw is that
it severs the connection between one’s own consumption and one’s
immediate environment, so that it becomes perfectly reasonable for a
car owner to demand the demolition of poor settlements on the Ridge.
This thinking is, at its core, deeply anti-ecological, since it ignores one
of ecology’s basic tenets: that everything is interconnected.
When this profound truth is ignored, the Ridge becomes an

isolated space, cut off from the rest of the world, to be protected by
further strengthening the barricades around it. Sometimes, this is
quite literal: there has recently been a push to build walls around
several parts of the Ridge. At other times, this logic becomes farcically
superficial; the Delhi government has resorted to erecting bamboo
screens along major roads during international events in order to hide
“unsightly” low-income settlements and create a pleasing “natural”
view of the city for visitors, cut off from the reality of those who toil
to make the city run.
The Economics of Disconnection

This way of thinking is not just due to greed, or laziness, or narrow-
mindedness. The obscuring of connections (ecological and otherwise)
is a structural feature of today’s international economy, and can argu-
ably be traced back much further, to the development of social classes
many thousands of years ago. The elites in early class-based societies
no longer had to labor to produce their everyday means of subsistence,
and thus lost a vital, visceral connection with nature. It was these elites
who ruled, and wrote, and presided over religious rituals, thus shaping
a culture that was increasingly distanced from nature.
Seeds 15
In a capitalist economy, this sense of disconnection is amplified
considerably, since even those who work to produce the necessities of
life are generally not toiling to create their own means of subsistence.
Rather, they are producing commodities that will be sold by someone
else, to someone else, on the open market; at the same time, they
are using their (often meager) earnings to buy the goods they need
from the market. This process automatically creates a disconnect
between the commodity’s producer and its eventual consumer.24
In contemporary times, this disconnect has become truly extraordi-

nary, as high-tech products are assembled in factories scattered across
the globe, with supply chains stretching across several continents. It’s
easy to miss the dark side of these networks. When we use our smart-
phones, we may, in some abstract way, know that our technology is
the product of sweatshop labor in China, environmentally-scarring
mining in South Africa, and so on, but it’s very difficult to feel these
connections viscerally; the system itself has distanced us from them.
Our sense of disconnection from nature is, in one way, an illusion.

But this illusion is propped up by economic, political and social
realities, which have their roots in the birth of class societies and
which have intensified immensely under global capitalism.25 For
much of human history, this has led to an arrogant triumphalism:
humans have defeated nature or have escaped the bonds of nature.
(Of course, someone must be working with nature to produce food
and build homes, but these people are pushed out of the popular
imagination, with serious consequences: is it any coincidence that
many victims of displacement in Delhi and beyond have been farmers
and construction workers?)
Today, in the age of global environmental crisis, one hears this

triumphant language less. Ironically, the very technology that was
once used to tout humanity’s separation from nature is increasingly
being seen as evidence that humans, in the end, can’t escape nature.
If we keep adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, we will be bound
to a world of rising temperatures, no matter how “free” from nature
we may temporarily feel. Nature will have the last laugh.
Despite the increasingly apparent inseparability of humanity

and nature, some still fall into the trap of seeing nature as a totally

separate realm, which must be cordoned off from humanity’s poi-
sonous influences. Though such advocates are resolutely opposed to
an arrogant ideology of conquering nature, they duplicate the binary
thinking at the heart of that ideology.
This happens all too often with the Ridge. Small areas of the Ridge
are cordoned off, and then Ridge defenders are incensed when the
cordons are overrun. The frustration is understandable, but it doesn’t
seem to take into account that Delhi is a city with a severe housing
shortage (especially for low-income populations), a commitment to
driving up land prices (encouraged by both the public and private
sector), and a never-ending inflow of migration (supported by an
explicit government policy of promoting urbanization).
This is not to say that Delhi doesn’t need green spaces, nor that
some wild zones shouldn’t be left relatively untouched by humans.
But merely creating islands of conservation whilst doing little to
address the interconnected economic and political causes of ecolog-
ical destruction, will inevitably lead to these islands being washed
away, sooner or later. In the case of the Delhi Ridge, in the middle of
a frenetic megacity, it seems likely that wave of destruction will come
sooner rather than later.
Darkness and Light

I did not come into the Ridge project with such pessimism. The seeds
for this project were planted far more playfully. I moved to Delhi in
2010, and soon after moving into a flat near Delhi University, I began
hearing alarming rumors about a nearby park.
Muggings. Murders. Mystics. Monkeys.
Curious, I began wandering around Kamla Nehru Park on the

Northern Ridge, and to my eyes, it seemed to be quite tame (except
for the ubiquitous monkeys). It was a public park with big wide paths,
some of them even paved. Its neatly manicured hedges kept the
more unkempt thickets of trees firmly in the background. It was filled
with diligent joggers and disciplined power-walkers. But the intense
public perception of the Ridge kept drawing me back. There must be
something, I figured, that gave the Ridge such an outsized place in the

imagination of those who lived near it, many of whom would not dare
to venture into it.
The Ridge, I slowly discovered, was, for many, a place to seek tran-
scendence, sometimes a profoundly spiritual one, sometimes a more
mundanely material one. It was a place to escape the constraints and
conventions of a restrictive society. Furtive lovers met there, paying
off security guards and disappearing into the bushes. Rebellious high
school students went there to smoke pot and drink beer. Sadhus and
yogis also smoked pot there, in search of a more divine high (or so
they said).
In a strange way, the present-day “uncivilized” wildness of the

Ridge reflects much older associations of nature and transcendence—
even if this wildness is just a perception, ignoring all the careful
horticultural work that has contributed to the Ridge’s current
incarnation. This way of viewing the Ridge is a double-edged sword.
It reflects the continuing divide of human culture and wild nature.
The Ridge parkland is only seen as a place of transcendence because
it is so starkly opposed to the everyday life of conventional society.
And yet, in the flickers of sacredness, there is some sense that this
is our ultimate home, that the Ridge is expressing some truth that our
society has forgotten. This is, perhaps, a grandiose way to describe a
park full of lovers, joggers and stoners. But, as we shall see, the Ridge
has been home to miracles and tragedies, gods and demons, deaths
and resurrections, for many centuries. They point to a deeper reality.
It is a reality, though, that cannot be disentangled from the Ridge’s

economic history, nor its political history, nor its environmental
history. The spiritual life of the Ridge does not exist in a vacuum.
The same can be said of Delhi, whose existence as a city depends cru-
cially on the stones and soil of the Ridge. The story of human society
and the Delhi Ridge is, to a large extent, the story of the growing rift
between the two, and the way that rift has expressed itself through
statecraft, surplus accumulation and spiritual belief. But, reading
history against the grain, the story also provides clues about how this
rift can be healed.
Seeds 19
1 Stones
Shifting Geologies of the Ridge
A Walk through (Pre)History

In 1986, an archaeologist named S. S. Saar made a startling discovery.
Walking in the middle-class South Delhi neighborhood of Malviya
Nagar, he noticed a mysterious glint in a pile of sand. Mixed in with
the sand, which had been dumped there by a crew of construction
workers, he found a handful of ancient stone tools, carved from
quartzite.
This inspired another archaeologist, A. K. Sharma, to find the

source of these tools, and his search eventually led him to Anangpur,
a village just beyond the southern boundary of Delhi, where large-
scale quarrying operations had been initiated as part of larger efforts
to mine the Ridge. A series of archaeological expeditions followed,
and the research teams found thousands of stone tools scattered
through the area, evidence of a large Stone Age site of habitation.1
Despite the fact that many stone tools had been destroyed or misplaced
in the process of mining, Anangpur remains one of the largest Stone
Age sites discovered in India.
If not for the construction boom in Delhi, and the need to dig up
the Ridge’s rocks and sands for building, Delhi would still be ignorant
about the largest settlement of its earliest human inhabitants. Those
intent on building a new Delhi couldn’t help but dig up the past, quite
literally. And all that digging inevitably circles back to the Ridge,
the source of the city’s geological riches.
Geology has played a pivotal but often overlooked role in the

development of both historical and present-day societies, and Delhi
is no exception. Geology underlies our lives, not just physically, but
economically, socially, and technologically. Consider, for instance,
the absolute centrality of fossil fuels to modern life. The industrial
revolution was propelled by steam power, which depended on the
fossilized remains of vast coal deposits from the Carboniferous
(literally, “coal-bearing”) Age, about 300 million years ago. Similarly,
the political economy of the twentieth century hinged on the geo-
logical remnants of the Cretaceous Period 100 million years ago,
when vast gas and oil reserves formed due to a lack of oxygen in the
deep sea. The geology of Delhi may not have such global resonance;
nonetheless, every society in Delhi’s history has drawn on the unique
geology of the region, from the Stone Age to the present day.
Those who ignore Delhi’s geology do so at their own peril. In

September 2014, newspapers reported yet more delays in the
construction of the city’s “Signature Bridge”, which was meant to
be completed for the 2010 Commonwealth Games.2 The culprit this
time: an “unexpected rock profile” on the riverbed. Bridge, meet
Ridge. Anyone familiar with Delhi’s basic geology would know that
the above-ground outcrops of the ancient Aravallis peter out precisely
at the section of the Yamuna where the bridge was being built. But
the Aravallis keep on going underground, all the way to Haridwar,
covered by relatively recent alluvial deposits from the river systems of
the “young” Himalayas. The rock profile found by the bridge engineers
should not have been so unexpected after all.
Though the stones of the Ridge form the foundation of much

of Delhi, they remain largely hidden from view. They are buried
underground (or underwater) or hidden by shrubs and thorns, with
only the occasional boulder visible on higher ground. What follows in
this chapter is a work of excavation, unearthing the ridge-ness of the
Ridge. For these stones have a story to tell, not just about geology, but
about the hunter-gatherer prehistory of Delhi, the bloody travails of
the medieval period, the rise of imperial bureaucracy, the struggles
of the city’s workers, and the dreamy imagination of the city’s elite.
I am hardly the first to be interested in these stones. Delhi has long

been home to people whose lives and livelihoods depended on the
region’s geology, from our hominid ancestors who first found tool-
worthy material in eroding stones to the modern-day contractors
selecting the best type of sand for making concrete. They are all
geologists in the broadest sense of the term; their understanding of
the Ridge’s rocks has pushed forward scientific and technological
advances and pioneered new methods of using Delhi’s natural
resources, in both constructive and destructive ways.

The Stones Come Alive
For the Paleolithic inhabitants of Delhi, one stone would have held
particular importance: quartzite. This is the stone from which so
many tools were crafted, the stone that S. S. Saar stumbled upon
so fortuitously. Quartzite can be found in abundance throughout the
Aravalli range, which begins in Gujarat, traverses all of Rajasthan,
and ends with the low hills of the Delhi Ridge. Once a grand mountain
chain, the Aravallis have been subject to erosion and gradual
weathering over the course of more than a billion years. However,
quartzite is particularly resistant to erosion, and so it remains
prominent in many parts of the range, including the Ridge. It would
have been a beacon to early tribes.
Although these tribes seem to exist in the farthest reaches of the

ancient past, they are of remarkably recent vintage when compared
to the quartzite they were so adept at shaping. Quartzite appeared to
the tribes as a fixed, permanent substance, with a solidity and heft
that proved useful for many purposes. Indeed, this is how quartzite
appears to us today. But when considered on a sufficiently vast time-
scale, the stones of the Ridge (quartzite and all the others) take on a
life of their own, clashing and clanging and eroding and re-forming
over many millennia.
Before zooming in on a more intimate, human-centered timescale,

it is worthwhile to meditate for a moment on the unfathomable
expanses of geological time. The quartzite of the Ridge is 1.5 billion
years old, the same age as the Aravalli Range itself. It is 7,500 times
older than humanity and 150,000 times older than the birth of
agriculture. No wonder it seems so constant to humans.
To understand how quartzite formed, and why it has properties

that have been so useful to Stone Age and modern humans alike, we’ll
have to take a brief plunge into the forbidding, Greek-inflected jargon
of geologists. For instance, the oldest time period on the geological
time scale is called the Hadean eon, named after Hades, Greek god
of the underworld. The name is meant to evoke the fiery, “hellish”
conditions on Earth at the time, as much of its surface was still molten;
the technical term is “extreme volcanism”. In those times, there was
more lava than rock, and the Ridge was still waiting to be born.
Stones 23
The oldest rocks in the Aravallis are around 3.3 billion years old,
significantly predating the formation of the mountain chain. This
marks them as products of the Archean eon, when the Earth was
beginning to cool. Appropriately, the term “Archean” comes from the
Greek word for “beginning” or “origin”; Earth’s geology, including our
little corner of it, the Ridge, properly starts in this eon. After the end
of Hades’ reign, various continents began to take shape.3 The basic
constituents of these continents were cratons: stable, thick pieces of
the Earth’s crust.
From around 3 to 2.5 billion years ago, there was a period of rapid
thickening in the craton that now hosts the Delhi Ridge. Evidence of
this can be found in an analysis of the present-day Aravalli mountain
range, which reveals an ancient formation at its base, dominated
by granitic rocks. During the Archean eon, the crust in the Aravalli
region was at least twenty kilometers thick.
The next eon, the Proterozoic, was when the Ridge as we know
it took shape. Geology is not a field known for its ironies, but it is
surprising to learn that the mountains of the Ridge actually began as
a basin.4 Although the immediate cause of the Aravallis’ formation
was the pushing together of land, it has its origins in the pulling apart
of the Earth’s crust.
This process, known as rifting, began approximately 2.5 billion

years ago and continued until about 1.9 billion years ago. The craton
that had grown so thick in the Archean age of beginnings began to thin
out in the Aravalli region, as tectonic forces started pulling it apart. Fiery
heat returned to the Ridge, as magma burst through the cracks in the
earth. Due to all this thinning out, a large basin formed, which began
to collect volcanic rocks, as well as sedimentary ones like sandstone.
Rifting was followed by about 300 million years of cooling as the

crust settled back into an equilibrium. But this equilibrium would not
last long. The main event was about to start: the “Delhi orogeny”. On
a normal human timescale, this event would hardly be perceptible.
A human would not find much change in the Aravallis even during its
most drastic periods of transition. But if we speed up our timeline,
and take in a billion years at a time, we can see how transformative
the Delhi orogeny was.

“Orogeny” refers to the collision of huge masses of rock and the
forming of mountain chains. When textbooks say that the Aravallis
are 1.5 billion years old, this is what they mean: the Delhi orogeny
took place about 1.5 billion years ago. Two pieces of earth that were
formerly being pulled apart to create basins were now being pushed
together. All the sediment got pushed up as the mountain range was
formed. In describing the dramatic process of rift inversion, the
staid, technical language of academic articles slips up and betrays
some emotion; in orogeny, part of the basement rock “suffers” from
deformation and metamorphism.
That last hardship (metamorphism) is particularly important for

understanding the current geological make-up of the Ridge. As the
basins were pushed together and began their ascent, the volcanic and
sedimentary rocks that were previously present in the region changed
into metamorphic rocks because of the heat and the pressure of the
mountain-making process. And so, the sedimentary rock known as
sandstone was heated, compressed, and transformed into quartzite.
After this massive event 1.5 billion years ago, the Aravalli range
continued to evolve, as any geological phenomenon does; smaller
basins emerged along the flanks of the mountains, and new sequences
of sedimentary rock formed on these flanks. A few dramatic geological
surprises were yet to come, as we’ll see. But the basic form of the
Aravalli mountain range had been established, and the key geological
components of the Ridge were in place, including the quintessential
metamorphic rock of the area: quartzite.
Enter Hominids
Over the course of the Ridge’s history, humans have engaged in a slow,
and then alarmingly rapid, process of resource extraction, chipping
away at stones that had come into being over the course of billions
of years. In one sense, humans only accelerated processes that were
already well underway; the Aravallis had begun eroding well before
humans entered the scene. But again, we must weigh geological time-
scales against more anthropocentric ones. The pre-human erosion
occurred at the glacial pace of geological time, the forces of wind and
of water weathering away the rock molecule by molecule. It was a slow
Stones 25
disintegration imperceptible to human eyes. Human intervention
happened much more quickly, and thus its impact has been much
more dramatic.
The first signs of this intervention are remarkably ancient, though

their discovery has been remarkably recent. The massive archaeological
site at Anangpur, for instance, was unearthed only in the late 1980s.
These recent findings have provided a glimpse into the Stone Age
pre-history of Delhi. The very term “Stone Age” points to the centrality
of rocks to the everyday life of ancient communities. And fittingly, the
only evidence we have from that period in Delhi is a growing set of
stone tools dug up by archaeologists (or construction crews).
It is surprising how little these Stone Age remnants figure in

popular histories of Delhi. Part of this may be due to the notorious
difficulty of interpreting such ancient, scattered evidence. Part of
this, perhaps, is political. Hindu nationalist narratives have given
Delhi thoroughly Indian (by which they mean thoroughly Hindu)
roots. Such narratives are quick to label Indraprastha, from the epic
Mahabharata, as the first significant habitation in the Delhi region,
despite the questionable historicity of the epic.
Indraprastha must be the first, the origin, the precursor and

progenitor of all other Delhis; the “sons of the soil” Hindutva narrative
demands this. No matter that the Mahabharata itself implies that
the area was already inhabited before the heroic Pandavas made their
entrance. And, more relevant for our purposes, no matter that there is
tangible, hard-as-rock evidence that, many thousands of years before
the already-misty past of the great Bharata war, other migrants had
already made their way to the Delhi region, with an origin story more
universal in nature.
This evidence comes from at least forty-three sites around Delhi,

which are detailed in a landmark 1987 report on the city’s Stone Age
past.5 These sites are, unsurprisingly, clustered around the Ridge
(where else to get stone tools?) and span a vast period of time, from
the lower paleolithic (more than 200,000 years ago) to the meso-
lithic (as recently as 5,000 years ago). The 1987 report built on
earlier, more fortuitous discoveries, including the very first discovery
of ancient stone tools in 1956, when a scholar happened to find four

such tools near the main gate of Delhi University in the north of the
city. Several other early finds took place in the campus of Jawaharlal
Nehru University (JNU) along the southern edge of the Ridge. More
than one archaeologist has commented that it is embarrassingly easy
to chance upon Stone Age relics when strolling in Delhi’s hills.
Many of the ancient stone tools discovered in the Ridge, including

those of Anangpur, are categorized as “Acheulian”, a name that comes
from the town in France where such tools were first discovered.
Such tools were widely used in several continents for hundreds of
thousands of years, with the oldest traced to 1.7 million years ago.
When we venture this far back in history, the meaning of the word
“human” starts to get a bit shaky. Were the authors of the massive
stone industry in Anangpur and throughout the Ridge really human?
It is unlikely that they were Homo sapiens or, to use a favored archae-
ological term, “anatomically modern humans”. But they belonged to
the genus Homo, Latin for “human”, and in the archaeological liter-
ature, all Stone Age sites are broadly considered part of early human
life. (For instance, there’s the common claim that “Acheulian tools
were the dominant technology for the vast majority of human history.”)
So how human, exactly, were the Ridge’s earliest hominid inhabitants?
The simple answer is that the Ridge’s Acheulian tool-makers

belonged to the species Homo erectus, a direct ancestor of Homo
sapiens, and similar to our species in several crucial ways. They had
significantly larger brains than the very first of our genus, Homo
habilis, and shed some bulk in order to move more nimbly. Also, as
compared to Homo habilis, the physical differences between males
and females were less marked. If not modern humans, they were well
on their way to being so.
But things are rarely simple in the study of the prehistoric past.
Some archaeologists suggest that Homo erectus is actually an archaic
subcategory of Homo sapiens. Others insist that Homo erectus is
not the direct ancestor of Homo sapiens; that honor goes to Homo
ergaster, a species whose very existence is hotly debated. Adding to
the confusion is the difficulty of connecting the general debate
on human origins with the specific—and scant—evidence from the
Delhi region. The only clues in the area are stone tools; no fossilized
Stones 29
skeletons have yet been found, making it all the more difficult to
determine just what kind of hominid created the tools. And the
dating of these tools is highly imprecise. A recent study of Acheulian
tools found on the JNU campus could only give the extremely rough
estimate that the Stone Age site was somewhere between 128,000
and 350,000 years old.6
Yet even this estimate is helpful. There is a general consensus that

Homo sapiens only reached India about 70,000 years ago, well after
the Ridge had its first hominid inhabitants.7 This makes the Homo
erectus label seem appropriate for the earliest Ridge settlers, as does
the fact that, in other parts of the world, Acheulian tools are often
found with the skeletal remains of Homo erectus.
The species Homo erectus originated in Africa, the birthplace

of our genus. Given our geological concerns, it is worth noting that
Homo did not originate just anywhere in Africa. Our genus was
born in the Great Rift Valley, a set of broken hills and surrounding
savannas that stretched from the Red Sea to present-day South Africa.
This immense ecosystem was well-suited for early hominids largely
because of its hills and caves, which served many purposes: as a place
to hide from dangerous predators, as shelter from the elements, and
a vantage point for spotting prey.
The earliest of our genus, Homo habilis, with its pre-Acheulian

tools, likely relied much more on scavenging than on hunting, and the
species stuck to Rift Valley-like environments even when some groups
migrated out of Africa. But by the time Homo erectus had emerged,
our genus had shed some of its original constraints. The harnessing
of fire and the use of Acheulian tools allowed these hominid societies
to roam more freely over more varied terrain, and to hold their own
against a wide set of predators. Still, even for Homo erectus, hilly
areas would have been a clear draw, both because of the stone they
provided and the vantage points they afforded.
This helps explain why there are such dense clusters of Stone
Age remains in the Delhi Ridge. The broken, meandering hills of
the Ridge would have provided an ideal environment for hunting,
and not just because of the ease of spotting prey. The archaeolo-
gist A. K. Sharma speculates about the hunting methods of Delhi’s

earliest inhabitants and their use of escarpments or steep slopes:
“Escarpments... provided ideal spots for the paleolithic man to drive
herds of less harmful animals towards escarpments and force a fall to
kill or injure them grievously.”8
For these early hunter-gatherer communities, the tools fashioned

from Ridge rock were essential for tasks like hunting, starting fires,
cutting up the bodies of dead animals, digging up roots, and piercing
the shells of hard fruits. The use of Acheulian technology also suggests
considerable intelligence and knowledge passed on from generation
to generation. Paleolithic inhabitants of the Ridge would have
recognized the variations of quartzite in the hills, and would have
selected those blocks of quartzite that were most erosion-resistant,
and thus best suited to tool-making.
The Acheulian tool-makers were encountering a rockscape that

was highly weathered. This is not only because of the age of the
Aravallis, but also because the stone in this region has unusually
high amounts of iron impurities, which accelerate the weathering
process. Over the course of millions of years, drops of rainwater
have worked their way into microscopic cracks in this iron-rich rock,
slowly but relentlessly prying open the cracks and wearing away the
stone. Ridge rock formations thus typically have a gray, unweathered
core, surrounded by weathered white rock, with an outer covering of
severely eroded, crumbling red rock. Stone age people sought out the
strong gray core for tool-making.
The site at Anangpur, which has thousands of finished artifacts as

well as tools in various stages of production, suggests that the settle-
ments here were quite large. Many archaeologists have argued that
the quartzite tools, aside from their various utilitarian applications,
had high social value and were used as markers of social status. Some
of the tools seem unnecessarily elaborate, which suggests a larger
symbolic function. On this theme, speculation is rife. Archaeologists
Marek Kohn and Steven Mithen have suggested that elaborate stone
tools were used to impress and woo potential mates.9 Another archae-
ologist, Mimi Lam, has asserted that Acheulian tools, durable and
produced in huge numbers, served as the first commodities.10 Love
and money: it seems Homo erectus hunter-gatherers weren’t so dif-
ferent from us after all.
Stones 31
The Long Journey of the Ridge’s First “Modern” Migrants
While all this may be speculation, it strongly suggests that even for
the earliest hominid settlers of Delhi, the stones of the Ridge were
loaded with symbolic import. If this was true for the Homo erectus
inhabitants, with their Acheulian tools, it was even more pronounced
for the next round of settlers: Homo sapiens, our own species reaching
Delhi at last.
They, or their ancestors at least, had come from rather far away.
Like Homo erectus, modern humans have their origins in Africa.
Our species first began migrating out of Africa about 100,000 years
ago, and reached the Indian subcontinent around 60,000 years ago.
Archaeologists speculate that India was an important early stepping-
stone in the dispersal of Homo sapiens populations throughout Asia
and Europe.11
These early human communities likely hugged the coast as

they made their way from Africa to India and then onwards as far
as Australia, traveling both by land and by sea. A recent scientific
article paints an evocative portrait of this process. Migrating groups
would have stuck to coastal habitats and their associated range of
exceptionally rich, diverse, and economically reliable marine food
resources (fish, shellfish, crustaceans, sea mammals, sea birds, etc.).
They thus minimized the need for new economic and technological
adaptations as they moved from one coastal location to another—in
effect a process of repeated “beach hopping” from west to east, driven
by steadily increasing population numbers.12
Things got difficult when some of the groups decided to explore the
interiors of the subcontinent, likely following the rivers that flowed
into the sea from the coastline. Faced with a different environment, a
different set of predators and prey, a different climate and a different
landscape, these early explorers had to improvise and develop a new
set of survival skills and social structures suited to the new challenges
they faced. This process was a slow, halting one, taking place over a
period of several thousand years, but it led to a proliferation of human
settlements throughout the subcontinent, including, eventually, the
Delhi region. In the process, the communities relied on a crucial
technology that had originally been developed in Africa: microliths,

or small stone tools that were far more advanced and versatile than
the Acheulian tools of the Homo erectus, thus furthering our genus’s
transition from scavenger to hunter.
Many microliths have been found in the Delhi area; they make
up a significant portion of the Stone Age tools found in the Ridge.
Whereas the Homo erectus settlers of Delhi were most concerned
with quartzite, the Homo sapiens who first came were after another
type of rock: quartz. (Yes, the two are different; yes, this is confusing.)
The quartz was a product of a surprising development in the

geological history of the Ridge. Long after the Aravallis had formed
and stabilized, a layer of molten magma from deep within the earth
bubbled up to the surface and hardened to form rock. These formations
pushed into the Ridge rock, creating veins of intrusive quartz stone
that streak through the old topography. Some of these veins are clear
and glassy; others more milky and turbid. All varieties were employed
by the early human (that is, Homo sapiens) inhabitants of Delhi to
make microliths.
Although microlithic tools could serve many functions, arguably

the most important was their use in hunting. During this era of
human history, interchangeable microliths were mass-produced, and
they represented an advance over Acheulian tools in part because
of their lightness and the ease with which they could be replaced on
weapons. Archaeologists speculate that weapons like spears would
have featured long rows of microliths, which would have pierced prey
more thoroughly and caused rapid blood loss.
The increasing sophistication of microlithic tools, and with it, the

increased importance and effectiveness of hunting, had a profound
impact on human life in Delhi and beyond. It is difficult to trace this
impact with any precision, and, once again, research on it is largely
speculative. But the clues that we get are fascinating.
For one, microlithic technology may help explain why South

Asia is so densely populated today. Of course, much of this region’s
population explosion is quite recent, but it has surprisingly ancient
roots. In the period between 45,000 and 20,000 years ago, most of
humanity lived on the subcontinent. This period saw three interrelated
Stones 33
trends: population increase, environmental deterioration, and micro-
lithic innovation. The environmental deterioration was not caused
by humans, at least initially; rather, it was due to the advent of an ice
age, which curtailed the monsoon and led to increased desertifica-
tion. In response, human populations became more densely clustered
in the few areas that remained suitable for habitation.13
Increased population density put pressure on these societies to

produce more food, which in turn led to experimentation and inno-
vation with stone tools. With more efficient, more lethal tools, popu-
lations could not only keep their density, but start expanding again,
especially when environmental conditions became more favorable.
This, perhaps, is the prehistory of the South Asian population boom.
This general picture is useful for contextualizing the appearance

of the first Homo sapiens of the region, but when we zoom in, there
are very few details about the particular practices of the Ridge’s
hunter-gatherers. This is true about both Homo sapiens and their
predecessors, Homo erectus. The scattered bits of evidence we have
about Stone Age life are tantalizing; they suggest a flourishing of
life in Delhi during both paleolithic and mesolithic time periods, but
they give only the faintest hints of a timeline for this life, and only the
vaguest sense of its shifting technologies and demographics.
Some hints are particularly suggestive. Recently, simple rock

carvings were found on the Ridge, near clusters of microliths on the
JNU campus. This suggests signs of a Stone Age culture in Delhi, of
artistic and spiritual practices that might shed light on daily life in
those prehistoric days. Mudit Trivedi, the anthropology graduate
student who discovered the carvings, has recognized their impor-
tance and has emphasized the need for further research on this and
other archaeological sites around the campus.14 But so far, his pleas
have been ignored.
This reflects a more general neglect of Delhi’s prehistoric past,

which has not been a priority for government funding agencies.
Meanwhile, the intensive, ongoing urbanization of the Delhi region
has sent real estate prices sky-rocketing and has caused many
archaeological relics to be bulldozed aside. It is no coincidence that
significant archaeological finds have happened at construction sites

in Delhi, from Anangpur to the JNU campus. But this is hardly a
sustainable strategy for archaeological explorations. Construction
crews turn up ancient relics only to bury them under layers of concrete;
it’s only through fortuitous interventions that archaeologists pluck
some relics of note from the churning earth of Delhi.
Little attention is paid as the evidence of Delhi’s most ancient

settlements is destroyed piece by piece. By way of comparison, the
destruction of archaeological remains in war-torn Iraq has grabbed
international headlines, and has been used by various political com-
mentators to point out the mindless violence of the US Army or ISIS,
depending on the commentator’s political persuasion. The destruc-
tion of Delhi’s ancient archeology has been a quieter, more mundane
affair. No war, just the humdrum expansion of a megacity—a mall
here, a residential complex there, a factory here, a mining site there.
It has upset the city’s small coterie of archaeologists and history
enthusiasts, but few others.
Even those who are passionate about the later archaeological

remains—the massive fortress walls, the picturesque ruins, the exqui-
site tombs—seem indifferent or simply uninformed about the city’s
Stone Age past. In some ways, little pieces of chipped stone aren’t as
fascinating as intricately carved pillars and palaces, but they open a
window into a much deeper, more mysterious past, one far removed
from Hindu myths. Far from being an eternally Hindu city, Delhi is
actually a symbol of a much broader humanity—a reminder of our
African origins and our uncertain journeys into the unknown.
Stone Remnants of a Different Sort

Despite all my wanderings in the Ridge, I have yet to chance upon
a Stone Age tool. Perhaps I don’t have the attuned eye of the
archeologist. Perhaps I am just unlucky. So I decide to set myself
a more realistic target. On a sunny day in late November, a friend
and I set off on my motorcycle to search for a historically significant
bit of quartize that is, I have heard, less elusive than the Stone Age
tools scattered across the city. It’s a long journey from my home in
Mehrauli, on the southwestern edge of the Ridge, to the neighborhood
called East of Kailash, on the Ridge’s southeastern side. Not that the
Stones 35
two neighborhoods are so far apart geographically; the trip is long
because of the notorious traffic of Delhi, a city that famously boasts
more cars than Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai combined.
We finally reach our destination: a small park maintained by the

Delhi Development Authority (DDA). The park is a welcome relief
from the congestion and aggression of the Delhi roads. Tibetan prayer
flags are fluttering in the breeze. Groups of Buddhist monks, with
shorn heads and purple robes, clamber over the rocks and pose for
selfies. Two men are sitting on a bench, rolling a joint. Others are
lying down in the grass, soaking in the winter sun.
This is Delhi at its most idyllic. Not too hot; not too cold; rolling
hills and green grass; people enjoying picnics and kids running
around. In some ways, the park is typical of the city. There are scores
of other carefully manicured, fenced-off parks just like this through-
out the metropolis. But the presence of the prayer flags and the monks
suggests that there’s something special about this one.
This suspicion is confirmed when we pass through the main gate

of the park, skirting the garbage dump that borders the gate. A small
signboard, with text in both English and Hindi, announces that this is
the site of an Ashokan edict, discovered by the Archaeological Survey
of Indian (ASI) in 1986.15 Another late discovery!
Most Delhi-ites aren’t aware of this piece of history in their midst,

but it seems to be well known internationally. The monks visiting the
edict are from Myanmar. Another group from Sri Lanka is on their
way. They have come to pay homage to the edict from Ashoka, the great
emperor who famously converted to Buddhism, and sought to instill
Buddhist values throughout his empire, which covered vast stretches
of the Indian subcontinent. Today, the Delhi edict is enclosed in a
metal cage installed by the government, which is in turn protected by
a concrete structure. A kindly caretaker, employed by the ASI, holds
the keys to this structure, and opens it up when tourists approach. He
tells us about the history of the site.
The edict has been carved into one of the quartzite rock outcrop-
pings that dot this area. Ashoka wanted his legacy to be written in
stone, quite literally. Though the Stone Age was long gone, stones
still packed a symbolic punch.16 His rock edicts, including the one in

Delhi, tell of his conversion to Buddhism, his great achievements, his
exhortation that both the humble and the great follow the Buddhist
path, and his hope that this cause would “endure forever”. Embedding
this message in stone—the painstaking work, no doubt, of a skilled
craftsman—does give it a kind of permanence, but even that (as any
good Buddhist would know) is illusory.
The text of the Delhi edict is now almost entirely worn away. This is
in part because devout visitors insist on touching the stone, to estab-
lish some kind of tactile communion with this revered Buddhist ruler.
But despite the near illegibility of the writing, the visiting monks do
clearly see themselves as carrying on Ashoka’s cause. A small statue
of the Buddha has been installed near the edict. He is surrounded by
wilting but colorful flowers. Incense burns, and visitors leave money:
Indian rupees, American dollars, Burmese kyats. On their way out,
many pick up a pebble from the surrounding stones as a keepsake.
The presence of an Ashokan edict in Delhi suggests that the region

was important during the period of Mauryan rule, which was at its
peak in the third century bce. This area would have fallen on the
Uttarapatha, the major trade route of the region, and would have
been important ecologically because of its location at the center of the
watershed formed by the Indus and Ganges rivers. Ashoka’s reign is
often presented as a golden age of Indian history, marked by religious
tolerance and vibrant cultural expression, as well as material wealth.
But apart from a fading stone inscription, little can be said about life
in Delhi at this time. From the available evidence, it is unlikely that
there was any kind of urban agglomeration in Delhi during this era.
Still, there is no doubt that the Delhi of the stone edict was radi-
cally different from the Delhi of the Stone Age tools. The existence of
empires like Ashoka’s reflects the full-fledged emergence of powerful
states ruling over class-based societies. Huge empires were increas-
ingly common, and with them, increasingly intensive practices of agri-
culture, which could satisfy the material demands of growing states.
At this point in history, and indeed for more than a millennium

after Mauryan rule, Delhi was not seen as an ideal base for empire-
building, largely because of its arid climate. It became more attractive
to empire-builders only in the eleventh century ce, for reasons that
Stones 37
will be explored in depth in the next chapter. With the region’s rise
to prominence, Delhi’s stones found themselves unearthed for a new
purpose: fortifying state power.
The first states to show interest in Delhi gravitated towards

the Ridge, and the first stone fortresses were built in what is now
Mehrauli. The initial walls were erected by a clan called the Tomars,
who were defeated by the Chauhans, who were in turn defeated
by Mohammad Ghori and Qutbuddin Aibak, who set up the first
lasting Turkic Sultanate in Delhi (more on these characters in the
next two chapters). This quick succession of rulers in Delhi points to
the city’s importance in an age of widespread military contestation,
due to its position as a gateway into India from the subcontinent’s
northwest. Until the Mughals set up a relatively lasting peace, north
India was roiled by waves of conflict, as powerful empires from
Central Asia competed with each other and with local dynasties for
control of the region.
In this tumultuous environment, it is no wonder that the early

rulers of Delhi were largely concerned with securing their own safety.
By locating their citadels on the rises of the Ridge, they provided
themselves with a useful vantage point to spot marauding armies
and withstand sieges. And they built enormous stone walls encircling
their cities, making each settlement its own fortress.
Not only were these fortifications located on the Ridge, but they
used the very stones of the Ridge to construct their massive walls and
buildings, unearthing huge quartzite blocks to create their fortresses.
In other words, the early urban settlements in Delhi were not only
built on the Ridge, they were built of the Ridge. The ruins—especially
the remains of a fort called Tughlaqabad, which tower over the adjoin-
ing road—are a bit like the Aravallis themselves: eroded reminders of
previous days of glory, now battered by many years of decay. But the
craftsmanship, and the attention to geological detail, is still evident.
In the ruins of Lal Kot, there are quartzite blocks that fit together with
perfect precision, thus making mortar unnecessary.
By the time of the Mughals, urban Delhi had shifted away from the
Ridge and onto the banks of the Yamuna River, which was becoming
increasingly important for trade and as a water source. In maps from

Mughal times, the Ridge has receded into the distance, providing a
backdrop to the foreground of the thriving city. With the Mughals, the
Ridge became the outskirts of the city, or, as in the case of Mehrauli, a
romantic getaway, far from the responsibilities of state-building.
Quarry Quarrels
The British brought the Ridge back into prominence. While they
engaged with the Ridge in myriad ways, adding layers of military,
emotional and political significance to the site, they certainly did
not forget its foundational rock-ness, and its value for constructing
massive buildings.
In 1803, the British East India Company took control of Delhi

and ruled by proxy through a series of Mughal kings who played
increasingly ceremonial roles. It further tightened its grip on the city
after brutally quashing the Uprising of 1857, an event which prompted
East India Company rule to be replaced by the direct control of the
British Crown. But the wholesale British transformation of Delhi only
began in earnest in 1911, when it was named the new capital of British
India, replacing Calcutta.
The construction of the gleaming, rigidly geometric New Delhi

(the initial phase of which took roughly 20 years) brought an unprec-
edented building boom to the city, and the quartzite blocks of the
Ridge provided suitable building blocks for government buildings,
while also providing continuity with empires past. Even before that,
as early as the 1870s, Delhi quartzite was mined by the British and
used to construct structures like the Agra Canal, which diverted water
from the Yamuna. But the building of New Delhi led to mining on a
much larger scale.
Clues about this mining boom can be found in the Delhi State
Archives, which sit facing the Ridge in south Delhi, not far from
Mehrauli. Tucked in a quiet corner of the Qutab Institutional Area, the
archives contain the records of the erstwhile Deputy Commissioner
and Chief Commissioner, imperial posts for mid-level British officials
charged with administering Delhi District (as it was designated at
that time).
Stones 39
Many of the files in the Delhi State Archives are starting to disinte-
grate and others have disappeared altogether, but the administrators
of the archives have kept alive the British spirit of bureaucracy and
red-tapism. I discovered this first-hand during my many visits to the
archive, which involved countless forms in triplicate, meticulously-
maintained handwritten registers, and mysterious procedures that
governed access to files. I often found myself gazing wistfully out the
window of the archives’ reading room, watching the swaying trees
in the nearby Ridge park, as I waited for a particular form to be pro-
cessed or a particular approval to be granted.
But it was worth the effort to get my hands on the weathered letters
penned by British officials and to get a peek into the world of colo-
nial governance. The archival material on Ridge quarrying is espe-
cially fascinating. These files reveal the government’s obsession with
control, regulations and bureaucratic processes. Even something as
elemental as stone gets bureaucratized, and thus is subject to endless
power struggles and jurisdictional battles. Quartzite, for the British,
was largely a means to an end: a way to make the empire look grand,
and, perhaps just as importantly, a way to exert financial control over
natural resources.
A look into one particular set of archived correspondences

reveals just what was at stake in the British efforts to mine the Ridge.
India was described as the jewel in the crown of the British Empire
(I hardly need to point out that this is a geological metaphor), and
the new Indian capital needed to reflect this grandeur. At the same
time, the government was obsessed with cutting costs, especially as
critics at home in England accused India’s British administrators
of being irresponsible, corrupt, and profligate. British India, which
was meant to bolster the Empire’s economic dominance on a global
scale, was seen by some as a liability. The planners of New Delhi,
then, had to balance the need for regal splendor with the need for
fiscal scrupulousness. As one analysis put it, “The maximum effect
was to be obtained at a minimum of cost—the leitmotiv of British
rule in India.”17 The mining of the Ridge must be seen in this context.
Aravalli stone was abundant, locally available, and grand enough for
the new capital. It is little surprise, then, that the Ridge was mined
intensively as New Delhi was built.

Even with a constrained budget, this was a massive undertaking.
In addition to Ridge rock, stones were brought in from other parts
of northern India, most notably the pink sandstone that now adorns
the most important buildings in New Delhi. The British built special
rail lines to carry rock from the Ridge quarries and beyond directly
to the building sites in New Delhi, and the stone yard created for
this purpose was the biggest in the world at that time. The British
brought in not just stone, but stone-cutters, casting a wide net across
north India to find craftsmen skilled in shaping rock. A recent book
about the making of New Delhi, emphasizing the speed and scope
of construction, notes that the combination of skilled workers and
modern mechanical devices like cranes “created an unprecedented
momentum of construction work”.18
But this momentum was difficult to sustain. In 1916, chaos erupted

on the mining front, albeit in the stiff-upper-lip British bureaucratic
fashion, in a dispute that drew in a wide range of powerful officials and
their underlings. What started as a concern over sanitation turned
into a larger turf war that raised crucial questions about government
ownership of resources like stone and processes like mining in an
imperial city. It’s worthwhile going into the details of the case, since it
shows that the imperial system, though dysfunctional at times, rarely
lost sight of its key goal: to extract as much revenue as possible.
On 16 February 1916, the Chief Commissioner of Delhi, W. M. Hailey

(after whom a road is now named in New Delhi), sent a letter to the
Deputy Commissioner, noting that the deep pools of water created by
quarrying were breeding grounds for disease, and suggesting that quar-
rying be limited to shallower depressions.19 The Deputy Commissioner
dutifully followed up on this suggestion, temporarily banning mining
in the Jhandewalan and Panchkuian areas, where particularly deep
quarries had been dug.
An Executive Engineer from the Public Works Department replied,

not with concerns about sanitation, but with territorial antagonism.
His letter states,
My contractors Milka Singh and Girdhari Lal, who have been

quarrying Delhi Quartzite...during the past twelve months, have
Stones 41
reported to me that the Tahsildar...stopped their work and informed
them that they would now have to get a pass from the Deputy
Commissioner. Will you please inform me whether the Deputy
Commissioner has received any authority over these quarries from
the Imperial Delhi Committee?20
Some explanations are in order. A “Tahsildar” or tehsildar, as it is

more commonly spelled (the British were known for their questionable
spellings and constant mispronunciations) is the head of a tehsil, a
small administrative unit that became prominent during British rule.
By the early 1900s, the role of tehsildar was played by Indian officials,
who were making up a larger and larger part of the Raj’s administrative
apparatus. The Executive Engineer’s letter suggests the complexities
of British rule, as Indian contractors working for British engineers
came into conflict with Indian administrators following the orders of
British government leaders, with all the parties involved claiming to
be working towards the same goal on behalf of the Raj.
But if all the players were on the same team, they were clearly
not on the same page. The engineer’s letter reveals a tension that
Delhi has felt at least since the establishment of New Delhi as the
new center of British power: the struggle for control between the local
city government and the larger powers that be (the British imperial
state, then the Indian national government). As the capital city,
Delhi has been closely guarded over by latter organizations, while
the former groups chafe under the constraints placed on them in
governing “their” city.
In the case of the 1916 quarry quarrel, the main opponents were
the Imperial Delhi Commission, tasked by the imperial govern-
ment with planning the new capital, and the office of the Deputy
Commissioner, which oversaw many essential administrative tasks
for the District of Delhi. The Imperial Delhi Commission was part
of the larger Public Works Department, whose engineers bristled at
any challenge to their technocratic control over the newly emerging
city. The turf war plays out in exceedingly polite language, with each
letter invariably ending, “I have the honour to be, Sir, your most obe-
dient servant.” But beneath this veneer of professional humility, the
officials exchanged sharp barbs and jockeyed for position.

Stones 43
The Deputy Commissioner, Major Henry C. Beadon, emerged as
the protagonist of this molehill-turned-mountain. Looking back at the
history of the Delhi Ridge in colonial times, Beadon seems to be every-
where at once. Besides his role in the quarrying controversy, he was
a key player in attempts to extend agricultural taxes, a long-winded
contributor to debates about forest conservation, and a leader of
government efforts to buy land for New Delhi.
Beadon was a tireless defender of bureaucratic procedure. In

the quarrying case, he attracted the ire, not only of the planners of
New Delhi, but also of his supposed ally in local governance, the
Chief Commissioner. Beadon, a stickler for the rules, repeatedly cited
government regulations to defend his actions, while his opponents
appealed to the urgency of building the new imperial city and exas-
peratedly implored Beadon to stop gumming up the works.
After Beadon stopped the mining of deep quarries, the Public

Works Department’s Chief Engineer responded to concerns about
sanitation with irrefutable geologic fact, based on the Ridge’s history
of weathering and erosion: “it is necessary to cut the rock to a great
depth in order to obtain sound stone free from partial decomposi-
tion.” He then complained that “the output of stone is stopped and
work at the Secretariats will shortly be held up.”21 He finally struck a
deal with the Chief Commissioner whereby deep quarries would be
allowed, with the provision that they be filled up with rubble as soon
as quarrying ceased.
The matter could have ended there, but Beadon kept stirring up
trouble (or kept on simply doing his duties, as he no doubt would have
put it). He gave orders to announce an auction for the stones that had
been quarried by the contractors Milka Singh and Girdhari Lal, to
the great dismay of the Public Works Department, whose engineers
needed that stone to build New Delhi’s government secretariats. The
Chief Engineer wrote an indignant letter to Beadon, who reluctantly
agreed to stop the auction.22
But the long-suffering Beadon did not accept defeat. Instead,

he defended his actions in a series of letters. In a representative
correspondence, this one to the Chief Engineer, he started off with:
“Your letter has evidently been written under a misapprehension

of existing facts and prescribed procedure.” He made it clear that,
according to the government regulations, the Deputy Commissioner
(that is, Beadon himself) should act on behalf of the State as the
owner of State lands. He was thus incensed that the Public Works
Department had been issuing licenses for quarrying on State lands.
He tersely noted that “passes issued by any one but myself have
been issued without any authority at all.”23 He suggested that the
best way forward was to change the regulations so that the Deputy
Commissioner no longer had responsibility over the area controlled
by the Public Works Department.
This suggestion was implemented by mid-May, but, unsurpris-

ingly, the tensions did not end there. Accusations and recriminations
were hurled about through June and July, as a tehsildar (who, at this
late stage, is finally given a name: M. Fazl-ud-din) once again stopped
quarrying activities on a site that was extracting stone for the sec-
retariats. Beadon blamed some of these problems on the incompe-
tent drawing of boundaries, claiming that it was unclear where his
turf ended. He again claimed the moral high ground: “I have allowed
the contractors to go on working in order to avoid delays: it will save
correspondence if the... contractors are directed to comply with the
published rules.”24
Beadon also pointed to a deeper confusion about the limits of his

power.
If the land is to be under my charge… for quarrying, it is essential

that the land should be under my full and unfettered control. No
Executive Engineer...should have anything to do with the permits
for quarrying…. If a departure is to be made from the Regulations
in respect to this matter, the most feasible situation will be for
the whole...area...[to be] removed entirely from the Deputy
Commissioner’s control.25
Beadon’s desire for “full and unfettered control” set the stage for
many future debates over jurisdiction and city planning. Frustrated
with the conflicting demands of different departments, he believed
that each parcel of land should be under the clear, direct control of
only one agency. It is not power he wanted, so much as clarity and
Stones 45
lack of interference. He was happy to give up control of New Delhi
lands; just don’t give him partial control.
In the same letter, Beadon explained why he thought this exclusive

control was necessary. Mustering his argumentative forces, Beadon
cited the Land Acquisition Manual, the Settlement Manual, and a
Standing Order of the Financial Commissioner, all of which showed
“very clearly that royalty is a form of land revenue and that it has
always been the duty of the Deputy Commissioner to collect royalty
and to issue passes for quarrying on all land.” Criticizing the Chief
Commissioner’s approach, Beadon asserted that his suggestion to
hand lands over to the Public Works Department
was accepted...but in a modified form, which I notice does not

provide for the levying of royalty or land revenue when quarrying
takes place in those areas. Presumably private individuals and
contractors will (if they are not at present) practice quarrying
there. Unless the responsible officers start a proper system of
permits, the State will lose its land revenue.26
With this, Beadon struck at the heart of the matter. The imperial
government was nothing if not a revenue-collecting machine. As
a colonial instrument, its main function was to extract resources
(natural, human-made, financial) from India in service of the
empire. Beadon’s claim is that streamlined, clear-cut administration
is essential for revenue collection. Stone, then, was an important
building block for New Delhi, not only in a literal sense, but in a
financial sense. The government’s ability to levy royalties on quarried
land was a revenue source that contributed, however modestly, to the
notoriously expensive construction of the new imperial city.
Beadon’s pleas fell on deaf ears; or at least, no responses are

recorded in the archives. He was outranked, after all, by his oppo-
nents, within both the local and the imperial governments. But
Beadon’s lesson—that government control over geological resources
means government control over revenue—was hardly lost on his
compatriots. Nor was it forgotten by those who took control when the
British Crown left India.

The Life and Death of Mining in Postcolonial Delhi
After Independence, the new government, like the old, attempted to
exert control over the quarrying of Ridge stone, although they had
to confront increasingly powerful local interests who wanted their
own share of the mining wealth. There is evidence of quarrying acti-
vities on many sites throughout the Ridge in the years immediately
following Independence, but by the 1960s, the stone industry had
centered itself firmly on the southern border of Delhi, more than
fifteen kilometers away (as the crow flies) from the imposing im-
perial monuments of New Delhi that had been appropriated by the
country’s new postcolonial leaders.
What emerged in the 1960s and 1970s was a village-based quar-

rying industry dominated by local elites, who threw open Ridge land
to feed the capital’s ever-growing construction industry.27 The far
south of Delhi, although within the boundaries of the capital, was
still entirely rural in character, and small villages dotted the southern
border, from Badarpur in the east to Kapasera in the west. Panchayat
leaders began to see the hilly parts of village commons—which had
previously been used collectively for grazing or forestry—as poten-
tially lucrative investment opportunities, and a thriving mining
industry soon developed.
Quartzite blocks remained an important product from these

mines, but another component of Ridge geology also rose in promi-
nence. While the British emphasized the importance of digging deep
to find uneroded stone, postcolonial miners found that there was
great value precisely in the Ridge stone that was most eroded, since it
proved indispensable for the next stage of Delhi’s growth. This mate-
rial too is derived from iron-rich quartzite, but in its most weathered,
broken-down form. The outermost layer of highly weathered Ridge
quartzite eventually breaks down into a thick reddish sand. Locally,
this is known as Badarpur sand, named after an area in southeast
Delhi where the sand is particularly prominent. Badarpur sand is
often used as an ingredient in concrete, and it is also useful for filling
in the foundations of buildings and for constructing roads. As the city
of Delhi has been increasingly hemmed in by concrete and pavement,
Badarpur sand has played a crucial material role.
Stones 47
Mining in the post-Independence period was both more exten-
sive and more thoroughly documented than colonial-era mining. It
extended throughout the Aravallis, but was particularly intensive in
Delhi given the rapid pace of urbanization and the resulting need for
construction material. In some ways, not much had changed since
British times. The government was still the ultimate authority when
it came to mining; any land that was quarried technically came under
government ownership (a nation-wide practice that was only ques-
tioned in 2013, after a surge of reforms in the mining industry), and
it was the Delhi government’s responsibility to issue permits. Like
the British government before it, the Delhi government—which, until
1991, was directly administered by the central government—was keen
on maximizing revenue. One way they did this was by auctioning off
leases for quarrying on Ridge land.
But this is just the beginning of the story. The official winners of the
auction—the lessees of quarry-able Ridge land—were often panchayat
members who already enjoyed social and economic privileges within
the village hierarchy; various efforts by workers’ collectives to win
quarry auctions were stymied by their lack of funds and by their
opponents’ political maneuvering. The typical lessee, while locally
powerful, had little involvement in the day-to-day operations of
the quarry. He served mostly as a figurehead who received various
economic and political benefits from the role.
The actual work was overseen by a group of contractors and mid-

dlemen, referred to in local parlance as thekedars. Backed by local
musclemen, if not by any legal claims to the quarries, thekedars
marked out their spheres of influence and maintained exclusive
control over their domains. Below the thekedars were another essen-
tial link in the chain of control: jamadars, or labor contractors, who
found groups of workers with the requisite quarrying skills. At the
bottom of the pyramid, in terms of both income and social standing,
were the scores of workers. Even the workers were subdivided and
categorized, with those who cleared vegetation and debris from the
rocks ranked below the workers who did the actual quarrying.
The workers were largely migrants or children of migrants from

Rajasthan, with a smaller percentage coming from Haryana and
Uttar Pradesh. Most often, they migrated to the Delhi mines after

drawing on the financial help and social connections of a jamadar
who was originally from their region. They brought with them vivid
memories of agricultural decline and landlessness in their rural homes,
and oppression from the upper-caste elite in their villages (the stone
workers were invariably “lower” caste). They came to Delhi more out of
desperation than out of hope for a transformed life. In the apt words
of Mohammad Talib, the jamadars represented “a case of the city
reaching out to the village to recruit the prospective proletariat”.28
Of all the contemporary chroniclers of Delhi’s stone quarry

workers, Talib has probed most deeply into their material conditions,
their social and economic life, and their strategies, dreams and
coping mechanisms. His outstanding ethnographic account, Writing
Labour, draws on three years of intense interaction with the workers
(from 1984 to 1987), as well as extensive textual research.
Talib does not mince words about the highly exploitative nature
of the quarrying business, although his condemnation is couched in
academic language: “Stone quarrying as a business venture involves a
minimum of capital investment in the actual work and its administra-
tion against a maximum of profiteering and capital augmentation.”29
In other words: the lessees and thekedars, once they secured mining
rights from the government, needed to invest very little money while
making extremely high profits due to unethical and exploitative busi-
ness practices.
Meanwhile, the stone workers risked their life and their health for
extremely low pay, and even had to provide the tools for their own
work. Even worse, the workers often had to take loans from thekedars,
jamadars, and other unscrupulous lenders to collect the money to
buy tools and other essentials, including food that contractors sold
at inflated prices. This often led to a spiral of debt and the workers’
complete dependence on their employers, which then resulted in
conditions of bonded labor: workers no longer received a salary, and
worked only to repay their ever-mounting debts.
Talib also provides extensive details about the excruciating labor

done by the stone workers. The initial work of clearing the land to
be quarried was done by the lowest group on the workers’ hierarchy,
members of a caste that has traditionally used donkeys to transport

materials. In this case, though, the workers did their own carrying,
with men typically digging up the soil with a pickaxe and woman or
children (who were inevitably paid less) carrying the earth in baskets
to a convenient dumping ground. According to Talib’s calculations,
over the course of a day, a worker would carry about 8,000 kilograms
of earth and would earn around `9.
Then came the actual quarrying work, carried out by another set
of workers who were slightly higher in the hierarchy. If possible,
these workers removed stones manually, so they did not have to use
expensive, dangerous blasting equipment that they themselves had to
buy. After digging down until they hit a vertical rock face, the workers
then used iron rods to pry loose large chunks of stone. If this was not
possible, out came the explosives. Experienced workers were able to
intuit where to place the explosives to get the most effective blast.
These experienced workers were also in charge of determining the
length of the wick and lighting it with a beedi, before all the workers
retreat to a sheltered spot.
Once the stones had been detached from the rock face, the next
step involved breaking the stones into convenient pieces. Much of
the stone was broken into irregular pieces, but the most valuable
products were stones shaped into standard-sized chunks, which
were then used for milestones or for bricks. Breaking these stones
took incredible strength and precision, and were thus the provenance
of another set of workers. Under a master-apprentice system, these
workers generally took about three years to develop the ability to
make near-identical bricks by eye, without any measuring tools. At
most, the finished products varied by a couple of centimeters. Finally,
yet another set of workers, lower down on the scale, carried away the
broken-up stones and load them into trucks.30
While Talib’s attention to the grueling, exploitative nature of

this work is commendable, what gives his account unique depth is
his analysis of the work’s larger symbolic importance. The workers
depended on quarrying for their livelihood, and thus the stones
became an important part of their symbolic universe. The process of
laboring in the stone quarries clearly transformed the workers, even
as they transformed the landscape and extracted the raw materials
for Delhi’s booming construction industry.
Stones 51
As the workers sought to make sense of these transformations,
they often resorted to geological similes or metaphors. Talib reports,
“One worker actually showed me his palm with a claim that it was as
hard as a stone and would remain unhurt even if a truck rolled over it.
The worker was suggesting that working on stones turned his hands
into stones.”31
The workers’ metaphorical invocations of stone should not be

taken lightly. These were not just literary flights of fancy; rather, such
expressions were grounded in their intimate relationship with the
stones that ensured their livelihood. Their day-to-day interactions
with the stones formed a vital framework for seeing and understanding
their world. One worker remarked, “We were born amidst stones,
live in them, and get our bread from them.”32 As is clear from many
accounts of the work itself, this was a matter of life and death. Not
knowing the stone well enough—how explosives will fracture it, how
pieces of it will fall from a rock face, how easily it will break—could
result (and often did result) in horrific injuries and even death.
Adding to these practical concerns was the sheer amount of time the
workers spent around rocks. This often began in childhood, as many
of the workers grew up around the quarries, and spent their younger
days helping their parents, who were themselves quarry workers. The
children often spent many hours collecting stones, informal training
for their eventual occupations.
The quarry workers thus used stones as source material for rich
conceptual constructs, filtering their other experiences and struggles
through the hard reality of the material. One of the main uses of stone
metaphors was simply to express the strenuous, physically taxing
nature of the job; Talib quotes a working saying, “Breaking rocks
requires an unbreakable body and mind.”33 As the workers got older,
the metaphor became considerably darker: “Our bodies have become
as the pits in the quarries.”34
Beyond this relatively straightforward equivalence, stone meta-

phors were used much more expansively as workers sought to explain
their moral universe. Several workers employed these metaphors to
assert the importance of patience and equanimity: “A hard rock tells
us to remain patient and never to lose heart.” Similarly, “You cannot
break rock without breaking your anger. Quarry work is never done

alone; you work with your fellow workers. If you are quarrelsome you
lose them and your bread too.”35 And in a more resigned vein: “To
complain is to break one’s head against a rock.”36
These attempts to come to peace with the grueling work some-
times led to a muted acceptance, with some even using the language of
occupation-based caste to assert the inevitability of such work: “Hands
that deal in stones must not deal in any other material. Different things
require a different aptitude to handle.”37 Yet, on other occasions, and
for different workers, similar metaphors were used more subversively,
to demand more equitable working conditions: “Our work is as hard as
the stones. Our wages must match our hard work.”38
Throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s, the workers
mounted increasingly ambitious attempts to unionize and collectiv-
ize. There were many collective actions, from workers’ cooperatives
to lengthy strikes, at times supported by civil society organizations,
at times relying on local leadership. The workers not only had to con-
front the contractors, mine owners, and a growing set of middlemen,
but also a paternalistic state that repeatedly affirmed its support for
the workers’ rights and their basic dignity, while quietly letting labor
abuses go on unchecked and striking backroom deals with contrac-
tors. For each worker victory, there was an even harder pushback. But
throughout, the workers’ language of resistance, just as much as their
language of quiescence, was laced with stony metaphors.39
Ultimately, though, the question of resistance versus quiescence
ceased to matter. In 1983, a directive from the Delhi government
banned quarrying activity in the city. The decision was ostensibly
for the sake of workers, who had never given up the fight for better
working conditions, even as the state of the mines deteriorated. The
frequent injuries and gruesome deaths were an embarrassment
for the government, which played an increasingly large role in the
management of the mines from the mid-1970s onwards. Banning
mining solved a bad PR issue However, the ban was only sporadically
enforced, a negligence made painfully clear by the death of seven
workers in a pit-side collapse in 1990. A more wide-ranging ban was
finally put in place in 1991.
Though the closure of quarries in Delhi had the supposed aim of
protecting workers, this was cold comfort to the 4,000 people who
Stones 53
suddenly found themselves out of jobs. They must have been quite
surprised to hear the state’s rhetoric of “worker’s safety”; after all,
this was the same government that had “overseen” the quarrying
industry in Delhi, and through a combination of malign neglect and
active collusion with powerful village leaders and an intricate web of
intermediaries, had been responsible for the exploitative and unsafe
working conditions of the quarry workers. The workers protested
that the mines should be re-opened, with stronger safety measures
in place. However, the Delhi government found it easier to sweep
the entire issue under the rug. Further, the quarries of Delhi were
offering diminishing returns, both geologically and financially, as
quarrying crews were starting to descend to groundwater levels, at
which, work is no longer feasible. Banning mining opened up other
alluring possibilities for the use of the land, such as the development
of high-end real estate. Of course, mining continued, but covertly, or
else across the border in other parts of the Aravallis.
The closure of the Delhi quarries coincided with a rise in the popu-
larity and the power of environmentalist rhetoric, a trend that will be
dissected much more thoroughly in later chapters. The largest of the
quarrying sites, the Bhatti mines near Badarpur, was incorporated
into a nearby forest reserve; thus the Asola Wildlife Sanctuary became
the Asola-Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary.40 Yet, while some government
officials were genuinely enthusiastic about environmental conserva-
tion, the use of an ecological justification for the closures acted largely
as a smokescreen, obscuring other motives. This became increasingly
clear in the years after the closure, as ecologically harmful, non-
native, fast-growing species were planted to maximize the appear-
ance of a green cover in some parts of the Sanctuary, while trucks
carrying stones from illegal quarrying activities continued to ply the
roads of the Sanctuary.
Worse, in other former mining areas, the land quickly developed

into sites for much-coveted, high-end luxury estates, especially the
misleadingly named, palatial “farmhouses”. Urban Delhi was rapidly
expanding, both geographically and economically, and the former rural
“hinterland” areas were becoming increasingly desirable. The con-
version of mines into luxury housing was no accident. As the fiercely
committed activist and journalist Anita Soni notes,

It would be wrong to assume that the termination of quarrying...
has been the cause behind spectacular increase in the number of
farmhouses and in the acreage of existing estates. In reality, the
deals had been struck much in advance, during the years of the
operation of the quarries.... [The quarrying ban] was expected,
and awaited, by the village-based intermediaries, ready to
exercise their ownership rights over the land.41
Some former quarry workers found employment performing

menial tasks on the sprawling estates that sprang up in this zone.
The ban on mining thus appears as a kind of magic trick, making
quarries disappear and replacing them with eco-friendly sanctuaries.
Of course, like any magic trick, this is an illusion. Quarrying still goes
on, because its products are essential to the ever-growing construc-
tion industry; it just happens outside of city limits. Actual quarry-
ing work is messy: it involves real people doing real labor, oppressed
by real exploitation and organizing real protests and real collective
actions. Much better to cover this up as much as possible and replace
it with a simulacrum of pristine nature. And some forest-land is
actually created, but it is not what it seems, and it is hemmed in by
ever-growing mansions.
This sleight of hand in the Delhi Ridge mirrors later developments
regarding the Aravalli Range as a whole. In 2009, the Supreme Court
banned mining in the entire Aravalli range, citing, of course, ecological
concerns, including the erosion of water courses and the loss of green
cover. But the construction industry needs its raw materials, and
Delhi continues to grow, which ensures that mining will continue in
one way or another.
In the Supreme Court judgment, there was no mention of the people
who actually work in the quarries, and depend on them for their live-
lihood. Like the Delhi government, the Supreme Court has seemingly
forgotten that these people exist. Their work, and their intimate rela-
tionship with the Aravalli stone, has been relegated to the shadows.
Touch the Rock

The modern-day history of mining and mining bans in the
Delhi Ridge brings to light the broader pitfalls of anti-ecological
Stones 55
environmentalism, which prioritizes pleasant scenery close to home,
but fails to examine the roots of environmental problems, and our
own potential complicity with these problems. We want nice parks
and lush forests, but we also want inexpensive building material for
ever-bigger homes. Without quarrying, there is no concrete for high-
rises, there is no asphalt for roads. But thanks to mining bans, these
quarrying activities are out of sight, and thus out of mind.
If the stone of the Ridge exists in the consciousness of the city’s

elite, it has lost its economic weight and has become a breezy site
for recreation. Rock climbing has become an increasingly popular
pastime in the national capital, with the prime outdoor climbing
sites located, of course, on the Ridge. Instead of workers toiling
in the quarries, there are climbers following the mantra, “be one
with the rock”. The stones are no longer a means of sustaining
life; rather, they are a way for the relatively well-off to escape the
drudgeries of urban existence.
The history and the socioeconomic overtones of rock climbing

are quite complex. Mountaineering, the more general pastime that
gave birth to rock climbing, has a long history as an elite, hyper-
masculine pursuit, strictly regulated along class lines by etiquette-
heavy organizations like the Alpine Club in the United Kingdom.42
In the 1960s, in keeping with the mood of the times, mountaineering
got a more free-spirited, counter-cultural edge, as well as an increased
awareness of environmental issues. It was during this period that
modern rock climbing emerged, with its emphasis on a minimalist
style that uses limited amounts of gear and strives to avoid damaging
rocks and leaving debris behind on climbs.
American rock-climbing pioneers like Yvon Chouinard came

from working-class backgrounds and embraced a vagabond lifestyle.
Spending their nights in campgrounds near climbing sites, they
hunted squirrels for dinner, and made money by designing and
creating a new generation of eco-friendly climbing tools, setting up
makeshift factories in their campsites. Now Chouinard is the founder
of the wildly successful outdoor equipment company Patagonia, and
he has appeared on the cover of Fortune magazine, which makes
it difficult to argue that he represents a radical departure from
climbing’s history of privilege. But in his early days, he embodied the

rebellious spirit of a community that chose to live in the woods and on
the rock-face instead of climbing the career ladder.
Like many activities imported from the West, rock climbing has
lost this cultural complexity and has entered India purely as a pursuit
of the well-off (see also: bowling, long associated with the American
working class). Climbing gear, like the industry-standard gear made
by the other company Chouinard founded, Black Diamond, must
be imported from other countries at prohibitively high prices. The
vast majority of Delhi climbers are “weekend warriors”, taking time
off from their busy jobs to unwind and challenge themselves with an
unusual, energizing pastime.
Many of these climbers make use of the “Delhi Rock” Facebook

page, which serves as a popular online meeting place for outdoors
enthusiasts living in or passing through Delhi. The administrators of
the page post information about climbing spots in Delhi and welcome
newcomers to the climbing community.
The Delhi Rock group also organizes climbing trips to two main
locations: the so-called “Old Rocks” of Lado Sarai, in a Ridge park
in the midst of urban South Delhi, and Dhauj, a village well outside
of Delhi city limits. While Lado Sarai was once its own village, it was
long ago engulfed by the rapidly expanding city. The park surround-
ing the “Old Rocks” is well maintained by the Delhi Development
Authority, with wide dirt paths and benches sprinkled throughout.
Delhi Tourism, a government body, even tried to promote the park as
a rock-climbing site, painting numbers on the rocks to label various
routes, and installing a sign with stern rules. It never quite caught on,
and now the sign is rusted to the point of illegibility. Still, groups of
climbers descend upon the site from time to time, joining the rowdy
cricket players, the old men conversing intently on benches, and the
local athletes there for a morning jog or workout.
Dhauj is more remote. It is still a village, though given its proximity

to Delhi, it seems likely that it too will soon be swallowed up in the
sprawl of the megacity’s suburbs. A few canny businessmen have
tried to cash in on Dhauj’s relative quiet and its natural beauty; the
area now boasts two complexes, “Camp Dhauj” and “Camp Wild”, that
offer comfortable accommodations and host “adventure” activities

like rock climbing, rappelling, and mountain biking. Reports on the
“Delhi Rock” Facebook page, though, suggest that all is not well at
Dhauj, and that the villagers resent the intrusion of city folk, including
the many foreigners who have joined Delhi Rock trips.
A recent post on the page recounts a harrowing incident. A group

of climbers had just completed a climb, and were about to start
another, when they saw that their rope had been cut with an ax by
a local teen. Perhaps the teen did not recognize exactly what he was
doing, but his act of vandalism could have been deadly; if the climb-
ers had not noticed the cut rope, and had continued climbing, a fall
would have proven fatal. Perhaps the teen was feeling malevolent;
perhaps he justified his action because it occurred on his village’s
ancestral grazing ground, and he was feeling protective. Whatever
the case, the incident reveals the ugly side of a culture clash, pitting
an adventuresome elite and a foreign activity against a village that is
being inexorably drawn into the urban sphere.
The dynamics of Dhauj place urban climbers and rural herders

on opposite sides of a stark divide. But the climbers bear some
remarkable similarities to another marginalized group: the stone
quarry workers that once populated Delhi’s margins. Both groups
take significant risks while interacting intimately with Delhi’s stones;
both rely on their first-hand, sensual geological knowledge to keep
themselves safe in precarious situations; both come to see the rock
as part of their symbolic world. But of course, this overlooks their
fundamental differences. The workers were pushed into these jobs
by the force of circumstances, while rock climbers freely choose to
experience these risks. For those mining the quarry, it is inevitable,
regrettable work; for the climbers, it’s an escape from work.
If it weren’t so unjust, there would be something poetic about the

replacement of workers with climbers on the Delhi Ridge. Certainly,
it’s a sign of a certain vision of the city, one that wishes to push aside
the messiness of work (and working-class politics), to be replaced by
scenic, tension-free sites of leisure. And this vision is hardly unique
to Delhi. The artist and cultural critic Martha Rosler has spoken
of the “Disneyland” model of the city, which replaces class conflict
and other cultural, religious, social and political tensions with a
series of tranquil experiences.43 In this fantasy land, rock exists only
Stones 59
to be climbed, not quarried—never mind that much of the city is
constructed with quarried material.
The problem with this vision of Delhi is that it does not actually
solve the problems plaguing the city; it just moves them off to a less
conspicuous location. The city’s population continues to rise at an
unsustainable pace, but walls and cordons, both figurative and literal,
keep green areas green, spacious areas spacious, poor areas poor,
polluted areas polluted. Mining continues, but on the sly, or simply
further away. The beneficiaries of these spatial re-arrangements now
enjoy a “vibrant” city of spotless parks, gleaming malls, mountain
biking routes and rock-climbing outings. But something is missing.
An amusement park ride may be fun; but to live one’s days in an
unending amusement park ride is, finally, nauseating. And there is
a sense of unrest, a feeling that the walls and cordons will eventually
break under so much pressure.
Thankfully, this vision of the city is relatively recent and, if geology

has taught us anything, it’s that everything changes, even those things
that seem most permanent. Perhaps the geology metaphor can be
pushed even further. Geologists speak of the Aravalli range “suffering
deformation” in the process of tectonic rifting and shifting. But this
process eventually led to a grand mountain chain, one composed
largely of metamorphic rock, something entirely new, but with traces
of the old shot through it. And even the decay and weathering of
the Ridge has led to surprising opportunities. The city of Delhi has
certainly seen its share of suffering and deterioration, along with
a series of metamorphoses. If the Disneyland version of Delhi is a
chimera, can something more promising rise in its place?

A
B Fractured Forest, Quartzite City
C
Ridge-as-Utopia
2 Soil
Mobile Ecologies, Hybrid Histories
Stony Soil, Thorny Trees: The Ridge’s

Unforgiving Ecology
On a bleak mid-January afternoon, the trees of the Ridge are draped
in a thick, polluted haze. The sun shines weakly through the smog,
but I still work up a sweat as I climb up a steep quartzite slope.
A friend and I are in a park called Sanjay Van, just north of Mehrauli,
Delhi’s historic first city. The dirt trail we’re following is more stone
than soil; bits of rock and coarse red sand crunch underneath our feet
as we make our way uphill.
We reach the top of the hill and take in the view. To the right
looms the graceful tower of Qutb Minar; to the left are the ruins of
Delhi’s first walled fortress; in front of us is a sea of green. Behind us,
the slope gently descends into a wide basin, remarkably flat in this
hilly terrain. Years ago, some enterprising young men cleared all the
trees and shrubs to create a grassy cricket ground. At the moment,
two cricket games are taking place side by side, one for kids and one
for adults.
As the cricketers laugh, lounge and play, a thin woman in a simple

sari emerges from the forest and stands at the edge of the clearing, a
huge pile of firewood balanced on her head. She is soon joined by
a young boy and girl, each carrying smaller bundles of wood. They
throw down their loads and sit for a few minutes, watching the revelry
around them. Then they get up, and the two kids help the woman
heave the firewood back onto her head. They skirt the edge of the
cricket games and disappear into the forest on the other side.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the slope, we see a grizzled old man
wrapped in a shawl, leading several goats through the underbrush.
My friend calls out to him, and he replies gruffly. He is busy finding a
suitable grazing ground for his flock, and he has little interest in the
two odd figures yelling at him from the hilltop.
As we descend from our perch and head towards the park exit, we
see more women collecting firewood, handling the branches carefully
to avoid their prickly thorns. Throughout the year, firewood is a
valuable fuel source for those who can’t afford gas connections. But
firewood is an even more precious commodity in mid-winter, when
families make small fires outside their homes to beat back the damp
chill of the season.
Near the exit of the park, we spot an official from the Delhi Forest
Department, giving instructions to a group of contract workers about
pending maintenance tasks. We chat briefly with the official, and as
we exchange pleasantries, the group of women with their firewood
crosses our path, heading home with their spoils. The official looks
at them, looks at us, and lightly chides the women. They continue
walking, unconcerned.
Technically, the women are breaking the law. So too is the old man
grazing his goats. Sanjay Van is part of the Ridge’s Reserved Forest
zone, and as such is entitled to the state’s most stringent protections.
Firewood collecting and grazing are strictly prohibited, as an imposing
sign at the park entrance makes clear. And yet, in reality, the prohibi-
tion is not so strict. The wood-collectors and shepherds have clearly
come to an understanding with the Forest Department officials.
Some might dismiss this as a simple case of government cor-

ruption, but the truth is much more complicated, especially when
one delves into the history of the area. Sanjay Van was named a
Reserved Forest in the 1990s. For many years before that, it served as
a commons for the surrounding villages, and it was used extensively
for grazing and wood-collecting. These erstwhile rural areas have
now been swallowed up by the expanding city (they bear the strange
administration designation “urban villages”), but vestiges of an earlier
life remain, especially for the area’s poorer residents, who depend on
the natural resources of the park. Elders in the area, who remember
when their village truly was a village, resent the intrusion of the state
and the restrictions on what was once their common property.
This dynamic is not just confined to Sanjay Van. Before the official
label of “Reserved Forest” was imposed, the Ridge’s primary ecological
role—at least as far as humans were concerned—was to serve as a
Soil 63
grazing ground and woodlot. This role was largely determined by the
Ridge’s geology, albeit in a paradoxical way. Although the Ridge’s
rocky soil is a harsh habitat for shrubs and trees, it was nonetheless
the preferred location for gathering fuel and fodder.
To understand why, it’s necessary to look at Delhi’s ecology, and

particularly its soil composition. The ancient Aravallis cut through the
landscape of Delhi, leaving a band of rocky, infertile soil. Surrounding
this is an environment shaped by a much newer and more imposing
geological formation: the Himalayas, from whose glaciers the Yamuna
river originates. The (relatively) new alluvium from the Yamuna river
system gives the non-Ridge soil of Delhi its fertility. In traditional
terms used for Delhi’s soil types, the hilly Ridge land (called kohi) was
distinguished from three different soil types that are broadly allu-
vial: bangar (fertile soil on level land), khadar (the sandy riverain of
the Yamuna) and dabar (low-lying land that was subject to seasonal
flooding).1
As human settlements in Delhi grew, they needed an ever-

increasing food supply, and any zone with fertile soil was taken over
by agriculture, which became increasing intensive over time. The
Ridge, with its rocky soil, was not part of this agricultural zone and
could thus be put to different uses: grazing, for instance, or firewood
collecting. In fact, the stunted trees and grasses that managed to grow
on the Ridge provided ample fodder for livestock, making it a prime
location for pastoralists.
On the local scale, then, the Ridge’s rocky soil serves to separate
Delhi’s pastoral zone from its agricultural zone. But this small-scale
picture should be complemented by a much broader view. On a
regional level, Delhi and its Ridge mark a transition from the arid
habitats to its west to the fertile ones to its east. Thus, on both a
microcosmic and a macrocosmic level, the Ridge serves as a dividing
line between two kinds of soil and two kinds of ecologies, which in
turn favor two distinct livelihood strategies—pastoralism and agricul-
ture. In practice, of course, the distinction is not so neat. Agriculture
and pastoralism are often practised in tandem, sometimes by the
same people. The fact that Delhi has long supported both livelihood
pursuits suggest that the city, and the region as a whole, represent a
mosaic of ecological and economic landscapes.

Even given this hybridity, though, communities with pastoral
roots have had an outsize impact on Delhi. This is largely because
pastoralists are, on the whole, a more mobile bunch. Pastoralists
entering the Indian subcontinent from arid Central Asia have played
a crucial role in the shaping the Ridge and the city of Delhi. The
history of these transformations, which this chapter seeks to tell,
is one in which ecological and social history are intertwined. It’s
about the Ridge’s stony soil and what has emerged from that soil;
it’s about those migrants who put down roots in Delhi and begin to
consider themselves “sons of the soil.”
If the previous chapter was an eclectic geological history of the
Ridge, here is an eclectic ecological history, with human communities
fully integrated into the story of the land. Although pastoral groups
are central to this drama, they are just one part of a larger cast of
players, which includes saints, bandits, warriors, merchants, pilgrims,
farmers, landlords, administrators, miners, politicians, lawyers, activ-
ists and many more. All these figures have sprung up on the soil of
the Ridge.
The Rise (and Fall) of the Gujjars

In this book’s introduction, we witnessed the mythical burning of the
Kandava forest by Aryan pastoralists, which hints at the long history
of pastoral livelihood strategies in the Delhi region. There is a broad
scholarly consensus that Aryans migrated into northern India from
central Asia, bringing with them their pastoralist lifestyle and their
pastoralist gods (including Agni, the god of fire).2 This consensus has
been fiercely contested by Hindu nationalists, who insist, against the
weight of mounting evidence, that the Aryans must have originated
in India; but the controversy around the so-called “Aryan migration
theory” should not distract us from the fact that Aryans were just
one of many groups passing through the subcontinent’s northwest
corridor, entering India from Central Asia.
From the perspective of the Delhi Ridge, perhaps the most
important migration was the one that brought the Gujjar community
to India. More than any other group, Gujjars have laid claim to the
title of “sons of the soil” on the Delhi Ridge, and they still play a vital
role in shaping the social and ecological contours of Ridge land.
Soil 65
Initially, though, Gujjars were just one more stream in the unend-
ing flow of peoples and cultures entering India through the north-
western corridor. The evidence here is a bit shaky; most of it is from
the colonial era and it relies on rather dubious etymology. There is
speculation that Gujjars originally came from Georgia (re-written as
Gurjia or Gurjaristan), or that they broke off from the Gujj tribe of
southern Khurasan in Central Asia. Despite these confusions, there
is a fairly solid scholarly consensus that the Gujjars were a pastoral,
nomadic tribe that moved from Central Asia to South Asia sometime
in the early or mid-first millennium ad, establishing a set of roving
communities mainly in present-day Rajasthan and Gujarat (in fact,
this is where Gujarat gets its name).3
The picture gets a bit clearer once we reach the seventh century.
By this time, there is evidence that some segments of the Gujjar com-
munity had given up the nomadic pastoral life in favor of full-time
agriculture. Meanwhile, other Gujjar groups were drawn into the
powerful currents that were reshaping the political landscape. Most
dramatic was the fate of the Pratiharas (as known as the Gurjara-
Pratiharas), a Gujjar clan that considered itself Rajput. The rise of
the Pratiharas parallels the larger ascension of Rajput clans as dom-
inant political and social players in Rajasthan (formerly known as
Rajputana) and eventually in the Delhi region.
Although, in the present day, the term “Rajput” conjures up the

image of a fixed, high-status, closed caste group, the emergence
of the Rajputs in early medieval Rajasthan suggests a more fluid,
ambiguous category. “Rajput” was a broad category into which various
individuals and tribes could fit as they transitioned from a relatively
isolated tribal life to a position at the head of emerging states. It may
be more accurate, then, to speak of a process of Rajputization, rather
than a stable social entity called “Rajput”.4
Further, the emergence of the Rajput was inextricably tied to

changing livelihood practices, and particularly the expansion of the
agricultural economy. Put simply, states favor sedentary agriculture
over nomadic practices (whether pastoralism or hunting and gath-
ering). The apparatus of the state—capital cities, armies, an expand-
ing number of rulers and their retinue—needed the surplus food and
goods that settled agriculture could provide. By bringing more land

under agriculture, states could increase the surplus at their disposal
and build their military, economic and social strength.
Such were the dynamics at work as Rajput groups began to form.

Initially, the term “Rajput” mostly referred, not to kingly lineages, but
to individuals who joined established armies as mercenary soldiers,
and then used their military status to become landowners and if
possible establish their own power center. Eventually, “Rajputs” began
to emerge as distinct social groups, first as minor powers supporting
existing kingdoms, then as independent powers developing their own
networks of alliances, marriages and dynasties. The array of groups
given the designation “Rajput” in medieval times (by no means a fixed
list) included tribes as varied as the Medas, a group that had long
resided in the area, and the Huns, a group of clearly foreign extraction
that had recently assimilated into the local communities.5
The Gurjara-Pratiharas were one of the most powerful Rajput

clans, and they emerged from their local context to play a decisive role
in North Indian politics. Early references to the Pratiharas suggest
that they took part in the expansion of settled agricultural kingdoms
at the expense of smaller, more mobile tribal settlements. This was
often a violent process. A Pratihara leader known as Kukkaka is
credited with raiding the cattle of other tribes, burning down the
enemies’ villages (echoes of Arjuna and Krishna) and establishing
markets for merchants.6 By eighth century, the Pratihara empire
had expanded significantly, and had moved its base of power from
present-day Rajasthan to present-day Uttar Pradesh, and specifically
the city of Kannauj, which has a long imperial legacy.7
From Kannauj, the Gurjara-Pratiharas made alliances and

expanded their power throughout North India, including Delhi. A
Rajput clan called the Tomars controlled the Delhi region, likely first
as generals of the Gurjara-Pratiharas, then as governors ruling in the
name of the Pratiharas, and finally as independent kings.8 According
to Gujjar tradition, the Tomars were also of Gujjar descent, perhaps
cousins of the Pratiharas, and their line continues to this very day with
the Tanwar subcaste, which is prevalent in many areas of the Delhi
Ridge.9 (These claims of ancient lineage are often made in strikingly
modern ways. An online platform for the Gujjar community contains
threads with titles like “Founders of Delhi, the Gujjars Rise Again”.)
Soil 67
Whatever their provenance, the Tomars were to inaugurate the tra-
dition of building walled settlements in Delhi, using quartzite mined
from the Ridge to create structures on the heights of the Ridge. The
Tomars constructed their fortress, called Lal Kot, in the southwestern
corner of the Ridge, most likely in the mid-eleventh century. Lal Kot is
now in ruins, its crumbling ramparts dotting Sanjay Van park.
But one hardly needs to wait a millennium to appreciate the tran-

sitoriness of the Tomar’s reign. Soon after emerging as an indepen-
dent power, the Tomars suffered defeat at the hands of yet another
Rajput power: the Chauhans. Little is known about Vigraharaja IV,
the Chauhan king who toppled the Tomars. But his nephew, Prithviraj
Chauhan, also called Rai Pithora, has become a key figure in Indian
history and mythology. Under Prithviraj’s rule, the fortifications of
Lal Kot were extended, again using the quartzite blocks of the Ridge,
to create an enlarged fortress known as Qila Rai Pithora. However,
Prithviraj did not use this as his main base; Delhi was a military
outpost manned by one of his vassals.
Despite this fact, Prithviraj is lauded by Hindutva historians as the

last Hindu king of Delhi, renowned for his clashes with Mohammad
Ghori, sultan of the Central Asian Ghurid empire. Prithviraj defeated
Ghori’s army in 1191, but fell to the same army in the following year.
1192 is thus given great importance by Hindu nationalists. It is regarded
as the year of the fall; this is when the “outsiders” finally succeeded in
breaching the defenses of the pure Hindu subcontinent.
Ferment in the Arid Zone

This may be questionable history, but there’s no doubt that Ghori’s
victory, and the increasing importance of Delhi in this period, point
to significant shifts. The emergence of Delhi’s Ridge-top fortresses,
and the rapidity with which they changed hands, are indications of
a wider churning. In this period, Delhi became a crucial hub in the
intersecting lines of trade, transport and warfare that were spreading
throughout a huge part of the world.
These economic and political changes cannot be separated from

Delhi’s ecology, and its location within a much larger ecological zone.
Delhi stands between the extreme dryness of Rajasthan to the west

and the well-watered Gangetic heartland to the east. To its west lies
not just the dessication of the Thar desert, but also the sprawling,
discontinuous ecosystem that the historian Jos Gommans refers
to simply as the Arid Zone.10 This area includes all the dry zones
stretching from northeastern Africa across the Middle East to Central
Asia, up to Southeastern Europe and down to South Asia; roughly,
it comprises all the areas in these regions that receive less than
1,000 millimeters of rainfall annually. The Indian subcontinent as
a whole serves as a transitional zone between this drought-prone
area and the lushness of monsoon Asia. Delhi and its Ridge play this
role in miniature.
Even within the Arid Zone, of course, there were oases of agri-
culture, largely along rivers. However, in most of this zone, nomadic
pastoralism had the upper hand. With such little rainfall and such
unforgiving soil, a nomadic lifestyle has distinct advantages; pasto-
ralists could easily move between different grazing areas depending
on the vagaries of rain patterns, and their livestock could survive on
The Arid Zone
Soil 69
the grasses, shrubs and stunted vegetation that proliferated through-
out the zone.
The ninth and tenth century saw an expansion and a subsequent

melding together of many different nomadic groups in the Arid Zone,
creating a rich cultural mix that drew on Arabic, Persian and Turkic
traditions. This culture, and the technologies that went along with
it, then spread into India, with mastery of war-horses an especially
important element. Though horses had existed in the subcontinent
since the time of the Aryans, new migrants from the Arid Zone brought
both new breeds and new styles of mobile warfare, in what Gommans
dubs a “horse-warrior revolution”.11 More broadly, this was an age of
pastoralists, merchants and pilgrims criss-crossing the Arid Zone and
creating disruptive new flows of ideas, technologies and armies.
Although many of the horse-mounted warriors entering the sub-

continent were Muslim, what impressed local populations was less
the warriors’ religion and more their equine accomplishments.
Rajput rulers were among the first to adapt this new military technol-
ogy, which greatly aided their expansion. Two other types of animals
were also important: camels and cattle. The latter was important both
for long-distance transportation (of people and of goods) and for agri-
culture (plowing the fields). The importance of cattle gave increased
prominence to pastoral communities, who had extensive experience
breeding hearty cattle and guiding them over long distances. On the
backs of horses, camels, and cattle, rising powers from the periph-
eries of the Arid Zone were able to establish new routes for trade,
pilgrimages and plunder.
The kingdoms emerging in this era had to maintain a fine balance

between the newfound resources of the Arid Zone and the riches of the
agriculturally fertile zones whose powers they were displacing. They
relied on nomadic groups to work as cattle-breeders, as merchants,
and as mercenary soldiers; but they also needed agricultural surplus,
growing cities, and densely settled populations to tax and control. This
explains the location of many cities that arose in this time period, cities
that sat on the border between dry pastoral zones and more fertile
agricultural ones. In northwestern India, Delhi is the prime example
of such a city. The Ridge was an especially attractive location for new
kingdoms since its imposing heights had clear military advantages.

This big-picture perspective helps us recast the lines of conflict
that have plagued both India as a whole and the Delhi Ridge in parti-
cular. This was not, as the Hindutva narrative avows, a “native Hindu”
vs. “invader Muslim” conflict; the larger tension was between settled
agricultural powers with their increasingly parochial Brahminism
and newer powers that drew on the resources of the Arid Zone, estab-
lished cities in transitional zones, and championed emerging reli-
gious movements that ranged from Sufism to the cult of Rama. True,
many of the newer powers embraced Islam. But many didn’t, includ-
ing the Rajputs, who also took advantage of the resurgent Arid Zone,
and who helped establish intersecting trade and pilgrimage routes
throughout the subcontinent. The post-1192 rulers of Delhi, broadly
referred to as the Sultanate, should be understood in this context.
Rulers vs. Gujjars

The Delhi Sultans, who themselves had emerged from pastoral-
ist backgrounds, had an ambivalent relationship with the pastoral
communities that surrounded the city, particularly concentrated in
the arid zones to the west of the city’s new walled fortresses. Delhi’s
new rulers and the pastoral communities fell into an uneasy alliance,
one which was marked by cooperation and collaboration, but also by
conflict and distrust.
The settled state often tried to expand into pastoral zones and
to convert grazing lands to agricultural fields; the introduction of
canals was a crucial strategy for creating new zones of fertile soil.
Ideologically, too, the state often downplayed the role of pastoral
groups, preferring to laud the agriculturalists from whom surplus
could be extracted more easily and who were generally more pliable.
Pastoral groups resisted state control, and given the frequent attempts
to undermine their livelihood, they felt fully justified in conducting
the occasional cattle raid or act of banditry.
This dynamic is especially clear with the Gujjar community, one of

the dominant pastoral groups in the Delhi area. In recent years, some
scholars from the Gujjar community have adopted the Hindutva
perspective to explain the Gujjars’ decline in medieval India. For
these scholars, 1192 was not just a disaster for India, it was a specific
Soil 71
tragedy for the Gujjar community. Gujjar history has now been
retrofitted, made into a glorious (if doomed) struggle against vicious
outsiders; a recent book about the community is entitled Heroic
Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 ad to 1206 ad).12
This view of history draws on the imperial grandeur of the Gurjara-

Pratiharas, and on the Tomars who ruled Delhi in their name. The
victory of Mohammad Ghori over Prithviraj Chauhan is recast as a
victory of Muslims over Gujjars. However, by the late twelfth century,
the grand Pratihara empire, which once stretched across most of
northern India, had already disintegrated, leaving in its wake a
fractious set of small warring states. Given the history of the resurgent
Arid Zone, the downfall of the Pratiharas may very well be linked to
their abandonment of pastoral ways and pastoral zones, and their
establishment of an imperial capital well into the humid, fertile zone of
the Gangetic Basin. They could not withstand the rise of newer powers,
including both their rival Rajputs and Central Asian forces.
Even more importantly, the royal, Rajputized Gujjars were only

ever a tiny fraction of a larger Gujjar population that had spread
throughout the northern half of the subcontinent. This population
was internally stratified to an enormous degree, with many commu-
nities continuing the age-old tradition of nomadic pastoralism, some
making the transition to settled agriculture, and a select few grabbing
power across the region.
The extreme heterogeneity of Gujjar groups makes it difficult

to establish a connection between the royal Tomars of the eleventh
century and the present-day Tanwars in Delhi. For the vast majority
of Gujjars of northern India, both before and after the coming of the
Muslims, their lives were dominated by either pastoral or agricultural
pursuits, or, in many cases, a mix of both. A new set of rulers did little
to change that.
Still, it is true that the overall reputation of Gujjars suffered in

the Sultanate period. After the fall from imperial grace, they were
certainly perceived as a threat to “settled” civilization. A celebrated
religious tale from this era shows the casual disdain heaped upon
Gujjars. The story is set in the fourteenth century, when the emperor
Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq was building the new capital of Tughlaqabad

along the southeastern edge of the Ridge. He needed more people to
do the hard work of mining and hauling quartzite for the ramparts
of his new metropolis, so he sent his officials to get workers from
the old city. There, workers were building a step-well for the revered
Sufi saint Nizamuddin. They reluctantly joined the imperial building
project but hurried back every night to work on the saint’s well.
Incensed, the emperor banned the sale of oil in the city so that
workers could not light the lamps that illuminated their night work.
Nizamuddin took water from the well itself and asked the workers to
light the water as if it were oil; miraculously (for Nizamuddin was a
miracle-worker), the water lit on fire. But the emperor had to pay for
his insolence; Nizamuddin uttered a famous curse: “May your new
city be inhabited only by jackals and Gujjars.” For that sage, Gujjars
were simply shorthand for wildness and barbarity. The prophesy
was fulfilled shortly after Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq’s death, as his son
abandoned the new city less then a decade after its founding, likely
due to severe water shortages in the area.
The marginalization of Gujjars continued with the coming of the

Mughals, who seized control of Delhi as the Sultanate disintegrated.
Babur, founder of the Mughal empire, famously complained about
Gujjars and other pastoral groups who raided his cattle as he passed
through their territory; the rear guard of his encampment chased
down and beheaded several Gujjars raiders.13
The relationship between Mughals and Gujjars became especially

strained with the founding of Shahjahanabad, the Mughal’s Delhi
capital, in 1639. According to Gujjar historian Rahul Khari, Gujjars
inhabited the area where Shahjahanabad’s Jama Masjid was slated to
be built, a small hillock called Bhojla Pahari. Though this hillock does
not figure in standard accounts of the Ridge, it deserves inclusion
as a Ridge area. Such isolated hillocks appear on either side of the
main Ridge formations in Delhi, and they are evidence of the city’s
basic geological and ecological layout. The ancient, much-eroded
Aravallis are covered in many places by much newer alluvium from
the Yamuna river system but pop out in places like Bhojla Pahari.
These unexpected elevations became favored spots for religious
monuments. It is no accident that the Mughals sited their most
important mosque on one of Shahjahanabad’s very few hills.
Soil 73
The Gujjars, no strangers to the hills of the Ridge, were, Khari tells
us, not willing to give up Bhojla Pahari without a fight. Mughal troops
went on the offensive. Gujjars from 12 surrounding villages were
displaced in the violence, and were only able to re-establish three
villages, one of which, Chandrawal, went on to play an important
role in the colonial era.14 The Mughals then leveled the top of
Bhojla Pahari to create a solid platform for the mosque; this was a
foreshadowing of the much more thoroughgoing leveling of Ridge
land that would happen under later powers.
Given Khari’s tendency to see Gujjar history through an extremely

polarized religious lens, it is difficult to take this story at face value.
Nonetheless, it reflects the undeniable violence and marginalization
that Gujjars have faced at the hands of imperious city-builders in
Delhi, including both the British and the postcolonial Indian state.
If the account is not history, it is surely prophesy. It indicates the
very real ways in which Gujjars have been written out of the history
of the city.15
And yet, the relationship between Gujjars and the city of Shahjah-
anabad was not one of unremitting conflict. Gujjar communities
played an essential role in the economy of the city, taking advantage of
the (relatively) stable urban growth that Mughal rule facilitated. As the
city’s population grew, so too did the demand for meat and dairy pro-
ducts, many of which were provided by Gujjar communities grazing
their animals on the nearby Ridge. In addition to raising their own
livestock, they also grazed the livestock of city butchers, taking them
from the city to pastoral zones like the Ridge. In exchange, they were
allowed to keep a handful of the animals, increasing their own flock.16
Gujjars and other pastoralists maintained part of the Ridge as

grassy grazing land, while preserving other parts as woodlands, often
in the form of sacred groves. Both forest and fodder zones were held
in common, either by single villages, or by larger collectives that had
developed customs and procedures for shared land use. For instance,
in many places, Gujjar shepherds would pay a pasturage “toll” in
areas that they moved through.
Such systems were starting to feel significant strain due to the

continuing growth of Shahjahanabad, especially as the eighteenth

century progressed. Landowners in surrounding villages started to
complain about the pressure on their commons due to all the cattle
that Gujjars were bringing in from the city.17 It is likely that several
areas in the Ridge became totally denuded during Mughal rule due
to the extensive pressures on the land. But there was no question of
overturning the system of shared land use and common ownership.
This system, despite increasing urban pressure, still maintained large
areas of both grasslands and woodlands on and around the Ridge,
especially in the southern zones farther away from Shahjahanabad.
And it was precisely this system, and the ecological pattern it main-
tained, that was irrevocably changed under British rule.
The British and a Radical Break with the Past

Ironically, it is only because of the British that we have a clear sense
of the ecological backdrop of Shahjahanabad. The British took control
of Delhi in 1803, and they surveyed their new territory with keen
interest, recording their observations in various government reports
and gazetteers.
One clear result of their investigation was the care with which
communities maintained stands of trees. In typical dry prose, a
gazetteer for Delhi District (an administrative unit created by the
British) intoned:
Another characteristic incident of land tenure in the district is

the reservation of wood-producing land in the shamilat deh
[village commons] as an enclosure whence no fuel or wood is to
be cut. This is generally connected with religion in the shape of a
fakir’s hut, or grave or a religious shrine; but sometimes no such
religious element is observable.
The author of the report cannot help but add a note of imperial
condescension: “The people, with that faculty of docile obedience
which is at once such a help and a trouble (when it degenerates, as so
often is the case, into slavish adherence to custom) to the administra-
tor, observe the social precept without asking more about it.”18
The administrators in question were the British, or more precisely,

the East India Company. And they were not surveying the land out of
Soil 75
mere academic curiosity. They were intent on making money from
it. The East India Company was a strange vehicle of colonial rule, an
amalgam of a money-minded corporation and an occupying force.
It was, technically, “a monopoly joint stock company”, chartered by
the British Crown in 1600 to engage in trade, form local alliances,
and compete with the rival monopolies of the Portuguese, Dutch and
French. The British had little influence in India until the 1700s, and
their rise was marked by rampant corruption, cheating and looting.
Agents of the Company used its lucrative monopoly to line their own
pockets, while leaving the Company itself in shaky financial straits.19
The British government eventually recognized the magnitude of

this plundering, with its ill effects on royal coffers, and tried, with
some success, to reel it in. But by this point, the East India Company,
seeing the vast wealth of India, had ambitions that went well beyond
trade. Through a series of deliberately misunderstood grants and
treaties, along with military incursions backed by teams of merce-
naries, the Company began piecing together an empire. Most histo-
ries of the British Raj point to the 1757 Battle of Plassey, when East
India Company troops defeated the Mughal governor of Bengal, as
the beginning of British territorial expansion. But an equally crucial
turning point was the “Diwani” grant of 1765, in which the Mughal
emperor gave the Company the right to collect agricultural revenue
in Bengal. Through a questionable and self-serving interpretation of
this grant, the Company reckoned that it now had the right to occupy
the land as an imperial power.
The Diwani grant also points to a telling economic shift in

Company policy; though trade was still profitable, Company officials
had their eyes on an even bigger goldmine: land revenue. Agriculture
was the basis of the Indian economy, and taxing agricultural land was
thus crucial to funding Company rule. This became increasingly true
as the British expanded beyond their initial coastal footholds. Thus,
when the British took control of the Delhi area, one of their priorities
was to assess the productivity of the land and find an efficient way to
tax the population based on their assessment.
Looking out on their new lands, British administrators were

struck by the preponderance of “waste” in Delhi District.20 For the
British, “waste” had a clear economic definition: if land was not

agriculturally productive, it could not be taxed, and it was, in British
eyes, mere detritus. But this pejorative term obscures the range of
ecological functions “wastelands” perform. For many groups, and
most importantly for pastoralists, these “wastelands” were essential.
They included both wooded areas and open grasslands and served as
important grazing routes for various pastoral communities.
Like previous empires, the British Raj had many reasons to

promote agriculture and many reasons to fear and suspect nomadic
pastoral communities. In their singular drive for profit, however, they
promoted agriculture more aggressively and more extensively then
their predecessors, especially as their grip on the region strengthened.
The British were further emboldened by their unwavering belief
in the “magic of private property”, a phrase much used at the time. In
their own country, they had seen how the death of the commons and
the rise of the individual, propertied farmer had led to huge increases
in agricultural profits. (It mattered little to the British elite that this
burst of efficiency happened at the expense of the great masses of
agricultural workers, who were thrown off the land and formed the
bulk of the growing urban proletariat.) It was the British goal to
unleash just such an agricultural revolution in India, for their own
benefit, of course.
But their short-sightedness, and their overriding emphasis on

profit, led not to agricultural revolution, but to stagnation and
decline. The earliest efforts were in Bengal, where the East India
Company implemented its first “Permanent Settlement” in 1793.
Such settlements were a key instrument in the colonial toolbox. They
were based on detailed assessments of the land, and they determined
the amount that the natives would have to pay in agricultural taxes.
The hope was that, by clearly demarcating which land belonged to
which landlord, and by keeping a fixed assessment rate, the land
settlements would lead to a flurry of agricultural improvements.
But the settlements usually had just the opposite effect. East India
Company officials established taxes at an unrealistically high level.
Farmers were not able to pay. They got trapped in a cycle of debt,
agricultural productivity fell, and rural discontent grew.21
By the time the British began their Land Settlement efforts in

Delhi, they at least recognized that their previous attempts had been
Soil 77
misguided. In Bengal, and then in Madras and other parts of British
India, administrators had first targeted individual landlords, and
then individual peasants, as the potential payers of land revenue. In
Delhi and the surrounding regions, they struck upon a new formula,
drawing on the results of the newly-emerging field of anthropology.
India, they posited, was a land of village republics. And indeed, in the
Delhi area, they found a strong tradition of village councils composed
of landowning males. If these councils already existed, why not just
tax them?22
Such was the thinking when officials began Land Settlement efforts
in Delhi District in 1817. But the British could not solve the riddle of
Indian society (and how to make it pay) so easily. Since their focus
was on village communities as isolated entities from which revenue
could be extracted, they ignored the connections between various
villages, and between settled villages and mobile pastoral groups like
the Gujjars.
Their blindness resulted not just from avarice, but from funda-
mental assumptions about land. Despite their ostensible recognition
of village councils and community ownership of land, the British
could not escape a worldview dominated by private property. For
them, land was a commodity, something to be bought and sold. They
introduced rules that determined the landholdings of individuals
based on their current cultivation (as opposed to the much older
custom of ancestral plots), and they introduced methods for privatiz-
ing commonly held lands. Most importantly, they insisted on drawing
sharp boundaries between villages where before there had been much
fuzzier borders. Especially in pastoral areas, there had been little
effort to demarcate the “waste” between villages and within villages.
The haziness of precolonial frontiers was an endless headache for the
British, since it made the formal sale of land remarkably complex.
The simple act of drawing exact boundary lines had profound

effects on the hinterlands of Delhi. These lines tore the connective
tissue joining pastoral and agricultural collectives and erased the
customary rights of nomadic groups. In the early days of British rule
in Delhi District, the main emphasis was expanding agriculture at
the expense of pastoral activity. So, once boundary lines were drawn,
agriculture was promoted in “waste” areas that fell outside the new

village borders, often in zones frequented by pastoralists. This process
was sped along by the construction of canals throughout the district.
The government also tilted the scales against pastoralists by encour-

aging intensive agriculture within villages, and setting up tax rules that
punished the practice of keeping land fallow for long periods of time.
Such “long fallows” were key sites both for pastoral activity and for the
regeneration of the soil, but in their zeal for agricultural production,
the British were happy to overlook these factors.
The British offensive against pastoral livelihoods was not simply

a matter of tax policy and technological changes like canal con-
struction. British officials also waged an ideological war against the
whole idea of nomadism in general, and pastoralism in particular.
Perhaps this is no great surprise. Rulers in India from the Sultans
onwards were to curse the rebellious, independent, and unpredict-
able nomadic groups that refused to be good, tax-paying citizens. An
official British description of a pastoral zone in Delhi District sums
up this contemptuous attitude nicely: the area in question is “over-
grown with grass and bushes, scantily threaded with sheep walks and
the footprints of cattle” and the “chief tenants are nomad pastoral
tribes who knowing neither law nor property collect herds of cattle
stolen from the agricultural districts.”23 Any rural group that adopted
non-agricultural means of livelihood was tarred as hopelessly lazy
and criminally inclined.
This rhetoric took on a particularly nasty tinge as imperial theo-

ries of race began to gain ground. Not long after Darwin published
his revolutionary theories of evolution, a crude, politically motivated
application of Darwinism sprang up. Known as Social Darwinism, this
ideology applied the concept of evolution to different human com-
munities, venturing that different groups were engaged in a “survival
of the fittest”, and that some had a distinct advantage. Drawing on
dubious science, the groups were theorized as races that were biologi-
cally distinct, sharply differentiated by the process of evolution. While
these supposedly biological differences were most easily seen in physi-
cal markers, such as skin color and skull size (hence the obsession with
phrenology), the Social Darwinists linked these physical differences
with intellectual, emotional, and civilizational differences, creating a
hierarchy with the European races (of course) at the top.
Soil 79
In India, racial language was used to identify particular groups that
were not sufficiently pliable and had resisted British rule. The apothe-
osis of this strategy was the Criminal Tribes Act passed by the British
Indian government in 1871, in response to an uptick in banditry in
the countryside. Suffused in racial language, the Act identifies certain
“tribes, gangs and classes” that are “addicted to the systematic com-
mission of non-bailable offenses”. It specifies that such groups must
be prevented from practicing “their hereditary professions of theft,
robbery and dacoitry”. Simply being born into one of these groups had
become a criminal act.
The Gujjars had a prominent place on the list of Criminal Tribes,

and the attitude of the British toward Gujjars was unfailingly deroga-
tory and often couched in racial terms. The Delhi District Gazetteer,
published by the British government in 1884, stresses that thievery
and deception are ingrained in the character of the Gujjar. Although
noting that they are relatively light-skinned, the Gazetteer goes on
to remark that “the Gujar has generally been a mean, sneaking, cow-
ardly fellow, and it does not appear that he improves much with the
march of civilization.” But beneath the racial slurs, there was always
a level of economic calculation. The Gujjars are derided as “third-rate
cultivators” who contribute nothing to the British drive to expand
agriculture.24
Entirely absent in colonial accounts of the Gujjar community is any

recognition of the role the British themselves played in antagonizing
Gujjars and pushing them towards extra-legal activities. Successive
land settlements and redrawn village boundaries made it increasingly
difficult for Gujjars to make a living as pastoralists. While cattle raids
had long been a feature of pastoral life, the nineteenth century saw
a huge increase in the number and organization of raiding groups;
despite the racial language used by the British, these groups were
often quite diverse, with members drawn from different castes and
religions, united in their economic distress and their resentment of
British rule.25 In their minds, they were not petty thieves, but rather
noble bandits.
In part due to government policies and persecution, many

Gujjar groups in the Delhi area had become settled by the mid-
1800s, practicing agriculture alongside more traditional pursuits of

cattle-rearing. But even this was not enough to guarantee a secure life.
On several occasions, their land was simply snatched from them by the
government and its officials. Representative in this regard is Thomas
Metcalfe, who served as Resident of Delhi, and who took land from a
series of Gujjar-dominated villages stretching from Shahjahanabad
to the Northern Ridge. One of these villages was Chandrawal, which,
at least in Rahul Khari’s account, had already faced similar pressure at
the hands of the Mughals. Metcalfe used his new property as the site of
“Metcalfe House”, the most expensive mansion in northwest India at
the time. On the southern part of the Ridge, Metcalfe took over the tomb
of a sixteenth-century Mughal nobleman and used it as his personal
retreat, as well as renting it out to honeymooning couples. These land
grabs only added to the perception of the British as an alien power
intent on undermining the livelihoods and lifestyles of local populations.
These frustrations came to a head with the Great Uprising of 1857.

Historians continue to debate the precise causes and contours of the
uprising, but there is widespread agreement that rural discontent,
often stemming from British agrarian policies, played a major role in
turning the conflict from a military mutiny to a widespread rebellion
against British rule.26 This is certainly true in the Delhi region. One
of the most striking acts of the rebellion was the burning of Metcalfe
House by the villagers of Chandrawal. After the British brutally
crushed the uprising, the Gujjars paid dearly for their role in it. All of
Chandrawal was confiscated by the government; it was briefly rented
out to non-Gujjars as grazing land and was eventually sold off in plots
intended for British bungalows. The surviving villagers moved to a
site further north, bringing the name of the village with them; they
resumed their pastoral livelihoods as well as they could and tried to
rebuild a sense of community life.
From “Waste” to “Forest”

The vengeance against Gujjars and other rebel communities in 1857
was swift, brutal and undeniable. Its wounds were immediately
apparent to those on both sides of the conflict. The slow draining
of the life-force of the land, which both preceded and followed the
Mutiny, was more difficult to discern. The land was transformed in
both dramatic and mundane ways. Canals proliferated; new villages
Soil 81
were created in former “wastelands”; long fallows were converted
into short ones or into constantly-tended fields; land was redefined
as a commodity and a market for land thus established; and common
lands were privatized and sold to the highest bidder. These changes
inevitably had wide-reaching effects: nomadic tribes were forced to
settle; tensions between agriculturalists and pastoralists flared up
with increasing regularity; farmers unable to pay extortionist tax
rates fell into poverty and debt; ancestral properties were transferred
from the old landed class to a new set of middlemen, mainly bankers
and urban professionals.
These profound changes were felt most acutely in pastoral zones,

as the entire pastoral way of life was threatened. At times, the British
were forcefully confronted with the damage they had wrought, most
vividly with the rise of famines. In the nineteenth century in Delhi
District, droughts, scarcities and famines became alarmingly common
in pastoral areas, and the government eventually began to recognize
the collateral damage their policies were causing. By the end of the
century, the drive to extend agriculture had slowed considerably.
But the Raj was not simply motivated by humanitarian concern or

by fear that a famine-prone region might be inclined to start another
1857-type rebellion. It was increasingly recognizing that the “waste”
in British India was, perhaps, not so useless after all. This belated
realization was largely driven by technological change. The railroad,
that potent symbol of modernity, was introduced in the region in
1862. As the rail system expanded, it needed to be fed with the forests
of India. The construction of railway lines required a huge amount of
wood, mostly for the sleepers that supported the tracks. For this
wood, administrators largely turned to the “wastelands”, in which
local populations had maintained many forested zones.
Teak and sal, the trees used for sleepers, were not found in Delhi,
although they were available in the larger Punjab Province, of which
Delhi District was a part. But closer to the Ridge, “wastes” provided
essential ingredients for building streets, which complemented
the rail network as British influence penetrated deeper into the
subcontinent. These ingredients were mineral: the stones, pebbles
and sands (including Badarpur sand) used by the British Public Works
Department for road construction. As early as 1824, the government

introduced laws allowing them to temporarily acquire “wastelands”
rich in mineral wealth, and to dig up whatever they needed before
returning the land to the locals.
By 1878, it was clear to the British that they needed a stronger

administrative tool for controlling the “wastelands”. The Indian
Forest Act, introduced in this year and revised significantly in 1927,
was this tool. It allowed the government to set aside any patch of
land as a “Reserved Forest” and to prohibit the cutting of trees,
collecting of firewood, grazing of livestock, and other activities. Of
course, the government itself was free to cut down trees in protected
forests, as it did with great zeal to build its empire. It could also
selectively allow some grazing and other pastoral activities, after
charging a hefty fee.
In one sense, the Indian Forest Act can be seen as a reversal on

the part of the government, a recognition, at long last, of the value
of so-called “wastelands”. But in another, more fundamental sense,
the Act was merely a continuation of the state’s longstanding policy
of introducing radical changes in land ownership practices with an
eye to filling government coffers. The Indian Forest Act was not really
about ecological concern, but rather about control over land, and thus
control over valuable resources.
The government’s instrumental view of ecosystems—evaluating

the land based on the presence or absence of economically valuable
trees—led to a fundamental misrecognition of the Indian landscape.
This, at least, is the implication of new ecological research that
argues for a wholesale recategorization of Indian forest types, which
even today follow British typologies. This research, by the ecologist
Jayashree Ratnam and others, calls into question British descriptions
of wide swaths of India, including Ridge habitats, as “dry deciduous
forests”. The British emphasis on trees, as opposed to entire ecosys-
tems, blinded them to the fact that “dry deciduous forests” were, in
fact, savannas, that is, mixed tree-grass ecosystems in which the grass
species actually play a driving role.27 The British categorization is so
deeply ingrained that it is still used by the vast majority of environ-
mentalists in India, and it has only recently been questioned by a small
group of scientists.
Soil 83
But the British disregard for the environment went well beyond
misclassification. Even though the value of trees was slowly dawning
on them, this recognition could still be overruled by more pressing
economic concerns. The actions of the government after the imple-
mentation of the Indian Forest Act hardly suggest environmental
enlightenment. From 1900 to 1920, 3,000 square miles (7,770 square
kilometers) of forests were cleared for agriculture in Punjab Province,
an area that then included Delhi.28 To put this into perspective, this is
one hundred times the area currently designated as Reserved Forest
in the Delhi Ridge.
A Tale of Two Settlement Officers

Ironically, in this same period of time, two areas of the Delhi Ridge,
though largely denuded, were classified as Reserved Forests. This
designation built on twenty-odd years of largely unsuccessful efforts
by various colonial administrators to afforest the Ridge, which had
been suffering from both the long history of urbanization in Delhi
and the recent introduction of detrimental land settlement policies.
Even more ironically, the government officials who carried out the
ecologically disastrous land settlements were the very ones who
proclaimed the value of “forests” most loudly.
Here we’re not talking about a big cast of characters. In fact, we’re
just talking about two officials. One of the most striking aspects of
British rule in India was the staggeringly large set of responsibilities
given to single individuals, a reflection of both the drive to cut admin-
istrative costs and the hubristic presumption that one officer could
easily navigate the innumerable complexities of Indian economic,
political and social systems.
So when it came time to conduct land settlements in Delhi District,

just one officer was entrusted with the task, along with a small team of
assistants. Although the very first land settlement was in 1817, the most
comprehensive ones were much later, in 1880 and 1910. The 1880
settlement was conducted by J. R. Maconachie, an official who had
worked on land issues in Delhi District and the larger Punjab Province
for over two decades. In the records that he left behind, Maconachie
comes across as an enthusiastic, even kind-hearted administrator, but

one nonetheless biased by the prejudices of his time. He clearly had
a deep knowledge of the region, publishing one book called Selected
Agricultural Proverbs of the Punjab and another on customary law in
Delhi. He was also keenly interested in forestry, and one of his chief
missions as an officer was to increase the tree cover in Delhi District
and beyond.
And yet, in 1880, he authored a land settlement report that con-
tinued the trend of prioritizing agriculture, demonizing pastoralism,
and weakening collective institutions that had previously played such
a key role in maintaining sacred groves and other forest patches.
What is more, he did so with a clear conscience, with the (mis)under-
standing that such measures would actually have a positive impact on
forest conservation.
Maconachie’s main mistake was his inability to locate the true
roots of the environmental crisis, which made him confuse cause
and effect. This was not due to thoughtlessness or carelessness;
Maconachie was conscientious and thoroughgoing in all his reports.
Rather, Maconachie’s vision was narrowed by the ideological blinders
he wore. He viewed pastoralists with great suspicion and held them
to be the main cause of the deforestation rampant in Delhi and the
larger region.
His settlement report reflects his biases. The report was no mere
cataloging of traditional land tenures and soil productivity assess-
ments; it was also an opportunity for Maconachie to opine on a wide
variety of social and racial matters. He joined his fellow officials in
his outright disdain for Gujjars. He notes that in Delhi District, the
Gujjar community “has appropriated almost entirely the hill villages,
as they suit their pastoral traditions, and pastoral traditions are less
repugnant than a settled husbandry to thieving, a habit universally
attributed to the Gujjar.”29 He prefers the Jats, traditional rivals to the
Gujjars, who were more deeply rooted in agricultural traditions.30 He
waxes idyllic, saying “Nothing is pleasanter, of its kind, than to walk
through a well-cultivated Jat village.”31
But he has not given up all hope for the Gujjars. He maintains,
“There seems reason to hope that a material improvement in the
habits of the Gujjar is setting in. The agriculture of the hills will be
greatly aided by the bands now being made or repaired; and this will
Soil 85
probably in itself prove an inducement to pursue the path of honesty.”32
Bands or “bunds” are earthen dams used to collect water and provide
sources for irrigation; they were widespread in pre-colonial times, and
Maconachie shows unusual sensitivity in his appreciation of these
traditional systems of water management. And yet his statement on
the whole reeks of standard-issue colonial ideology: Gujjars can only
be “induced” to be honest if the Ridge can be converted from a pastoral
to an agricultural zone.
Shortly after writing this report, Maconachie was able to test out
his theory on the northern portion of the Delhi Ridge. His goal was to
stabilize the soil using bunds. In his mind, this would have two dis-
tinct positive effects: an increase in the number of trees that could be
planted, and an extension of the agricultural zones of Delhi into the
hills. For his test site, he chose a part of the Ridge close to the village
of Chandrawal, which was, one may imagine, not in the mood for any
more state intervention. Not that the villagers had a say in the matter.
Maconachie was perhaps the most dangerous kind of colonial
official: one who genuinely believed he was doing good for the locals.
He was not, as far as the records show, animated by the naked greed
that motivated many early colonial adventurers. He instead played
the role of the stern but loving father, who always knew what was best
for his children.
In his bund project, Maconachie tried to recruit the men of
Chandrawal to help with his construction efforts. It is unclear how
successful he was, but, given that the project was abandoned within
three years, it is unlikely that he found support for a key component
of his plan: forbidding grazing in the areas to be afforested. A letter
on the plan states,
The first measure is to make arrangements for effectually

excluding goats and cattle from browsing on it... The villagers
who own any plots which may be needed would have to be dealt
with, but they... I trust will be induced to consent to what will
ultimately benefit them, as covered with wood, the ground will be
more valuable than it is now.33
Maconachie was not helped by larger trends tied to the regrowth

of the city after the devastation of 1857. From 1880 onwards, there

was a sharp increase in the demand for meat in Delhi; it is under-
standable that the Gujjar villagers of Chandrawal preferred the guar-
anteed income of a consistently growing meat market, rather than
the vague promises of government officials for “valuable” forest
land, especially given both the overt and covert violence of the state
against them.
Urban expansion was thus the backdrop to the 1910 settlement

report, which was carried out by none other than Major Henry C.
Beadon, the protagonist of Chapter 1’s quarry quarrel. Beadon, like
Maconachie, was deeply interested in forestry, and, like Maconachie,
he was convinced that the main enemy of the forest was livestock, and
more specifically, the goat. In his settlement report, he notes, “The
great increase in sheep and goat is remarkable and from the point of
view of new arboriculture deplorable, as the main increase is in goats:
flocks are a profitable income to the owners who graze them unscru-
pulously where they choose.”34 By “new arboriculture”, Beadon simply
means the planting of new trees. Like so many before him, Beadon
creates a simplistic opposition between not-to-be-trusted villagers and
wise British administrators who knew the value of trees.
In an earlier memorandum, Beadon had taken the opportunity to

rail against goats at greater length. Discussing the hills at the southern
end of Delhi District, Beadon maintains,
The main destructive agency there, and I am convinced every-

where else, is the goat. It is most unfortunate that goat-keeping
is lucrative: but there is no getting over it, and the result is that
wherever there is waste and uncultivatable land, that area is over-
run with goats who browse down every tree and every shrub.35
He goes on to stress the importance of planting tree saplings in

the hills but cannot resist take one more swipe at goats: “The greatest
remedy of all in my opinion, however, is the strict control of goat
grazing. There are people who hold that the goat is a wonderfully
economical animal: so it is, as it lives at the expense of posterity.”36
Beadon, of course, is on the side of posterity. Even more than

Maconachie, he is animated by an unshakable conviction that he is
part of a civilizing mission, making tough choices and noble decisions
Soil 87
on behalf of the native population. After his repeated anti-goat
harangues, he concludes with this rousing, patriotic sentiment:
All forest conservation is locally unpopular, but a time arrives

when the parting of the ways is reached and the State has to
decide whether it will follow in spite of difficulties a firm policy
of conservation, or the craven policy of inaction or half measures
which are little better than inaction. If France in 1860 and 1864,
during the disturbed era of the Second Empire, could take a
strong line with success, there can be no excuse for a weak policy
in British India.37
For Beadon, then, prohibiting grazing, and stigmatizing pastoral-

ists in the process, was nothing less than a sacred civic duty.
In a way, Beadon and Maconachie were right; grazing did prevent

trees from springing up on the land. The tension between grazing and
forestry had, after all, been noted since the time of the Mahabharata.
And there is ample evidence that, in areas like the Ridge, if grazing
and other human activities stop and the land is left to itself, forests
(or, more accurately, tree-filled savannas) will eventually emerge. In
recent decades, this has been seen again and again in the former mines
along the Ridge, which were themselves former grazing grounds. If
these closed mines are left alone, whether through neglect or through
active conservation efforts, diverse ecosystems grow back with sur-
prising speed.
But the British officials were viewing the goats vs. trees tension
through far too narrow a lens, ignoring the tumultuous changes to the
land that they themselves had inaugurated. If given the opportunity
and the land, pastoralists were very well capable of maintaining
thriving forests along with grassy grazing lands. But the British had
denied them that opportunity, or rather had taken it from them piece
by piece. British land policies, with their exorbitant tax rates, firmly
defined boundaries, and obsession with enlarging agricultural zones,
were an unprecedented affront to pastoral life and to the groves
carefully preserved by pastoralists.
By 1880, when Maconachie turned his attention to the Ridge

near Chandrawal, the zone had long been deforested. Whether this

was due to the urban pressures of Shahjahanabad or the policies of
the British is difficult to know. But for colonial officials, the solution
was clear. What was needed was more state control, not less; more
expropriation of land from locals, not less. They were intent on pun-
ishing pastoralists for conditions beyond their control.
Maconachie’s actions in this regard were relatively sensitive;
paternalism aside, he at least tried to get the support of the local
community and involve them in the tree planting process. After
Maconachie, a more brusque approach was favored. Leaving aside
any pretense of community uplift, later administrators stressed that
the area should be afforested for the benefit of nearby British res-
idents, with local communities strictly excluded. Officials began to
construct fences around these areas. They also started conducting
cattle raids, unaware of the irony that they were practicing the very
activity that supposedly proved the ‘savagery’ of the Gujjars. One offi-
cial proudly reports,
I have carried out, by night and day, various raids on the tres-
passing cattle, and by not releasing the cattle on the payment of
the merely nominal fine but prosecuting the owner for mischief
I have, I hope, partly succeeded in convincing the latter that for
the present at any rate it will pay them better to graze their cattle
elsewhere.38
But these attempts were not as successful as the administrators

had hoped. The Gujjar villagers would not abandon their means
of livelihood so easily. They found many ways to subvert the new
system of exclusion, to the exasperation of British officialdom.
A typical complaint in 1909 reads, “The grazing can be stopped,
but the difficulty will be in preventing grazing at night, as these
Chandrawal men are not above turning their cattle in to the public
gardens and private compounds at night.”39 But despite intense local
resistance, the British kept up their efforts, building fences, hiring
guards, conducting cattle raids and introducing regulation after
regulation to prevent grazing.
In 1915, the transformation of the Northern Ridge was finally

complete; under the Indian Forest Act, the area Maconachie had
originally tried to afforest was set aside for full government control.40
Soil 89
The Gujjars were once again alienated from their land. The British had
placed a legislative stamp on a process they had started more subtly
decades earlier: the assault on pastoral livelihoods and commonly
held village land, and the replacement of such land with individual,
salable plots interspersed with government-controlled enclaves.
From Sacred Grove to Real Estate

This process, which started on the Northern Ridge, took a long time
to spread southwards; indeed, the story is still unfolding at the far
reaches of the Southern Ridge and beyond. Here, one can find traces
of older ways of life, of the “reservation of wood-producing land...
generally connected with religion”, which the British found when they
first entered the region. The most remarkable example of this is the
sacred grove of Mangarbani. The grove technically falls in Haryana,
outside the bounds of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (a clear-
cut boundary that owes its contours to the British). Officially it is not
part of the Delhi Ridge. But it is on the Aravallis, so its underlying
stones and soil are identical to those of the Ridge.
What grows out of this stony soil has amazed observers from
Delhi. Mangarbani is densely forested, and it is full of trees that have
long disappeared from the Delhi Ridge, most notably the graceful,
hardy dhau tree. The thriving forest is part of common lands shared
by the three villages of Mangar, Bandhwari and Baliawas, which
are dominated by the Gujjar community; these villages maintain
Mangarbani as a sacred grove in honor of a holy man named Gudariya
Baba who used to roam these parts.
The very existence of such a remarkable ecosystem in the midst

of three Gujjar settlements neatly refutes the argument originally
put forward by Maconachie and Beadon, and still echoed today by
some government officials and environmentalists: that villagers,
especially those with strong pastoral traditions, like the Gujjars, do
not care about trees, and land must be taken away from them and
vested in the government if it is to be protected.
Instead, Mangarbani suggests another lesson: that the ecological

behavior of pastoralists is molded by the larger systems in which they
are ensconced. For example, during Mughal times, the Gujjars living

close to Shahjahanabad put excessive pressure on their commons
because of urban demands for meat and milk; meanwhile, the Gujjars
of Mangarbani, much further away from city influences, left a more
balanced ecological footprint. This remained the case during British
rule as well, despite the compulsions of British land settlement efforts
and despite pockets of quarrying. But, over the past several decades,
Mangarbani has increasingly been drawn into the orbit of a rapidly
expanding Delhi, a trend that has threatened the survival of the grove.
Regular readers of Delhi newspapers may be familiar with this
story. On almost a weekly basis, one reads about a new threat to the
old forest. Or about threats to people in the forest. By far the most
dramatic headline came on 31 March 2014: “Birdwatchers Thrashed
at Mangar Forest”.41
The events described in the article are a combination of the dis-
turbing, the tragic, and the absurd, a mix that characterizes much of
the Delhi region in an era of runaway growth. The birdwatchers were
from nearby Gurgaon—not too long ago, a sleepy farming village and
now an urban hub conjoined to Delhi and filled with automobile facto-
ries, multi-national corporate offices, small-scale garment industries,
and a seemingly endless expanse of malls. (The city was renamed
Gurugram in 2016, a Hindu nationalist nod to the Mahabharata sage
Guru Dronacharya, who supposedly lived in this area thousands of
years ago. However, for the sake of avoiding anachronisms, I will
stick with “Gurgaon”, the name that was current when the following
events took place.)
The birders had gone to Mangarbani to spot winged wildlife in
the native forests of the grove. When the first car reached the grove,
they came upon a man who said he was the priest at the local temple;
he wanted to know what they were doing there. Things got a bit
heated, and the priest took out his phone and made a call. Within
minutes, a group of young men sped onto the scene in a jeep. They
jumped down, armed with sticks and iron rods, and attacked the
birdwatchers, a group which included an elderly woman and a young
child. The attackers fled, though, when the rest of the birdwatchers,
another four or five carloads, arrived on the scene.
The priest was later arrested, along with some of the assailants.
Now, though, they are all out on bail, as the rusty machinery of the
Soil 91
justice system does its agonizingly slow work. Many of the news
reports after the attack asserted that the priest has played a central
role in real estate transactions in the area. The British may have been
the first to introduce the idea of land as a commodity in the Delhi
region, but now, centuries later, the idea has become common sense.
It is embraced with gusto by the wide range of players that make the
real estate industry tick, a group that, apparently, includes a temple
priest and his hired muscle.
Real estate is now the shadow that hovers, unavoidably, over

Mangarbani and the three villages that surround it. This, though, is
a relatively recent development, and it has gained traction due to the
changing role of the Gujjar landowners in the villages. The fact that
Gujjars are the dominant landowners suggests that, in this area at
least, they long ago made the transition from nomadic tribe to settled
community. Pastoralism still plays a role here, but it has long been
complemented by agriculture, and it has taken place around fixed
village settlements. And Gujjars have integrated into a caste-based
village structure, finding themselves in a powerful position within the
local hierarchy.
The complexity of the caste system is in full view with the Gujjar
community. In most states in India, Gujjars come under the adminis-
trative category of Other Backwards Classes (OBC), which puts them
below the traditionally “high” castes, but above Dalits (administra-
tively: Scheduled Castes or “SC”) and tribals (Scheduled Tribes or “ST”).
It also makes them eligible for a range of reservations made available
by the state. But this cut-and-dry state-imposed category hardly gets at
the nuances and the internal differences within Gujjar communities. In
some parts of India, especially in the Himalayan foothills, Gujjars still
live a more tribal, nomadic existence, with little integration into settled
caste systems; however, in other contexts, including Mangarbani, they
are not only integrated, they are also the most powerful community in
a given village.
While OBC may, then, be a wholly inadequate way to describe

Gujjars, the designation is still vitally important, given its link to res-
ervations. In some cases, Gujjars have demanded a lower status, so
that they have access to more state benefits. These are the exigencies
of modern-day caste politics. While the impulse behind reservations

is a deeply progressive one—to provide support and opportunities
to groups that have historically been exploited and marginalized—
their application must deal with the messy terrain of competing
communities, internal discord, and intersecting layers of privilege
and power.
Such complex dynamics often lead to explosive results. In 2007,

in the state of Rajasthan, a group of Gujjars began to agitate for
the inclusion of Gujjars as a Scheduled Tribe (ST), in a sense a step
“down” from OBC, but one which would provide them with more
state support. As the protests gained momentum, they triggered state
repression. Within a span of four days in May 2007, police opened
fire on four different groups of protesters, in conflicts which left
25 Gujjars and one policeman dead.
In early June, the protest turned national, as Gujjar groups from

around the country descended on Delhi and other major cities,
including Jaipur and Ahmedabad. In a remarkable show of com-
munity strength, the protesters successfully cut off all road access
to Delhi, effectively blockading the national capital. While the agi-
tation was largely non-violent, some protesters set fire to buses and
trains. For the elite of Delhi, this destruction of property and inter-
ruption of their everyday life could not be countenanced. All the slurs
and all the urban disdain toward Gujjars, from Babur to the British,
were dredged up. A municipal councilor in Delhi is on the record
saying that, for Gujjars, “killing is in their blood”. Protests conti-
nued the next year, with 38 more Gujjars shot down by police. The
agitation only stopped when the government agreed to give Gujjars
reservations, not as a Scheduled Tribe, but as a Denotified Tribe—
the official post-colonial term for groups that the British had dubbed
Criminal Tribes.
At the height of the agitation, protesters from Rajasthan got strong

support from leaders of Gujjar-dominated villages in the Delhi region,
who both benefit and suffer from their proximity to state power.
Their strength at the village level gives them significant pull in local
elections, but despite that they cannot compete with the real power
players of the capital. Economically, too, they have benefited from the
ever-expanding markets of Delhi, but, except in rare cases, they have
not found a place at the table of the city’s elite.
Soil 93
The traditional ruling classes in Delhi still see Gujjar-dominated
areas as a backwards hinterland, even though, with the expansion of
the capital, they are often right in the midst of the urban sprawl. If not
physically, they are still metaphorically on the edge of an urban zone
that houses a far more powerful set of elites. And it is increasingly not
just an Indian elite housed in the Indian capital, but an international
elite housed in the multinational offices and luxury high-rises of
Gurgaon. This is the larger context in which the Mangarbani drama
has played out, as the sacred grove is being inexorably pulled into the
capital’s sphere of influence.
Interacting with these larger factors were village-specific dynamics.

As the main landed caste in the three villages surrounding Mangarbani,
Gujjars controlled the commons, including the sacred grove. Dalits
and other landless families could only use the commons with the
permission of the landowners. This began to change in the late 1970s,
when the government of Punjab (of which Haryana was then a part)
began a half-hearted land reform effort, carving out portions of the
village commons to give to Dalit families as agricultural plots.42
The plan succeeded in making the government look progressive

while leading to a series of regressive changes on the ground. The
government’s logic was that landowners would not be too opposed
to these efforts because they were only taking away “waste” land—
that is, the commons. This is in contrast to truly radical land reforms,
which would redistribute fertile agricultural land and give everyone
the right to access the commons. Such reforms would require a strong
commitment from the state, which it was hardly prepared to give.
Breaking up the commons to give plots to Dalits was a ruinous plan

for several reasons. First, especially in hilly areas like Mangarbani,
the commons were hardly suitable for agriculture, so giving them
to Dalits and telling them to farm there was something of an insult.
Second, the Dalits themselves depended on the commons for fuel
and fodder (even if their access to it was constrained), so breaking
them up would hardly be in their long-term interest. Third, the move
increased tensions between Dalits and Gujjars, as any land reform
effort would do, but unlike effective reforms, it did not actually give
Dalits the economic strength, or the state backing, to hold their
own and fight for an egalitarian village structure. Instead, the move

encouraged a backlash on the part of Gujjars, who felt (not without
reason) that this was just one more move from on high to take their
land away.
Not long after the government introduced the reforms, landown-

ing communities from across the state banded together to change the
law regarding village commons. They succeeded in the effort, and
the government amended the law in question to allow common lands
to be partitioned, and for each of the landowners to receive a portion
of the commons commensurate to his existing landholding. In the
end, the commons were broken up; but instead of being given to
landless Dalits, they were hoarded by those who already owned land.
Ironically, it was not the avarice of British land settlement policies
that finally destroyed the commons of Mangarbani; it was the ersatz
progressivism of the postcolonial state.
But the effects of the partition of Mangarbani’s commons were

not immediately evident. The initial partition took place in late
1970s, but it remained purely notional; it was still used as common
land under the firm control of Gujjar village councils. However, in
1986, the individual plots were actually marked out on the ground.
It is no coincidence that this happened just as Gurgaon was begin-
ning to take off. Soon after the demarcation of plots, real estate agents
and speculators descended on the villages, and many villagers sold off
their land. Several of the plots have now been fenced off, in prepara-
tion for building when the land values become appropriately lucra-
tive. So far, this has not happened in the sacred grove itself, but only
around the edges.
Villagers selling their land, and potentially abandoning their

sacred grove, should not be read simply as a crumbling of traditional
ethics and a sign of our degraded times. These decisions must be
placed in a larger economic context. Pastoralism has long ceased to
be a profitable activity; the British started to kill the commons and
the open grazing routes in the region, and the postcolonial govern-
ment finished them off. From the 1980s onwards, when Delhi was
in the throes of a building boom, mining extended to the far reaches of
the Aravallis, including many of the areas surrounding Mangarbani.
This propped up the local economy; the total ban on mining in
2002 (largely in the name of environmental conservation) caused
Soil 95
widespread economic uncertainty in the zone. In this situation, many
Gujjars, who had been devoted caretakers of the sacred grove, felt
they were better off selling their share of it.
Greed likely played a role, as did a lust for power; how else to
explain a priest so zealously taking up the role of real estate broker and
violent enforcer? But even this must be seen in the context of the larger
forces swirling around the region. The liberalization of the economy,
which had its watershed moment in 1991 and which has Gurgaon
(“The Millennial City”) as its iconic location, brought with it a wave
of consumerism, an unapologetic celebration of the accumulation of
wealth, and a reveling in newly-available imported products. Many of
the younger generation in villages around Mangarbani were already
drawn to the city out of economic compulsion. Is it unreasonable that
they were swayed by the new ideology of consumption that was so
openly celebrated by the city elite?
This question will be considered in more depth in Chapter Four.

For now, it’s important to note that some were not convinced by the
new gospel of spending. Many from the villages near Mangarbani,
especially but not exclusively the elders, still want to hold on to their
sacred grove. Some who sold their land now bitterly regret it. There
was a wave of excitement when plots were first being bought for sums
of money that then seemed unimaginable. But the real profits, it
eventually became clear, were made by corrupt speculators and real
estate moguls selling and re-selling the land.
The real estate industry is well known for chicanery and its
collusion with state officials (a full exploration of this nexus will once
again have to wait until Chapter Four). In the case of Mangarbani
and other Aravalli areas in Haryana, government officials have
misclassified hilly zones, which for centuries have been used for
grazing, as agricultural. Once an area is categorized as agricultural,
it is relatively easy to convert it into a commercial or residential
zone, especially as huge waves of urbanization pass through the
region and turn even legitimate farming areas into city neighbor-
hoods and suburban getaways. Real estate moguls find out about
these zoning changes in advance (and, in some cases, actually
make these changes happen), and can reap huge rewards as land
prices rise astronomically.

Questionable zoning is just one part of the real estate-government
nexus. The public learned more about this shadowy alliance thanks
to the revelations of Ashok Khemka, a bureaucrat and whistleblower
famous for being transferred 45 times (and counting) in his 22-year
career. His uprightness and zeal for countering corruption have
invariably created tension with his supervisors; many of his postings
have lasted only a few months. In 2012, Khemka canceled several
plans to consolidate landholdings in the area around Mangarbani,
which was hilly, uninhabited and tree-covered, if not as lush and
well-protected as the actual core of the sacred grove. A group of
real estate agents had been buying up low-priced plots of land, and
then trying to illegally exchange those plots for much more valuable
ones in areas where new roads were coming up. These agents often
represented high-level politicians and businessmen who knew about
these roads when they were in the early planning stages and could
conveniently invest their black money in a foolproof moneymaking
scheme. Although Khemka interrupted some of these deals before his
inevitable transfer, he could hardly put a dent in the larger corporate-
political machine that is chewing up Aravalli forests and spitting out
luxury housing and commercial complexes.43
In spite of such threats, the grove at Mangarbani is still standing.44

An alliance of city environmentalists and village advocates have, after
a long battle, succeeded in getting the area officially demarcated as
forest land. But its long-term prospects are uncertain. Mangarbani
is now unmistakably in the orbit of urban Delhi, and the Gujjars of
the surrounding villages must now face a dilemma that the Gujjars of
Delhi faced long ago: how to deal with an immensely powerful political
and economic elite hungry for land and money. Some villagers near
Mangarbani have taken an active role in facilitating the ongoing
land grab, and many have been willing to sell their land. Others have
stood firm and resisted the onslaught. But even they can sense that a
massive change is coming.
The ongoing saga of Mangarbani aptly illustrates the ever-changing

ecology of the Ridge, as it transforms from forest to grazing land to
mines to real estate. Throughout history, the Gujjars have shaped the
Ridge, and the Ridge has shaped the Gujjars, with the burgeoning
mass of urban Delhi increasingly deforming and reforming both.
Soil 97
The transition from a nomadic to a settled life, due to the twin
forces of British land settlement policies and urban expansion, was a
radical, but likely quite gradual transformation of Gujjar life. While
their connection with the Ridge was perhaps most vivid and vital
when they moved through it as nomads, their political and social
claims to the land grew stronger with their entry into the ranks of
settled gentry; they became “sons of the soil” in a fairly traditional
sense. Now, the move to turn the Ridge into a vast real estate market
is destroying the gentry as a class but is providing other avenues for
Gujjars to accumulate power and profit. Their fate then, continues to
be bound up with the changing ecologies and economies of the Ridge.
Other Nomadic Trajectories

The Gujjars may be the most iconic inhabitants of the Ridge, and the
ones with the farthest-reaching historical claims. But it would be a
mistake to see them as the only notable inhabitants. Their dominant
role should not obscure other groups who have traced out similarly
complex passages from nomadic tribalism to settled village life, and
from pastoral pursuits to the exigencies of urban living.
One such group is the Ods, traditionally a nomadic community

who, like the Gujjars, are spread across much of northern India. Also
like the Gujjars, the Ods trace their lineage to ancient royalty and also
consider themselves to be Rajputs. However, while Gujjar history can
be traced at least in rough outline from the seventh century onwards,
Ods appear more suddenly in the historical record. Ods have long
been spread throughout northwest India, but the group of Ods now
living in the Delhi Ridge only entered the area after Partition; before
that, they were in Sindh, in what is now Pakistan.
Unlike other migrants from the northwest, their choice of animal

companion was not the fighting horse, but the humble donkey, useful
for carrying loads. Not known for their agricultural prowess, Ods
are sons of the soil in a different sense: they are diggers of the earth,
constructors of wells, ponds, and embankments. This profession has
mythical origins: an ancestor of the Ods, Bhagirath, once declared
that he would never drink water more than once from the same well.
He thus condemned himself to a life of digging a new well every day,

which had the unintended consequence of honing his earth masonry
skills considerably.
This set of skills has found plenty of application in modern, post-

colonial India; Ods have scaled up their innovative digging techniques
from individual wells to the mega-projects of the independent state.
Od community leaders in Delhi reel off the list of big-name projects
for which they helped lay the foundations, from the Indira Gandhi
Canal that stretches from Punjab to Rajasthan, to the airport and
renovated railway stations in Delhi, to the Badarpur thermal power
plant, to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), to a
series of dams, including the Tehri Dam and the Bhakra Dam. Nehru
famously described dams as “temples of modernity”, but many of them
were built with the traditional know-how and earth-moving skills of
Od workers.45
It is precisely their facility with soil that brought Ods to Delhi in

the 1960s, and specifically to the Bhatti mines, the largest quarrying
complex of the Delhi mining industry. Its main product was “Badarpur”,
the red sand created by the erosion of iron-rich quartzite, although
uneroded quartzite blocks were also quarried. With their digging skills
and intuitive sense of the earth, developed over many generations, Ods
were well-suited to mining work, and they quickly became the largest
community of workers in the Bhatti mines.
When Ods tried to set up a more permanent base near the mines,
they encountered resistance from the settled Gujjar community that
dominated Bhatti village, as well as the surrounding villages. But the
Bhatti mines were feeding the booming construction industry in
the capital city, and the mines needed workers, so Ods quickly found
political backing, at a remarkably high level. Indira Gandhi, then the
prime minister, set up an “Od Nomadic Tribe Cell”, which supported
the establishment of schools, health centers and veterinary clinics
(for the donkeys). A foundation stone still stands for a housing project
inaugurated by Indira’s son, Sanjay Gandhi, in 1976; after Sanjay’s
death in 1980, the main Od settlement in the Bhatti mines changed its
name from Bhagirath Nagar to Sanjay Colony.
The Ods were also beneficiaries of half-hearted land reform

efforts, similar to the ones that marked the beginning of the end of
Soil 101
the Mangarbani commons. In 1987, many Od families received plots
of land that had been carved out from the village commons, in a move
that clearly rankled the local Gujjars. The official record of these
transactions has been lost; many Ods believe that this is the doing of
local Gujjar administrators, who held most of the lower-level govern-
ment positions in the area and who had ample reason not to record
the new land rights of the Ods.
But, as with many of these relationships, it was not simply one

of strife; after the closure of the Bhatti mines, Ods and Gujjars both
found themselves facing economic catastrophe, and they lobbied
together to have the mines re-opened. For Ods and other mine
workers, though, the crisis struck not just their livelihoods, but their
homes. Sanjay Colony and two smaller workers’ settlements were
suddenly labeled ‘slums’, which were to be cleared in order to extend
the Asola Wildlife Sanctuary. Enlarging this sanctuary, which had
first been established in 1986, and renaming it Asola-Bhatti was a
convenient way to cover up the mess of the mines. Bhatti had been
the site of the most egregious labor abuses and deadly accidents
in the quarrying belt. In 1996, some Od villagers were watching TV
and learned that their houses were slated for eviction; the state did
not bother to give them an official notice.
Since then, Od villagers have come to depend on the protection of

powerful Gujjar politicians. Stripped of their livelihoods, with their
habitation constantly threatened, Ods have little power except for
their numbers. They leverage this power by supporting politicians
who can make their lives marginally more secure. From 1996 to 2004,
they found a tolerable patron in Chaudhary Brahm Singh Tanwar, the
MLA of their constituency and a member of the BJP; his last name is
enough to identify him as a Gujjar, and a member of the clan that ties
itself to the Tomars, founders of Delhi. Tanwar made sure that the Od
villagers got water from tubewells and received metered electricity
connections, and he implemented a series of welfare schemes. His
successor, another Tanwar, but from the rival Congress party, was
not as generous, souring the Ods against the party that had originally
supported them.
In 2006, the initial order to demolish the three Bhatti Mines

settlements was finally put into action. On 20 April, the two smaller

villages were overrun by police, who cordoned off the area and
made way for bulldozers to do their sickening work. Afterwards, the
villagers moved quietly through the wreckage, salvaging whatever
could be taken to rebuild their lives. An older man died of a heart
attack while trying to pull out a beam from his demolished house.
Women gathered and started wailing, as government officials ignored
it all and went about their business.
When the police arrived at the main settlement of Sanjay Colony,

however, they could not proceed so easily. The colony was six times
as large as the other two, and the demolition was initially planned as
a multi-day process. But the would-be demolishers were met with an
angry crowd, as almost all the colony’s residents—men, women and
children—rushed out to block the road and resist the police. They
succeeded in driving them away, and they were similarly successful
the next day. They got some relief soon after, when the Delhi High
Court served a contempt of court notice to the Delhi government,
criticizing it for its failure to submit an adequate relocation and
rehabilitation plan for the villagers.
Now, well over a decade later later, Sanjay Colony still stands, but
it is haunted by the looming threat of demolition. Various court orders
have come in, upholding the demolition order, and various last-
minute pleas and protests have pushed the demolition further into
the future. The Od villagers are deeply disillusioned, bitter that the
state that extracted so much labor from them, that relied on them to
build the landmarks of the city, is now denying them any recognition.
They have abandoned the name Sanjay Colony, recalling as it does
unmet government promises, and gone back to the old community
name of Bhagirath Nagar.
Much of their anger is now directed at the Forest Department,

which runs the Wildlife Sanctuary that borders their village. For
many years after its extension into Bhatti, the “wildlife sanctuary”
was anything but; it was filled more with trucks than with animals.
The sanctuary is at the very edge of Delhi, on the border of Haryana,
and many trucks carrying materials from the still-active quarries in
that state would roll through the sanctuary on the way to deliver their
goods to the capital. The land remained denuded and degraded, full
of the dust and smoke of the heavy vehicles. The situation was so dire
Soil 103
that the government called in the army, or one part of it anyway, the
army’s Eco-Task Force. Such task forces had been formed all over
the country as a way to give jobs to servicemen done with their tours
of duty. This strategy represents an extreme version of the forest
policies introduced by the British: take the forests by force and guard
their borders vigilantly.
With their guns and their uniforms, the Eco-Task Force patrolled
the perimeters of the erstwhile Bhatti Mines, and succeeded in
keeping the trucks out. But their other mission, reforestation, has
been less of a clear-cut success. In the early years of their reforesta-
tion efforts, the army task force mainly planted a Mexican mesquite
species known locally as vilayati (foreign) kikar. This species was
originally introduced by the British in their efforts to reforest the
Ridge, after their attempts to plant other species had failed, due to
the rocky soil and the aridity of the climate. Vilayati kikar has thrived
on the Ridge, but at the expense of other species; its leaves contain
germination inhibitors, which limit the growth of grasses, herbs, and
small trees around it.
The Eco-Task Force chose the mesquite precisely because of its

weed-like tenacity; it spreads quickly, with little effort. In their own
way, the postcolonial government has shown the same ecological
blindness as their colonial predecessors; the landscape is seen
instrumentally, as a blank space in which to cram as many trees as
possible (whether to be used for railway construction and so on, or to
create the image of a “clean and green” city). The vilayati kikar has
transformed the landscape into a monoculture thicket, far from the
diverse tree-and-grass-filled savanna that the Ridge once was.
In recent years, in the face of pressure from environmentalists,

the Eco-Task Force has stopped planting vilayati kikar, and has
begun planting local species instead. But the damage has been done,
largely due to the mesquite’s tenacity; it has firmly established itself
as the dominant species in much of the sanctuary. The Od villagers
are well aware of this; they know all about the tree and its knack for
pushing away all other species. But what really galls them is the way
that the façade of green regeneration has been used to keep them in a
constant state of insecurity.

The latest offensive against the Ods has shifted gears, from the
ecological to the religious; the Ods are not just tarred as environmen-
tal encroachers, they are conflated with the Muslim Other. A senior
forest official (with intelligence from the army’s Eco-Task Force,
no less) is claiming that Bhagirath Nagar is becoming a “Pakistani
mohalla”. His assertion is that “foreign nationals” from Pakistan are
migrating across the border and finding their way to Bhagirath Nagar,
although he admits that this is based on “unconfirmed reports”.46 His
report implies that these are extended family members of the Ods
who settled in the colony decades earlier. It does not matter that the
Ods have vehemently denied this allegation, nor that the Ods are
Hindu. Though the forest official never explicitly uses the “M” word,
his rhetoric is a clear reflection of the all-too-common identification
of Pakistan with Islam with terrorism. He warns that this is an urgent
matter of “national security”, which necessitates “surveillance” so
that dire consequences can be avoided.
The Ods, though they are resisting this rhetoric, know they are
facing the risk of a forced return to their nomadic lifestyle, if the
state has its way and finally proceeds with demolitions. Perhaps it is
because of their precarious situation that they are staking a claim to
the Ridge’s forest in a way that Gujjars have not. Gujjars, long settled,
long having taken up the mantle of “Hindu resisters to Muslim invad-
ers”, now have little use for the mesquite-dominated hills that once
yielded mountains of construction material. That economic oppor-
tunity, dominated by Gujjar contractors, has now closed. New ones
have opened up, notably in the growth of palatial farmhouses around
the sanctuary. The Ods, in their insecurity, depend more on the
forest: for the firewood they need to cook and for the fodder to feed
their animals.
Even though their village still remains standing, many Ods have
effectively become nomads again, as they travel throughout the city
and through the larger region searching for work. Their digging
skills and their facility with the earth is still appreciated; in recent
years, they have done a significant amount of work installing under-
ground Internet cables. From mega-dams to high-speed Internet,
Ods have laid the foundations for the newest technologies and most
prestigious projects in postcolonial India. For that, they have had
Soil 105
their identity questioned, their villages destroyed, and their liveli-
hoods made illegal.
A Closer Look at Bhagirath Nagar

Bus Number 523 runs from Dhaula Kuan, a neighborhood bordering
the Central Ridge, to Bhagirath Nagar. The official destination, though,
is “Bhatti Mines”. This flashes on the electronic yellow signboards
of the bus, even though the mines have closed decades ago. As the
bus approaches its destination, it turns off the crowded Mehrauli-
Gurgaon road, through the luxury farmhouse zone of Chhatarpur,
to a landscape increasingly defined by huge fences, erected by the
government to demarcate the Southern Ridge. At the end of a dusty,
bumpy dirt road is Bhagirath Nagar.
The road was once paved, during the heyday of government

support when the mines were still churning out sand and stone; the
courts have now forbidden the local government from repaving
the road, as it will “encourage encroachment”. Bus 523 runs infre-
quently; it is supplemented by vans that serve as shared taxis, people
piling in as they return home from work. They often carry the tools of
their trade home with them; pickaxes, spades, shovels.
At the entrance to the village is a small chai shop (a brick structure

with a thatch roof) and a temple (a more elaborate affair), and then
a road with neat rows of houses on both sides. Moving down the
road, one gets a sense of what the village may have been like, and
what it has become. Despite the many government attempts to label
Bhagirath Nagar as a run-of-the-mill “slum”, it feels far removed
from the crowded working-class neighborhoods elsewhere in Delhi.
There are still pockets of space, still rural reminders, as mud houses
are interspersed with newer concrete ones. Along the road are a
few shops—a tailor, a vegetable vendor, a mobile repair shop. Pigs,
donkeys and cows pass by.
On the left is a large concrete building behind a high fence. Outside,

there’s a sign with text in Devanagari script, but the words it spells out
are English ones: “Indian Population Project”. This was, according
to the residents, a World Bank funded project, aimed at promoting
family planning. The building is decrepit; windows broken, debris

gathered in the courtyard. It has shut down, as have the other health
care facilities in the area. Village leaders recount stories of women
dying during childbirth because of the lack of facilities.
Not far from here is an upmarket retreat center owned by the

Radha Soami Satsang Beas, a spiritual organization with deep
pockets. It was built after leveling a hill, clear evidence that this was
part of the Ridge, but the construction was allowed: it didn’t hurt, the
villagers note, that the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi at the time was
a devotee of the sect.
No such favors, of course, have been extended to the residents of

Bhagirath Nagar, at least since the mines were closed. Government
attempts to destroy the colony have failed, due to the militant resis-
tance of the community, so the state is attempting a siege instead,
withdrawing welfare services and withholding employment opportu-
nities. Many of the buildings along the main road are showing the
strain; some are completely dilapidated.
The main road is short, and it ends abruptly, with an imposing

gate. On either side of the gate are huge walls, roughly 20 feet high,
marking the boundary of the Wildlife Sanctuary. The gate itself,
though, is shorter, around seven feet. Easily scalable. Cross to the
other side and enter into another world.
Border-Crossing Species
The Wildlife Sanctuary is both eerily silent and oddly posh. The
dirt roads are neat, flat and clean, carefully maintained. The trees
are aligned in a grid-like pattern, evidence of a planting effort that
emphasized geometric precision.
But for all its apparent order, the Sanctuary is still full of surprises.
It is, in a sense, an attempt to recreate the supposedly “pristine”
nature of the Ridge, which for the Forest Department means keeping
humans out. But the species that proliferate in the Sanctuary strad-
dle the boundary between nature and culture, between wilderness
and human influence. They mock attempts to erect clear bound-
ary lines. This is especially true of the two most prominent species
of the Sanctuary, one of which dominates the flora and one of which
Soil 107
dominates the fauna. The former is not too difficult to guess: the
ever-present vilayati kikar. The latter may not be a surprise either,
at least for those who have visited other parks in Delhi: the rhesus
macaque, that ubiquitous urban monkey.
These are not the “native” species that environmentalists prize.

And yet they tell us far more about the present-day Ridge than indig-
enous plants or animals that have not existed there for decades. The
modern Ridge forest is, after all, of relatively recent vintage, and it is
in the middle of an ever-expanding megacity. It abounds in hybrids
and muddled categories, in odd mixes of the city, the countryside and
the jungle.
The environmentalist’s disdain for vilayati kikar is not without

basis. Besides the fact that it was brought by the British, who demon-
strated their arrogant misunderstanding of Indian ecology again and
again, it has clear ecological downsides. And yet the intensity of the
scorn heaped on the mesquite seems disproportionate to its ecological
crimes. It is not as if it pried its way into a thriving native forest, stran-
gled all the indigenous inhabitants, and then put down its own thirsty
roots. Yet this is exactly what is suggested by references to vilayati
kikar as an “aggressive colonizer” running rampant on the Ridge.
In truth, the tree was brought into a heavily degraded landscape,
pockmarked by decades of mining.
Yes, it would have been far better if the Forest Department and
their friends in the army had been more sensitive, more forward-
thinking, more patient. Yes, they could have allowed a more diverse
ecosystem to grow back over time, instead of going with the quick
fix of vilayati kikar. But a sea of vilayati kikar is the landscape now
confronting us. However ecologically compromised, the green cover
of mesquite is still a green cover, with all the benefits that this implies:
cooler temperatures, more oxygen, a first line of defense against the
dangerously high levels of air pollution in the city.
There are more localized benefits as well: the residents of Bhagirath

Nagar use the branches of the vilayati kikar extensively for firewood.
Back in its native Mexico, as well as in the United States, mesquite is
known for the delicious, smoky flavor it imparts to food cooked on it.
This is an incidental bonus for the Ods; they mainly collect it because

it’s the most easily accessible fuel source. Even here, though, the Ods
don’t have it easy, since collecting firewood in a Reserved Forest is
illegal. Usually women are given the task of gathering the wood, and
all too often, they are harassed and intimidated by Forest Department
officials and army tree-planters.
By now, even the Forest Department has realized that vilayati

kikar was not the best ecological choice; and yet government officials
have so internalized the notion that the Ods are “outsiders” and
“encroachers” that they take the side of the recently-planted, thirsty
tree over the long-suffering Ods. With a modicum of sensitivity and
creativity, a mutually-beneficial solution could be reached: Ods could
employ their formidable skills to uproot the tenacious mesquite, use
the tree for firewood, and help the Forest Department in its effort
to plant more appropriate species. This would generate employment
and help the ecology of the region. The impediments to such a plan
are not logistical, but political. The Forest Department is loath to give
up its control of the Sanctuary, even if that just means letting more
locals in to work. And the government doesn’t want to undermine
the picture it has painted, of Ods as outside invaders who must be
pushed aside.
So now both Ods and vilayati kikar trees are demonized by those
who want a “clean and green” Wildlife Sanctuary full of thriving
native species. This is not, though, the attitude of the city as a whole,
at least with respect to the trees. While most ecologists still empha-
size the “vilayati” part of vilayati kikar, and enumerate its nega-
tive qualities, it has, in common parlance, become known simply as
kikar; the term is used interchangeably for both the local and the
“vilayati” variety. The citizens of Delhi have, through their every-
day vocabulary, naturalized the foreign tree, a city of migrants easily
accepting one of its own.47
Now a naturalized citizen, the vilayati kikar at least has some

limited benefits, especially for the put-upon residents of Bhagirath
Nagar. The monkeys, though, are a different story. Media outlets
have coined the term “monkey menace” and for once, they are not
exaggerating. Nearly every resident has a monkey story, and they
are not pleasant tales. Monkeys biting children; monkeys stealing
precious supplies of rice and wheat; monkeys grabbing laundry and
Soil 109
tearing up clothes. Monkeys can carry rabies, and the villagers know
they should get an anti-rabies injection if they are bitten, but they can
hardly afford it; one shot costs `500, and a full course of injections is
five shots.
But the monkey, unlike the mesquite, cannot simply be dismissed

as a rank outsider. Monkeys roamed the Delhi region long before
the first walled city arose. What is more, Delhi has a schizophrenic
relationship with its monkeys; it fears them and hates them for their
destructive tendencies, and yet reveres them as manifestations of the
god Hanuman. The city feeds the monkeys as a religious duty, then
complains when the monkeys come looking for food.
The problem is not confined just to Sanjay Colony. In 2004,

monkeys managed to gain access to the Defense Ministry and scatter
papers about, in their typically destructive way. In 2007, the Deputy
Mayor of Delhi died after falling from the balcony of his home in East
Delhi while trying to fend off monkeys. This incident, at least, put the
matter on the government’s agenda, as did a case just a few weeks
later in which a rampaging monkey bit 25 people over the course of
two days in the East Delhi neighborhood of Shastri Park.
The mayor announced that measures needed to be taken. But

which measures? The obvious first step was to increase the number
of monkey-catchers; in 2007, there were only five government-
employed monkey-catchers for a simian population of roughly
20,000. However, it was difficult to recruit monkey-catchers, since
many saw the profession as sacrilege, an affront to Lord Hanuman.
Still, suitable candidates were found, and a concerted effort to round
up the monkeys began.
But where to put them? Here, the Delhi High Court intervened.
Following the advice of animal activists, they suggested, why not
put them in the Wildlife Sanctuary? This is when Bhagirath Nagar’s
monkey problem began. Although the Wildlife Sanctuary is huge,
the government chose to erect the monkey resettlement zone on the
small section of the sanctuary bordering the Od village. The metaphor
is all too obvious: the government treats its unwanted animals like it
treats its unwanted humans, forcibly ejecting them from their homes
and pushing them to the furthest corners of the city.

The monkey’s new home, like all government resettlement colo-
nies, is bleak. The government has erected tall green plastic sheets
to keep the monkeys enclosed in their area of the sanctuary, but this
has hardly been an impediment to a species known for its agility and
climbing prowess. The monkeys escape their prison whenever they
feel the urge to do so. They have also started tearing down some of the
plastic sheeting, a mute protest, it seems, to their new fate.
But some twinge of consciousness, some residual devotion to

Hanuman, made the government feel at least marginally responsi-
ble for the monkeys they had displaced. The court ordered that two
prominent Hanuman temples should start collecting food donations
from devotees, and that these should be taken to the sanctuary on a
regular basis. If this is not enough food for the 16,000 or so monkeys
now in the sanctuary, then the government is responsible for making
up the difference. According to a report by the environmental maga-
zine Down to Earth, supplying monkey food at such high volumes has
become a lucrative, extremely corrupt business.48 The government
spends more than one crore rupees a year feeding the monkeys, but
the supply often stops unexpectedly because the forest department
fails to pay the middlemen who have won suspiciously large contracts
for monkey food delivery.
When there’s no food, and even when there is food, the monkeys
climb out of their prison and raid the food supplies of Bhagirath
Nagar. They seem to have a particular liking for roti, but they’ll take
whatever they can get, biting anyone who tries to stop them. A doctor
at a nearby clinic reports that he gets at least ten cases of monkey
bites a day. Adding insult to injury, the Forest Department claims
that the Bhagirath Nagar residents are actually stealing the monkeys’
food. Perhaps this is to distract from the fact that the department has
failed in its responsibility of planting fruit trees that were supposed to
provide the bulk of the monkey’s food.
The faulty prison, with its questionable food supply, is clearly just
a stop-gap measure that doesn’t actually address the root causes of
the monkey problem, and instead just dumps the problem at the
doorstep of a group that the state has already written off. Just what
are those root causes?
Soil 113
Shivam Vij, a journalist who has written two outstanding articles
on the history of Delhi’s monkey problem (and who himself has
been harassed by roving bands of monkeys), has taken a historical
perspective on the matter.49 With the help of primatologist Iqbal
Malik, Vij traces the “original sin” back to the 1920s, when American
researchers started taking monkeys from India and bringing them
back to the US for scientific studies, especially biomedical research.
The monkey trade only increased after Independence, as the country
found itself in dire need of foreign currency; it could make valuable
dollars by exporting simians. At its peak, roughly 50,000 monkeys
a year made the journey to the US. This continued until the practice
was stopped in 1978 by the devout Prime Minister Morarji Desai, who
was disturbed by the high numbers of monkeys who were dying en
route or in the course of experiments.
But by then, the damage had been done. The researchers preferred
male monkeys who were not too old and not too young. This pref-
erence, along with the sheer volume of the trade, severely disrupted
monkey society. In her research in the 1980s, Malik found that the
sex ratio of monkey populations in Delhi was skewed, as were the ages
of the monkeys. The social life of monkeys is a highly involved one,
and the practice of abducting thousands of middle-aged males broke
down the bonds that kept monkey communities together. The remain-
ing monkeys became more aggressive, and more desperate for food,
and hence more willing to venture into human territory to steal rotis,
snatch bananas and so on.
However, the matter does not rest here. The roots of the problem go
much, much deeper, and they complicate the common-sense under-
standing of the monkey menace. The story is not just one of humans
interfering with pristine nature through kidnappings and construc-
tion activities, disrupting the happy simian families that had done
so well before our meddling. On the contrary, there is considerable
evidence that this particular species of monkey has actually evolved
in human-dominated environments and has developed traits that are
advantageous for these settings.
This is the argument, at least, of a scientific study tellingly named

“Weed Macaques: The Evolutionary Implications of Macaque Feeding
Ecology”.50 Like vilayati kikar, macaques are “weeds” that thrive at

the expense of other species. Scientific studies have made it clear that
rhesus macaques do extremely well in human-influenced environ-
ments, and in many cases seem to prefer them. Of all the rhesus
macaques living in northern India, roughly half the population is con-
centrated in cities, towns, temples and railway stations, that is, places
with a lot of human traffic. So maybe, when it comes to Delhi, the story
isn’t just of humans invading monkey terrain, but of monkeys seeking
out human terrain.
The rhesus macaques, after all, came quite a way to get here,
especially if we take the long evolutionary view. Rhesus macaques
are just one of about 20 macaque species. Like humans, macaques
originated in Africa. The ancestor of all current macaque species
probably emerged around the same time as the first hominids. Unlike
humans, who likely came to India directly from Africa via the coast,
macaques took a more circuitous path, and broke up into many
different species along the way. The early macaques crossed land
bridges into Europe, and from there they spread eastward, eventually
entering Asia.
By this point, several macaque species had emerged, forming

four large groups. The rhesus macaques belong to the last of the
four groups, the one that split off from the other macaques most
recently. Their entry into Asia is relatively recent. It has also been
spectacularly successful. Rhesus macaques have a knack for pushing
other macaque species out of their habitats, as well as for ventur-
ing into new places where no macaque has gone before. As a result,
rhesus macaques are the second most widespread primate species
in Asia, second only to human beings. It may not be a coincidence
that these two species are at the top of the list. The rhesus macaque,
as compared to other macaque varieties, is exceptionally comfort-
able around humans, bolstering the claim that the species has likely
evolved in human-influenced environments.
This means that, in the course of its evolution, the rhesus macaque
developed characteristics that helped it both expand to new loca-
tions and co-exist with humans. The primatologist Dario Maestripieri
identifies three such characteristics: curiosity, aggression, and mili-
taristic social formations. The first is the most benign, and the most
in keeping with the monkeys that populate the world of cartoons,
Soil 115
children’s books and movies; there is, after all, an entire book series
revolving around a monkey named Curious George. Rhesus macaques
live up to that billing; they like trying out new foods, exploring new
places, climbing new trees and scaling new buildings.
The flipside of this curiosity is aggression. Rhesus macaques, with
their expansionist ways, are bound to run into new animals. When
they do, they size up their potential foe and, if they think they have the
upper hand, they attack. If no new animal is around, they are content
with fighting each other. As Maestripieri says, “Rhesus macaques are
irritable creatures who have a low threshold for aggression. They
wouldn’t make it in the world without their fellow macaques, but they
have very few inhibitions against attacking and hurting one another.”51
The aggressiveness of rhesus macaques is not just an individual
trait; it is bound up with the way their society is organized. Rhesus
macaque society is, Maestripieri tells us, intensely nepotistic and des-
potic. (He’s even come up with a clever pun for this: “Macachiavellian”.)
It is a matrilineal society, with males leaving the community when
they reach puberty to find another band of monkeys. Females are
thus a more constant presence in the communities, and they form the
core of the social structure. Having the females in charge doesn’t
make things any more peaceful, though. Each community is defined
by a hierarchy of extended families, with the more powerful families
engaging in constant acts of violent harassment to maintain their
dominance in the hierarchy. Maestripieri compares this to the social
organization in an army: everyone knows their rank, everyone shows
deference to their superiors, and everyone communicates in a terse
language geared towards relations of dominance.
And like an army, rhesus macaques are geared up to go to war. As
a species, they are highly xenophobic; they don’t like strangers, and
they don’t like other rhesus macaque communities. When one entire
community goes into battle with another community, internal hier-
archies and differences are put aside, and the group bands together
against the outside threat. In fact, the low-ranking monkeys in the
community use these battles as an opportunity to vent their frustra-
tion, and they often prove to be the most effective, vicious fighters.
When two rhesus macaque communities already know each other,
and have already established which group is dominant, their battles

are relatively tame, as they are just minor adjustments to an already-
fixed order. The monkey fighters are rarely killed, or even seriously
injured. However, when two totally new communities meet, the stage
is set for a gruesome bloodbath.
Scientists learned this the hard way. One of the first major studies
of rhesus macaques began in 1938, when an American biologist
named Clarence Ray Carpenter traveled around north India collecting
rhesus macaques, then threw them all together in a ship and sent them
to a tiny island off the coast of Puerto Rico, where he could observe
them at leisure in a laboratory-like environment. On the ship, though,
there was vicious fighting, with several of the monkeys drowning
after being forced overboard by their fellow simian passengers. Scores
of infants were also killed. When the survivors finally reached the
island, there was a final murderous battle, as the monkeys set out to
establish their hierarchies and dominance relations once and for all.
After this, things became (relatively) peaceful; there are four major
clans on the island, and each knows its place.
This harrowing journey reveals something important about these

monkeys; the chief threat to their survival is not, it seems, chang-
ing ecological conditions, but rather their fellow rhesus macaques.
They do just as well in Puerto Rico as they do in Delhi. In fact, this
is why they are so prized by biomedical researchers; they’ll thrive in
any laboratory, anywhere in the world. But they may not survive an
interaction with the monkey clan that lives next door.
This may explain why the monkeys in Bhagirath Nagar are so surly,
why monkey bites are so common, and why the monkeys are so eager
to escape their cage in Asola-Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary. The govern-
ment has hired monkey-catchers to gather a bunch of xenophobic,
aggressive, irritable macaques from different Delhi neighborhoods
and to throw them all together in one location. It’s no surprise that
the place has become a war zone. The villagers of Bhagirath Nagar are
just collateral damage.
The Ecology of the Delhi Ridge: Beyond Pristine Glory

Monkeys, of course, are not the only animals living in the Ridge, nor
are Mexican mesquite trees the only foliage. On the human side of
Soil 117
things, Gujjars and Ods are hardly the only communities residing in
or near the Ridge. Still, these four very different groups exemplify the
dizzying complexities of Delhi’s hills and their ecological history.
It’s no coincidence that all these groups are migrants, part of an

unceasing flow of people, animals and plants that have shaped Delhi
from the very beginning of its history. The Gujjars have made their
mark as early rulers, then as pastoralists supplying much-needed
milk and meat to the city, then as rebels fighting British rule, then as
contractors ensuring a steady supply of stone and sand for the city’s
construction industry; and now as real estate brokers jumping head-
long into the city’s thriving casino of land speculation and as poli-
ticians brokering formal and informal claims to the city. The Ods,
though a much more recent arrival, have still made their mark on the
city, first with their innovative digging techniques, which not only fed
the construction industry but also laid the groundwork for stadiums,
roads, housing complexes and internet connectivity, and then with
their tireless fight against displacement.
Vilayati kikar has shaped the city too, though not in unambigu-
ously positive ways. In much of the city, and certainly on the Ridge,
it provides a much-needed green cover. It provides firewood as well,
not an insignificant consideration given the huge percentage of the
population that does not own stoves. But the tree’s success has come
at ecological costs that will continue to haunt the city, as it wards off
other plants and spreads its monotonous monoculture.
And the monkeys. Unexpectedly, they turn out to be an urban

species; they serve as a fitting symbol for the Ridge as a uniquely
urban forest. But they seem to reflect all the dark sides of human
nature. The callousness of the state and its relocation schemes, along
with the insatiable, speculation-fueled expansion of real estate, have
only aggravated the surly combativeness of the monkeys (and, one
could argue, of the humans as well).
But the analogy should not be taken too far. Humans are not just
aggressive; not just militaristic; not just violent. The ecological and
political history of the Ridge is haunted by all these darknesses, but it
offers other lessons as well: the beautifully maintained sacred groves
of the Gujjars, of which Mangarbani is the sole remnant; the strong

traditions of common ownership and symbiotic customs in grazing
zones; the creativity, resilience and political astuteness of the Ods.
Even the monkeys aren’t all bad; their curiosity remains intact, and
they refuse to be jailed, despite the government’s many attempts.
The microcosm of Bhagirath Nagar, in which Gujjars and Ods,

monkeys and mesquites, all come together, is a far cry from the pristine
glory invoked by the Supreme Court. It also bears little resemblance
to the Disneyland of the Ridge’s rock climbers and mountain bikers.
But in all its despair and all its hope, in all its migration and mixing
and metamorphoses, it offers a much fuller picture of the Ridge and
its shifting ecology.
Soil 119
3 State
Warfare, Pageantry, Politics
On the heights of the Northern Ridge sits a forlorn stone pillar. Cars
zoom past; ambulances scream through on the way to the nearby
Hindu Rao Hospital. In a city with a surfeit of monuments and tourist
sites, this one is relatively neglected, though it was once on the main
tourist circuit. It still gets the occasional visitor—foreign tourists
wandering off the Lonely Planet itinerary, or well-heeled Delhi-ites
up early on a Sunday morning for a heritage walk. Like many of the
lesser tourist sites in Delhi, it is perpetually locked, a rusty chain
encircling its low entrance gate. The pillar itself is cracked and faded,
propped up on a rough stone pedestal.
But despite its modest appearance, the pillar has quite a history.
It is one of Ashoka’s pillars, erected by the great ruler in the third
century bce at the fringes of his Empire to spread word of his reign
and his righteousness. But unlike the rock edict in the southern part
of the Ridge, which we visited in Chapter 1, North Delhi’s Ashokan
pillar did not originate in the city; it is not carved from the Ridge’s
quartzite, though it occupies a prominent place on the Ridge. It is yet
another migrant to Delhi.
The pillar’s birthplace is the city of Meerut, where it stood happily

for over a millennium. In the late fourteenth century, however,
another emperor, Firoz Shah Tughlaq, took a liking to the pillar and
decided to transport it to Delhi, along with another Ashokan pillar
from the town of Ambala. Tughlaq had recently built a new capital
city in Delhi, commonly called Firoz Shah Kotla, on the banks of the
Yamuna. The Ambala pillar went to the center of his new city, and
the Meerut pillar went to the Northern Ridge, near the hunting palace
he had built as a getaway from the rigors of courtly life.
The transportation of such weighty stone cylinders was no easy

task, especially in those times. But Tughlaq was intent on getting
them to Delhi. Ziya al-Din Barani, a chronicler of Tughlaq’s reign,
describes the immense effort required to dislodge an Ashokan pillar
and bring it down to the ground:
Orders were issued commanding the attendance of all people

dwelling in the neighborhood. They were ordered to bring all
implements and materials suitable for the work. Directions were
issued for bringing parcels of the silk cotton tree. Quantities
of this silk cotton were placed round the column, and when
the earth at its base was removed, it fell gently over on the bed
prepared for it.
This was just the beginning of the onerous task:
The pillar was then encased from top to bottom in reeds and
raw skins so that no damage might accrue to it. A carriage with
forty-two wheels was constructed, and ropes were attached to
each wheel. Thousands of men hauled at every rope, and after
great labor and difficulty the pillar was raised on to the carriage.
A strong rope was fastened to each wheel, and 200 men pulled
at each of these ropes. By the simultaneous exertions of so many
thousand men the carriage was moved.
The pillar arrived in Delhi amid great pomp and celebration, with
“the most skillful architects and workmen” employed to fix the pillar
in its new home.1
This was not the only dislocation the Meerut pillar would suffer.2
Sometime in the 1710s, during Mughal rule, an accident in a nearby
military storehouse caused an enormous explosion. The impact of
the blast broke the pillar into five parts, and they lay scattered on the
ground for many years.
In 1830, almost 30 years into British rule, the land surrounding

the pillar was bought by the Governor-General’s Agent in Delhi,
William Fraser, in one of the questionable land deals that snatched
common land from the hands of Gujjar villagers. Fraser used the land
to build an enormous house, with the columns and verandas typical
of colonial architecture. It seems he took little note of the stone
remnants littering his backyard.

The Gujjars bore a grudge against Fraser, and he was widely dis-
liked by peasants because of the exorbitant taxes he levied on agri-
cultural land. He had more powerful enemies as well. Asked to judge
an inheritance dispute between royal brothers, Fraser decided against
Shamsuddin Khan, a Mughal nobleman and ruler of a minor princi-
pality in present-day Haryana. Shamsuddin, the son of Fraser’s now-
deceased friend and business partner Ahmad Bakhsh Khan, had looked
up to Fraser. But when Shamsuddin went to Fraser’s mansion to plead
his case, Fraser threw him out. Unable to bear the insult, Shamsuddin
hired the sharpshooter Karim Khan to assassinate Fraser. Khan did
so as Fraser was returning home from a party on a dark October night
in 1835. The assassin and his noble employer were soon caught and
summarily executed.
After Fraser’s death, a Maratha nobleman named Hindu Rao pur-

chased the house. Hindu Rao, an acquaintance of Fraser’s, snapped
up the blood-soaked property when it came on the market. Though
he originally used the palatial estate as a home for his pet cheetahs, he
eventually made the house his primary residence. Shortly after moving
in, he found the scattered remains of the Ashokan pillar and quickly
recognized their significance. He wrote to the Asiatic Society, a British
research organization, and offered the pillar to them as a gift.
The Society, though, was based in Calcutta, then the capital of

the British Raj, so the pillar had to undertake yet another journey,
one that took it well beyond its original home of Meerut. However,
the officials in charge of transportation, more pragmatic than Firoz
Shah Tughlaq, decided that it would be too costly to ship all five
pieces. Instead, they only shipped the piece that had the Ashokan
inscription on it.
In 1866, for reasons unknown, the British shipped the pillar

fragment back to Delhi, and in the following year, British engineers
put all the pieces back together again and placed it on the stone
pedestal where it now stands. Never known for their modesty, the Raj
rulers placed a sign at the base of the pillar, announcing their role in
putting it right again.
After Independence, the postcolonial Archaeological Survey of

India (ASI) put their own stamp on the monument, in their typically
State 123
minimalist way. They erected the fence that now runs around the
perimeter of the pillar, as well as the signature red-and-blue ASI sign,
which declares that the site is protected by law, but maddeningly tells
nothing about the monument itself.
The pillar may appear mute now, but its history speaks volumes
about the way the state has articulated its power in Delhi, or rather,
how multiple competing states have struggled to assert their power.
The history of governance in Delhi is hardly continuous, after all, and
hardly uncontested. In the archaeological record, these contestations
first become visible with the fortresses and monuments of Mehrauli,
which rose in the early days of Arid Zone dynamism. As we have seen,
the choices of these early states were partially determined by ecology,
both of the Arid Zone in general and of the Ridge in particular.
But once Delhi became established as a capital, political processes
acquired their own momentum, as the prestige of previous rulers was
appropriated by their successors.
Traditional histories speak of seven cities arising in Delhi. They
followed the same pattern: a new set of rulers would vanquish the old
guard and build themselves a new capital in Delhi, only to be van-
quished by an even newer set of rulers. Each new state would assert
its superiority to the old one, while simultaneously appropriating
old symbols of power and glory. Hence the profusion, and the relativ-
ity, of sites described as “old” in Delhi. Currently, Shahjahanabad is
known as “Old Delhi”, but for the eighteenth-century inhabitants of
Shahjahanabad, “Old Delhi” meant the crumbling ramparts erected
by Firoz Shah Tughlaq, whose city was new in comparison to his
grandfather’s Tughlaqabad, and on and on.
Sometimes a new settlement would engulf an old one in quite
literal ways. When the Chauhans defeated their fellow Rajputs, the
Tomars, to take control of Delhi in the twelfth century, the new rulers
simply expanded the walls of the old Lal Kot to build Qila Rai Pithora.
Mohammad bin Tughlaq took this logic to its extreme, seeking to
enclose four older settlements of Delhi (including Lal Kot and Qila
Rai Pithora) into an enormous new walled city.
Some rulers, on the other hand, wanted to make a fresh start.
Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, founder of the Tughlaq dynasty and Mohammad

bin Tughlaq’s father, moved to the southeastern corner of the Ridge for
his new citadel of Tughlaqabad. His grandson Firoz Shah abandoned
the Ridge altogether for his new city, although he then chose the
northern portion of the Ridge, then completely rural, for the location
of his hunting palace. But whether the new and the old were physically
overlapping or far-flung, the accumulation of cities merged to form a
conceptual whole: Delhi as the seat of power, Delhi as the focal point
of the state.
Each new state has presided over violence and has come to power
in the face of uncertainty and instability. To establish its sovereignty,
the new state has downplayed this uncertainty, papering it over with
pronouncements and displays of power and legitimacy. Often, this
has taken the form of invoking the past glory of former rulers, repur-
posing and re-appropriating their symbols of power. As the Ashokan
pillar suggests, the Ridge, with its commanding heights, was often the
site of this.
The pillar is a testament to both the strength and the shakiness of

state power in Delhi. Having been dislodged from its ancient resting
place and relocated to attest to Firoz Shah Tughlaq’s medieval power,
the pillar was, as we’ve seen, ignored and accidentally dismembered
by the Mughals, recognized by a lone Maratha nobleman, handed
over to the British, and reclaimed by the postcolonial government,
which has now banished it to heritage purgatory: not the com-
plete disregard shown to some of Delhi’s crumbling historical sites,
but not the care lavished on revenue-generating tourist sites like
Qutb Minar either.
Despite their sometimes-lackadaisical approach to the relics of

Delhi’s previous incarnations, the leaders of independent India have
clearly recognized the benefits of invoking the might and glory of past
rulers. It’s no coincidence that the two chief occasions of government
pomp (Independence Day and Republic Day) are celebrated in front
of the massive monuments to power built by the Mughals and the
British, respectively.
And while specific pieces of built heritage, like the Ashokan

pillar, are relatively neglected, sites of “natural heritage”, like the Ridge,
are increasingly (if mistakenly) seen by the state as markers of
State 125
“pristine glory” that must be preserved. This is not simply an ecological
argument; various government officials, starting with the British and
continuing to the present day, have explicitly linked the majesty of an
afforested Ridge with the impressiveness and legitimacy of Delhi as
a capital city.
The state’s entanglement with the Ridge has been a complex one.
Elements of this entanglement have already emerged in previous
chapters: the state’s thirst for stones and minerals to be used for con-
struction; the state’s need to establish a threshold between pastoral
services and agricultural surplus; even the state’s desperation to
relocate monkeys. But this hardly scratches the surface of an ever-
changing, millennia-old relationship between various state powers
and the set of hillocks and plateaus known as the Delhi Ridge.
This relationship is especially challenging to trace because “the

state” is both historically variable and notoriously difficult to define.
The state established by the Tomars in medieval Delhi had vastly
different functions, ideologies and powers than the one currently
governing from Raisina Hill. Premodern states, though they cer-
tainly had their complexities, were focused on a relatively limited set
of goals, with particular priority given to raising armies, collecting
taxes, and suppressing rebellions. Modern states have certainly not
abandoned these goals, but they are far more ambitious. Their inter-
ventions are more sweeping, in ways both good (public health, social
security, universal education) and bad (surveillance, censorship,
slum demolitions).
Struggles over state power in Delhi—over its exercise and over its
representation—are not just abstract debates rehearsed in history
books, academic journals and political tracts. They have played out
in physical spaces as well, whether in the reconstruction of an old
broken pillar or in the assassination of a powerful political figure.
State power has been made and unmade, projected and rejected, on
the Ridge.
Given the multifarious role of the state in Delhi’s long history, this
chapter has been divided into three parts, each reflecting a major
function of the state over the centuries: military conquest; building
and planning; and the provision of public services.

Part I: Soldiers
Blood and Glory

Before the state can perform its functions, it must first come into power.
In Delhi, at any rate before 1947, this has meant military conquest.
Armed power is not just necessary in the beginning, to establish pow-
er, it is an integral part of any state’s rule.3 Whatever else a state does,
whatever its broader goals and ambitions may be, it is nothing without
the power to enforce its rule.
The role of armed violence in establishing state power goes back
deep into Delhi’s mythical past. The Khandava bloodbath, described
in a previous chapter, represents, in one interpretation, at least, the
military victory of the invading Pandavas over the native forest-
dwellers of the Delhi area. Violence was thus a key precondition for the
founding of Indraprastha. But soon after this slaughter, the Pandavas
were sent into exile, with little opportunity to enjoy their new city. In
this, too, they serve as a mythical prototype for state power in Delhi,
which has been notoriously difficult to hold.
There’s even an old apocryphal saying: “He who builds a new city
in Delhi will soon lose it.” The rapid succession of kings and emperors
suggests that few states have been as stable and solid as their propa-
ganda boasts. Especially because of its strong historical associations
with empire and might, Delhi has been a coveted possession for rulers
wishing to make their mark. And because of the wealth it amassed as
a capital city, it was a favorite target of invading armies. Of course,
invaders rarely considered themselves invaders; they saw themselves
as noble conquerors and statesmen fighting for a righteous cause—
from the mythical Pandavas to the Rajputs, Sultans, Mughals and
British. And if they were really successful, they could convince the
public (and the historians) to consider them as such.
The Ridge has thus been both a refuge against “invaders” and a
staging ground for them. In the battles of Delhi, the heights of the
Ridge have played a dual role: in a very literal way, the physical heights
of the Ridge have aided armies by giving them a vantage point from
which to survey and attack the enemy camp. More metaphorically,
the heights have been used to shout out the glory of new regimes, or
old ones struggling to maintain their legitimacy.
State 127
Medieval Militaries
When Delhi first emerged as a medieval city, the Southern Ridge was
attractive precisely because of its commanding heights. (Technically,
in present-day terminology, this is the South-Central Ridge, but I’ll
use the term “Southern Ridge” here for simplicity’s sake.) A Ridge-top
fortress, however, was no guarantee of staying power, as the Tomars
and Chauhans quickly found out. When Mohammad Ghori, Sultan
of the Ghurid Empire, defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in 1192, he kept
the Rajput’s Delhi outpost intact, and his successors expanded from
this hilltop base. Chroniclers of Delhi’s history—from Ghori’s con-
temporaries to British colonial historians to present-day Indian
scholars—have generally portrayed this as a decisive changing of
the guard, a sudden and definitive entrance of a strong new force
in Indian politics; whether this was seen as a calamity or a triumph
depended on the observer.
But the consolidation of Delhi as a new power center was hardly
inevitable. Mohammad Ghori was caught in a web of rivalries and
intrigue, centered around his family’s base in Ghor, a city in what is
now Afghanistan. (It is worth noting in passing that this family, too,
came from pastoral roots and was initially derided as uncultured and
uncouth.) Ghori, after a decade leading his army to a string of military
victories in Punjab, Gujarat, Bihar and Bengal (1186–96), abruptly
withdrew from the subcontinent, leaving it in the hands of various
commanders from his military retinue.
One of Ghori’s slaves, Qutbuddin Aibak, eventually took charge
of Delhi; this was the beginning of the Mamluk or Slave Dynasty in
India. Other slaves were left in charge of other parts of the subconti-
nent. But these were no ordinary slaves. Certainly, they do not fit the
image of grinding, lifelong oppression and exploitation that the term
“slavery” usually evokes. As slaves, they were bound to their master,
but they were also given the opportunity to rise to positions of power,
after which they could be freed.
Though their combination of low social status and sometimes-
immense political power seems paradoxical, it had a clear logic to it.
Rulers like Ghori bought slaves like Qutbuddin Aibak when they were
young, and indoctrinated them in everything from court etiquette to
martial arts to religious practice. Ghori, like many of his contemporaries,
State 129
was particularly interested in amassing Turkish slaves, who were reput-
edly fearsome fighters and loyal servants. As a poem from that era puts:
“One obedient slave is better than 300 sons, for the latter desire their
father’s death, the former his master’s glory.”4
This was the logic that led Mohammad Ghori to install the Turkish
slave Qutbuddin Aibak as his Governor in Delhi. But the slaves, who
had already proved their military worth and their shrewd ability to
navigate the politics of conquest, were hardly docile. While all still
pledged their loyalty to Ghori, they began to jockey for position and
consolidate power in their fiefdoms. Aibak was especially aggressive,
and his power plays were particularly significant for Delhi. In 1192,
Ghori had left Delhi nominally in charge of a vassal from the Chauhan
family, but Aibak seized the Ridge-top outpost from the vassal before
the year had ended. There are stray references to Ghori’s dissatis-
faction with Aibak’s impertinence, but, through visits to Ghazni and
other placatory gestures, the slave was able to stay in his master’s
confidence.
After Ghori’s death in 1206, Aibak positioned himself as the right-

ful Sultan of Delhi, carrying on the rule of the Ghurid Empire, despite
the presence of several competitors. Unlike the Chauhan rulers he
had displaced, he promoted Delhi as a capital city. His Ridge-top
fortress, inherited from the Rajputs, was projected as the center of an
important dynasty. Court chroniclers, writing in the royal language
of Persian, backed up this claim. The courtier Fakhr-i Muddabir
dutifully records that Aibak is the “hero and world conqueror of
Hind” and that Ghori named him “as his deputy and heir in the capital
of Hindustan”.5 Thus Aibak, through his scribes, initiated a long
tradition of invoking the glory and power of Delhi.
However, Aibak was hardly the unchallenged ruler of northern

India, no matter how much he proclaimed himself to be. And he
died just four years after Mohammad Ghori, so he had little chance
to consolidate his power and challenge his rivals across northern
India. By the time of his death, Aibak had amassed his own retinue
of slaves, and his death unleashed a fierce power struggle between
them. A powerful Turkish slave named Shamsuddin Iltutmish finally
triumphed over his rivals.

Though he had vanquished his internal foes, Iltutmish found
himself surrounded by a sea of external enemies. The Delhi Sultanate
was arguably the weakest of four powers that had emerged in the after-
math of Mohammad Ghori’s north Indian conquests. While Iltutmish
was fighting his rivals, these other powers had eaten considerably
into the territorial holdings of the Delhi Sultanate. Iltutmish spent the
first 20 years of his reign clawing back these territories and counter-
attacking to expand his territories. By 1229, he had defeated all his
major rivals, and for the first time, the Sultan of Delhi, from his seat
on the Southern Ridge, could reasonably proclaim that his was the
strongest political force in North India.
This claim was backed by new migrants to the city, who had their
own reasons for promoting Delhi’s centrality. For Iltutmish’s rule
was marked not just by strife between former allies, but also by larger
calamities. From 1219 onwards, the Muslim elite in Transoxania and
Afghanistan were driven from their lands by Mongol invasions. These
elites suffered not just the physical trauma and terror of Mongol
conquest and violence, but also the indignity of being driven away
by forces they saw as barbaric, idolatrous and boorishly uncultured.
Iltutmish, seeking ideological support to complement his military

strength, welcomed the noblemen, traders and religious scholars
who had fled Mongol destruction, offering them land grants and
government posts. Atop the Southern Ridge, he attempted to build
a new center of Muslim culture, piety and refinement. As one of the
emigres put it, Iltutmish had transformed Delhi into Qubbat al-Islam:
a sanctuary for Islam. But Qubbat means more than just sanctuary;
it suggests an axis, or a center. If Aibak claimed that Delhi was the
center of Sultanate power in Hindustan, Iltutmish went a step further
and promoted the city as a focal point for an entire faith.6
But all was not well, even at the height of Iltutmish’s reign. Military
threats to his regime never entirely disappeared, though they were
increasing confined to the edges of his empire. Closer home there
were rumblings of discontent from the hermitages of Sufi saints. These
mystical practitioners of Islam had little patience for the orthodoxies of
the city’s religious scholars. Chief among the Sufis was the renowned
mystic Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, who also fled from the Mongols
and settled in Delhi after a brief stint in Baghdad. His fame would
State 131
eventually rival that of the Sultans, and he chafed under the control of
newly powerful clerics.
This discontent found dramatic expression at the tail end of

Iltutmish’s reign. In 1236, a Sufi saint named Nur Turk, who had
a sizable following of devotees from Gujarat, Sindh and Delhi, led
an attack on the city’s main congregational mosque. Apologists for
the regime claimed that Nur Turk was simply a heretic, bent on
destroying a pious Muslim community because of his rebellious
ways. But commenting on this event a generation later, the famed
Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya (whose spiritual master, Baba Farid,
was a follower of Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki) absolved Nur Turk of any
heresy.7 Instead, he argued that the mosque attack was a reaction to
the indiscretions of the orthodox religious scholars, who had been
swayed by the material riches of Delhi.
Nur Turk’s uprising was quickly quelled, but it serves as a potent

reminder of the vicissitudes of power in the Delhi Sultanate, and
the constant threats it faced both from within and without. On the
whole, the Delhi Sultanate was not a stable empire but rather a series
of dynasties whose power fluctuated dramatically: after the Slave
Dynasty, Delhi was ruled by the Khiljis, then the Tughlaqs, then
the Sayyids and the Lodis. The last two dynasties were particularly
weak. Later accounts, such as the ones compiled by the Mughals, who
ushered in a period of relative stability, consider Firoz Shah Tughlaq
to be the Delhi Sultanate’s last leader of any note.
But these same Mughal accounts also stress Delhi’s “axial impor-
tance in subcontinental politics”.8 Despite the rapidly-diminishing
power of the Sultanate in its later years, the propaganda efforts started
by Qutbuddin Aibak on the Southern Ridge centuries earlier proved
effective; Delhi was regarded, even by skeptical outsiders, as a strong
political capital, indeed, as it still is.
Meanwhile, on the Northern Ridge

The Southern Ridge saw the first articulations of Delhi as a power-
ful political capital and as a refuge for a threatened civilization. The
Northern Ridge came to prominence later, but its history reveals sim-
ilar patterns: military struggle and considerable violence, followed

by attempts to justify and legitimize state control, alongside more
subterranean expressions of local tradition and resistance.
The main event in this history is the gruesome bloodshed of

1857, but this colonial violence has an uncanny medieval echo. In
December 1398, the feared warrior Timur descended on Delhi with
his army. Timur was yet another conqueror with nomadic Central
Asian roots; he combined Mongol military prowess with Turkic and
Persian taxation systems. He presented himself as a restorer of the
Mongol Empire and an heir (in spirit, if not in biology) to Genghis
Khan. This was hardly reassuring to the Sultans of Delhi, who had
long seen themselves as a refuge from the predations of the Mongols.
Timur and his troops swept through northern India with ease,
taking advantage of the disintegrating Delhi Sultanate. Just as
Mohammad Ghori and Qutbuddin Aibak had benefited from intra-
Rajput rivalries, Timur profited from intra-Sultanate discord. He
arrived in India only ten years after Firoz Shah Tughlaq died, but
Delhi had since witnessed the quick succession of six Sultans, with
the Sultanate splitting in 1394, leaving the new ruler of Delhi,
Mahmud Shah Tughlaq, fatally weakened.
When Timur arrived in Delhi, he sent an advance guard of troops

to inspect Firoz Shah Tughlaq’s hunting lodge on the Northern Ridge,
which Timur described as a “fine building”. But his appreciation
for architecture gave way to chilling orders for his troops: “to plunder
and destroy, and to kill every one they met.”9 Timur later joined the
advance guard to view the palace himself and to use the vantage point
of the Ridge for reconnaissance.
Later, he returned to the foot of the Northern Ridge with his entire
army, and they set up a heavily fortified camp as a springboard for
their attack on Delhi. Though this campsite is now in the midst of
Delhi, at that time it was deep in its hinterland, roughly five miles
north of the urban enclaves that the Tughlaqs had built, which were
themselves located just north of the old Slave Dynasty fortresses on
the Southern Ridge. Timur’s plan was to draw out Mahmud Shah’s
army and to defeat them on the plain between the Northern Ridge
and the city of Delhi. His troops had warned him of the massive, fully
armored war elephants that formed the core of the Sultanate defenses.
State 133
In response, Timur ordered that all the trees in the area be cut down
(yet more evidence of centuries-old deforestation on the Ridge) and
used to reinforce the trenches that his troops had dug around the camp.
Timur also instructed his troops to tie water buffaloes to the newly
erected fences as a further line of defense against the elephants.
On the morning of the decisive battle, Timur mounted his horse

and rode up to the top of the Northern Ridge, to survey the enemy
army as it approached. Satisfied with what he saw, he rode down and
led his troops into battle, driving the Sultan’s army all the way back to
the gates of the city, where they conceded defeat.
The battle was just the beginning of Delhi’s suffering. Timur set up
his throne in the Idgah, located on the far outskirts of the Tughlaq city
atop the Southern Ridge. There, he received the “learned Muslims”
of the city, who were given “the honor” of kissing his throne and who
begged Timur to spare their city. He amused himself by surveying
the elephants that the Sultan had left behind; the elephants’ drivers,
eager to placate Timur, had the elephants bow their heads as Timur
passed. The conqueror, pleased, had the elephants sent to his various
strongholds throughout Central Asia, with five of the best ones dis-
patched to his capital city, Samarkand. Timur also threw lavish
parties for his triumphant army, bringing in Turkish and Arab musi-
cians and dancers, and serving “wine, sherbet, sweetmeats, and all
kinds of bread and meat”.10
But there was the serious business of plunder to carry out as well.
Timur sent his men around the city to collect money, as well as grains,
oil, sugar and flour. The people of Delhi resisted, no doubt alarmed by
the presence of marauding troops who, even by Timur’s admission,
were laying “riotous hands” on the city and its riches. The resistance
was short-lived. Timur’s troops massacred the population, burned
down much of the town and plundered whatever they could.
In the fighting, a group of rebels escaped from the mayhem and

gathered on the Southern Ridge, venturing beyond the Idgah to take
refuge in the Slave Dynasty-era congregational mosque, which had
earlier weathered Nur Turk’s attack and was, at that point, considered
part of “Old Delhi”. The rebels started to stockpile weapons and food
supplies, but Timur found out about their plot and sent his troops,

who “attacked these infidels and put them to death, after which Old
Delhi was plundered”.
Justifying this gruesome multi-day massacre, Timur lapses into

the passive tense, merely noting that “certain incidents occurred”
and the “flames of strife” had been lit. He then falls back on a religious
justification:
It was therefore my earnest wish that no evil might happen to

the people of the place. But it was ordained by God that the city
should be ruined. He therefore inspired the infidel inhabitants
with a spirit of resistance, so that they brought on themselves that
fate which was inevitable.11
Many modern historians, and not just Hindu nationalist ones,

have accepted Timur at his word, portraying him as yet one more
sword-wielding Muslim fanatic.12 Yet whatever his inner religious
beliefs (and there is ample evidence that he wore his religion lightly,
parading it about at times and dropping it when convenient),13 it is
clear that Timur’s military conquests were serving larger political and
economic prerogatives.
Timur’s raids and conquests in India were not just the result of
random cruelty (though they were certainly cruel). They were part of
the logic of empire, which centered on Timur’s capital of Samarkand.
It’s no coincidence that he sent Delhi’s best elephants there. And it
was not just elephants. Timur also records that he rounded up all
of Delhi’s “artisans and clever mechanics who were masters of their
respective crafts”14 and sent them to different cities of his empire,
so that they could aid their economic growth. For himself, he
took all the builders and stonemasons of the city and sent them to
Samarkand, where he was building his own congregational mosque
to memorialize his rule. The historian Satish Chandra explains
that this process applied not just to Delhi but to Timur’s other con-
quests in Baghdad, Damascus and beyond, and that Timur’s inter-
ests extended to culture as well as trade. In this way, he amassed a
group of skilled painters, calligraphers, musicians, historians, archi-
tects, silk-weavers, bow-makers, masons, metalworkers, gem-cutters
and more.
State 135
Chandra continues: “Timur was not merely a Central Asian, semi-
nomadic leader intent on carving out as large an empire as possi-
ble. His conquests were aimed at...unifying the principle Asian trade
routes, overland and overseas, under his control.”15 From this perspec-
tive, Timur’s sacking of Delhi and his other exploits in northern India
largely served as a way to safeguard key trade overland routes con-
necting Central Asia to India, as well as to secure ports on the western
Indian coast. An Italian traveler of that era, Nicolo Conti, notes that
travel was safe between Egypt and India because the entire zone was
controlled by Timur.16
For Central Asian traders, and for the occasional European adven-
turer, Timur’s reign thus held out the prospect of stability, prosperity
and thriving economic and social exchanges. For the inhabitants of
Delhi, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, his reign was an unmitigated
disaster, bringing destruction, bloodshed and chaos. Timur’s beau-
tiful mosques, built in part by Delhi’s artisans, still stand in pres-
ent-day Uzbekistan, where the fearsome ruler is still remembered
fondly. (When the Soviet Union fell and Uzbekistan became indepen-
dent, the new government replaced a statue of Karl Marx with one of
Timur.) These mosques serve as a testament to Walter Benjamin’s
famous dictum, “There is no document of culture which is not at the
same time a document of barbarism.”
For Timur, the Ridge was just a temporary resting ground, a place
to survey the battlefield and inspect the architectural glories of the
dynasty he was about to destroy. For the early Sultans of Delhi, on
the other hand, the Ridge was their sanctuary, the axis of their faith
and their state. Timur’s brutal raid marked a low point for the Delhi
Sultanate, from which it never truly recovered.
The Mughals, who succeeded the Sultans, remained attached to

the Ridge, and specifically to the Southern Ridge that hosted Delhi’s
oldest fortresses. In Mughal times, the focal point of “Old Delhi” was
the shrine to the Sufi saint whose influence Iltutmish had once tried
to curtail: Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, affectionately known as Qutb
Sahib. Qutb Sahib’s repute had grown posthumously, largely because
of the fame of his disciple’s disciple, Nizamuddin. By the time Babur
came to India, Qutb Sahib’s shrine had become a major pilgrimage
point, with a bustling local community dedicated to the glory of the

saint. In the centuries that followed, several Mughal emperors chose
to be buried close to the Ridge-top shrine.
The Ridge, then, has borne witness to shifting imperial dynamics.

As increasingly powerful empires have set their sights on Delhi, their
rulers have not forgotten the material and symbolic importance of the
Ridge. It has been a crucial node in economic, military and religious
circuits that have spanned increasingly large parts of the world.
A New Empire, A New Army

Even for the massive British Empire, which, at its peak, engulfed
much of the world and towered above all other powers, the small piece
of land known as the Delhi Ridge played an outsize role. For patriotic
Britons in the late nineteenth century, “The Ridge” was synonymous
with sacrifice, heroics, bloodshed and redemption, a potent symbol of
the trials and the triumphs of empire.
This was an improbable development, especially since Delhi was a

relatively late addition to British India. The British did not enter India
by land. In contrast to their imperial predecessors (the Delhi Sultans,
the Timurids, the Mughals), the British did not come upon Delhi
as a crucial threshold for their initial Indian conquests. In keeping
with its origins as a trading firm, the British East India Company
first engaged with India via its coastal ports. As it morphed from a
business-oriented company to an unwieldy state power, the East India
Company organized itself around three port cities—Calcutta (now
Kolkata), Madras (now Chennai), and Bombay (now Mumbai)—with
ever-growing Presidencies spreading out from those centers. In its
expansionary efforts, it was backed by its own private armies, largely
composed of Indian mercenaries, though with a sizable number of
Irish and English recruits as well. Just as the three Presidencies were
relatively autonomous, so too were the three armies raised to defend
them and expand their borders; the biggest of these armies, and the
most important, was the Bengal Army, which had its roots in the East
India Company’s most important urban center: Calcutta.
When General Gerard Lake defeated the Marathas, who had been
hounding the Mughals, and marched into Delhi as the defender-
turned-usurper of the Mughal Empire, he did so as the head of the
State 137
Bengal Army of the East India Company. The British recognized that
Delhi had long been an imperial capital, but they also knew that the
Mughals had been drained of all their power, and they thought of
the rituals and procedures of courtly life in Delhi as mere relics of a
spent empire. They thus allowed the Mughal emperors (now emperors
in name only) to retain some vestige of their symbolic prestige, while
eviscerating whatever dwindling power they still had.
In 1828, in keeping with this mindset, the British humored the

Mughal Emperor, Akbar Shah II, and moved their army’s European
troops outside of the walled Mughal city of Shahjahanabad, and into
a cantonment on the western slopes of the Northern Ridge. Most of
the cantonment’s buildings were at the base of the Ridge, but a few
were atop the Ridge, including Flagstaff Tower, located on the highest
point on the Northern Ridge. This structure was used as a lookout
tower, with the British flag flying proudly atop it.
The British felt justified in making this move since the Mughals
had no military power; British officials were more worried about
attacks from the Sikh Empire, against whom they were soon to fight
two wars. Their new position on the Northern Ridge was ideal for
fending off attacks from the northwest, where the Sikh armies would
likely amass. To further fortify their position, the British strength-
ened the walls encircling Shahjahanabad, reinforcing with stone and
brick the mud structures that the Mughals had built.
The British were thus completely taken by surprise when the

biggest threat to their rule came from inside the walled city itself.
On 11 May 1857, a group of rebel soldiers forced their way into
Shahjahanabad and set up base in the city before anyone could stop
them. The troops had come from Meerut, where, the previous day,
they had mutinied and killed their commanding officers, along with
both Indian and European civilians living in the area.
The arrival of the Meerut troops in Delhi was perhaps the defining
moment of the 1857 Uprising. Although the rebellion had many
causes (including the discontent felt by groups like the Gujjars) and
took different paths in different parts of the country, Delhi was its
symbolic center. This, at least, can be inferred from the actions of
the Meerut troops, as well as many other rebels from across North

India who followed in their footsteps and converged in Delhi. In their
uprising against the British, the Meerut troops sought legitimacy
from the very symbols that the British had thought were hopelessly
spent: the prestige of the Mughals and the imperial lineage of Delhi.
From Delhi, the rebels found a symbolic center for what was to
become the biggest uprising against the most powerful empire in the
nineteenth-century world.17
The soldiers from Meerut came to Delhi to get the blessing of the
Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, in their rebellion against
the British. Confronted with the unruly troops, a reluctant Zafar had
little choice but to agree. The uprising came as a rude shock to the
British, and it accelerated a hardening of British attitudes towards
the people they sought to rule in India. The Indian subject was
increasingly seen as irremediably savage, and the violence of the early
days of the Uprising was invoked as proof of this.
A chief symbol of supposed Indian savagery was the Flagstaff

Tower on the Northern Ridge. By the afternoon of 11 May 1857,
the rebelling armies had swept through Shahjahanabad and had
ransacked the cantonment outside the city walls. Flagstaff Tower
became a place of refuge for the British families fleeing both the
walled city and the cantonment. Women and children were packed
into the sweltering interior of the tower, and several passed out due
to the heat and stress.
A handful of British army officials guarded the tower, and they

argued over the best course of action: should they stay in the tower
until nightfall, or should they retreat immediately? As they debated
this, a bullock cart made its way up the Ridge to the tower, carrying in
it the mutilated bodies of British soldiers who had been killed in the
walled city. Although the cart had been sent by another British officer,
and was on its way to the cantonment, the understandably jittery
families in the tower assumed it was an act of psychological warfare on
the part of the rebels. This ended any argument: the families poured
out of the tower and began their slow, tortuous escape.
It took the British almost a month to reclaim the Ridge. On

8 June, under Major-General Henry Barnard, the Delhi Field Force
entered the Delhi region, decisively defeating the rebel troops at a
State 139
western outpost of the city. From there, the British troops moved to
the Ridge, shooting everyone in their path, including a young fakir
who had attempted to take refuge in an old ruined mosque that had
been built in the time of Firoz Shah Tughlaq. At Flagstaff Tower, they
faced fierce resistance, but eventually overpowered the rebels, who
retreated to the safety of Shahjahanabad. The bullock cart full of
corpses still sat beside the tower; in the scorching summer heat, the
bodies had become mere skeletons. In this grim setting, the British
ran their flag up the tower’s flagpole and considered their options.
Although some trigger-happy British officials, both at the time and

in later accounts, faulted Barnard for stopping at the Ridge and not
following the rebels into the city, he clearly made the prudent choice.
The rebel troops far outnumbered his own, and they were protected
by the strong city walls that the British themselves had reinforced.
The Ridge was a key strategic site; it overlooked Shahjahanabad and
allowed the British troops to survey rebel movements and fight off
any attacks from a position of strength.
But the Ridge had its drawbacks as well. In the peak of the
summer, it was blazing hot and almost entirely barren, with only the
occasional stunted tree. There was no reliable water source nearby,
and the nearest available water, coming from the Yamuna canal, had
a horrible, putrid taste. Several of the troops died of heatstroke. And
then there were the military dangers: the British encampments on the
Ridge were clearly visible from the walled city, and the rebels soon
began to shell the British strongholds on the Ridge with alarming
accuracy. One of these strongholds was the mansion built by William
Fraser, who had been assassinated 22 years earlier. By now, the
house was known by the name of its subsequent owner; in British
correspondences, it is invariably referred to as Hindoo Rao’s house.
The physical features of the Ridge had psychological impacts as

well. From their various lookouts on the Ridge, the British troops
could see new sets of rebel troops streaming into the walled city nearly
every day. This sight was hardly reassuring to the British, especially as
it underscored their own precarious position. Although they initially
hoped for quick reinforcements so that they could lay siege to Delhi,
it soon became evident that supporting troops were still a long way
away. Many of the troops who would eventually ensure the British

victory had not even been gathered and mobilized. Given the scope
of the rebellion, British officers were casting their nets far and wide
to gather the troops and the equipment they needed to quell it. The
soldiers on the Ridge were, for the moment, on their own.
Because of their favorable position on the heights of the Ridge,

the British were able to repel the waves of attacks launched by the
rebels. However, as the days on the Ridge turned into weeks and
then into months, the British troops faced a slow transition from mil-
itary threats to epidemiological ones. Their very success in cutting
down rebel troops led to another grim problem; decomposing bodies
littered the side of the Ridge, attracting swarms of disease-carrying
flies and emitting an intolerable stench. To make matters worse, the
monsoon, which had arrived on 27 June, turned many spots on
the Ridge into fetid swamplands, unleashing plagues of snakes and
scorpions. On 5 July, Barnard died of cholera. By the end of July,
more soldiers were dying of cholera than of bullet wounds. Their
attempt to quell the Uprising had morphed into a war of attrition
against more implacable enemies.
In the letters that soldiers sent out from the Ridge, especially
to their wives, they maintained a stiff upper lip, minimizing the
precariousness of their situation. But hints of the dangers they faced
inevitably surface, as in the case of one letter from an officer named
Keith Young to his wife:
It has been a very hot day, but a refreshing shower an hour or two
ago has made it considerably cooler, and there is now a pleasant
breeze blowing, and thunder rumbling in the distance. I wish it
would come down a good plump of rain, and it would serve, too,
to put out the fire in one of our batteries, which caught fire just
now, and seems inclined not to allow itself to be put out.18
Relief finally arrived on 14 August, in the form of a mercurial

and, by some accounts, psychopathic British officer named John
Nicholson. Nicholson had spent the previous three months repressing
discontent in Punjab and rounding up troops. Remarkably, given the
fact that the British had just fought a war against the Sikh Empire,
and would fight another just one year after the Uprising ended, a large
State 141
percentage of Nicholson’s troops were Sikhs. Their long-standing
hatred of the Mughals, who had killed several Sikh gurus, seemed to
outweigh their relatively new grudge against the British. Nicholson
led the advance guard into Delhi; behind him was an enormous “siege
train”, an eight-mile long convoy of troops, guns and ammunition,
with the larger guns pulled by teams of elephants.
On 4 September, the siege train finally arrived on the Ridge. By

12 September, all 60 of the howitzers that had been lugged to the
Ridge were firing non-stop on the city walls. And on 14 September,
Nicholson led the attack on the city. In the chaos of the fighting, a
rebel sniper shot Nicholson in the chest. A young officer arranged
Nicholson’s transport back to the Ridge, and he spent the last days of
his life in the camp’s makeshift infirmary, as fighting raged in the city
and the outcome of the battle seemed increasingly uncertain.
Archdale Wilson, the new Commander-in-Chief, was unnerved

by the losses the British were absorbing. He knew Nicholson had
been shot, and he was also aware that one of the rebel leaders was
leading a contingent up the Ridge to Hindu Rao’s House, which, if
successful in its mission, would completely encircle the British camp
and cut off contact between the British soldiers in the city and their
reinforcements, supplies and medical facilities on the Ridge. Several
times, Wilson contemplated a full retreat.
However, after a week of chaotic, bloody street fighting, the British

broke the back of rebel resistance. On 20 September, they stormed
the Red Fort, the center of Mughal power, and began a systematic
massacre of the Delhi population. Within days, a large number of the
city’s inhabitants, 150,000 people, had either been killed or forced to
flee. Huge sections of the city were razed, and the triumphant troops
looted and plundered with abandon, following in the footsteps of
Timur’s troops 450 years earlier.
The British, at least in their official pronouncements, felt few

scruples about the violence and trauma they had unleashed. If any-
thing, their tone was celebratory, with a grim sense of satisfaction at
having shown the native his proper place. Echoing Timur’s language,
the British focused on the supposed religious barbarity of the rebels,
in contrast to their own spiritual uprightness (here Christianity took

the place of Timur’s Islam). Nowhere was this more evident than
on the Ridge. It was the “Mutiny”, in fact, that turned the ridge north
of Shahjahanabad into “The Ridge”, a proper noun, recognized by
patriotic souls across the British Empire. Although today “the Ridge”
generally refers to all of the Aravalli hills in Delhi, the phrase origin-
ally designated the small ridge where the British pitched their tents
during the Uprising. Even before the Uprising had ended, tales
of British heroism and hardship on the Ridge were becoming the
stuff of legend.
Evidence of this consecration could be found in newspapers

articles, letters and speeches throughout the British Empire, with
especially strident voices coming from London, the center of the
empire. If the city stood, in the British mind, for savagery, debauch-
ery and near-apocalyptic evil, then the Ridge, in its austerity, sym-
bolized British righteousness and heroism. This idealization of the
Ridge took concrete form in 1863, when British officials constructed
a garish Mutiny Memorial to commemorate the troops that had fallen
in the fighting. The Memorial, constructed in Gothic style, mimics
the form of a church cathedral, with a large cross at the top, in case
anyone missed the symbolism.
Yet most of those actually fallen, whom the Memorial ostensibly

celebrated, had not entered the fight for the sake of the British flag,
let alone for Christianity. Four-fifths of the soldiers on the British
side were Indian, with many Sikh and Muslim mercenaries filling the
ranks. And even on the British side, there were fissures between
the Irish and English and between troops from the East India Company
and from the Queen’s Army. Some Company troops even scrawled
graffiti on the walls of a crumbling ruin on the Ridge condemning a
sergeant for watering down their grog.19
The Ridge-top scrawlings of restive soldiers are drowned out by

the stately pronouncements of officialdom, in the form of the Mutiny
Memorial. But even this memorial, built to commemorate one of
the most significant moments in British imperial history, eventually
faded from popular memory. It now receives precious few visitors
and hardly fits into the public imagination of the city. It is one more
record of a state’s failed attempt to immortalize itself.
State 143
Perhaps this is to be expected, more than 70 years after Independence.
What is more surprising is the quickness with which the memories
of the “Mutiny” were forgotten. As early as 1902, British officials were
bemoaning the lack of attention given to the sacred Ridge and urging
the public to rediscover it. H. C. Fanshawe, a former Commissioner
of Delhi District, made such a plea in his guidebook to Delhi. In many
ways, Fanshawe’s book, entitled Delhi: Past and Present, resembles a
contemporary Lonely Planet: it suggests three- and five-day itinerar-
ies for the time-pressed; dividing the city into different, easily-visited
sections, it provides maps and directions, and even puts important site
names in bold font. But the underlying spirit of Fanshawe’s guide is
patriotic, not commercial. He writes:
I would venture to hope that the present volume will afford

to visitors to Delhi not only a clear guide to all that is to be seen
there, but also an intelligent record of the history of the place
in all its various phases, and will help to secure a permanent
memory of such and of many others, for the great and gallant
feats of arms performed before Delhi in the summer of 1857, by a
very small force under the most arduous and trying conditions.
I cannot but think that the recollection of this feat, not yet fifty
years ago, has become somewhat unduly dimmed.20
The centerpiece of his book is a chapter on “Delhi in 1857”, an

exhaustive account of all the sites, on the Ridge and elsewhere, where
fighting took place, as well as the surrounding gravestones, ruins
and monuments, along with an exceedingly detailed narration of
the events of May through September, interspersed with multi-page
excerpts from the journals and notes of various military officials who
were part of the Delhi fighting. For Fanshawe, the “Mutiny” was the
pinnacle of Delhi history. The preceding centuries, which he hastily
describes in the barest of outlines, are mere ornamentation and
backdrop for the true story of Delhi’s glory.
Delhi continued to be important for the British, especially after

it officially became the capital of British India in 1911. But the estab-
lishment of a new imperial capital brought the city’s center of gravity
away from the Northern Ridge and the former sites of the 1857
fighting. Though the planners of New Delhi acknowledged the sanc-
tity of the (Northern) Ridge, their attention was mostly elsewhere.

Ironically, it was the post-Independence government that was to
bring the Mutiny Memorial back into prominence, albeit briefly. In
August 1972, to celebrate 25 years of Indian independence, the govern-
ment renamed the monument “Ajitgarh” or, roughly, “Victory Fort”.
Beside the British inscriptions, the Indian government added its own, a
sort of exegetical footnote: “The ‘enemy’ of the inscriptions of this mon-
ument were those who rose against colonial rule and fought bravely
for national liberation in 1857.” This was government appropriation of
the most unimaginative sort; rather than build its own memorial, the
new state simply repurposed a structure built by the old state, Gothic
architecture and Christian cross notwithstanding.
The government went a step further in 2010, in the run-up to the

much-touted Commonwealth Games, illuminating the memorial
in a bright red light. The lighting had an unintentionally ghoulish
quality, bringing into stark contrast the banality of the government’s
tourist-minded plans versus the bloodshed and imperial excess
the memorial originally signified. When asked about the appropri-
ateness of celebrating British colonial sites in preparation for the
Games, Delhi’s Chief Minister Sheila Dixit gave a pragmatic response:
“History is history and now we’re talking of today: tourism, cultural
ties and common links.”21
Refuge and Rupture on the Southern Ridge, 1857–1947

Against Dixit’s vacuous, business-minded optimism stands the more
realistic assessment of William Faulkner: “The past is never dead; it’s
not even past.” Surely India’s past is all too alive in its present. To
take the most obvious example: the wounds of Partition are, in many
ways, still fresh. While the Northern Ridge, with its Mutiny Memorial,
remains a testament to colonial oppression and rebel resistance,
the Southern Ridge, and especially the Sufi shrine of Qutbuddin
Bakhtiar Kaki in the present-day neighborhood of Mehrauli, offer a
different history lesson: of a composite culture slowly slipping away,
of antagonisms between Hindu and Muslim becoming ever sharper,
and of state violence turning inwards to consume a shrine, a city and
an entire subcontinent.
Qutb Sahib’s shrine was deeply symbolic of the syncretic culture

over which the late Mughals had presided. As the temporal power of
State 145
the Mughals waned, they became increasingly devoted to religious
activities. Zafar, the Mughal Emperor who became the unlikely
figurehead of the Uprising, was especially fond of Qutb Sahib’s shrine.
His father had built a palace next to the shrine, and Zafar expanded
the structure, adding an ornate red sandstone façade and many other
elegant flourishes. He used it as a summer house, now rechristened
“Zafar Mahal”, a place to enjoy the relative coolness and breeziness of
the Southern Ridge.
The shrine was visited by Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Christians,

and it had been one of the focal points of a remarkable event, Phool
Walon Ki Sair (the Flower-Sellers’ Stroll), which had begun during
the rule of Akbar Shah II, Zafar’s father. The event has an elabo-
rate backstory. Akbar Shah II had strained relations with Zafar, his
eldest son, and planned to make his younger son, Mirza Jahangir,
heir apparent. The British Resident in the Red Fort, nominally in the
service of the Emperor but in fact the real source of authority, rejected
this plan. Soon after, an incensed Mirza Jahangir, perched on a roof
in the Red Fort, fired his gun at the Resident, missing him but killing
his orderly. Mirza Jahangir was exiled to Allahabad, but his mother
intervened on his behalf, pleading with the Resident and praying to
Qutb Sahib, promising that she would pay her royal respects at the
shrine if her son was freed.
Remarkably, the Resident gave in to the mother’s demands, and

allowed Mirza Jahangir to return to Delhi. The mother kept her
word, and, along with the Emperor, took the 11-mile journey from Red
Fort to Qutb Sahib’s shrine, laying a garland of flowers on his tomb.
In one local retelling of the tale, the Queen had decided to walk bare-
foot, and the flower-sellers, who were whole-heartedly devoted to the
Mughals, walked with the royal couple, throwing flower petals on
the road to soften the hardship of the long walk. Along the way, the
flower-sellers, many of whom were Hindu, told the Queen that they
too had been praying for the release of Mirza Jahangir, and that she
should pay her respects at the nearby Yogmaya Temple as well.
She happily did so.22
This retelling paints far too rosy a picture of the royalty and their
unquestioning, loving subjects, but it does indicate the attitude of
religious inclusiveness that pervaded the late Mughal era. The success

and popularity of the Queen’s dual pilgrimage led to the establishment
of Phool Walon ki Sair as an annual event, expanded to include
wrestling matches, fireworks, dances, swimming competitions and a
full week of general revelry. The festival reached its peak during the
reign of Zafar. A generous patron of the arts who was well-known
for his interest in Hinduism as well as Sufi mysticism, he threw his
energies into cultural and spiritual pursuits, with the Phool Walon ki
Sair as the most public, celebratory expression of this.
This all came to a stop with the Uprising. Early in the morning on
17 September 1857, when it became clear that the British were going
to take the walled city of Delhi, Zafar slipped out of Red Fort with a
small party of attendants. His destination was Qutb Sahib’s shrine;
he stopped about mid-way at Nizamuddin’s shrine to pay his respects
and gather his energy. As he set out for the Southern Ridge, though, he
was intercepted by a cousin, who told him that Gujjars were robbing
all the people who passed that way. Though this explanation was
likely true, it was a subterfuge; the cousin was actually in the employ
of the British and had come to convince Zafar to surrender. He was
successful. Zafar gave himself up to the British at Nizamuddin’s
shrine, and he was exiled to Burma. The grave intended for him
outside Qutb Sahib’s shrine lies vacant.
In the immediate aftermath of the British-led massacres in Delhi,

Qutb Sahib’s shrine, long considered a sanctuary for the embattled,
assumed this role in a grim, literal sense. Refugees from the walled
city streamed into this safe haven. But they had little food and were
hardly prepared for the coming winter. The poet Ghalib, even after
witnessing all the barbarities of the Uprising, was still shocked at
the utter callousness of the British towards the families that had
been driven out of the city and were wasting away at places like
Qutb Sahib’s shrine. He lamented, “Are the British officers not aware
that many innocent and noble-minded women, both young and
old, with small children are roaming the forests outside Delhi?”23
Sickness soon broke out at Zafar Mahal, the summer palace adjoining
Qutb Sahib’s shrine, now jam-packed with refugees. In November,
the British started letting Hindus back into the city, but Muslims
were not allowed in unless they obtained a special order from the
British government.
State 147
Tensions between Muslims and Hindus certainly predated 1857,
but the defeat of the Uprising exacerbated these tensions signifi-
cantly. The early days of the Uprising had seen an unprecedented
level of cooperation and amity between Muslim and Hindu rebels.
As the threads of the rebellion unraveled, the inter-religious bonds
forged in early battles began to weaken. The British, as always, were
eager to exploit these divisions, and after regaining control of the sub-
continent, they took up their policy of divide and rule with renewed
vigor, with special ire reserved for Muslims.
Remarkably, the Phool Walon ki Sair was revived in the years after
the Uprising, and it continued through the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. But the British banned it in 1942, at the height
of the “Quit India” movement. During this tense time, British officials
feared any large gathering of Indians, especially one which threatened
to bring together both Hindus and Muslims. The British sought to
suppress the movement and succeeded largely by imprisoning the
bulk of the Congress leadership. But by the end of World War II,
the British realized that the independence movement could not be
contained so easily. Two years after the end of the war, India gained
its independence, but at a terrible cost: the trauma of Partition, which
rent British India in two and led to untold suffering and bloodshed.
With Partition, Delhi was rocked by the worst violence it had expe-
rienced since 1857. Muslim-dominated areas, including the areas
around Zafar Mahal and Qutb Sahib’s shrine on the Ridge, were tar-
geted by roving Hindu mobs. Once again, localized violence on the
Ridge was a symptom of much larger political and military ruptures.
This was not the violence of the colonial empire against the rebel-
ling colonized, as in 1857, nor of invading armies, as in the case of
Timur or the Ghurids; these were two colonized communities tearing
each other apart, just at the moment of their supposed freedom.
Perhaps this is one reason why, in postcolonial India, anti-British
sentiment rarely reaches the fever pitch of anti-Pakistan sentiment;
the founding violence of the current Indian state was fratricidal,
rather than directed at the colonial enemy.24
During Partition, the shrine of Qutb Sahib once again took on

special significance. From its centuries-old role as a site of pilgrimage

for Hindus and Muslims alike, it went on to become a victim of
communal fury. Gangs of Hindu men from nearby villages ransacked
the shrine, driving away all the devotees, damaging the stonework,
and stealing the metal foil which covered some of the ornamentation
(which they mistakenly thought was silver).
Gandhi had largely been sidelined during the negotiations between

Nehru and Mountbatten. Though earlier, he had seemingly voiced
his support for Partition (writing, in 1928, “I am more than ever con-
vinced that the communal problem should be solved outside of leg-
islation, and if in order to reach that state, there has to be civil war,
so be it”25), when it came into effect, he was horrified by the religious
violence it sparked. He spent the last months of his life traveling to
affected areas and using his considerable mass appeal to try to contain
the violence.
The last fast of his life was prompted by the ransacking of Qutb
Sahib’s shrine. This was the catalyst for a fast that eventually had
several demands, all of them focused on ending communal violence
in Delhi and beyond and ensuring that Muslims who had been chased
out of the city could come back. From 13 January to 18 January 1948,
Gandhi fasted, growing progressively weaker as the days went on.
Finally, on the 18th, top political leaders, including members of Hindu
nationalist groups like the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, signed
and delivered a pact promising that Muslims would not be targeted in
Delhi, and specifically that Qutb Sahib’s shrine would be repaired and
returned to its caretakers. Twelve days later, Gandhi was assassinated
by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist who felt Gandhi was being
too kind to Muslims.
Nehru resurrected the Phool Walon ki Sair in 1962, in a belated

attempt to mend the communal fabric that had been torn apart during
Partition. Later, Indira Gandhi tried to take the festival in another
direction, inviting cultural troupes from each state to perform during
the celebration. This was part of a larger effort to promote what was
euphemistically called “national integration”: in essence, a central-
ization imposed from above (as Indira Gandhi had tried, ultimately
unsuccessfully, with the Emergency), with local autonomy replaced
with caricatured cultural performances from different regions, thus
creating a facade of diversity.
State 149
But the sheer persistence of the Phool Walon ki Sair shows both
the reach and the limits of state power. On the one hand, the state
has been instrumental to the founding of the festival and its many
iterations. And the symbolism of Qutb Sahib’s shrine goes back to the
early days of Delhi as a political capital, as Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki’s
spiritual power faced off against Iltutmish’s political power.
On the other hand, the festival has consistently escaped the limits
that the state has set for it. The festival is, after all, named for the
flower sellers, not for any prince or prime minister, and its energy
largely came from the impromptu shops and stalls that sprung up
during the weeklong festival, selling sweets and kebabs and kites and
jewelry and much else. Even today, more people attend the adjoining
fair, with its ferris wheel and haunted house and myriad games, than
the lackluster cultural performances. The people of Delhi, and parti-
cularly of Mehrauli, have been witness to, and sometimes, active par-
ticipants in, state-sponsored violence, and they know its awful power.
But the playfulness and frivolity of the festival suggests another kind
of power, a resilience and lightness that escapes the long arm and
stern gaze of the state.
Part II: Structures
Building State Power on the Ridge

As the Phool Walon ki Sair suggests, the state is not just concerned
with military might. It also seeks to display its grandeur and magna-
nimity. Festivals are an ephemeral way to do this; more permanent is
the construction of massive stone structures as monuments to state
power. Take, for instance, Zafar Mahal: its sheer size and its employ-
ment of ornate stone carvings announce the prestige of its owner,
but its location, adjoining a bustling Sufi shrine, far from the Mughal
power center of Red Fort, implies a more humble, mystical bent.
The palace suggests that rulers seek to make an impression not only
through sheer power, but also through sophistication, luxury, spiritu-
al devotion, pomp, and grace; that is, through majesty in every sense
of the word.
As states have risen and fallen in Delhi, so too have a wide array of
structures that were meant to convey the many shades of state power.

In some ways, the history of urban architecture in Delhi has been
cyclical, just like the history of the city itself: empires have come and
gone, buildings have sprung up and then fallen into ruin. But despite
this ebb and flow, there has also been a linearity: the city has been
getting bigger and bigger, from tiny Rajput fortresses to the immense
urban sprawl of the present day. State efforts to structure the city
have thus expanded and intensified, from austere walls to individual
pillars and palaces to planned forests and overarching Master Plans
to guide the growth of a megacity. And as structures have sprung up
on all sides of an expanding city, the Ridge has remained surprisingly
central, a key element in constructing state power.
Pillars of (Contested) Power on the Southern Ridge

In our survey of state architecture, we may start with the reign of
Qutbuddin Aibak, who played such a crucial role in establishing Delhi,
and more specifically the Southern Ridge, as a center of imperial
power. Aibak initiated the construction of two iconic monuments
on the lower slopes of the Southern Ridge, the Qutb Minar and the
adjoining congregational mosque. Though Qutb Minar is Delhi’s
most famous monument, it is functionally merely an accessory of the
nearby mosque and was used as a place for the muezzin to call the
faithful for prayer. The mosque has several names, but it is most
often referred to as Quwwat-al-Islam, or “Might of Islam”. It is built
using the remains of plundered temples, with Shaivite, Vaishnative
and Jain columns interspersed throughout, and defaced idols staring
blankly from the walls. Aibak began the construction of the mosque
soon after Prithviraj Chauhan’s defeat, siting it near a temple that
was demolished in the fighting. The name of the mosque, “Might of
Islam”, was a natural choice, given that its main purpose was to strike
at the religious heart of the heathen Hindu natives and to impress
upon them the wrath of a new power boldly asserting itself.
Or so the story goes. This conventional interpretation of the Qutb

Minar and its mosque is deeply ingrained. It is the story one gets
in textbooks, in scholarly journals, in popular retellings, even on
guided tours of the Qutb complex, now a UNESCO World Heritage
site. But it is quite misleading. While it is true that Aibak and other
Sultans destroyed temples, this is not necessarily evidence of an

eternal Muslim/Hindu struggle. When Hindu rulers fought each
other, they would also destroy their rivals’ temples, so the mere act
of temple destruction need not imply implacable religious enmity.
Moreover, the standard narrative overstates the strength and unity
of the new rulers.
As the historian Sunil Kumar has pointed out, no inscriptions in

the Qutb complex refer to the mosque as “Might of Islam” and no
Persian chronicles from this period contain that name. Kumar has
taken great pains to dismantle the standard narrative of this site.26 He
notes that the name “Might of Islam” was first recorded only in 1847,
some 750 years after the mosque was built, as part of a monograph
on Delhi’s topography written by Sayyid Ahmad Khan, an Indian
judge employed by the East India Company. The name stuck, largely
because it aligned so well with the British “divide and conquer”
policy, with its stress on the irreducible difference between Muslims
and Hindus in India.
But a closer look at the Qutb Minar and its adjoining mosque shows
that they are not eternal symbols of Muslim fanaticism and Hindu
defeat. Though, centuries later, they appear transfixed, as stark,
unchanging symbols of a decisive victory, their actual history is full of
change, uncertainty and transformation, reflecting the fluctuations of
state power in Delhi. Just as there is no “pristine glory” in the ecology
of the Ridge, there is no fixity to these Ridge structures and the states
that built them.
The original minaret, build by Aibak, was quite short and squat,
only the first storey of the present-day tower. There is no evidence
that Aibak intended to build a taller tower, though it is easy to forget
this and see the seeds of the contemporary minar in Aibak’s creation.
Built immediately after Ghori’s victory over Prithviraj Chauhan and
Aibak’s seizing of the town from Ghori’s chosen vassal, the minaret
and the adjoining mosque are full of inscriptions that emphasize
military might and victory over the infidels. The inscriptions sing
Ghori’s praises, with Aibak clearly intending the glory of his master
to reflect on him.
Many histories have jumped to the conclusion that these inscrip-

tions were aimed at the non-Muslim population that Aibak had
State 153
subjugated. This certainly fits with the idea of a united Muslim
ruling class imposing its will. But Sunil Kumar argues that Aibak had
another audience in mind. The inscriptions are written in Arabic,
in a script that would only be understood by Muslims with exten-
sive education. Remarkably similar inscriptions can be found in
the mosques constructed by Aibak’s rivals, the other slaves-turned-
sultans of North India. For example, his chief rival, Bahauddin
Tughril, built a mosque in Bayana, which mirrors the Delhi mosque
in its architecture and purpose, and which also contains inscriptions
celebrating martial victories, divine favor, and the creation of a new
congregational space for Muslims. Tughril’s and Aibak’s inscriptions
should be read together, or rather against each other: each targeted,
not the non-Muslim conquered, but the Muslim subjects of the new
Sultans, who were competing against each other to prove that they
had the strongest claims to sovereignty.
Further additions to the Delhi minaret and mosque reveal more

twists in the tale of rivalry and contested state power. As we have
seen, there was considerable turmoil after Aibak’s death, and his
eventual successor Iltutmish spent decades fighting both internal and
external foes. After he finally consolidated his power, Iltutmish added
three more stories to the minaret and expanded the congregational
mosque significantly, doubling its original size. His mosque now
dwarfed those built by erstwhile competitors like Tughril, and the
minaret now towered over the landscape. The inscriptions he added
to the mosque are also revealing; although some speak of military
victory, the majority of inscriptions are focused on building a properly
devout community, exhorting Muslims to congregate and pray at the
mosque—in keeping with his promotion of Delhi as a refuge from
the predations of the Mongols.
These monuments of piety, pride and power took on new signif-

icance with the rule of Alauddin Khilji, whose father had toppled
the already teetering Slave Dynasty and taken control of the Delhi
Sultanate. Khilji’s additions to the mosque and minaret show his
ambitions and his hubris. First, he doubled the size of Iltutmish’s
already-expanded mosque. Though little of this extension remains
today, a glimpse of it can be seen in the enormous, elegant entrance
hall on the south wall of the mosque. The hall is made of red sandstone,

with elaborate marble trim and inscriptions from Koranic verses.
Now standing alone, the hall was once a fittingly grand entrance to an
enlarged and newly adorned mosque. In contrast, a rougher piece of
architecture sits outside the mosque, the beginnings of a new minaret
that Khilji intended to be double the height of the existing minaret
built by Aibak and Iltutmish. But Khilji could not even finish the first
storey before his death; all that remains is the jagged rubble masonry
of the core of the minaret, which Khilji planned to cover with marble
and sandstone.
The next major intervention in the architecture of this complex
came with Firoz Shah Tughlaq. Given the attention he had lavished
on Ashokan pillars, it is perhaps not surprising that he had a keen
interest in Aibak and Iltutmish’s minaret as well. In 1368, the minaret
was struck by lightning, which sent the top storey flying off. Tughlaq
did not let this opportunity go to waste; he replaced the destroyed
storey with two storeys of his own, adding large amounts of white
marble to differentiate his addition from that of his predecessors.
By the time that the British and their allies began writing about the
Sultanate-era mosque and minaret on the Southern Ridge, centuries
had passed since this last intervention, and the moral geography
of the area had shifted considerably. This brings us back to Sayyid
Ahmad Khan, the East India Company judge who first recorded the
use of the name “Quwwat al-Islam” (Might of Islam) for Aibak’s
mosque. Given the history of the mosque, especially the trauma of
Mongol invasions, it becomes clear that “Quwwat al-Islam” is in fact
a corruption of “Qubbat al-Islam” (sanctuary and axis of Islam), as
the latter is a well-documented name for Delhi. But for Khan, and
especially for the British historians who followed in his wake, this
history was pushed aside, and replaced with a picture of unending
Hindu-Muslim conflict.
In a similar way, the name of the minaret, Qutb Minar, was
taken to refer to Qutbuddin Aibak, the military strongman who had
imposed his will on the native population. But the name was of rela-
tively recent vintage, and in fact referred to the Sufi saint, Qutbuddin
Bakhtiar Kaki. In local tradition, Kaki had risen to the top of the Sufi
hierarchy, and was thus considered to be the axis of the world, cen-
tering and stabilizing existence through his mystical presence. The
State 155
minaret became known as Qutbuddin’s staff; it was a representation
of the saint’s power to connect heaven and earth.
But these local meanings were swept away by the heavy hand of
British historiography. The British emphasized the military, and
orthodox Muslim, origins of the mosque and the minaret. They also
sought to make their own imperial mark on Qutb Minar, repairing
it in the aftermath of an earthquake in 1803, and, at the behest of
one Major R. Smith of the Royal Engineers, replacing the cupola
at the top with a structure modeled on a Bengali pavilion. But the
jarring dissonance of this new architectural form was too much for
even the British to take, and they removed it in 1848, dumping it
unceremoniously on the grounds near Qutb Minar, where it remains
till today.
Location, Location, Location (the Art of Siting a

New Capital)
By the twentieth century, British ambitions for Delhi had grown
well beyond tinkering with Southern Ridge monuments. In 1911,
the British announced their intention to move the Raj capital from
Calcutta to Delhi. Building the new capital took 20 years. Once it was
finally inaugurated, the British could only enjoy their new capital for
16 years, before Indian Independence swept them away, yet another
lesson in the impermanence of state power.
Although the British were ushered out of the capital, and the
country, in 1947, their influence still permeates the city that they built,
and well beyond. British officials consciously sought to link them-
selves to empires of old; but at the same time, they were clear that
they were building a new city on new principles, including new legal
frameworks, new aesthetic sensibilities, new urban planning tools and
new ecological visions. And, despite the upheavals of Independence
and Partition, these are still, largely, the principles that govern Delhi
today, and that determine the fate of the Ridge.
The transfer of the British capital from Calcutta to Delhi was then,
a momentous turning point for the city of Delhi and its Ridge, one
which depended on its past prestige but charted out a radically new

course for its future. The initial 1911 announcement was largely seen
as a punishment for Calcutta and the larger Bengal region, which had
been at the forefront of resistance to British rule. But the pull of Delhi
should not be underestimated.
In a letter written about a month before the transfer of the capital

was publicly announced, Lord Crewe, the Secretary of State for
India, noted that Delhi had “an Imperial tradition comparable with
that of Constantinople, or with that of Rome itself.” In addition to
the symbolic legacy that the Sultans worked so hard to establish,
and which the Mughals readily embellished, there were older, more
mythical resonances. Crewe invoked the Mahabharata and the city
of Indraprastha, noting that “the near neighborhood of the existing
city formed the theatre for some notable scenes in the old-time drama
of Hindu history, celebrated in the vast treasure-house of national
epic verse.”27
For Crewe, and for many other British officials, the Uprising of
1857 could only be explained as a burst of irrational passion, with
the barbarous natives showing undue attachment to old lineages
and centuries-old symbols of power. Having failed to appreciate
these sentiments before, the British were now willing to exploit them
however they could. Crewe continues:
To the races of India, for whom the legends and records of the past
are charged with so intense a meaning, this resumption by the
Paramount Power of the seat of venerable Empire should at once
enforce the continuity and promise the permanency of British
sovereign rule over the length and breadth of the country.28
Of course, the British had also built up their own attachment to the
“legends and records” of Delhi, especially in the wake of the Uprising,
as the Mutiny Memorial on the Northern Ridge suggests. Indeed, the
historical significance of Delhi, and especially of the Northern Ridge,
made the choice of the new capital appealing, not just to British
officials in India, but also to a wider British public that had been
raised on tales of imperial derring-do and military triumph.
Initial speculation in the press was that the new British capital
would be built in close proximity to the Northern Ridge. And indeed,
State 157
this site was thoroughly scrutinized by the three-member Delhi
Town-planning Committee, which was formed to evaluate potential
locations for the new city and to guide its planning. But in the end, the
Committee decided against siting the new city around the Northern
Ridge. In part, the very sanctity of this site worked against it; the
Committee reported that,
sentiment will not permit of new buildings being erected on the

better half of it. The portion from Flagstaff Tower to Hindu Rao’s
house and the Mutiny Memorial must remain sacrosanct; the
Ridge can therefore never be more than a rough park garnished
with plain but hallowed buildings.29
Sentimental concerns were not the only ones, though; the poten-
tial northern site for New Delhi, which included both the Northern
Ridge and the plains running down to the Yamuna, was rejected for
a number of reasons: it was too small, not allowing for future expan-
sion of the city; the plains were often waterlogged and malarial; and
the area was already occupied by many British civilians, whom it
would be difficult (and expensive) to displace, especially because, as
the Committee noted, a majority of those civilians “represented the
business houses of Delhi”.30
In the end, the town planners abandoned the north, but they did not
abandon the Ridge; the site they chose was centered on Raisina Hill,
in a zone the British referred to as the “Southern Ridge”. This was the
first time the English term “Ridge” had been applied beyond the Ridge
of 1857 fame, and it marks the slow transition of the term’s meaning,
from its original limited sense (the ridge north of Shahjahanabad), to
its expanded, generic sense (all of Delhi’s hills). The names of par-
ticular sets of hills have changed as the city has expanded. What the
British called the Southern Ridge, around Raisina Hill, is now called
the Central Ridge, which is a significant appellation both geographi-
cally (it’s now in the middle of the city) and symbolically (it’s at the
heart of the present-day iteration of Delhi).
In later writings, the Raisina site was freighted with the weight
of inevitability; its choice as the locus for the new city was portrayed
as pre-ordained. The Governor-General of India at the time, Lord

Hardinge, later wrote of a horse ride he took up to Raisina Hill with
William Hailey, the Chief Commissioner of Delhi:
We galloped over the plain to a hill some distance away. From

the top of the hill there was a magnificent view, embracing Old
Delhi and all the principle monuments situated outside the town,
the Yamuna winding its way like a silver streak in the foreground
at a little distance. I said at once to Hailey: “This is the site for
Government House”, and he readily agreed.31
One of the chief architects of the new city, Herbert Baker, describes
it more lyrically, almost mythically. He was standing on Raisina Hill
with two friends, looking at
the deserted cities of dreary and disconsolate tombs and won-

dering how the new city would rise. The sky was overcast and
it rained intermittently. Suddenly, the clouds lifted and the sun
broke through. A brilliant rainbow formed a perfect arch on what
was destined to be a great vista, where Lutyens’ memorial arch
[India Gate] now stands. We acclaimed it was a good omen.32
Omens aside, the British were clearly taken with the view from
Raisina Hill; once again, the sheer height of the Ridge came to play
a key role in state decision-making. Whereas earlier empires (and
even the British in 1857) had been drawn to the heights of the Ridge
for military considerations, the British town planners were guided
by more aesthetic reasons. But aesthetics were not divorced from
power; the impressive views from Raisina Hill were employed to
emphasize both the continuity of British and pre-British empires and
the supremacy of the new rulers.
This was stated quite explicitly by George Swinton, head of the

Delhi Town-planning Committee:
The British Raj has come up at last to range itself alongside

of the monuments of past rulers, and it must quietly dominate
them all.... It is because I find it difficult to see that expression
of dominion in what I fear may develop into little more than a
superlatively well arranged cantonment that I have personally
looked to the rock and the “command” of the Ridge.33
State 159
From the Ridge, the British rulers could literally look down on
the earlier cities of Delhi. Raisina Hill formed the focal point of a
semi-circle of historic monuments, with the Mutiny Memorial to the
north, Shahjahanabad’s Jama Masjid to the northeast, the tomb of
the Mughal Emperor Humayun to the east, and the tomb of the Mughal
statesman Safdarjung to the south.34 In early plans for the new city,
the link between Raisina Hill and Jama Masjid (between what was
increasingly being called “New Delhi” and “Old Delhi”) was empha-
sized; early sketches included a grand boulevard between the two sites.
The new city would be happy to soak in the prestige of the old empire,
but with a firm emphasis on its dominance.
In the end, though, the plan for the grand connecting boulevard
was dropped, largely due to cost concerns. This suggests that, for all
their emphasis on grandeur, town planners had to consider other
factors as well. British officials were constantly torn between the
need to make “New” Delhi suitably impressive and the importance of
keeping costs at a reasonable level, especially as critics in India and
back in Britain began to decry the extravagance of Raj expenditures.35
From an economic point of view, Raisina Hill was a good choice.

Unlike in north Delhi, there were no wealthy business owners who
would have to be compensated. And, largely because of its rocki-
ness, the land itself was cheap. An initial report on potential costs
of land acquisition noted that “waste” land generally had a market
value of around `15 or `20 per acre, or up to `40 per acre closer
to Shahjahanabad, where “grazing is valuable”. In contrast, fertile
farming land, especially cultivable land close to the city, was valued
at up to `140 per acre. (Of course, these seemingly objective valu-
ations were only possible because of major transformation of the
land which the British themselves had set into motion, including
the treatment of land as a mere commodity and the marked prefer-
ence for agriculture at the expense of pastoralism, as detailed in the
previous chapter.)
Raisina Hill had another important benefit, in addition to the

economic and the aesthetic: its slope kept it relatively free from
waterlogging and flooding, and thus reduced the risk of diseases like
cholera and malaria. The Delhi Town-planning Committee attached
great importance to the fact that, in this area,

storm water and drainage of all kinds can have a rapid fall and be
given an outfall above flood level.... The investigations of the san-
itary officers prove that the villages in this area have the healthi-
est past history of any of the areas under the consideration of the
Committee.36
The Committee had one more factor in mind when considering the
Raisina Hill site, which should come as no surprise given the history
of state intervention in Delhi and on the Ridge: the role of the military
in the new city. In keeping with the projected scope and scale of the
new Raj capital, government officials planned for a grand new army
cantonment in Delhi. The cantonment would ideally be close, but not
too close, to the key government buildings of the new city, so that
the civil and military authorities could be in close communication
but would also have their autonomy. As the civilian planners were
closing in on a site on the eastern slopes of the Southern (now Central)
Ridge, they kept up a dialogue with military authorities, who were
increasingly interested in the plot of land on the western slopes of the
same portion of the Ridge. Whereas the eastern site would gaze out
at the historic cities of Delhi, the western site would spread out onto
a more open, empty plain, ideal for military training exercises and
further expansion of the cantonment.
In short, the Raisina site, due in large part to the characteristics of
the Ridge, met all of the imperial requirements for a new city, including
aesthetic, economic, sanitary and military concerns. The confluence
of these factors, quickly identified after a cursory investigation of
possible sites, quickly ended the debate about the siting of the new
city. Raisina Hill would be the focal point of Delhi.
In many ways, it still is. The governmental heart of Delhi, and
indeed of India, is still located on a small rise in the Ridge; “Raisina
Hill” has become a metonym for state power, akin to “The White
House” in the United States or “10 Downing Street” in Britain. The
zones surrounding the (now Central) Ridge, on both its eastern
and western slopes, still have special status. While most municipal
concerns in the city are addressed by the Municipal Corporation
of Delhi, two privileged zones have their own caretakers: Raisina
Hill and its surrounds are looked after by the New Delhi Municipal
Council, while the military has its Cantonment Board.
State 161
Not that these seats of civilian and military power have gone
totally unchallenged, both by civil society and by other parts of the
government. The tension between local government bodies and
imperial (and then national) central governments has simmered in
Delhi since 1911, as the quarry quarrel of Chapter 1 amply demon-
strates. Central to that quarrel was Major Henry C. Beadon, the
Deputy Commissioner of Delhi District. But Beadon’s role in the cre-
ation of New Delhi was not limited to impeding quarrying efforts and
insisting on a proper chain of command. He was, in fact, central to
the process of acquiring land for the new capital. Without his help,
New Delhi would have no ground to stand on.
The Travails of Land Acquisitions, on Raisina Hill

and Beyond
From government correspondence, it is clear that other officials
found Beadon to be insufferable but at the same time indispensable.
Choosing a site for New Delhi turned out to be a relatively simple
task, but actually building a city around Raisina Hill was a gargantuan
undertaking. And before any construction began, land needed to be
acquired. For this, the government needed someone with an intimate
knowledge of the area and its land use customs and regulations. So,
they turned to Beadon, author of the 1910 settlement report for Delhi.
Government officials knew how high the stakes were, and how costly
a wrong move could prove to be. Even before the transfer of the capital,
land speculation was already widespread in the Delhi area. Officials
recognized that, once Delhi became the new imperial capital, the land
market would go into a frenzy and land prices would skyrocket.
In an attempt to rein in the effects of land speculation, officials

made careful use of the Land Acquisition Act of 1894. In many ways,
this law built on the logic of the Indian Forest Act of 1878, which
had been introduced to give the British control over the no-longer-
useless “wastes” of India. The Land Acquisition Act was much more
sweeping, establishing procedures for the government to forcibly
acquire any land it deemed necessary for “public purposes”. The
language of the act was deliberately vague, giving the government
considerable leeway to determine what exactly constituted a “public

purpose” and giving Indians very little recourse if the government
decided it wanted their land.
Within two weeks of announcing Delhi as the imperial capital,

115,000 acres (roughly 465 square kilometers) for the new city had
been notified under the Land Acquisition Act. This initial notification
was largely a preventive measure, as the site for the new city had not
yet been selected. But according to the Land Acquisition Act, com-
pensation rates were tied to market rates for land on the day of the
initial notification (even if the actual payment for the land happened
much later). British officials realized that they were about to make
land in Delhi very, very valuable, and they wanted to artificially freeze
the prices so they could buy up land at their leisure. Despite their
ideological embrace of free market forces, they were happy to disrupt
these forces when they became inconvenient.
The Delhi Town-planning Committee submitted its report rec-

ommending Raisina several months after the price freeze, in June
1912, and by August 1912, the ever-efficient Beadon had produced a
report detailing the estimated costs of acquiring the plot of land the
Committee had recommended. Though significantly less than the orig-
inally notified area, it was still enormous: roughly 43,000 acres, along
with an additional 9,000 acres tentatively set aside as an “Expansion
Tract”. Beadon’s report records, in painstaking detail, the different
types of land to be acquired, and arrives at the final figure of `373,060
as the tentative cost of acquisition.
But despite the seeming precision of Beadon’s report, all was not
well in officialdom. Before submitting the report, Beadon, as usual,
was complaining about the shortcomings of the people and systems
impeding his progress.37 The city also proved surprisingly difficult
to map. As the earlier Settlement Reports of Beadon and others
suggest, the colonial state got its power, not just from military might,
but from its abilities to draw boundaries, create categories, and map
its territories with increasing precision; this enabled a range of new
taxes and regulations, which changed the use of land and altered the
growth of villages and towns in dramatic ways.
But this was easier said than done. Officials found it particularly
difficult to find suitable maps for the areas around the Yamuna River,
State 163
whose water levels fluctuated with the seasons, and whose path had
shifted over the years. Demarcating this area for the capital was a
comedy of errors, with lost maps, indignant engineers, misplaced
boundary markers and suspicion of sabotage. It took the beleaguered
officials several years to finally draw the official boundaries for this
part of the city.38
Once the land was mapped and demarcated, even if inadequately,

the acquisition could be finalized. But this too was no easy process.
In Beadon’s opinion, the problem was that the Land Acquisition
Act was too lenient. In his (typically patronizing) words, the Land
Acquisition Act
has the blemish that it does not recognize the custom of the people
of this country to be dissatisfied with any decision which is not the
pronouncement of the highest tribunal…. It will be necessary to
employ a full time advocate to cope with the litigation.39
It takes a particularly blinkered colonial viewpoint to see the Land

Acquisition Act as a lenient law. In Delhi, the Act has been a tool for
forced urbanization, liquidating agricultural lands, grazing grounds
and village commons and replacing them with government buildings
and urban infrastructure. Officials knew that, with the growth of New
Delhi, life in the region would change irrevocably; but the British had
little interest in giving villagers a stake in the new city.
Freezing “official” land prices in late 1911 using the Land Acquisition
Act was the first step in villagers’ marginalization, assuring that they
would not benefit from the bonanza of rising land prices in Delhi.
But this was just a prelude to their wholesale dispossession. Entire
villages were uprooted to make way for the new city. Raisina Hill, for
instance, gets its name from Raisina Village, whose inhabitants were
forced to abandon their lands, including their old village commons
on the Ridge.
Sometimes, in lieu of (inadequate) compensation money, villagers

were given land elsewhere, so they could, in theory, continue their
livelihoods and put their agricultural skills to good use. But the
government’s relocation efforts were half-hearted at best. Originally,
officials promised farmers plots of fertile land near their old villages.

It quickly became evident that such land was near-impossible to find,
and more far-flung spots were identified, including “wastelands” in
Karnal and Rohtak. In another scheme, farmers were given plots of
government-owned land in Punjab, but only as tenants, with eventual
ownership of the plots dangled as a distant possibility.
Even after employing these dubious tactics, the acquisition of land

for New Delhi was still an expensive proposition, which exceeded
Beadon’s original estimates. As the city planning moved from the
initial cost estimates to the actual payment of compensation to land-
owners, Beadon recedes in the archival records, and is replaced with
an Indian civil servant named S. S. Khazan Singh. Given the title of
Special Land Acquisition Officer, Singh was tasked with the delicate
job of negotiating with landowners who were about to be displaced
from their ancestral villages.
Just like the contemporaneous Quarry Quarrel, Singh’s acquisi-

tion efforts reveal the ambiguity of Indian officials in the British Raj.
On the one hand, the fact that Singh was tasked with such a crucial
responsibility suggests the Raj’s increasing recognition of the skill
and competence of Indian officials. On the other hand, Singh was
clearly carrying out an imperial agenda, one which put him at odds
with many of his compatriots, who were being uprooted by that
very agenda.
Singh’s Indianness likely helped him in his negotiations. He could

relate to landowners in a way that the imperious, patronizing Beadon
could hardly hope to. In his final acquisition report, Singh notes that
“the task of acquiring this property was very heavy and intricate”,
especially because “acquisition operations [began] so late after the
issue of the Gazette Notification of December 1911”. Despite this,
Singh was convinced that “the amount of compensation paid on the
whole... shows the sum awarded to be a very moderate market value
for the property acquired”.
Further, the legal troubles that Beadon feared largely did not
materialize, at least in Singh’s account, which notes:
The reason that in case of such important acquisitions there should

have been so few [legal] applications is that, in each individual
State 165
case, I have been trying to convince the persons interested of the
adequacy of the award made. The procedure is in no doubt very
laborious, tedious and troublesome requiring a considerable
amount of tact and patience, but it is exceedingly beneficial to
both the people and the Government, as it leaves no ground for
the persons interested to grumble and saves the expenses and
worry of litigation which otherwise is sure to be seriously large.40
The government, however, followed up on Beadon’s suggestion

and hired a lawyer from Lahore to work full-time dealing with
legal challenges to the government’s acquisition and compensation
decisions, suggesting that the process was not quite as smooth as
Singh implies.
An Acquisition Postscript
There is more recent evidence, too, that Singh’s claims may have been
overblown. A century after the massive acquisition process began,
its after-effects are still rippling through the Indian court system. At
least 17 cases have been brought against the government in recent
years, from families who claim that their relatives were never properly
compensated.
Admittedly, there was a long gap between the original acquisition

and the filing of these court cases. In the intervening years, anger at
the British was channeled, not through official legal channels, but
through village lore and long-nursed grievances. Most of the current
legal challenges have originated from a small village named Malcha
Patti in Sonepat district of Haryana, roughly 50 kilometers from New
Delhi. The place gets its name from a much older Ridge-side village
called Malcha that bordered Raisina and was completely obliterated
to make way for the grand government buildings and boulevards
of New Delhi. The current inhabitants of the Haryana Malcha are
descendants of the Delhi Malcha, villagers who were driven out by
British machinations.41
Some in the Haryana village remember hearing stories from their

grandparents about British troops storming the villages of Raisina
and Malcha, and killing 33 villagers protesting their impending

displacement. Despite the specificity of this memory, it is difficult to
verify. The British, though hardly averse to celebrating their massacres,
left no record of a military action to clear these villages.
British officials did, though, keep meticulous records of land owner-

ship and government payments. After determining what they felt were
fair compensation rates for land acquisition, the government depos-
ited the compensation money with the Court of the Divisional Judge
in Delhi. The problem was that many of the villagers did not know how
to claim the money. Some had already fled Delhi, embarking on new
lives in areas like (new) Malcha, Haryana. Many were illiterate and had
no way of understanding the compensation procedures. Their descen-
dants now estimate that only ten of the 300 families in (old) Malcha
and Raisina claimed their compensation money.
So where is that money now? This is the question that has hounded
a rose farmer named Sajjan Singh for the past 20 years. Singh is an
inhabitant of the Haryana Malcha, and his grandfather, now in his 80s,
is one of the elders who has passed down stories of British cannons
arriving in the Delhi Malcha. Singh is the reason that these stories have
moved from the realm of lore to that of legal challenges. Back in 2006,
Singh, having learned from a chance encounter with a Revenue Officer
in Delhi that his forefathers should have been compensated for their
land, hired a lawyer to track down the missing money.
If the British court had indeed deposited the money, it would have
been in the official British bank: Bank of Bengal, which later merged
with the Bank of Bombay and Bank of Madras to become the Imperial
Bank of India. After Independence, it became the government-owned
State Bank of India (SBI), which proudly proclaims itself “The Banker
to Every Indian”. In theory, SBI should now hold the money set aside
for the Raisina and Malcha villagers.
But SBI officials, when questioned about this matter, responded
in an affidavit, “The relevant records of the year 1913 of the Bank of
Bengal are not traceable.” SBI is not the only government issue to use
this excuse. Sajjan Singh’s lawyer laments, “Everyone is eventually
hiding behind this one excuse—documents have been lost.”
Faced with this implacable logic, Singh has been running around
in circles trying to get the government to at least recognize that he
State 167
and his family deserve compensation. Recently, he has focused on
one particular plot of land that his family once owned, a 20-acre
strip that has become embroiled in much larger controversy. The
British government had leased the land to a Swedish entrepreneur
named Edward Keventer for the purpose of establishing a dairy farm.
Keventer’s company was purchased by the industrialist R. K. Dalmia
after Independence, and the Dalmia family kept renewing the lease for
the plot, which was still, in theory, only to be used for dairy farming.
Delhi Land and Finance (DLF), the largest real estate developer in
India (and a major player in the next chapter of this book), bought
the Dalmia’s dairy company in the early 2000s, and they have since
embarked on an ambitious plan to build high-rise luxury apartments
on the plot of land.
DLF is known for its close ties to the Congress party, and several
BJP notables raised questions about the propriety of DLF’s high-
rise plans in erstwhile Malcha. How, for instance, did they get the
central government’s permission to build eight-storey buildings in
such a sensitive security zone? And why did they pay such a low fee
to convert the official land use of the area from commercial (dairy) to
residential (luxury apartments)?
As the main opposition party from 2004 to 2014, the BJP cried itself
hoarse about Congress corruption, and Congress collusion with shady
DLF plans was only one more instance of this. Through the network
of contacts he had made during his decades-long legal crusade, Sajjan
Singh began meeting with BJP officials who had become interested
in his case as a way of targeting the Congress. Sajjan Singh says that
he even met with Rajnath Singh, the upper-echelon BJP leader, who
promised his full support.
But these promises disintegrated when the BJP came to power
in 2014. Now that they had engineered the Congress’ humiliating
2014 election defeat, they had little interest in going after the big
corporations that had benefited from Congress patronage, lest they
be held under similar scrutiny for their various corporate collusions.
One BJP leader told Singh that the party “did not want to get caught
in political thickets”.42
From potential savior, the BJP went to being Singh’s chief enemy,
especially when it introduced a controversial ordinance to a key

land acquisition law soon after coming to power. The law in ques-
tion was the “Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land
Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013”, passed by
Congress as a replacement for the much-criticized Land Acquisition
Act of 1894. However, the new act, while providing some additional
benefits and safeguards for those threatened with displacement,
keeps the same general framework of the British law, giving the gov-
ernment similarly sweeping powers to acquire land; it is telling that
most news reports refer to the new act simply as the Land Acquisition
Act of 2013.
The ordinance introduced by the BJP further weakened provisions

meant to protect farmers and others dependent on the land. The
ordinance inspired massive protests, which enjoyed support from a
wide range of farmers’ organizations, social movements and political
organizations, and activists like Sajjan Singh. In response, the BJP
quietly let the ordinance lapse when it came up for renewal.
But this minor victory hardly erases the damage done by many
years of land acquisitions, first carried out by the British govern-
ment, then carried forward by the Indian state. By the government’s
own estimates, almost 75 percent of the roughly 40 million people
who have been displaced by government land acquisitions have not
received compensation. And though the government will hardly
admit it, very few of the remaining 25 percent have received adequate
compensation; despite the government assertion that it buys land at
above the market rate, farmers know that they are better off selling
their land to private developers, even though such developers are
notoriously unscrupulous.
Sajjan Singh is quite aware of these facts, as well as the staggering

amounts of money that are involved in land politics. In the 1910s,
government officials would have put the value of his forefathers’
20-acre plot at about `700; this is the compensation amount that has
mysteriously disappeared. Even at the time, landowners complained
bitterly about unfair compensation rates, but the skyrocketing land
prices in Delhi, which rose far faster than inflation rates, make these
compensation figures look truly ludicrous. The land which DLF
now hopes to develop has an estimated market worth of `90,000
crores; Singh, in one of his many court appearances, said that he
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would thus consider `15,000 crores billion a fair compensation to
his family now.
The court balked and said the government could hardly afford
such an enormous amount. Singh responded that he would happily
accept the land back instead; he would also accept a 100-acre plot
of land in another, less lucrative part of the country. The court
referred the case to the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, the Land and
Building Department, and the Ministry of Urban Development;
Singh’s Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare continues. Meanwhile,
the former villages of the Delhi Ridge still make do on the plains of
Haryana, as they have for the past hundred years.
Back to British New Delhi and its Ridge Transformations

The Land Acquisition Office set up by the British Raj was closed on
5 June 1916; as far as the government was concerned, the process
of acquiring land was over. After all, they had a city to build, which
meant they had a landscape to transform. As one account notes,
25 villages and their agricultural land had been acquired. The

entire landscape of the land taken over was reworked, village
settlements were levelled, many stretches of low-lying land were
filled up, several hillocks were levelled and agricultural fields
were replaced with macadamised roads and buildings.43
This included blasting 20 feet of rock from the top of Raisina Hill
to make a level platform for the new government buildings.
As this description suggests, British planners had no concept of

the Ridge as a “pristine” landscape to be protected. They were happy
to chop down hills when it suited their purposes. And, as noted in
Chapter 1, the British were busy quarrying other parts of the Ridge,
with a dedicated rail line bringing quartzite blocks and Badarpur sand
from the southeastern part of the Ridge to the central Ridge where
New Delhi was being erected.
Despite their general lack of concern for ecological issues, the

British laid the foundations for the modern Ridge forest when they
built New Delhi. As detailed in the previous chapter, there had been

sporadic British attempts to afforest the Northern Ridge, near the
Mutiny Memorial, during the 1880s and 1890s. But these efforts,
with little real backing from the government, sputtered out quickly.
The afforestation of the Ridge only picked up real momentum with the
founding of New Delhi.
The planning for this had started before the villagers of the Ridge
had even been displaced. An early objection to the Raisina Hill site
for New Delhi was that the surrounding Ridge was too barren, worn
down as it was by years of grazing, urban pressures and short-sighted
government land use policies. Although placing government buildings
on a hill would certainly project power, the grace and majesty of the
new capital would be undermined by the rough, dusty grimness of
the Ridge’s bare rocks. One government report notes,
From an aesthetic view, the ridge is not a pleasing sight. The crest
of the ridge forms an unbroken hard line on the horizon, and its
bare slopes littered with debris of rock, and its monotonous brown
color due to the dry grass in winter render it unattractive.44
To counter this objection, Governor-General Hardinge sought the

advice of the Conservator of Forests in the United Provinces, P.H.
Clutterbuck, who assured him that the Ridge surrounding Raisina
Hill could be reforested.
The first concrete step in the reforestation project was to stop

grazing of the land. In the long-term, this would not be an issue, as
all the villages in the area would be uprooted. But in the short-term,
British officials went with their favored strategy of drawing boundar-
ies, fencing off erstwhile grazing land and hiring guards to keep away
village pastoralists. As opposed to the earlier, scattered attempts to
afforest the Ridge, this one had the full weight of the imperial govern-
ment behind it. To give the effort legal weight, the government notified
the Raisina part of the Ridge as a Reserved Forest on 24 November
1913.45 This was the first time, though hardly the last, that the Indian
Forest Act would be applied in Delhi.
The language used by government officials at the time makes it

quite clear that a landscape needn’t actually be tree-filled to count as
a “Reserved Forest”; rather, the label could be aspirational. Wherever
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the British (and later the Indian) government wanted a forest to be,
it could proclaim a Reserved Forest. In place of the barren Ridge,
where, at most, there were grasses and shrubs a few inches high, there
would soon arise “a green mantle of vegetation”.46
With the legal framework in place, and with the to-be forest fenced
off, British planners saw quick results. Within a few years, many trees
had sprung up. One forester noted that there were, in some places,
“thickets it would be difficult to get through”.47 These were generally
trees that thrived in the thin, rocky soil of the Northern Aravallis; they
can still be found in places like Mangarbani.
But the government was not content with this regeneration, even
though it had taken very little time and money on their part. From
the beginning, the goal of the afforestation was aesthetic, and a
rather specific aesthetic at that: the look of imperial grandeur. Not
satisfied with “a scrub type of forest with trees of low height growth”,
city planners instead emphasized the need for “a better type of vegeta-
tion” (elsewhere: “a pleasing type of vegetation”), which would neces-
sitate artificial watering.48 Clearly, “better” and “pleasing” are highly
subjective categories, and in this case, they were filtered through
the lens of a thoroughly British landscape gardening aesthetic; the
trees should be tall, straight and evergreen, and should produce
sightly flowers.
But beyond the individual trees, the emphasis was the role that
the Ridge would play in the larger landscape of New Delhi. As noted
earlier, Raisina Hill was chosen as the center of New Delhi in part
because it formed a promontory from which the older Delhis could
be viewed and, quite literally, looked down upon. This function was
not just confined to Raisina Hill, it applied to the Ridge as a whole.
While planners were mainly concerned with the so-called “New Delhi
Ridge”, which surrounded the new capital, they did not forget the “Old
Delhi Ridge”, especially because of its Mutiny resonances. The latter
received the “Reserved Forest” designation under the Indian Forest
Act in 1915, two years after its more central counterpart.49
Connecting these two parts of the Ridge was a key part of con-
structing New Delhi and bridging it to Delhi’s past, in both literal and
symbolic ways. As the planning committee’s final report notes:

The northern ridge must be considered also, for as soon as the
linking road has been carried out, the drive along the crest from
the Cantonments and Malcha to Hindu Rao’s House and the
Flagstaff Tower will become popular. Arrangements are now
being made to protect its slopes, and, when to an unsurpassed
sentimental and historic interest are added fine trees and shrubs
and flowers, few places should have a stronger attraction....The
views from these drives will be magnificent. The panorama of
the present city, the new city and the monuments and cities
of the past stretching below to the river as seen from the rough
eminence past a foreground of rocks and trees should be one
difficult to match for charm.50
The views were meant for wealthy British officials and civilians,
who could afford the vehicles to drive along these new Ridge roads
and who would appreciate the views of the decaying ruins along with
reminders of the 1857 glory and the supposed role of the British as
the redeemers of Delhi’s long imperial history. And the backdrops
of these views would be the Ridge, which thus could not be a mere
“natural scrub forest”, but instead had to engineered to be as majestic
and stately as possible.
The “Scheme for the afforestation of the Delhi Ridge” drawn up

in February 1913 by B. O. Coventry, Delhi’s Deputy Conservator of
Forests, gives detailed notes about how such a forest could be brought
into being. It would not be enough simply to plant the desired trees
during the rainy season; to achieve the desired aesthetic effect, the
hills of the Ridge would need to be terraced, which would both create
a uniform view and allow for soil regeneration. Coventry also contem-
plated more drastic measures, such as using dynamite to blast holes
in the rock, which could then be filled with soil and planted with tall,
water-hungry trees like the Australian eucalyptus.
Coventry realized that it would be difficult to create a lush, ever-

green forest given the Ridge’s unforgiving conditions; he notes that
owing to the peculiar nature of the ridge, with its shallow rocky
soil, much of the work... will be more or less experimental, and
experience alone will show exactly which species will succeed
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and which will not. There are many species, however, which are
certain to succeed.51
Even this assessment was overly optimistic. Many of the sup-

posedly “successful” species, for instance, were indeed evergreen in
wetter conditions, but dropped their leaves during the dry season
in the arid soil of the Ridge.
Reviewing the afforestation work six years after it had started,
a Forest Department official named R. N. Parker recognized these
flaws. After noting that “a more unpromising site for afforestation
would be difficult to find”,52 Parker asserts that “many of the plants
being planted on a big scale... are unsuited to the locality.” He does
though note that he found Prosopis juliflora, our old friend vilayati
kikar, to be “very conspicuous”.53 Soon after Parker’s initial visits to
the Ridge, vilayati kikar found an enthusiastic proponent in William
Mustoe, who was appointed Forest Officer for the Ridge in 1919.54
Mustoe personally supervised trips around the Ridge to plant the
persistent mesquite, ensuring its rapid spread around the Ridge.
Due to the unexpected (but ecologically unsurprising) proliferation
of vilayati kikar, British afforestation efforts were successful in
reaching their main stated goal: provide a suitably green backdrop to
the new seat of imperial power. Since, from the beginning, the British
plantation drive was driven by aesthetic and political motives, rather
than ecological ones, officials were hardly worried about the potential
impact of vilayati kikar on the diversity and long-term sustainability
of the landscape.
In other aspects of this project, too, the British attitude was one of
studied unconcern. Having given the initial notification for the two
portions of the Ridge in 1913 and 1915, respectively, and having fenced
off the areas and begun plantation efforts, the government began
dragging its feet on the legal procedure mandated by the Indian Forest
Act. This involved what the Act dubs a “Forest Settlement Officer”
who was to survey the area and determine whether any compensa-
tion needed to be paid. The parallel with earlier “Land Settlement”
programs, as well as ongoing land acquisition efforts, is striking: the
goal was for the government to lay claim to land as quickly and cheaply
as possible, with one lone officer left behind to settle any claims from
locals whose lives were disrupted by the government’s moves.

The initial surveying process must, according to the Indian Forest
Act, be completed within three months. The officer then must review
all the claims that come in, which must be submitted in writing,
inquire into the validity of these claims, and single-handedly admit or
reject these claims. Further, the officer is empowered to acquire land
under the Land Acquisition Act of 1894, if this is necessary for the
creation of the Reserved Forest.
Although Forest Settlement Officers had been appointed as part

of the 1913 and 1915 notifications, a 1944 announcement listed a new
Forest Settlement Officer for these areas,55 suggesting that the previous
officer had not actually completed his duties: claims had not been
settled and compensations had not been awarded. Such confusions,
both about the exact boundaries of the Reserved Forest and about the
status of settlement efforts, have persisted up to the present day.
The application of the Indian Forest Act and the efforts to reforest
the Ridge were just one component of New Delhi’s creation. But there
were other, broader trends in urban planning, both before and after
Independence, that had a profound impact on the Ridge, and are thus
crucial to understanding its current condition.
Planning the City, Planning the Ridge

From the beginning, one of the motives driving the design of New
Delhi was a fear of density, and especially of densely packed “native”
populations. New Delhi was consciously set up in contrast to the (sup-
posedly) overcrowded, unsanitary, riotous lanes of Shahjahanabad,
which, through this juxtaposition, became “Old” Delhi. But the very
construction of the new city would inevitably bring a mass of Indians
into Delhi, as builders, miners and other workers. To contain this flow
of migrants, and to house people who would be displaced by the new
city, the British planned to build the “Western Extension”, so named
because it fell to the west of Shahjahanabad, in an area now known
as Karol Bagh.
Much of this extension was located on and around the Ridge,

an area useful to town planners because of its relatively low popu-
lation density (a result of the Ridge’s traditional ecological function
State 175
as a pastoral, rather than agricultural zone). British officials had no
compunction about leveling parts of the Ridge to build housing, even
while it beautified other parts of the Ridge and lauded their magnifi-
cent views. But once the leveling was complete, the actual execution
of the Western Extension project faltered. The government did not
build enough low-income housing or create sufficient urban infra-
structure; instead, relatively wealthy Indians from surrounding areas
built their own houses and took control of the area.
In response to the failure of the Western Extension and other

schemes to relieve congestion and improve sanitation, British offi-
cials created the Delhi Improvement Trust (DIT) in 1937. The Trust,
dominated by nominated appointees rather than elected officials,
was tasked with clearing slums, building infrastructure and widening
roads. Its most important responsibility was developing new planned
neighborhoods, which could house up to 200,000 residents of the
city. The government gave the DIT control over the huge tracts of
land it had acquired for building the city, with the expectation that the
DIT would subsidize the cost of developing neighborhoods by leasing
the land at profitable rates to the new residents. From the beginning
then, even though urban growth in New Delhi was state-dominated,
it was largely driven by a logic of profit-making.56
The state monopoly on urban land, combined with the DIT’s profit-
driven approach, led to a uniquely dysfunctional land market in
Delhi, which was exacerbated by the rush of Indian and international
soldiers and military officers to Delhi during World War II. In this
setting, the DIT was widely accused of profiteering and land specu-
lation. Instead of building enough housing, the DIT instead built up
very limited plots and sold them to the highest bidder (the “war-rich”,
as one commentator dubbed them). By encouraging scarcity in the
market, the DIT pushed up land prices, and then profited by increas-
ing rents. They also used the Land Acquisition Act to buy up land
at cheap prices, and then sell it on the open market once prices shot
up. This dynamic made it extremely difficult for the poor to find
adequate housing.
Such conditions of scarcity and concentrated state power lent

themselves to corruption. Government officials colluded with con-
tractors to build houses made from black market materials that had

been rationed for war efforts, and the houses were then rented out
at exorbitant prices. The corruption was extremely widespread,
affecting the DIT itself, as well as the police, customs officials, and the
Public Works Department.
After Independence, the new leaders of India inherited the DIT,

which was folded into the Ministry of Health. But before they could turn
to reforming the DIT, which most Indian politicians resented greatly,
they had bigger problems to deal with. The huge influx of Partition ref-
ugees put an enormous strain on Delhi’s urban infrastructure, as well
as its social fabric.
As Gandhi fasted in protest against the slaughter of Muslims and

the vandalism of Qutb Sahib’s shrine, other Congress leaders took a
more pragmatic approach, and sought to find ways to safeguard the
order and aesthetics of their seat of power. In addition to capping
the number of refugees allowed in the city, the government set about
building refugee colonies in areas then seen as far-flung outskirts of
Delhi; once again, the Ridge’s relatively low population density made
it a favorite spot for government land-development projects, and
refugee settlements sprung up in distant Ridge areas like Kalkaji. But
roughly two-thirds of the refugees officially allowed in Delhi ended
up, not in these resettlement colonies, but in properties owned by
Muslims who had been forced to flee the city, including in Ridge
areas like Mehrauli. Further, many who were not lucky enough to
be included in the city’s refugee quota stayed in the city anyway,
squatting on government land that was controlled, but had not been
developed, by the DIT.
After Independence, a growing population (including many

non-refugee migrants), combined with lack of infrastructure, led to
growing health threats, which culminated in a deadly cholera epi-
demic in 1956. This prompted Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur, Minister for
Health and Local Self-Government, to write to the head of the Ford
Foundation’s Delhi office, and to ask for help planning for the future
development of the city. The American foundation, whose initial money
came from Henry Ford’s industrial wealth, was becoming increasingly
involved with philanthropic activities overseas, and readily agreed
to the proposal. They even secured the expertise of Albert Mayer, a
famous town planner from the United States.57
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Mayer and his Ford Foundation team collaborated with the Town
Planning Organization (TPO) established by the Indian government in
1955 to deal with the spiraling growth of the city. Shortly after Mayer
arrived in India, the government also formed the Delhi Development
Authority (DDA), which would carry out the plans that Mayer and his
colleagues developed. The DDA was supposed to be a more sensitive,
social justice-oriented version of the DIT, which it replaced. Even at
the time, however, many opposition leaders claimed that the DDA,
given monopoly power over land development in the city, would simply
repeat the mistakes of its predecessor.58
There were other notes of discord as well. The (Indian) TPO team
had an often-tense relationship with the (American) Ford Foundation
team, as the former resented the latter’s breezy paternalism. Just
as British officials like Beadon claimed they knew what was best for
the Indian populations, even as they consistently misread the situ-
ation on the ground, the American planners exuded a mix of confi-
dence and disdain. It hardly helped that, besides Mayer, none of the
American planners had significant experience with Asian cities, let
alone Indian ones.
However, the clash between the American and Indian planners

was largely one of egos, not ideology; most of the TPO planners had
studied urban design in the United States, and they shared Mayer’s
fundamental beliefs about city planning. This ideology was its own
kind of paternalism, with an emphasis on top-down planning that
would create a rational, well-ordered city to replace the haphazard
one built by waves of migrants. For the next six years, the two teams
worked together to create a comprehensive planning document
called, in its final form, the 1962 Master Plan for Delhi.59
It was no coincidence that Americans and Indians were brought

together in this city, at this time. The Ridge, and the city as a whole,
was once again drawn into much larger geopolitical currents. If, at
certain critical points in British history (in 1857 and again in 1911),
the Ridge took on an outsize role in imperial imagination, then the
assumption of power by the newly independent Indian government
on Raisina Hill signaled a different, radically new international align-
ment. This was characterized by the break-up of European empires

after two world wars and long anti-colonial struggles, the correspond-
ing emergence of independent governments in the former colonies,
the rise of the United States as the world’s most powerful nation
(replacing Britain) and the onset of the Cold War.
One of the United States’ chief geopolitical priorities was to keep

countries in what was then known as the “Third World” from joining
the “Second World”, that is, the sphere of international Communism.
If they had to, they would go to war to do this, as the conflicts in
Korea and Vietnam later demonstrated. But there were other, less
militant, responses. The Ford Foundation, for instance, saw itself as
“moderating the cruder elements of anti-Red hysteria in the USA in
the 1950s”.60 It prided itself on a more liberal internationalism, one
which promised “Third World” audiences, especially elite postcolonial
leaders, a way to address poverty and unrest in their countries while
avoiding the tumult and upheaval of revolution.
In keeping with this model, the Master Plan was an attempt to

make Delhi a “modern” city, one that could be a model for India and
for the “Third World” as a whole. The Master Plan was part of a much
larger Western focus on India; the country was the largest recipient of
Ford Foundation funding in the 1950s.
One strategy for creating a modern Delhi was through zoning or

restricting certain areas of the city to certain uses: residential, indus-
trial, commercial, recreational, and so on. This was largely an exten-
sion of British methods of state control through mapping, drawing
boundaries, and regulating activities like grazing. Another, much
more radical strategy was the attempt to create a new urban citizen,
unburdened by the fetters of tradition. One way of doing this was
through the creation of open, green spaces like parks and gardens,
where people from all walks of life could congregate, and where a
new model of public life could emerge. Although these would osten-
sibly be democratic spaces, the imagined “model citizen” was gener-
ally identified, implicitly or explicitly, with the urbane, cosmopolitan
elite. This idea was not unique to Delhi; when designing perhaps
the world’s most iconic urban green space, Central Park in New York
City, Frederick Law Olmsted imagined it as a place where the working
class could come and observe the manners and social graces of the
upper classes.
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More generally, the parks were meant to counteract the congestion
of city life, giving residents an open space to get clean air. Mayer
saw himself as part of the Garden City tradition which, among other
things, decried the deleterious effects of living in dense, polluted
cities, and advocated for more dispersed growth that combined the
best of the rural (open space, healthy living) with the best of the urban
(employment opportunities, vibrant social opportunities). Urban
parks were a central part of this vision, bringing the benefits of village
life into the city.
Ironically, this emphasis on the restorative impact of green space

coexisted with concerted attempts to banish any trace of the rural from
Delhi. In many planning documents from this time, the rural is con-
flated with the backward and the uncivilized. As part of its zoning regu-
lations, the Master Plan prohibits “village-like trades” in the urbanized
part of Delhi, on the grounds that they “cast an unhealthy influence
on the urban setting”. For the planners, “milch cattle and dairymen”
were of particular concern. The Master Plan gives provisions to relo-
cate them to “urban villages”, pockets of rurality exempt from the
plan’s strict regulations. These were generally pre-existing villages that
were swallowed up by Delhi’s rapid expansion. As the scholar Ravi
Sundaram notes, “This was in effect a program for a modernized form
of urban apartheid, a purging of the village from the city through legal
banishment to designated enclosures.”61
Another way of enforcing this apartheid was through the promo-

tion of a strictly rural, agricultural “Green Belt” that would encircle
the urbanized core of Delhi but would not take part in any urban
activities. This agricultural belt would, in theory, help feed the city,
while also containing urban sprawl.
The ambiguous attitude towards green areas in Delhi (praised as

parks; marginalized as productive landscapes) led to further trans-
formations on the Ridge. One the one hand, the Ridge was imagined
largely as a recreational space; in the 1962 Master Plan, it is referred
to several times as a “Regional Park”. The model is clearly Western.
Commenting on the Ridge just north of Raisina Hill, the Master Plan
states, “It should not be allowed to be dissipated by small undesirable
uses but should be gradually developed as a central public park in

Delhi, comparable to Hyde Park in New York.”62 The transformation
of the Ridge into a park was envisioned as a slow process: “small por-
tions of it may be developed... and the rest may remain in a natural
state with the under growth.”63 The difficulty of keeping any of Delhi’s
land in a “natural state” would soon become evident.
While parks were promoted, the long-suffering pastoralists of

the Ridge were dealt yet another blow. Their profession dismissed
as non-urban and hence backward, they could either submit to state
displacement, find another career or continue keeping livestock on
the sly. Many chose the last option. The Master Plan was notoriously
difficult to implement, since it called for a total reordering of urban
life, in a city where “illegal” settlements (especially on DIT land) had
already proliferated and become a fact of life. Many government
officials, especially the ones working on the ground, also had a material
interest in bending the rules of the plan. They could collect bribes on
a regular basis and build up networks of power and patronage.
Such dynamics continue to this day. In the Gujjar-dominated

village of Chandrawal near the northern Ridge, which suffered under
both Mughal and British rule, the marginalization of their pastoral
livelihood continues. This iteration of Chandrawal is now sandwiched
between two neighborhoods planned in the 1950s to accommodate
Partition refugees, Jawahar Nagar and Kamla Nagar. Chandrawal is
classified as an “urban village” so the residents are technically allowed
to keep cattle within the bounds of the neighborhood. But there is little
space to graze, so the cows are let out to roam around the surrounding
neighborhoods, eating trash and blocking traffic. Many residents also
run dairies that have not been authorized by the government. Both
these activities are, technically, illegal, but the residents know who to
pay off. Further, as the scholar Amita Baviskar notes, “The fact that
Chandraval village also has a sidebusiness in supplying musclemen
for local politicians, property brokers and others who need someone
to lean on or be leant upon also helps give its dairies a degree of
immunity from harassment by city authorities.”64
The ongoing resistance of Chandrawal villagers, and their uneasy

alliance with a range of officials, is indicative of the larger failure of
the Master Plan. The grand ambitions of the Master Plan quickly
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dissolved, overwhelmed by the realities of urban life and governance
in Delhi. Beyond the impracticality of the new zoning regulations,
there were massive problems with land development, as the DDA
followed in the footsteps of the DIT. The basic issue was the same:
the DDA, like the DIT, still refused to build enough housing, instead
developing small plots and selling them at relatively high prices.
The dearth of low-income housing was especially pronounced; the
growth of informal working-class settlements (pejoratively dismissed
as “slums”) was largely in response to this failure.
The continuity from DIT to DDA indicates the similarities between

the British and Indian approaches to city planning, not least in their
emphasis on a heavy state hand, and their prioritizing of the urban at
the expense of the rural. Both these tendencies were evident in their
respective land acquisition strategies, which used the same legal tool:
the Land Acquisition Act of 1894.
When building New Delhi, the British acquired roughly 35,000

acres of land, largely from the surrounding villages, including several
on the Ridge. The DDA outdid them, acquiring roughly 39,500 acres
in 1959, in the biggest land nationalization outside of the Communist
world. Again, this was done at the expense of Delhi’s villages, as land
prices were once more frozen by the initial notification under the
Land Acquisition Act, and meager compensation was given to villagers
whose farmlands and village commons were purchased by the state.
Due to the Master Plan’s “urban village” provision, however, villages
were not totally uprooted, unlike the cases of Malcha and Raisina;
instead, the residential core of villages (called the abadi) were allowed
to stay, while the villagers’ means of livelihood (farming land, grazing
land, wood lots, etc.) were snatched away.
This enormous land-buying spree is sometimes referred to as the

“Delhi Experiment”. It is universally recognized as a failure. The 1962
Master Plan had the goal of planning and controlling Delhi’s growth
for next twenty years. Halfway into this time period, it was abundantly
clear, even to the government, that the plan had been a bust. A report
written by the TPO’s successor, the TCPO (Town and Country Planning
Organization), cataloged the following failures: near-universal class-
based segregation; extensive violations of the meticulously planned

zoning rules; a lack of housing options, especially for the poor; and
widespread squatting on DDA land. An earlier report bemoaned the
skyrocketing of land prices, which were largely the result of DDA-
driven land speculation; land prices had jumped nearly four times from
1958 to 1969.65
On the Ridge, these failures were particularly clear. Historically,

because of its rocky soil, the Ridge has been sparsely populated.
It thus became a popular spot for “illegal” housing of all kinds, from
super-elite mansions to desperately poor settlements. As we shall see
in the next chapter, the ultra-rich took advantage of the supposedly
“rural” character of the far reaches of the Southern Ridge—part of
the Master Plan-mandated “Green Belt”—to build lavish homes they
dubbed “farmhouses” to keep up the legal pretext of their settlements.
A New Beadon
One of the young officials who witnessed the disintegration of the
Master Plan’s grand hopes was Jagmohan Malhotra, usually referred to
simply by his first name. Jagmohan was outraged at the way the Master
Plan’s norms were being violated, and much of his long, accomplished
and, to many, notorious career can be seen as an attempt to create the
ordered city that the Master Plan had promised.
Though Jagmohan was inspired by the American-influenced

Master Plan (which he called “a pioneering work”) he bore more
of a resemblance to European figures, and especially to the British
officials that once ruled Delhi. Jagmohan was, in many ways, the
Beadon of post-Independence Delhi. He is not always mentioned in
mainstream accounts of the city (just as everyone knows Lutyens,
but few know Beadon), but if one dusts the surface just a bit, one
finds his fingerprints everywhere. His influence on the city as a whole
is remarkable; his particular interventions on the Ridge are also
surprisingly pronounced.
Like Beadon, he presents himself as a hard-headed but ultimately

kind-hearted administrator, making the tough decisions that may
attract enemies in the short term, but will benefit society in the long
term. In one of his writings, he registers his agreement with “Lord
Wavell’s observation: ‘India can be governed firmly or not at all.’”66
State 183
Throughout his long career in Delhi, he remained convinced that
the problem with the urban planning in Delhi was not the DDA’s total
inability to build adequate housing for the poor, nor the perverse
incentives the DDA’s land monopoly gave for corruptions large and
small. No: the problem was “the soft and permissive nature of the
Indian state”.67 Government officials simply lacked the will-power to
stand up to builders, real estate developers, and “encroachers”, and
sternly implement the letter of the law, for the greater good of society
(as he saw it).
He had the opportunity to combat this chaos relatively early in

his career. As an Implementation Commissioner for the DDA in the
1960s, he saw myriad failures of the Master Plan. By 1975, he had risen
to the position of Vice-Chairman of the DDA. In June of that year,
when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed a State of Emergency
on the nation and began ruling by decree, Jagmohan found his oppor-
tunity to re-order Delhi in the ways he had always dreamed of doing.
Jagmohan had long been an admirer of Baron Haussman, the

nineteenth-century figure who had overseen the renovation and mod-
ernization of Paris, giving the city wider, more “rational” roads and
uprooting many traditionally working-class neighborhoods. Most of
the changes were made in the name of order and control, especially
given Paris’s history of mass demonstrations; the volatile working
classes would be both more scattered and more easily controlled by
police stationed on the spacious new roads. The creation of green
areas was a major part of the reconfiguring of Paris, and many build-
ings were razed to make room for parks. One of Jagmohan’s chief
aims was to reshape Delhi in much the same way Haussman had
reshaped Paris.68
He found willing partners in Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay,

who oversaw most of the more unsavory aspects of Emergency.
Many in Delhi were targeted during the brutal “cleansing” of the city
during Emergency (both Indira Gandhi and Jagmohan were fond
of the “cleaning” metaphor), including left-wing students in Delhi’s
universities and colleges, opposition politicians from both the left and
the right, and intransigent journalists (of whom there were alarmingly
few). But the poor undoubtedly bore the brunt of the Emergency’s

disciplinary force. Jagmohan, like many British and Indian officials
before him, had an instinctive revulsion to crowded, low-income
areas, especially in the Muslim-dominated old city of Shahjahanabad.
In a book he wrote a year before the Emergency, Jagmohan had this
to say:
Certain parts of Shahjehanabad have become dead—infrastruc-

turally and culturally. In Hauz Qazi, Lal Kuan and Turkman Gate,
bums and bad characters are all that can be seen at nightfall.
Only indecent remarks of cheap film songs are heard. The very sight
of eating places with broken chairs, stinky tables with shabby and
shirtless waiters, is repellent. It is necessary to brighten up these
areas; otherwise these will remain the breeding grounds for crimi-
nals and rioters.69
The Emergency targeted such areas, even though the poor were
hardly the only ones breaking the norms of the Master Plan; they
simply made a more convenient target for the state’s force. About
60,000 families were displaced, their homes demolished by govern-
ment bulldozers.
Jagmohan was widely reviled for his role in the Emergency. He

was stung enough by this criticism that he wrote an entire book
defending himself, called Island of Truth.70 Jagmohan justified the
demolitions on largely aesthetic terms, in words that resonate with
the British creators of New Delhi, and all the state actors that have
sought to portray the glory of the capital. In a later book, he writes,
After the execution of the clearance-cum-resettlement-cum-

redevelopment project, Delhi looked a neat, clean, orderly and
organised city with a personality and identity of its own. Areas
around historical monuments were cleared, landscaped and
developed as parks and community greens. Not only was the
architectural and cultural legacy of the metropolis preserved but
also airy lungs were created all around.71
Jagmohan’s celebration of greenery combined the British emphasis

on grandeur with the American emphasis on parks as a means of moral
improvement, to transform the “bums and bad characters” of Delhi.
State 185
Several years after the Emergency, Jagmohan was elevated to
the position of Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, the highest executive
position in what was, at the time, officially known as the Union
Territory of Delhi. This means there was no state legislature—another
attempt by the central government to keep control over its capital—
and that the Lieutenant Governor had considerable power, as long
as he did not run afoul of the leaders on Raisina Hill. By this time,
the anti-Emergency backlash had ended. Indira Gandhi became
Prime Minister again in January 1980, and Jagmohan was named
Lieutenant Governor of Delhi in February.
In this role, Jagmohan oversaw the biggest expansion of Delhi’s

protected forests in decades. After the 1913 and 1915 notifications of
the Ridge (Central and Northern, respectively) as Reserved Forest,
subsequent legal notifications had simply tinkered with their bound-
aries, or appointed new Forest Settlement Officers to take up the
seemingly-endless task of settling claims to compensation for forest
land. This was true before Independence and after; a 1958 notification
named yet another Forest Settlement Officer, and a 1965 notification
redrew the boundaries of the Central Ridge.72
Jagmohan changed this trend. He was the first in post-Independence

Delhi to use the Indian Forest Act to actually notify sizable plots of new
forest land. Always ambitious, he notified more than twice the amount
of forest land than his British predecessors had; 5,853.9 acres to their
2,343. He had the land notified as a “Protected Forest”, which is slightly
less stringent than a “Reserved Forest”, and allows for more local uses,
though still under the state’s watchful, punitive eye. The notified land
was composed of 25 sites scattered across Delhi, with the majority of
the land on various parts of the Ridge.73
The seeming precision of the figures involved in the notification

concealed a much messier reality on the ground. According to the offi-
cial notification, all of the land involved already belonged to the gov-
ernment; it had either been acquired by the DDA as part of the “Delhi
Experiment” or was owned by the Land and Development Office
(L&DO), a colonial-era institution that had handled much of the acqui-
sition and land record administration during the building of New Delhi.

However, these acquisitions, as we have seen, had been quite
contentious. They were resisted by the villagers who were losing their
farmland and their commons, and later, many DDA and L&DO plots
were occupied by those who migrated to Delhi. Sometimes, these two
groups formed uneasy dependencies. Some villagers, for instance,
rented out land that used to be their village commons, but was now
technically government owned; migrants had little choice but to
accept these arrangements, which often involved bribes to local police
and other officials. Jagmohan’s forest notifications did little to change
this tangled web of relations.
Further, there was still a lingering sense of public resentment and

outrage at the large-scale housing demolitions of the Emergency, so
Jagmohan did not have the leverage to push through another round
of demolitions to clear the way for parks and forests. This agenda
would have to wait for another decade or so, when the public mood
had changed yet again, as we’ll see later in this chapter.
As Lieutenant Governor, Jagmohan still found ways to reshape the

city, though his actions suggest that his emphasis was not primarily
on ecology, but on the larger message that greenery could send. The
greenery itself was expendable, if there were other, more powerful
ways to send that same message. This was evident in Jagmohan’s
central role in planning the 1982 Asian Games, a kind of regional
Olympics, with athletes from 33 Asian countries competing. Hosted in
Delhi, the Games were, in the eyes of the organizers, including Indira
Gandhi, yet another way to equate the city with larger glory and gran-
deur. Jagmohan writes that the Games “won applause from thousands
of visitors” and “enhanced India’s prestige abroad” thus giving “new
self-confidence to the nation”.74 Live telecasts of the Games, a novel
phenomenon in India at the time, spread the event around the country
instantly, and strengthened the symbolic connection between Delhi
and India as a whole.
On a more material level, the Games involved a major reordering

of the city, including the building of eight new stadiums and a “Games
Village” to house the foreign athletes and coaches. The Games were
also used as an opportunity to push through several infrastructure
projects, including a local railway line circling the city. To handle
State 187
this construction boom, contractors and builders brought in huge
numbers of migrant workers. One account estimates that roughly one
million workers migrated to the city in the lead-up to the Games.75
More local sources were tapped as well, both for labor and for
raw materials. Badarpur sand from Bhatti Mines and other Ridge
sites was an essential ingredient for many construction projects, and
quarrying operations kicked into high gear to meet the increased
demand. But this was not the only way that the Bhatti Mines area
factored into the Games preparations. The government decided that
one of the new athletic facilities, a shooting range, would be located
on a patch of land adjacent to the mines, which quarry workers
had long been using as a grazing ground for their livestock and as
a playground for their children. The government had little regard
for such uses of the land, and construction of the shooting range
soon began.
The government’s attitude to the workers, and especially to their
grazing activities, is, perhaps, to be expected. More surprising was
the government’s stance on a patch of forest land that Jagmohan had
seemed to intend to promote. The land in question was in the vicinity
of Siri Fort, the ramparts of the walled city built in the early fourteenth
century by Alauddin Khilji as a defense against Mongol invasions.
It served that purpose well, but now, like all of Delhi’s old cities, it lies
in ruins. Before 1982, these ruins were surrounded by forest. In order
to build the Asian Games Village, much of the forest was cleared, to
the alarm of the nascent environmental movement in the city.76
It is unclear how much glory, and how much international
attention, the Games actually brought to Delhi. Despite Jagmohan’s
references to thousands of visitors, the overwhelming majority of
foreigners who came to Delhi were either athletes or officials. Only
an estimated 200 foreign tourists and spectators came for the event.
Further, the construction for the Games was extremely costly, and
the costs were hardly recovered. Many of the stadiums lay vacant
after the event, unable to create revenue, until they were renovated
in another costly procedure for another costly mega-event: the 2010
Commonwealth Games. An athletes’ dormitory called the Players’
Building was not finished by the time the 1982 Games started and
remained half-built for the next 15 years. The influx of workers

exacerbated Delhi’s chronic housing crunch, leading to even more of
the informal settlements that Jagmohan so despised.
Jagmohan still portrayed the Asian Games as a victory, since it

was, after all, a successful media event, seen by all the country. This
was Jagmohan’s last major attempt to reconfigure Delhi. From 1984
to 1990, he served as the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir. His stint
as Governor, during a raging separatist insurgency, was marked by
controversy. He was sent by the government because of his repu-
tation as a firm administrator, but, as one journalist put it, he used
his post to usher in “a period of unfettered repression”.77 As usual,
Jagmohan defended himself by writing a book, entitled My Frozen
Turbulence.78
By 1996, Jagmohan had left Congress and joined the BJP, and he
was named Minister of Urban Development in 1999. This gave him
an opportunity to revisit Delhi, which he describes in terms that are
quite literally paternalistic.
I was deeply agonised. In my earlier assignments in the DDA

and as Lieutenant Governor, I had nursed Delhi like my child and
ensured its planned development on the ground, strong opposition
from vested interests notwithstanding. I found that this child had
been badly bruised by all and sundry.79
Unable to beat back the collective force of these “vested inter-

ests” and resented by his colleagues for the friction he was causing,
Jagmohan was shifted to the less powerful position of Minister of
Tourism. Excluded from the large-scale modernist urban restructur-
ing projects that he so admired, he instead took up smaller interven-
tions. Several of these involved the use of parks to convey the majesty
of the state by invoking past dynasties. Given his increasing align-
ment with the Hindu nationalist rhetoric of the BJP, he could hardly
invoke the Mughals or Sultans; in proud Hindutva tradition, he chose
to glorify Prithviraj Chauhan as the savior of Delhi. Beyond the larger
philosophical and political problems with his reading of history, it
also simply gets the facts wrong. Although Prithviraj controlled the
Delhi region, he never used it as a capital; as mentioned earlier, he
was based in Ajmer.
State 189
This did not stop Jagmohan from installing a huge statue of
Prithviraj Chauhan in the Southern Ridge, where the ruins of the old
Rajput fort of Lal Kot meet the ruins of Jahanpanah, the walled city
built by Mohammad bin Tughlaq. The statue was inaugurated and
unveiled by the Home Minister, L. K. Advani, better known for his role
in the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Several months later, Advani
led a prayer ceremony at the nearby Qutb Minar, in an attempt to
reclaim it as a Hindu space.
Advani’s view of history may be skewed and reductive, but he,

like Jagmohan, understands the role of symbolic spaces in projecting
state power. Although he might deny the legitimacy of the sultans
who built the Qutb Minar and the surrounding city, he, whether
consciously or unconsciously, picked up a crucial lesson from them:
that states rule not just through military might, but through meta-
phors, symbols, and religious and political spectacles, whether they
are architectural splendors, sporting mega-events or prayer services.
Advani could not deny the significance of the Ridge-side minaret,
Delhi’s abiding symbol of state power, even as he tried to imbue it
with new meaning.
Part III: Services
The Ridge, then, has been the site of both pitched military battles
and symbolic demonstrations of the state’s legitimacy, grandeur and
righteousness. But the state cannot sustain itself only through shows
of force and strength, whether literal or symbolic. Beyond coercion
and propaganda, the state also needs to provide at least some basic
services to at least some of the population. This is not divorced from
the use of military power; as the state expands through military might,
it also promises (though does not necessarily deliver) stability and
peace to its inhabitants. Of course, the scope and range of services
provided (and expected) varies dramatically through time and space,
with the modern era witnessing a huge proliferation of state programs
implemented for the benefit of citizens, from health care to education
to employment schemes.
But the services a state provides are not necessarily an unalloyed

good. They benefit some more than others, and can, in many cases,

harden existing power relations rather than challenge them. What
is more, the idea of “public services” raises crucial questions: who is
considered part of the public? Are slaves? Are women? Are the so-called
“low” castes? Are foreigners?
Deforestation for the Public Good

These general questions have had very specific resonances in the
exercise of state power in Delhi, and on the Ridge in particular. And
these questions go back to the early days of the Sultanate, when
Delhi was first being established as a political capital. In those times,
modern terminology like “public services” was hardly current; a more
religious idiom was used. But just as Qutbuddin Aibak and his rival
Bahauddin Tughril used authoritative religious terminology to make
very political and very contested claims about their sovereignty over
North India, early sultans like Shamsuddin Iltutmish invoked reli-
gion to give symbolic weight to the mundane tasks of governance on
the edge of the Arid Zone.
In 1230 ce, as the legend goes, Iltutmish had a dream. The Prophet
Muhammad appeared before him, riding his horse through the hilly
terrain at the outskirts of Iltutmish’s newly powerful capital city of
Delhi. The horse stopped in the middle of a low basin and tapped his
hoof on the ground. In the dream, Iltutmish understood that it was his
sacred duty to build a reservoir at this spot. Several days later, Iltutmish
was surveying the land around his city, and he suddenly stopped,
recognizing the landscape from his dream. He approached the spot
where the horse had halted, and he saw a lone hoof print in the dirt.
He immediately ordered that a water tank (or hauz) be dug at this spot.
The tank took on his name and became known as Hauz-i-Shamsi.

It was a grand construction, with a pavilion exactly in the center,
where the hoof print had been found, to commemorate the prophetic
vision. It became a crucial water source for his city, and domestic
servants would make the trip from the city center to the hauz on the
outskirts to collect water and do laundry.
It is not surprising that the hauz was freighted with such symbolic
and religious significance. Water was a precious resource, not easy
to find in the Arid Zone. Therefore, providing his people with water

was one of the most significant services a ruler could provide. The
Ridge, with its variable slopes and its rocky soil, was a fickle source of
water. However, if one dug at the right place, one would be rewarded
with plentiful groundwater that had been filtered through the porous
quartzite of the Ridge and was hence remarkably clean.
But the Hauz-i-Shamsi suffered from the political turmoil that

enveloped Delhi after Iltutmish’s death. Different groups of powerful
slaves propped up a series of short-lived sultans, until, in 1266, a
Turkish slave named Ghiyasuddin Balban was finally able to wrest
control of the empire from his rivals. He made many efforts to
consolidate the Sultanate’s power and to expand his reach farther
into the hinterland of northern India. But one of the first problems
confronting him was more immediate. Hauz-i-Shamsi, and the area
around it, was plagued by attacks and thefts. Domestic servants were
beaten up and robbed when they went to the hauz to do their daily
chores, and people from the city did not feel safe traveling beyond the
walled city at night, for fear of attacks.
The assailants were from the Meo community, a group that has
much in common with the Gujjars. Both, until the colonial era,
largely relied on a nomadic, pastoral lifestyle, and both were typically
portrayed as dangerous, uncultured and unreliable by those living
in more settled communities. But both were also admired for their
rebelliousness and political independence.
Balban had little patience for the Meos. He realized that they were
hiding in the forests around the hauz and in the outskirts of the city
more generally. One of his first acts as Sultan was to clear the trees
at the edge of the city, so the Meos would have no place to stage their
attacks. He then launched an aggressive military campaign against
the Meos, bringing the region surrounding Delhi firmly under his
control. He used this same method to expand his empire, hiring
specialized woodcutters to clear paths through forested areas, then
relocating intransigent populations, enslaving women and children,
and promoting agriculture by offering the newly cleared land to
loyalists.80
Both the deforestation and the military action could be considered

a public service; certainly, for the domestic servants who had to make
State 193
their daily trips to the hauz, life was easier. But the “public” had strict
boundaries; for the nomadic and pastoral communities of the area,
Balban’s reign was disastrous.
Forestation for the Public Good

This was hardly the last time the state used deforestation as a
military strategy. After their victory over the rebels in 1857, British
officials went on a tree-cutting spree, deforesting large swaths of
land between the Ridge and Shahjahanabad, and in the city itself,
both as punishment and as a way to facilitate easier surveillance of
the population.
But, as we have seen, British interest in the Ridge eventually

turned to afforestation, especially once the construction of New Delhi
began. And even though the British rationale for afforesting the Ridge
was largely aesthetic and political, environmental concerns, and their
impact on humans, featured as a secondary impetus. One planning
document plainly noted that, while aesthetic factors were the most
important, afforesting the Ridge would also have the effect of stopping
the run-off of rainwater, and hence preventing soil erosion.81
For Jagmohan, the emphasis on parks and forests was clearly part of
a larger aesthetic vision of a “clean and green” city that would promote
Delhi’s prestige both locally and internationally. But Jagmohan, even
more than the British, described parks and greenery as a public good,
something that would benefit the residents of the city. Using a bodily
metaphor that has become increasingly popular, Jagmohan empha-
sized the need for a city to have lungs so that it could breathe easily
and cleanly.
During Jagmohan’s time as Lieutenant Governor, another kind of

environmental rhetoric was emerging in the city, one that emphasized
wildness and transcendence over a tidy, state-imposed neatness. This
was in sync with the Romantic strains of an environmental movement
that was gaining global recognition. In terms of Ridge activism, the
pioneers were a group of students who eventually founded a group
called Kalpavriksh (named after the bountiful tree of Indian myth).
They were moved by the messier parts of the Ridge, the untamed
patches full of thickets and undergrowth and wildlife. As a later report

on the Ridge opined, “unless one is exposed to its rough terrain, its
adventure, smells and sounds, it is difficult to sense the peace it can
provide.”82 Their engagement with environmental activism was often
sparked by deeply emotional connections to the little-explored eco-
systems of the Ridge, and one of their first organized activities was
leading nature walks with other college students.83
Their vision of the Ridge stood in marked contrast to the actions of
the state post-Independence, and to the idea of the Ridge as a prim,
proper, manicured space. The Master Plan had envisioned the Ridge
as a Regional Park, and later administrations were happy to comply
with this vision. In 1962, the Central Ridge around Raisina Hill was
handed over to the Central Public Works Department, so that it could
be developed and beautified as a set of parks; in 1968, a similar order,
with similar rationale, transferred the Northern Ridge to the DDA.
Further, in the decades after Independence, the government had
done little to maintain the larger Ridge as a forest.
The student-activists of Kalpavriksh were keenly aware of this.
In 1979, one of the students found out that the government had
allotted a plot of land in the Central Ridge for building schools.
They organized a protest rally, gathering support from the residents
of the neighborhood as well. Though they were unable to stop the
construction of the schools, they had laid the foundations for Ridge-
centric environmental activism.84
Despite their criticism of state attitudes and actions towards the
Ridge, the students found that some very high-level government
figures were receptive to their demands. In 1980, the students sent
a petition to Indira Gandhi asking that no new constructions come
up on forest land. Gandhi’s urban vision was quite well aligned with
Jagmohan’s (as the Emergency and the Asian Games had shown). She
also shared his environmental sensibility; in the late 1970s, she had
requested the Indian Air Force to modify a planned construction on
the Ridge so that the city’s skyline and the forest could be preserved
(note the twinning of aesthetic and environmental concerns). She was
also responsive to the students’ petition, which likely contributed to
Jagmohan’s notification of 25 new forest zones.
However, these limited steps could not counteract Delhi’s explo-
sive population growth, which necessitated new “illegal” settlements
State 195
for the poor and the rich alike. So while environmental consciousness
grew, it did little to change the larger social, political and economic
dynamics that were eating away at the greenery of the Ridge.
Pollution and the Public Interest

The terrain of environmental activism in Delhi began to shift in the
1990s, largely due to a judiciary that was increasingly receptive to com-
plaints about environmental issues, which were framed as matters of
public good. A key figure in this development was the environmental
lawyer M. C. Mehta, who filed a slew of legal petitions targeting pol-
lution in the city. In his petitions, Mehta repeatedly invoked Delhi’s
Master Plan, arguing that its careful zoning rules and regulations, espe-
cially regarding industrial activity, needed to be strictly enforced.
Mehta’s petitions are categorized as Public Interest Litigations

(PILs), in which the complainant is not necessarily the aggrieved
party, but rather a citizen or organization concerned with the public
good. PILs proliferated in India after the Emergency, as the judiciary,
which had been notoriously compliant during Indira Gandhi’s exper-
iment with authoritarianism, sought to re-establish its progressive
credentials and prove that it was working on behalf of the downtrod-
den. PILs in the early 1980s thus largely focused on marginalized
or oppressed groups. For example, in 1982, the People’s Union for
Democratic Rights (PUDR) filed a PIL on behalf of the construction
workers who were employed building stadiums for the Asian Games
and who were facing widespread labor abuses.
However, the PILs filed by M. C. Mehta were of a very different

nature. They also claimed to be in the “public interest”, but in a more
nebulous way. Mehta argued that the residents of Delhi as a whole
would have a higher quality of life if industrial pollution and other
kinds of environmental ills, including air pollution and noise pol-
lution, were reduced. Although Mehta filed scores of PILs address-
ing issues across India, one PIL in particular (to be precise, Writ
Petition 4677 of 1985) would go on to have an outsize impact on the
national capital.
Writ Petition 4677 has had a long life, working its way up to
the Supreme Court, which issued a number of rulings related to the

petition. The one that got the most attention was a 1996 ruling man-
dating that all “hazardous” industries should be relocated outside the
city. This was later expanded to all “polluting” industries in “non-
conforming” areas; that is, areas not zoned as industrial in the
Master Plan.85 In 2000, the government finally attempted to enforce
this order, which rendered thousands of workers jobless. This led
to a series of massive protests, which rocked the city for four days,
as factory owners found a rare piece of common ground with their
workers and encouraged workers to rally against the ruling.
This case suggests the ambiguities of “public interest”. Lawyers

like Mehta positioned workers’ rights as simply a sectional interest, as
opposed to environmental issues, which impact the entire population.
But for the thousands who lost their jobs due to factory closures,
marginally cleaner air hardly made up for the loss of livelihood. This
brings us back to the realm of anti-ecological environmentalism.
While the largest source of air pollution in Delhi is vehicular traffic, not
industry, there has never been a Supreme Court order relocating all
SUVs and luxury cars outside the city’s borders. Moreover, this kind of
environmental thinking draws on an aesthetic tradition, from Beadon
to Jagmohan, that sees the landscape in terms of neatness, cleanness,
and respectability, and does little to solve the root problems of ecolog-
ical destruction. (Mehta, not surprisingly, was one of the chief propo-
nents of banning mining in Delhi, a move which embodied precisely
this kind of short-sighted logic.)
In the case of the Ridge, this anti-ecological environmentalism

was only one of the streams of activism that emerged in the 1980s
and 1990s. The members of Kalpavriksh, though also from an upper-
middle-class background like Mehta, began to develop a much more
thoroughgoing critique of consumer society and to question their own
privileged role in that society. Nonetheless, their rhetoric, especially
their emphasis on “encroachments” on the Ridge, could feed into a
more narrowly conceived, top-down environmentalism.86
These different streams of environmentalism came together in

1992, when several portions of the Ridge were transferred to the
DDA. Given the DDA’s evident lack of concern for forestry, this move
led to an outcry from Delhi’s multifaceted environmental movement.
Seventeen organizations banded together to form the “Joint NGO
State 197
Forum to Save the Delhi Ridge”. The forum included small local
groups like Kalpavriksh, as well as the Delhi branches of international
organizations like the World Wildlife Fund. The forum took to the
streets with protests and marches, but it also used its economic and
social capital to pursue other means of engagement. They enlisted well-
known Delhi residents to write letters and sign petitions in defense of
the Ridge, and they produced “Save the Ridge” commercials that aired
during prime-time news hours. Noted author Khushwant Singh was
on the advisory board of the forum. Their campaign was widely covered
in the media, especially the English-language media, which saw itself
as articulating the demands of a newly assertive middle class.87
Due to increasing public and media pressure, the government

established a 10-member committee to give recommendations about
the management of the Ridge. Led by Lovraj Kumar, an oil executive
and civil servant, the committee included six government officials
and four NGO leaders. The committee’s report, released in 1993,
was far-reaching, with 20 recommendations, but at its core was the
demand that all of the Ridge be notified as a Reserved Forest, and
that the boundaries of the forest be immediately demarcated. Other
recommendations were officially calling the Ridge a Reserved Forest
(as opposed to a Regional Park) in the Master Plan, minimizing the
conversion of the Ridge into manicured gardens, and creating a
Management Board to oversee the protection of the Ridge.88
One key recommendation dealt with the thorny issue of who should
actually control the Ridge. After much debate, and with much trepi-
dation, the committee recommended that the DDA should retain its
control of the Ridge, with the exception of the Asola-Bhatti Wildlife
Sanctuary, which was already under Forest Department control. This
was deeply ironic, given that the “Save the Ridge” agitation had gained
momentum precisely as an anti-DDA movement. However, the com-
mittee members reluctantly concluded that only the DDA had the power
and the resources to properly manage the Ridge, a task that included
demolishing encroachments, securing the Ridge’s borders, and devel-
oping parks and schools outside the Ridge to relieve the pressure on
Ridge land. The committee insisted, though, that the DDA should set
up a separate Ridge Management Division within the agency, which
would be sensitive to the unique requirements of forest maintenance
as opposed to park creation.

The government did not follow through with all the committee’s
recommendations; the Ridge remains a Regional Park in the Master
Plan, for instance. More alarmingly, the DDA never set up a separate
Ridge Management Division. Even today, the Ridge is overseen mainly
by the horticultural team at the DDA, to the dismay of many Delhi
ecologists. The government did, however, agree to the committee’s
core demand; on 24 May 1994, the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi
officially notified 7,777 hectares of the Ridge as Reserved Forest
under the Indian Forest Act. This included the portions notified by
the British in 1913 and 1915 (the Northern and Central Ridge), as well
as areas that Jagmohan had notified. It also expanded many of these
areas, especially in the Southern Ridge, where over 6,200 hectares,
or more than two-thirds of the total land, was notified; this included
the Wildlife Sanctuary that had swallowed up the erstwhile Bhatti
Mines. The 1994 notification envisioned the Ridge as four discrete
zones; the three already mentioned, plus the South Central Ridge,
near the old Sultanate stomping grounds of Qutb Minar.
This notification was similar to Jagmohan’s in that it did not, at first

glance, require any additional acquisition of land or compensation
to residents. The notification specifies that, in the four Ridge zones,
Reserved Forests are to be created on “all forest lands and wastelands
which is the property of the government, or over which government
has proprietary rights.”89 Technically, then, this was simply a matter
of transferring government land from one department to another.
But as with the 1980 notification, the reality on the ground was much
more complicated. A book about the Ridge issued by the Delhi Forest
Department is quite frank about this, noting that the 1994 notification
was issued “without a prior assessment of the availability of the Ridge
land free from encumbrances”.90
Further complicating matters, M. C. Mehta’s Writ Petition 4677

reared its head again. In yet another response to this PIL, the Supreme
Court, in 1995, alluded to the Lovraj Committee’s recommendation
and ordered that a Ridge Management Board be established. This
board mirrored the composition of the Lovraj Committee; it was
dominated by appointed government officials but included a few
NGO members in deference to their role in Ridge activism. Because
it was so stacked with government officials, it soon became a rubber
State 199
stamp for government projects to build on the Ridge, although it was
more successful in keeping private development out.
But M. C. Mehta and his unavoidable petition were to have an

even more profound impact on Ridge management. In later hearings,
Mehta argued that the 1994 notification did not actually extend to all
of the Ridge, and specifically that it left out large parts of the Southern
Ridge. In response, the Supreme Court issued two orders, one in
January 1996 and one in March 1996, directing that “uncultivated
surplus land of Gaon Sabha falling in the Ridge” should be “made
available for the purpose of creation of Reserved Forest”.91
These cryptic orders need some decoding. They rely, not on the
Indian Forest Act, but on the Delhi Land Reforms Act, a piece of legis-
lation that was meant to be a progressive contribution to rural Delhi.
Among other provisions, the Act transfers control of village commons
from the maliken deh, or traditional ruling village body made up only
of (male) landowners, to the gaon sabha, which includes all adults
in a village. However, the Act also contains a provision that calls to
mind old British land settlement policies; it mandates that “if the
uncultivated area situated in any Gaon Sabha area is, in the opinion
of the Chief Commissioner, more than the ordinary requirements of
the Gaon Sabha, he may exclude any portion of the uncultivated area
from vesting in the Gaon Sabha.” In essence, if a government repre-
sentative decides a village has too much land, he can take that land
away from the village, with no compensation required.
The law also reflects old prejudices. Farmland is protected, but
“uncultivated” commons are viewed, essentially, as wastelands, with
all their pastoral uses rendered invisible. This was bad news for vil-
lages on the Ridge; given its rocky nature, the great majority of gaon
sabha land in these villages was uncultivated, and hence became an
easy target for the state. Much of this land had also been used for
quarrying. Although this had been officially banned in 1991, it still
continued surreptitiously in some places. This further drew Mehta’s
ire; here was another example of a “polluting industry” failing to
conform to state mandates. The Supreme Court concurred.
In response to the Supreme Court orders, the executive branch
acted quickly. In April 1996, Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor issued

another notification, instructing 14 villages on the Southern Ridge
to turn over their “surplus” common lands, for the public good, of
course. But this was no easy task; given centuries of varied land uses
and changing legal systems, it was difficult to determine what land,
exactly, formed part of the village commons, and which belonged to
individuals. Further, it was far from clear what counted as surplus.
It did not help matters that the state itself sometimes seemed
confused about these distinctions. In 1994, the government acquired
land from villagers in Tughlaqabad, a Gujjar-dominated settlement
set amidst the ruins of Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq’s old city. The fact that
this acquisition even happened sheds doubt on the claim that all the
land notified in 1994 already belonged to the government. Several
of the villagers were unhappy with the compensation amount and
filed a lawsuit; the High Court sided with the villagers and ordered
that they be given a much higher compensation, namely `132 crore.
The government appealed this decision, but the Supreme Court
upheld it.
By the time the government began the paperwork for paying

the compensation, the 1996 notification had been passed, and the
government introduced a new claim: that the land in question was
actually uncultivated village commons on the Ridge, and thus no
compensation was necessary. The government filed a new case, which
the court has yet again rejected; but the government has appealed yet
again. These proceedings reflect the ambiguous status of Gujjars in
Delhi; they are powerful and organized enough to fight a continuing
legal battle with the government and to win most of their cases, but
they do not have enough clout to get the government to actually pay
up, yet.
For other, less locally dominant groups, the fight has been even
more difficult. One court case involves a petitioner who said he and
his family had been allocated a plot of land under Indira Gandhi’s 20-
point program, a government scheme that included half-hearted land
reform efforts quite similar to the ones enacted around Mangarbani.
The Forest Department, however, argued that this was actually forest
land. There was no question of compensation; the petitioner simply
requested that the government not “forcefully dispossess” his family.
State 201
Eviction and Construction
The court is waiting to hear from the Revenue Department, which is in
charge of land records, before making its final decision.92
Rich Publics, Poor Publics, and a Fractured State

As this case suggests, the 1994 and 1996 notifications did not just
affect village landowners. In Gujjar-dominated villages (which cover
most of the Southern Ridge), other castes and communities had
long struggled to improve their position, aided by the occasional
government scheme, before being blindsided by the aforementioned
greening initiative. Further, as the city sprawled outwards, formerly
rural areas of Delhi drew their share of migrants, both rich and
poor. The differential treatment of these migrants, especially after
M. C. Mehta’s prodding and the resulting 1996 notification, makes
it difficult to believe that the state is always working for an unbiased,
universal “public interest”. However, the Ridge’s post-1996 history
also suggests that the state is deeply fractured, and its fractures open
up a range of possibilities for the privileged and the oppressed alike.
After the notification, elite settlements on the Ridge generally

remained untouched. There are two iconic examples of this. One is the
Polo Ground run by the President’s bodyguards on the Central Ridge.
After a public outcry, this was briefly shut down, but it re-opened
once the media’s gaze had shifted. The other is Sainik Farms, Delhi’s
most famous rich “illegal” neighborhood. As the name implies, the
neighborhood is built on land that was zoned in the Master Plan as
agricultural, but its super-rich residents are hardly farmers. Portions
of Sainik Farms are on the Southern Ridge, but its residents have
little reason to worry; government officials know not to touch this
well-connected locale.
On the other hand, working class settlements on the Ridge were

targeted after the 1996 notification, and most, including two of the
three settlements surrounding the Bhatti mines, were demolished,
although it sometimes took many years for the bulldozers to actually
arrive. But as the previous chapter’s exploration of Bhagirath Nagar
shows, working-class settlements were not totally defenseless. In
Bhagirath Nagar, a local politician, connected to a national political
party, opposed a Supreme Court ruling, and its implementation by
municipal officials.
State 203
Of course, a divided state is hardly a new phenomenon. Since
the early days of the Sultanate, state power in Delhi has been riven
by competing factions. But in contemporary politics, as state power
increases, so too do the instances of fragmentation. This is especially
pronounced in a place like Delhi, the center of national politics
and bureaucracy. The tensions are myriad; local officials resent the
influence of bigger players, whether imperial (in British times) or
national (in postcolonial times). This applies equally to Beadon and
to the current Chief Minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal. Different
departments vie for influence. The judiciary scolds the executive
branch, and legislators defy the wishes of both, sometimes under
the influence of popular pressure, sometimes under the influence of
bribes (and often under the influence of both).
The administrative structure of the Ridge ensures that it will fall

prey to these rivalries and tensions. Although the entire Ridge is now
nominally under the control of the Ridge Management Board, its
everyday administration is still divided between several governmental
organizations, namely: the DDA, the L&DO, the Forest Department,
the Revenue Department, the Army (never far from the Ridge), the
Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the New Delhi Municipal Council,
the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the Railways, the Central Public
Works Department, and the Sports Authority of India (which controls
the Asian Games-era shooting range). Many of these only control
small patches of the Ridge (the MHA, for instance, owns a scant six
hectares); the biggest owners are the Forest Department and the
DDA, two agencies with very different visions for the Ridge.
One sign of the state’s fractured nature is that, over two decades
after the sweeping Ridge notifications of the mid-1990s, the settle-
ment process is still not completed; the Ridge’s boundaries have not
been definitively demarcated and residents’ claims to compensation
have not been fully processed. Daunted by the enormity and com-
plexity of the task, and often aware of the financial incentives (in
the form of bribes and kickbacks) of delaying the process, various
government officials and departments have found reasons to slow
down the process and shift to blame to other organizations. The
judiciary has repeatedly intervened in the matter, asking the govern-
ment to comply with its orders and finish the settlement process so

that the Ridge can finally, after more than a century, become a fully
Reserved Forest.
The National Green Tribunal (NGT), a special governmental body
set up in 2010 to expedite environmental cases, has added its voice
to the cacophony, chastising the government for its inaction and
demanding that the settlement be completed. The Forest Department,
never very powerful in the Delhi hierarchy, has been energized by the
NGT’s prodding; in 2012, it set up a Special Task Force for surveying
the Ridge and demarcating its boundaries. Forest Department offi-
cials have been especially excited about using new technology to carry
out the survey; this includes using digital maps from the Survey of
India, along with Geographic Information System (GIS) software to
draw precise boundaries.
These digital tools have been complemented with real-life, ground-
level surveys, especially after the NGT’s further intervention in 2013,
decrying the “unmanageable situation” on the Ridge. The Forest
Department was already well-aware of poor “encroachments” like
Sanjay Colony. However, during their surveys, they “discovered” richer
settlements on the Ridge as well, which had proliferated with the
tacit support of earlier generations of officials. In April 2014, Forest
Department officials knocked down the boundary wall of a luxurious
“farmhouse”, claiming that this was Reserved Forest territory.93
The owner of the farmhouse was shocked at the audacity of the Forest
Department. He, along with several other farmhouse owners, petitioned
the Lieutenant Governor, asking him to reverse the NGT’s orders. The
Lieutenant Governor did not act immediately, but in September 2014,
the Delhi chief secretary ordered the Forest Department to turn over its
maps and surveys to the Revenue Department, so that it could cross-
check the new demarcations with its old land records.94 As of 2019, this
process has not been completed; the settlement saga continues.95
This has been a reprieve for the rich and the poor alike, although,
like most state actions in Delhi, it will likely benefit the former more
than the latter in the long run. To wit: after the farmhouse owners
complained, but before the Ridge case was officially transferred to the
Revenue Department, the government demolished a working-class
settlement in the Ridge village of Aya Nagar, bulldozing an estimated
250 buildings.96
State 205
Forest Department officials, despite their frustration with having
the Ridge case transferred away from them, are still confident about
their surveillance and mapping methods, echoing the British faith in
sharp boundaries and strict demarcations of space. This language is
reinforced by the Ridge Management Board, including its civil society
members. Sunita Narain, a Ridge Management Board member and
head of the Centre for Science and Environment, noted that the board
“will do annual surveys, using remote sensing and spatial technologies,
to assess tree cover under each agency. Any evidence of encroach-
ment or degradation from the baseline will be severely penalized.”97
However, without addressing the underlying power dynamics that
shape land use in Delhi, these increasingly invasive tools will simply
be one more part of an arsenal of injustice, applying a supposedly
neutral law unequally and targeting those with the least power.
The ongoing contested demarcation of the Ridge shows both

the power of the state and its peril. Laws like the Indian Forest Act
and the Delhi Land Reform Act, and bodies like the National Green
Tribunal and the Supreme Court, have tremendous power in creating
categories that then have life-and-death consequences for the bulk of
the population; these agencies define what “public interest” will entail
(even if it involves mass evictions and dispossession), what land is a
“forest” (even if it has no trees) and what qualifies as “surplus” (even
if it has myriad uses for local populations). But these categories are
not as airtight as their proponents would like. The fissures in the state
also break the spell of these categories.
Precarious Lives on the Ridge

For many working-class residents of Delhi, especially those living
on the Ridge, the tensions within the state create conditions for a
troubling, cyclical existence. A brief snapshot of one working-class
Ridge-top neighborhood suggests the trials its residents are forced
to face.
Not far from Qutb Minar, just behind Mehrauli’s famous jharna,
there is a sprawling informal settlement. I used to walk by this
neighborhood, on the way from my flat in Mehrauli to the nearby
Chhatarpur Metro Station. Along the main road were a lively set of

stalls. I would often stop for a glass of chai or roohafza, depending
on the weather, or, if I had more time, for kebabs or pakoras or chole
bhature. With its bright lights and its buzzing crowds, this market
and its adjoining settlement made it feel safe to return home even
late at night, unlike the more lonely route to Mehrauli via Qutb Minar
Metro station.
But for many government officials, the settlement was seen as an

encroachment. It was first demolished in 1972, as a sort of prelude to
the massive Emergency demolitions of the mid-1970s. However, with
tacit support from other government officials, who saw the settlement
as a source of votes, of power, or of bribes, the neighborhood was
rebuilt, until the next demolition drive in 1995, following the major
Ridge notification the previous year. Again, the neighborhood regrew,
only to face bulldozers once more in 2012, when the National Green
Tribunal began bearing down on other government agencies. Finally,
in December 2014, several months after the Forest Department’s
demarcation drive had supposedly been suspended, the neighborhood
was demolished yet again.
A friend and I stopped at a chai shop a few days after the most
recent demolition to ask about what had happened. A chaiwala sat
with several customers. They were surprisingly nonchalant, even
though the chaiwala and one of the customers had lost their homes
in the destruction. They described the events with a deadpan gallows
humor: how the government had sent notices about the demolition,
but no one believed them; how they didn’t have time to take their
belongings before the bulldozers leveled their houses; how people
were contemplating going back to their ancestral villages, but in the
end, never would. We asked if people would reconstruct their houses.
“No,” a man said. “It is finished.”
But he was wrong. Phoenix-like, the neighborhood has risen again.

Houses have been rebuilt, shops re-established along the busy main
road. Life goes on, though precariously. In the shadow of the Qutb
Minar, the state still hovers, permeable, contestable, but all too real.
State 207
4 Surplus
Production, Consumption,
Speculation
New Rich, Old Rich (New Ridge, Old Ridge)

Mehrauli’s Ridge-top jharna, and the troubled settlement beside
it, lie south of Qutb Minar. Directly north of Qutb Minar is a once-
luxurious, now-fading building called the Qutb Colonnade. Built in
British colonial style, the colonnade was the center of an attempt
to gentrify Mehrauli in the 1990s. A key player in this effort was
Bina Ramani, the socialite and fashion designer who had earlier
engineered the conversion of nearby Hauz Khas Village from a sleepy
set of buildings and ruins to Delhi’s hippest party hub.
Ramani ran a restaurant called “The Tamarind Court” in Qutb

Colonnade. On an April night in 1999, Ramani threw a lavish party
for her husband. She claimed it was a private party, but anyone with
enough money could buy entry to the event. Ramani had set up an
unlicensed bar in the restaurant and had hired models as bartenders.
The party continued long after the restaurant’s closing time. After
midnight, Manu Sharma, the son of an influential politician and the
heir to a lucrative sugar mill business, strode into the restaurant,
approached the bar and asked for a drink. The bartender he con-
fronted, a 34-year-old model named Jessica Lal, told him that they
had just run out of alcohol. Sharma took this as an affront and again
demanded a drink. When Lal again refused, Sharma took out a pistol
and fired it into the air. His pride bruised by the refusal and his
temper flaring, he asked for a drink a final time. Lal said no. Sharma
shot her in the head, killing her instantly.
This tragic killing, with its senseless violence and its high-profile
players, was widely covered in the media. It was even made into a
Bollywood movie, No One Killed Jessica, which focused on the
aftermath of the shootings, when most of the famous witnesses
turned hostile and refused to testify against Sharma and his friends.
Many alleged that Sharma’s powerful father had paid huge sums to
convince the witnesses to change their testimony. In 2006, all of
the defendants in the case were found not guilty. This led to such an
intense public outcry that the case was retried. This time, Sharma was
found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The Jessica Lal case captured the public imagination because it

revealed the seamy underbelly of Delhi’s post-liberalization era and
its increasingly crass celebration of wealth, status and celebrity, a cele-
bration that often found its most conspicuous forms in the luxurious
buildings of the Southern Ridge.
But arguably, Delhi’s tryst with material wealth can be traced much,
much further back, not to liberalization in 1991, but to the flowering
of Paleolithic production. As discussed in Chapter 1, an immense
profusion of stone tools were manufactured on the Ridge during
Paleolithic times. Some archaeologists have theorized that such tools
were the first commodities, since they could be produced in large
numbers in a relatively uniform way, and thus hoarded and traded.
This remains in the realm of speculation. Even if stone tools were

part of an early, basic trading system, the livelihood strategies of
hunter-gatherer tribes did not allow for accumulation on a scale that
would enable some people to live off the surplus produced by others.
This would only come with the arrival of agriculture and (more
importantly for the Ridge) pastoralism.
The rise of surplus also led to the rise of the state; this chapter
and the previous one are thus intimately interlinked. For much of
Delhi’s history, those who were extracting surplus and those who
were building states were one and the same. In the case of Delhi’s
first Ridge-top fortresses, the surplus-extractors and state-builders
were Rajputs, who had emerged from the relative isolation of tribal
life and had become increasingly powerful, forming alliances, levying
taxes and building kingdoms.
Adventurers and plunderers from other parts of the Arid Zone

were drawn to India precisely because of its well-developed states and
their carefully managed surpluses. The Sultans, taking control after
Ghori’s incursions, established Delhi as a prominent center of wealth,
which was then targeted by new rounds of conquerors from the north,
from the Mongols to the Mughals. For the Sultans setting up a base at

the edge of the Arid Zone, this was, as we’ve seen, largely a process of
balancing and controlling the agricultural and pastoral populations in
the surrounding regions, utilizing the surpluses they produced while
putting down rebellions from both within and without. The Mughals,
who consciously positioned themselves as heirs to the Sultanate
legacy, performed a similar balancing act.
The British came to India as one more power drawn by India’s

fabled wealth. The British, unlike earlier rulers, initially came to the
subcontinent as traders, in the guise of the East India Company. Here
too, though, the state was far from absent; the East India Company
depended crucially on the monopoly status granted to it by the British
crown. The lines between state and surplus became further blurred
when the Company started to behave less like a trading firm and more
like an empire. As its territorial ambitions grew, Delhi, that old seat of
power and wealth, was inexorably drawn into its range.
Since then, state building and surplus production have co-existed

in an uneasy, complex alliance, often formally separated, but always
intersecting. The nature of the alliance shifted, as the mercantile capi-
talism of early Company rule transitioned to the industrial, imperialist
capitalism of the late British period, which in turn gave way to the
socialist-inflected developmentalism of the early post-Independence
period and finally the re-embrace of a naked capitalism in contem-
porary times. As this chapter seeks to argue, the Ridge offers a useful
microcosm for analyzing the shifting nature of this alliance.
If the state has crucially depended on the Ridge, so too have the
accumulators of surplus. The Ridge has provided much-needed
mineral resources (for stone tools, for fortress walls, for concrete, for
road foundations) as well as much-needed ecological ones, including
the grasses and shrubs that supported pastoralism for centuries.
Since the colonial period, when the British introduced the radical
idea that land is simply a commodity like any other, the Ridge has
provided a more nebulous source of worth; increasingly, it is prized
not for its geology or ecology, but simply for its value in a lucrative
real estate market.
The Ridge is not just a site for the production of economic sur-
pluses. It has also emerged as a favored locale for the (conspicuous)
Surplus 211
consumption of surplus, as the tragic story of Jessica Lal indicates.
This function of the Ridge is not disconnected from its ecology. With
its tough, stony soil, the Ridge was never a favored agricultural site
and thus was less densely populated than fertile zones in Delhi. The
Ridge’s relative isolation proved appealing to elite revelers looking to
distance themselves from the masses.
This trend has quite a long history. As we have seen earlier, in

the Sultanate period, quartzite lodges sprang up on isolated parts
of the Ridge and were used for the quintessentially elite pursuit of
hunting. The most prominent of these is Firoz Shah Tughlaq’s lodge
on the Northern Ridge, built as a regal retreat where he could recover
from the emotional blow of his son’s death. There are several on the
Central Ridge as well, which are now part of the picturesque scenery
of Lutyen’s Delhi. On the Southern Ridge, in Mehrauli, the Mughals
built elaborate recreational monuments like the jharna, where they
enjoyed their monsoon holidays and escaped from the dense crowds
of Shahjahanabad.
With its dual roles, supporting both the production and consump-
tion of surplus, the Ridge has been a key part of Delhi’s many economic
transformations. These transformations bring our attention to much
larger networks of trade and governance, as the Ridge has once again
been a key node in regional, national and global circuits and flows.
These have not been merely economic or political phenomena. The
changing fortunes of the Ridge have unleashed strong, often violent
passions: a volatile mix of desire, pride, jealousy and rage. An eco-
nomic history of the Ridge is thus also the history of rivalries, power
struggles, conspiracies and murders.
Making Delhi Safe for (British) Business

We already have some indication of this turbulent history. In the
last chapter, we met William Fraser, who was assassinated while
riding his horse along the crest of the Northern Ridge. His untimely
demise came at the hands of a Mughal nobleman who resented the
interference of a new political power and who feared the loss of his
aristocratic wealth. But before Fraser succumbed to an assassin’s
bullets, he had lived a full, violent, eccentric, profitable life, in which

his Ridge-top mansion was a crowning achievement. Fraser serves
as an apt symbol for the rough-and-ready mix of state-building and
surplus accumulation on the Ridge in colonial times. A government
official with a wild streak, he helped clear the way for British power
in Delhi, while amassing his own riches and displaying them on the
heights of Delhi’s hills.
Fraser rose to prominence in the last days of the East India

Company’s expansionary phase, in which mercenaries and military
officers built up the company’s holdings across wide swaths of the
subcontinent, in areas widely seen as hostile and lawless. Fraser was
sent to Delhi to be the Resident’s Assistant in 1805, just two years
after the British had taken control of the city. The Resident’s main
responsibility was to control the Mughal empire by proxy, but he
and his assistants also had to deal with a Delhi region that was still
in a state of tumult. Fraser’s first task was to tame Delhi’s turbulent
hinterlands, just as Balban had done centuries earlier when he had
seized control of the disintegrating Sultanate.
Fraser’s adventures in Delhi, military and otherwise, have been

chronicled by William Dalrymple, whose wife is Fraser’s descendant.
Dalrymple was lucky enough to chance upon a trunk full of letters,
documents and paintings in the Fraser ancestral home in Scotland
while he and his wife were vacationing there. Dalrymple reproduces
a letter from Fraser’s brother Alex, which draws parallels between
the rugged Scottish highlanders and the nomadic Gujjars tribes of the
Delhi area, both known for their pastoral pursuits. The letter describes
William as being “surrounded by Goojurs, formerly Barbarian, now
like highlanders; independent to equals, fiery and impetuous, but
faithful and obedient”.1
After several years of military successes, Fraser began the project of

building his luxurious Ridge-top mansion. He spent many years and
poured much money into making it. He chose the location carefully: it
was built on the very spot where Timur had camped centuries earlier,
as he prepared for his raid of Delhi.
While Dalrymple does not choose to ignore Fraser’s violence and

mercurial nature, he prefers to dwell on Fraser’s embrace of courtly
life, his mastery of Persian and Urdu, and the lasting bonds he
Surplus 213
developed with Mughal nobleman. For Dalrymple, Fraser and other
“white Mughals” represented the “hopes of a happy fusion of British
and Indian culture”.2
It may be questionable to romanticize those who won loyalty

through a reign of terror. But Dalrymple is certainly right in identifying
Fraser, and other British officials like him, as a dying breed in India.
They represented an appreciation for Indian languages, customs and
cultures (at least in their elite manifestations) and a warm respect for
their Indian rivals and allies, which was rare by the time Fraser died
and was definitively swept away by the bloody tide of 1857.
Dalrymple attributes this shift to an increasingly racist attitude on

the part of the British, which was complemented by an increasingly
rigid adherence to Christian doctrine. But this is only a partial expla-
nation. The changing attitude towards India and Indians was also
a product of massive changes in the global economy, and Britain’s
leading role in these changes. When the East India Company first
ventured into India, it was one among many European proponents
of mercantile capitalism. By the time of the 1857 Uprising, the age of
industrial capitalism was well underway, and the United Kingdom
was by far its most powerful proponent.
As industry, and in particular, the textile industry, expanded at

a furious rate, with the United Kingdom at its center, countries like
India suddenly found themselves at the periphery. With improved
technology and machinery, Britain could produce massive amounts
of textiles at extremely low prices. Further, belying their “free trade”
rhetoric, the British disproportionately taxed non-British textiles and
engaged in the physical destruction of handlooms in their empire,
hence undercutting competition from India, which was long known
for its hand-crafted textiles. At a political level, the Mughals, and
other kingdoms of India, were no longer seen as rival powers, to be
fought on the battlefield and viewed on more or less equal terms.
They were seen as subordinate members of an increasingly integrated
global economy.
The two factors suggested by Dalrymple—increasing racism and

evangelical Christian fervor—should also be seen in light of these tec-
tonic shifts in world affairs. While scientific and religious developments

were not simply reactions to economic change, there is no doubt that
these three realms influenced each other to a great degree. Thus, the
newly subordinate economic position of countries like India was ratio-
nalized through the increasingly influential “science” of race, from phre-
nology to eugenics. At the same time, social churning and widespread
instability in the wake of the Industrial Revolution found many outlets,
including religious revivalism.
By the time of Fraser’s death on the Ridge, these interlinked devel-

opments had brought an end to the age of the “White Mughals”. But
Fraser should not simply be seen as a man increasingly out of place
in his era. It was precisely through the military efforts of Fraser, and
others like him, that the East India Company established the condi-
tions for a new era of colonialism. Fraser’s efforts to tame Delhi’s hilly
hinterlands, and their reliably rebellious nomadic communities, laid
the groundwork for the later settlement efforts by J. R. Maconachie
and Henry Beadon, which sought to instill the values of capitalist
agriculture in the Delhi region.
As we saw in Chapter 2, these attempts at “settlement” had

wide-ranging impacts on the Ridge, where village commons were
threatened, pastoral pursuits became increasingly precarious, and
plots of land were increasingly seen as commodities. And while these
trends reached their peak in the post-Uprising period, they had
already gained momentum during Fraser’s tenure as Resident.
Mughals, Metcalfe and Murder on the Southern Ridge

The man who became resident after Fraser’s death, Thomas Metcalfe,
took advantage of these new economic conditions, buying up huge
plots of land in Delhi, while also embodying the new British conserva-
tism that Dalrymple so disdains. Instead of embracing Mughal dress,
as some of his predecessors had, “he arranged that his London tailors...
should regularly send out to Delhi a chest of sober but fashionable
English clothes.”3
However, Metcalfe appreciated the symbolism and the splendor of

Mughal tradition. In this, he foreshadowed the builders of New Delhi:
he wanted to appropriate the symbols of Mughal power, not as an
equal (like Fraser had tried to do), but as a superior successor.
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In doing so, he turned to the Southern Ridge, and more specif-
ically to Mehrauli, that favored haunt of Mughal pleasure-seekers.
He combined courtly Mughal traditions with his own ideas of luxury,
drawn from traditions of British landscaping and aesthetics. He, like
other British officials, imagined the Ridge as a miniature hill station,
a welcome relief from Shahjahanabad’s urban congestion. In addition
to his palatial house at the foot of the Northern Ridge (which rebelling
Gujjars burned down in 1857), Metcalfe bought a tomb in Mehrauli
and converted it into a monsoon getaway.
The context of this purchase suggests that economic unrest was

already rippling across the Delhi countryside. As Metcalfe’s daughter
Emily reports, “The family to whom it belonged had become impov-
erished and had handed over this tomb, as their only available asset,
to the banker to whom they owed a large sum of money. He wished to
sell it, and so my father bought it.”4
By Mehrauli terms, the tomb is not very old. It was built around
1610 to house the grave of Quli Khan, a foster brother of the Mughal
emperor Akbar. Metcalfe occupied the tomb and renamed it Dilkhush,
or “The Heart’s Delight”. He added pavilions and terraces, as well as
several new rooms. In its finished form, it included a master bedroom, a
smaller bedroom for Emily, a library, a drawing room, a dining room,
a dressing room, and several guest bedrooms. He turned another,
smaller tomb nearby into a boathouse, which bordered a small pond
and waterworks he had created to amuse his guests. He also rented out
the house to honeymooning couples.
Metcalfe was prescient in choosing the locale of his elite getaway.

Though in one sense he was following in the footsteps of the Mughals,
in another sense, he was a trailblazer in his gaudy re-appropriation of
the Southern Ridge’s long history, a foreshadowing of the farmhouse
trend to come. Unlike the Mughals, but like his postcolonial pleasure-
seeking successors, he chose a very secluded spot, far away from the
bustle and fervor of Qutb Sahib’s shrine. His exclusive ponds and
boats presaged the fenced-off farmhouses and elite swimming pools
of the present day. And not least, with his side business of honeymoon
rentals, he was a precursor to the booming real estate and marriage
industries on the Southern Ridge.

These comparisons should not, perhaps, be taken too far. Metcalfe
was distinctly British, and distinctly colonial. One sure sign of this
is the series of “follies” he built around his Mehrauli compound.
In architectural parlance, a “folly” is a structure built purely for deco-
ration, with no functional purpose. Follies became popular in the
eighteenth century in British and French gardens, and often incorpo-
rated classical Greek or Roman elements. Others were more whim-
sical or exotic, suggesting a fascination with the non-Western world
that was opening up through trade and colonial expansion. Egyptian
pyramids and Chinese temples were thus recreated on the lawns of
English nobility.
Bringing this idea to India, Metcalfe built a series of follies that

he and his guests could see while relaxing, boating and dining at
Dilkhush. Although Dilkhush was already surrounded by tombs and
monuments in various states of decay, Metcalfe wanted to enhance
this melancholy effect through strategically placed follies. Some were
relatively nondescript, such as a plain quartzite tower build atop
a pile of rocks in the distance. Some were more elaborate, such as a
pavilion built in Mughal style. And some were just bizarre, including
pyramids and ziggurats.
Metcalfe seemed to pretend that these follies were just part of the
landscape, writing of Dilkhush,
The ruins of grandeur that extend for miles on every side fill it
with serious reflection. The palaces crumbling into dust... the
myriads of vast mausoleums, every one of which was intended to
convey to futurity the deathless fame of its cold inhabitant, and all
of which are now passed by, unknown and unnoticed.5
This evocation of the subcontinent’s storied past had a clear

instrumental role: it was used to justify colonial intervention, and to
claim that the British had stumbled upon a degenerated empire that
needed resurrection. While Metcalfe and his ilk meditated upon the
transitory nature of power and empire, they had no doubt that, in
the present moment, their empire was in the ascendant. Their
recognition that glory inevitably fades did little to stop them from
constructing monuments to their own glory, in both small ways
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(Metcalfe’s follies) and large (the building of New Delhi several
decades later). For Metcalfe, the Ridge around Qutb Minar, with its
rocky vistas and its high density of ruins, was the natural location
for his peaceful, melancholy retreat, and he was happy to share this
experience with other British visitors, for a price.
But Metcalfe, like Fraser before him, was unable to escape the
tumult that British rule had brought to Delhi. His demise, too, was
linked to Mughal inheritance disputes. But while Fraser fell afoul of a
minor nobleman, Metcalfe attracted ire on a grander scale: his enemy
was the Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, and his favorite wife,
Zeenat Mahal.
At the heart of the dispute was the question of Zafar’s rightful

heir. Zafar, poet, mystic, and soon-to-be leader of the Uprising, was
not fond of his eldest son. Under the increasingly strong influence of
Zeenat Mahal, he became convinced that his proper heir should be
one of her sons. Metcalfe objected, citing the old British principle of
primogeniture.
Zafar became enraged when Metcalfe, along with two other British
officials, initiated talks with his eldest son, Mirza Fakhru. In 1852,
Mirza Fakhru signed a secret pact with the British, which stipulated
that he would be the next emperor, as long as he moved the seat of
Mughal power from Shahjahanabad to Mehrauli, and as long as he
formally dropped the Mughal’s claim of superior status.
In 1853, Metcalfe fell ill. When the illness didn’t lift, he started to
suspect that he was being poisoned. This suspicion was strengthened
when he learned that the two other officials involved in the secret pact
were experiencing similar symptoms: weakness, nausea, vomiting.
Unable to keep down any food, Metcalfe started wasting away. After
several months of sickness, he died in his north Delhi mansion.6
As it turned out, the controversy over Zafar’s heir was a moot one.
The Mughal Empire ended with Zafar and with the post-Uprising
retributions of the British. In 1858, the British Crown finally took
control of India, officially superseding the East India Company. Delhi,
for a time, became a shell of its former self. But with the growth of
British New Delhi, fully backed by the imperial government, the city’s
prestige was soon resurrected. The Ridge too regained its role as a site

for displaying power and wealth, a function that has continued to the
present day.
Postcolonial Ridge Real Estate

As we saw in the previous chapter, land speculation, and the govern-
ment’s attempts to curtail it, were a key element in the establishment
of British New Delhi. From 1911 onwards, real estate has played an
increasingly central role in the production and consumption of
wealth on the Ridge, leading to luxuries and architectural excesses
that would put Metcalfe to shame.
To understand the rise of the real estate business in Delhi and on

the Ridge, it is necessary to dig into the history of Delhi Land and
Finance (DLF), the country’s largest real estate developer. We have
already encountered DLF; the company featured as one of the many
roadblocks Sajjan Singh faced in his quest to receive compensation
for the acquisition of his family’s ancestral land on the Central Ridge.
But this was just a minor episode in the long, storied, some would say
notorious, trajectory of DLF. The history of this private company is
marked by a complex relationship with state institutions, including
the powerful DDA. If the DDA has been the guiding spirit of public-
sector housing development in post-Independence Delhi, DLF has
played that role for the private sector.
DLF was founded just before Independence, in 1946. Its founder,

Chaudhary Raghvendra Singh, had studied at the elite, British-run
St. Stephen’s College and then joined the Punjab Civil Service in 1935.
With the outbreak of World War II, he joined the Indian Army, which
was still run by the British. For his prominent role in recruiting Indian
officers to join the service, he was eventually named an honorary
Member of the British Empire.
With the end of the war, Singh sought to reinvent himself as a

real-estate tycoon. Soon after, Partition brought a flood of refugees
who needed housing. Many of the refugees were from well-off urban
backgrounds, and Singh’s DLF was the prime supplier of new housing
colonies for this well-heeled group. The company was extremely
prescient, buying up large swaths of agricultural land south of Lutyens’
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Delhi in anticipation, not just of the swelling refugee population, but
more long-term urban expansion.
Singh and his colleagues could clearly see that Delhi’s center of
gravity was shifting. Before Raisina Hill became the seat of govern-
ment power, the cities in Delhi had been slowly moving northward;
the Southern Ridge cities of the early Sultans were replaced by Siri to
its north, and then Firozabad north of that, and then Shahjahanabad
north of that. Though the British briefly contemplated a site north of
Shahjahanabad, their decision to locate their new city on the Central
Ridge reversed centuries of northward drift.
As suggested in the previous chapter, the current city of Delhi is,

in many ways, the direct descendant of the capital established by the
British in 1911. Not only has it inherited its grand halls of governance
on Raisina Hill, it has also kept many British laws and attitudes, and
has given immense power to the DDA, the successor to the British DIT.
And while the city has expanded in all directions, the city’s elite have
largely followed the British lead and settled further and further south.
For DLF, the land south of New Delhi was an obvious choice. To
New Delhi’s north was the crowded old city of Shahjahanabad, to its
east was the Yamuna River, and to its west was the already-packed city
extension. The south, meanwhile, was a more open landscape, dotted
by agricultural and pastoral villages. DLF planned developments all
over Delhi, but the south was clearly its favored location. Even today,
the colonies DLF founded in South Delhi, including South Extension,
Greater Kailash, Kailash Colony and Hauz Khas, are among the cap-
ital’s most coveted.
DLF was also looking farther afield, to the Southern Ridge villages
which were even further south than the colonies the company was
rapidly constructing. These were mostly Gujjar-dominated villages
eking out a pastoral existence on rocky land, sometimes as far as
30 kilometers away from the center of Delhi. In the 1950s, DLF agents
approached many Gujjar landowners and bought up large tracts of
their land. DLF’s leaders intuited, quite correctly, that this distant,
forbidding territory would eventually come into the urban orbit and
thus into the world of ever-increasing real estate prices, to be valued
by the city elite precisely because of its sparse population.

The decade after Independence and before the formation of the
DDA was the heyday of private real estate development in Delhi, with
DLF as the biggest actor, both in the city’s center and at its periphery.
Throughout this decade, there were widespread accusations of cor-
ruption and private-sector collusion with local government officials.
Nehru viewed DLF with great suspicion, and he pushed for a body like
the DDA largely to curb the power of DLF and their covert allies in the
Delhi bureaucracy.
Nehru was galled by the brazenness of top Delhi officials, including
the Chairman of the DIT, who bought huge amounts of land for as
little as four annas per square yard, and then proceeded to sell it for
eight rupees per square yard. An exasperated Nehru wrote to the
Minister of Works, Housing and Supply saying, “This does seem to
me rather extravagant profit.... Of all persons, surely the Chairman of
the Delhi Improvement Trust should not make money in this way.”7
In the end, the establishment of the DDA could not stop the
rampant land speculation, nor the collusion of high-level government
officials in shady real estate deals. It did, however, stop the momen-
tum of DLF, as all private real estate developers were prohibited from
plying their trade on DDA land. The Master Plan’s strict guidelines
for agricultural land also slowed DLF’s growth on Delhi’s fringes. For
a time, Nehru’s bid to limit the reach of private real estate companies
like DLF seemed successful.
From the Ridge to Gurgaon

As the decades have passed, Nehru’s success has appeared increas-
ingly ephemeral. DLF has since recovered its status as Delhi’s pre-
mier real estate developer. Its farmhouse complex in the Southern
Ridge, DLF Farms, is now an icon of residential luxury; another DLF
project, the high-end Emporio mall, has become the city’s symbol
of consumer luxury. The mall sits on the southwestern corner of the
Delhi Ridge, in a neighborhood called Vasant Kunj. It is part of a larg-
er commercial complex that also houses the corporate headquarters
of Maruti Suzuki, the country’s biggest car company and a prime
symbol of the age of economic liberalization.
It is perhaps no coincidence that DLF and Maruti Suzuki sit
together on the Vasant Kunj Ridge. They represent key components
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of the Delhi region’s recent economic history: on the production
side, the lucrative expansion of real-estate development and large-
scale manufacturing; on the consumption side, the promotion of a
lifestyle increasingly based on malls and cars. But these two compa-
nies, and the two industries they represent, are not in perfect synergy.
Though they sometimes find common ground (as they do, quite
literally, on the Vasant Kunj Ridge), they often find themselves in
conflict, representing different visions of economic growth and urban
expansion.
If the convergence of these companies is easily seen on the Ridge,

the divergences are best understood by taking a brief detour and
leaving Delhi altogether. The Vasant Kunj commercial complex is
a relatively recent development; we will return to this site and its
controversial history later in this chapter. Well before their forays into
the Vasant Kunj Ridge, both DLF and Maruti Suzuki found success,
and courted conflict and controversy, in less rigorously regulated
climes outside of Delhi.
Specifically, both companies were drawn to Gurgaon, the village-

turned-suburb whose birdwatchers rallied to defend Mangarbani in
Chapter 2. Gurgaon sits just south of Delhi, in the state of Haryana.
The Southern Ridge forms the boundary between the city and its new
suburb. Companies like DLF had to temporarily forsake the Southern
Ridge and forge further ahead, before they could loop back and make
their triumphant return.
For both Maruti Suzuki and DLF, 1981 was the key year for
initializing their Gurgaon growth. But for both companies, this
development had a long prehistory. Tracing the twin storylines of
these companies reveals much about the changing nature of the state/
market relationship in India, the country’s increasing entanglement
with global markets, and the wide-ranging consequences of these
changes for the human and non-human inhabitants of Delhi and
its Ridge.
Gurgaon Detour, Part I: Maruti

Maruti started as a pet project of Sanjay Gandhi, Jagmohan’s ally in
Emergency-era slum demolitions. After completing an internship

with Rolls Royce in England and returning to India in 1968, Sanjay
convinced his mother Indira Gandhi, then early in her career as Prime
Minister, that the government should grant a license to a private-
sector company for the production of a small, affordable car. This
was the height of the so-called “license Raj”, with the government
attempting to control the economy by maintaining strict regulations
on what company could produce which products.
Indira Gandhi’s nepotism was already well-established by this

time, and no one was surprised when a company founded by Sanjay
himself, called Maruti, received a license to produce India’s first
indigenously made low-cost car. Soon after, the Chief Minister of
Haryana, Bansi Lal, gave Sanjay a personal tour of Haryana, and in
violation of government land policies, let Sanjay pick the plot of land
he wanted for his upcoming car factory. Bansi Lal sold him about
300 acres of land in Gurgaon at an extraordinarily low price.8 But
even with all these favors, Sanjay was not able to produce a working
prototype for the car. After Emergency, when the Janata Party came
to power, they scrapped the company, as one of many moves to erase
Sanjay’s corrosive legacy.
Many point to this debacle, and other cases like it, as a sign of
the failure of India’s post-Independence economic model, some-
times referred to as “Nehruvian socialism”. However, as the sociol-
ogist Vivek Chibber has shown in his account of post-Independence
industrial policy, there was little that was truly socialist about the
Nehruvian economy. Capitalists in India had no problem with a
planned economy as long as that meant state support for industry,
but no state tools for disciplining capital. The capitalist lobby suc-
ceeded in crippling the main elements Nehru proposed to reign in
big business (such as the Planning Commission and the Industrial
Disputes Resolution Act), thus bending the planned economy to their
interests.9 Generational change also exacerbated the weaknesses of
this economic model; whereas Nehru truly believed in the importance
of a planned economy, Indira Gandhi exploited it more cynically. She
used it not just to meet her son’s whims, but also to shore up support
as the dominance of Congress faded.
However, Indira could also see that the world was changing.
Especially after the global economic crisis of 1973, governments
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around the world were abandoning their earlier faith in capitalist
state planning, and were emphasizing the need for looser regulations,
increased privatization of industry, a denser network of global trade,
a reduction of import tariffs, and a host of related measures.
Although India would wait until 1991 to fully embrace the neoliberal
policy package, it started to move tentatively in that direction during
Indira Gandhi’s later years. The rebirth of Maruti in the 1980s was
one sign of this. Whereas Sanjay’s project emphasized indigenous
production, the new Maruti Udyog, though a public-sector company,
partnered with the Japanese firm Suzuki. The new company, founded
in 1981, began production in Gurgaon two years later. Unlike Sanjay’s
company, this iteration of Maruti quickly developed a low-cost car
and marketed it with great success. The company has since built on
its early triumphs, and it still dominates the car market in India, even
in the face of increasing competition. At the same time, the company
has become increasingly privatized. Initially, Suzuki owned a minority
stake in the company; as the economic winds shifted, this increased
to 50 percent. By 2007, the government had completely disinvested
in the company.
Maruti Suzuki has been trumpeted in the business press as

a success story for the new Indian economy. The growth of the
company has been one of the engines driving Gurgaon’s expansion.
The company also had a broader symbolic impact, as its low-cost
car was one of the most visible signs of globalization’s prehistory in
India and a shift away from an earlier ethos. The Nehruvian era had
focused, at least in rhetoric, on major industrial projects that would
benefit the nation: dams, steel factories, coal mines, power plants.
Along with this was a focus on saving and austerity. The good citizen
would not spend profligately on consumer goods but would save up
money for the good of the country.
The Maruti Suzuki 800, the company’s first vehicle, was a harbin-
ger of change. Although the true watershed only came in 1991, Maruti
Suzuki was an early sign that new values and trends were creeping
in: consumerism, personal loans, international branding, private
vehicles. Good citizens now bought the Maruti Suzuki 800, which was
portrayed as a “people’s car”.

Beneath this branding exercise lurked traces of liberalization’s
dark side. True, the Maruti Suzuki 800 was much less expensive than
other cars manufactured in India, such as the famous Ambassador,
long considered a powerful status symbol. It was thus embraced by
the growing middle class, who enjoyed a newfound mobility (both
metaphorical and literal). But it was still out of reach for the vast
majority of the population, who could not afford the “people’s car” and
found themselves rhetorically removed from the category of “people”.
Such language betrays an increasing indifference to those left

behind by the new economy. The post-liberalization age has witnessed
sharp increases in inequality. A select few have seen their fortunes
soar, and a much larger group now has the opportunity to buy an
ever-growing range of imported goods, but those at the bottom of
the pyramid face an increasingly precarious life. Worse, their plight
finds little space in the imagination of a media and a middle class that
imagine themselves as representative of “the people”.
This shrinking of the social imagination has an ecological impact

as well, as people want to consume more but often have little concern
about the environment, except for their immediate surroundings.
It is no coincidence that the Maruti Suzuki craze emerged at the
same time as the environmental PIL phenomenon; the association
of “the people” with the numerically small, but symbolically import-
ant, middle class is an important part of PIL logic. This trend also
underscores the hypocrisy of a Delhi-centered environmentalism that
embraces the rise of the automobile while at the same time decrying
industrial pollution, especially because the cars are being produced
in Delhi’s backyard.
If the environment suffered with the rise of Maruti, so too did

the company’s workers. Corporate profits have soared, but workers’
wages (adjusted for inflation) have fallen steadily over the past two
decades. As wages have fallen, work has also become more precarious,
as permanent workers are increasingly being replaced by those on
temporary contracts.
Though the state gradually (and then completely) withdrew its stake
in Maruti, it remained involved in other ways. Since Independence, the
state has played a key role as an arbitrator in labor disputes. Although
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this blunted the militancy of labor struggles, it had, for decades, given
workers and unions in the formal economy a basic level of support and
stability. However, with the coming of neoliberal policy reforms, the
state has more and more taken the side of managers against workers.
This can clearly be seen at Maruti Suzuki, where workers long
struggled to form a union that was not under the thumb of the
management. They were opposed at every turn by the company,
with managers intimidating and often firing the more vocal workers.
In 2012, after 13 years of on-and-off agitation, a worker-controlled
union was finally registered. But later that year, simmering tensions
between management and workers boiled over into violence that
left both workers and managers injured, and one manager dead. The
mainstream media, along with the management, quickly pegged
the blame for the incident on the workers. Later reports, however,
revealed that the management had brought in hired goons to incite
violence, and the manager who died was, mysteriously, the one most
sympathetic to the workers’ demands. The management subsequently
enlisted state support, using the incident as an excuse to torture and
jail hundreds of workers, while firing 2,300 workers.10
In January 2014, a group of terminated workers and their families,
along with supporters from political and civil society organizations,
embarked on a 15-day “Jan Jagaran Yatra” (“Journey for the Awakening
of the People”). They traveled on foot from Kaithal, Haryana, where
over 100 workers were still languishing in jail, to Delhi. On the penul-
timate day of the march, the protesters stopped outside the gleaming
Maruti Suzuki headquarters on the Vasant Kunj Ridge. Before they
could get close to the headquarters though, they were stopped by a
line of heavily armed policemen. The police had received instructions
to prohibit the group from raising slogans outside the headquarters,
because it would offend the sensibilities of the corporate managers
sitting inside the building. Yet again, the victims of the new economy
were quite literally kept out of sight.
Gurgaon Detour, Part II: DLF

Despite its history of repressing workers, and despite its contribu-
tion to Delhi’s epic pollution levels, Maruti Suzuki remains a media
darling. DLF, on the other hand, has received more critical scrutiny.

This cannot just be due to DLF’s notorious collusions with govern-
ment officials; Maruti Suzuki has relied on state backing since its
earliest days, and even in its private-sector guise, it continues to
use the state to terrorize workers. Perhaps DLF has received more
media criticism because, unlike Maruti Sukuzi, it has faltered in
recent years, losing lawsuits and hemorrhaging money at an alarming
rate. Or perhaps DLF is targeted because it reveals an unseemly, but
thoroughly necessary, side of capitalist growth.
Another hypothesis: DLF finds itself in the spotlight because

it has put itself there, for better or worse. Much more than Maruti
Suzuki, DLF has boasted of its role in transforming Gurgaon. And it
is not an empty brag: DLF’s vision for Gurgaon has changed it from a
sleepy farming village to a prime location for multinational corporate
offices as well as a luxurious residential zone. DLF has aligned itself
with a particular vision of urban growth, one driven by private real
estate development, private infrastructure, international investment,
business outsourcing and information technology (IT). This has
become the dominant vision of Gurgaon, even as it sits in uneasy
coexistence with a massive automotive industry. And it is this urban
imagination that has increasingly been projected onto Delhi and
the Ridge.
But, as we saw, this vision began with DLF’s retreat from Delhi.
This takes us back to the 1970s, when Chaudhary Raghvendra Singh’s
son-in-law, K. P. Singh, took charge of the company. With the Delhi
real estate market officially closed, the elder Singh had become so
discouraged that he instructed the younger Singh to sell his share
in DLF for a mere `27 lakh. K. P. Singh, the dutiful son-in-law, was
on the verge of selling, but, as he tells it, a conversation with DLF’s
financial adviser changed his mind. Instead, K. P. Singh began an
aggressive campaign of buying up agricultural land in Gurgaon.
As the legend goes (and as K. P. Singh himself tells it), the new head
of the troubled company was lazing in a charpoy in the scrubland of
Gurgaon under the shade of a tree on a hot summer day. A Jeep
screeched to a halt in front of him, and its owner jumped out of the car
and asked for assistance. Luckily for Singh, the owner happened to be
Rajiv Gandhi, who had officially entered the political scene after his
brother Sanjay’s untimely death. Singh brought some water to cool the
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overheating Jeep and helped get the vehicle running smoothly again.
Gandhi asked Singh what he was doing in the middle of nowhere, to
which Singh reportedly replied, “Dreaming of a new city.”11
Though Gandhi was Nehru’s grandson, he had not, apparently,
inherited his grandfather’s disdain for DLF. Not long after this chance
meeting, the laws for acquiring land in Haryana changed to become
much more favorable to real estate developers. In the absence of state
planning and with few regulations to hold them back, DLF drove the
growth of Gurgaon. The company also diversified from its role as
essentially a land buyer, and has built exclusive gated communities,
mega-malls, golf courses, offices and cinemas.
DLF’s Gurgaon dominance began in 1981, when the company
became the first to receive a license to develop property in the area.
Until then, Gurgaon had been relatively ignored by regional plan-
ners and real estate developers alike. Delhi’s 1962 Master Plan,
which included ambitious regional planning goals, simply noted
that Gurgaon is “handicapped for want of good water sources and
only a modest growth is contemplated”.12 This is largely due to the
configuration of the Aravallis south of Delhi. The slope of the hills
channels most of the area’s water into a watershed to Gurgaon’s east,
towards the lushly-forested Mangarbani and the now-industrialized
Faridabad.
But DLF had something much more ambitious in mind than
“modest growth”; it envisioned a wholesale transformation. To do
this, the company first had to acquire a considerable amount of land.
If the British first pushed the idea of land as a commodity in India,
companies like DLF have taken this idea to its logical conclusion.
However, in doing so, such companies have been forced to deal
with the long, complex histories of land use in the Delhi region,
including the role of the state in introducing various land reforms
and regulations, and the increasing fragmentation of land as families
divide up their properties. DLF had to iron out these complexities.
Only then would land in Gurgaon be legible to buyers as a simple
commodity that could be purchased like any other.
In this process, K. P. Singh acted as a middleman between rural
landowners and urban business interests. Though the banning of

private real estate development in Delhi had hurt DLF, it was still
a company that planned and strategized on a grand scale. To attract
both individuals and companies to Gurgaon, DLF needed to assemble
large plots of land, which meant negotiating and striking deals with
many different farmers. Singh stressed his rural roots when meeting
farmers; he often went to them wearing a dhoti, along with a military
beret to connect with the farmers’ pride in their martial traditions.
But acquiring the land was only the first step in the process. The
vast majority of this land was zoned as agricultural, just like the
Master Plan-mandated Green Belt in Delhi. But unlike in Delhi,
where a nominal adherence to the Master Plan made it necessary
to develop subterfuges like “farmhouses” (which were bereft of
farming), land uses could be changed more easily in Haryana. To
do this, companies needed to obtain a Change in Land Use (CLU)
issuance from Haryana’s Town and Country Planning Department.
There were many rules and regulations regarding CLUs, but these
were easily bent and broken by a network of bureaucrats, politicians
and real estate developers. DLF has long been dogged by accusations
of its collusion with top government officials but, precisely due to its
political and economic power, these charges have never stuck.13
Once they acquired the land and the requisite CLUs, DLF needed to
find buyers. Initially, the company focused on domestic buyers. Here,
DLF was helped yet again by the murkiness and moral ambiguity of
the real estate world. It’s a very poorly kept secret that real estate
is a preferred storehouse for black money, which India generates
on an epic scale. According to one study, India has over $1.5 trillion
in black money, more than the rest of the world combined.14 In the
media, much is made of the black money that finds its way to banks
in Switzerland and other financial havens. But many have discovered
a simpler solution: investing in domestic real estate, where black
money is happily accepted.
Such investments supported DLF’s early Gurgaon growth. As

the years went on, though, DLF’s vision became increasingly global,
especially following the 1991 economic reforms. In keeping with the
spirit of those days, DLF turned its attention to multinational firms,
the IT industry and the service sector more broadly, in an attempt to
brand Gurgaon as a “world-class city”. In this, there was once again
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a convergence between DLF’s business interests and the national
vision promoted by Rajiv Gandhi and his successors. Like his brother,
Rajiv was enamored of technology, but he was more conscientious
and methodical about its introduction in India. He continued with
the technological trends started by his mother, including automobiles
and televisions (which had gotten their big boost with the Asian
Games). But he added an emphasis on newer technologies, including
computers and networking.
As the years went on, the technological focus settled on IT out-

sourcing, which even today has immense symbolic importance, both
domestically and internationally, despite its relatively small contribu-
tion to the Indian economy. DLF played a major role in bringing this
trend to Gurgaon. Again, K. P. Singh used his personal connections
and networking abilities, this time on an international level. In the
early 1990s, Singh befriended Jack Welch, the chairman of General
Electric. By 1997, Singh had convinced Welch to set up a business
outsourcing unit for GE in Gurgaon. This set a precedent. Soon, other
international companies flocked to Gurgaon, and to the offices and
apartment buildings that DLF was building.
The present-day showcase of this is Cyber City, a commercial

hub created by DLF. Full of gleaming glass and metal buildings,
Cyber City houses some of the world’s top companies, including
Pepsi, Shell, Nokia, Philips, Pfizer, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Ernst &
Young, Samsung, American Express, Exxon Mobile, Google, Yahoo!,
LinkedIn, and, of course, General Electric. Cyber City was recently
connected to the government-run Delhi metro via a smaller metro
service run as a joint venture between the government and DLF.
In addition to its role in bringing international companies and IT

operations to Gurgaon, DLF has also played a part in transforming
the Gurgaon real estate market to make it more amenable to inter-
national investment. This has been part of DLF’s efforts to expand
the National Capital Region and to launch projects throughout India
with international backing. This has meant changing the Indian
real estate market so that it is more in line with global standards,
including the promotion of real estate mutual funds and mortgage
markets.15

In 2007, when DLF announced its decision to go public, the
company looked unstoppable. K. P. Singh had climbed all the way
up to number eight on Forbes’ well-known list of the world’s richest
people. After the initial public offering, Singh’s wealth skyrocketed
from $10 billion to $30 billion. But a nasty surprise was lurking
around the corner: the global financial crisis of 2008, which exposed
the flaws and risks of DLF’s growth strategies.
The immediate cause of the 2008 crisis was the implosion of a

sub-section of the American mortgage industry. However, given the
increasingly interconnected nature of the global neoliberal economy,
the effects of this implosion reverberated around the world. The
Gurgaon model depended crucially on international investment,
and the crisis left many, including DLF, in the lurch. Prior to the
crisis, Lehman Brothers, the firm whose spectacular collapse defined
the financial crisis, had invested $200 million in one of DLF’s
subsidiaries. Merrill Lynch, another company hit hard by the crisis,
had invested $370 million in DLF township projects.16 After the crisis,
such investments dried up.17
The slowdown after the financial crisis also drew attention to more
fundamental issues with DLF’s business model. From the beginning,
DLF had not been shy about taking on significant amounts of debt to
fuel its growth, on the speculative assumption that demand would
keep rising and investments would keep flowing in. As a 2015
article on DLF points out, this strategy worked well “in the bull run
before the Lehman crisis”, when irrational exuberance encouraged
market players to take the “aggressive presentations of developers
at face value”.18 In the more subdued post-crisis phase, DLF became
increasingly saddled with debt.
Reflecting these setbacks, DLF’s stock price declined 57 percent

between 2007 and 2012. Singh tumbled from 8th place to 191st place
on the Forbes’ billionaires list. As the company lost its aura of invin-
cibility, the questionable business practices that fueled DLF’s rise
suddenly started receiving attention. In March 2012, a Canadian firm
called Veritas Investment Research issued a scathing report accusing
DLF of all sorts of accounting irregularities and business malpractices.
The title of the report reflects its exceedingly harsh assessment (as well
as its penchant for groan-inducing puns): “A Crumbling Edifice”.19
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In October 2012, reports surfaced that DLF had given interest-free
loans and other favors to Robert Vadra, Rajiv Gandhi’s son-in-law,
who had managed to acquire significant tracts of land at below-
market-value prices. Vadra’s fixed assets and investments jumped
from `7.95 crore in 2008 to `60.53 crore in 2010. As one news
report dryly notes: “It remains unclear why DLF and other major
corporations would have made him large loans, since this is not in
the nature of their business. Nor did Mr. Vadra’s companies have any
apparent prior specialisation in real estate business.”20
Though Congress’s political opponents made much of these find-

ings, neither Vadra nor DLF has yet been punished for these shady
dealings. Nonetheless, DLF is struggling. As of August 2014, it had
accrued `19,000 crore of debt, and the Competition Commission
of India had brought several cases against it for abusing its domi-
nant position to price its goods and services unfairly. When the
Supreme Court gave an interim order on one of these cases,
telling DLF to deposit `630 crore, the company’s stock declined
7.3 percent in two days.
These scandals may help explain DLF’s tarnished reputation.

More broadly, in the wake of the 2008 crisis, real estate and financial
companies have come under increased scrutiny, in contrast to man-
ufacturing firms like Maruti Suzuki. While Maruti fits the stereotyp-
ical model of productive economic activity, putting together tangible
products, in a big factory, on an assembly line, DLF’s work is in the
acquisition and sale of land, a pursuit that lends itself to speculation.
As tempting as it is to denounce the “casino capitalism” and

rampant speculation of the real estate sector (and, along with it, the
financial sector), the “productive” economy could not exist without
the land and the liquidity that these sectors provide. This is one of
capitalism’s many contradictions: while these sectors are essential
for capitalist growth to function smoothly, they also enable all kinds
of speculation and distortions. Financial and real estate investments
are, at their core, a gamble; they are speculating on what future
returns will be. In Marx’s evocative language, these sectors traffic in
“fictitious capital”, which acts as the savior of accumulation, but at
the same time “the fountainhead of all manner of insane forms”.21 The
DLF model for Gurgaon shows the risks of such insanity.

Besides its failure in purely economic terms, the urban model pro-
moted by DLF has been an ecological disaster. Runaway economic
growth has also meant rapid population increases. According to one
estimate, Gurgaon’s population is growing at a rate of 250 percent per
decade. Gurgaon has started to recognize its error in not heeding the
Delhi Master Plan’s ominous warning about lack of water resources
in the area. One dire article has proclaimed that Gurgaon is “on its
deathbed”,22 as the city obliviously extracts the last of its groundwater.
This problem has been exacerbated by the destruction of traditional
bunds, which channeled water from the Aravalli hills and kept the
city’s small lakes and ponds alive.
One prominent example of this is the construction of a Maruti

Suzuki manufacturing plant in Manesar, a village bordering Gurgaon
and now part of the same industrial zone. The plant has blocked
the flow of water coming down from the Aravallis, which has led to
waterlogging on one side and dessication on the other. There was no
due diligence completed before the construction of the plant, and
no consideration of its ecological impact. Despite their differences,
DLF and Maruti Suzuki are bound together in the same destructive
model of development.
Delhi, too, a “World-Class City”

Since the 1980s, then, the National Capital Region has seen profound,
and deeply unsettling, economic and environmental changes. Gurgaon
is often presented as the poster child of these changes, but Delhi too
has seen radical transformations. Though Gurgaon is technically in a
separate state, the growth of Delhi and the growth of Gurgaon have
always been intertwined. Gurgaon, after all, was marketed as a sub-
urb of Delhi (its proximity to Delhi’s international airport has long
been a selling point), and it has been connected to it by the Delhi
Metro since 2010.
The Metro is a telling manifestation of the rapidly diminishing dis-

tance between Delhi and Gurgaon, both practically (in terms of travel
time) and geographically (in terms of physical distance between the
urban centers). The Metro ride from Delhi to Gurgaon is fascinating.
After the hubbub of Chhattarpur station, near Mehrauli, the scenery
Surplus 235
slowly begins to change. Buildings start to thin. Farmhouses come
into view, the elevated rail line disturbing the jealously guarded
privacy of the estates’ owners. The landscape is dotted with wedding
halls and swimming pools, surrounded by expansive green lawns.
After the farmhouse belt, a profusion of trees appears, a sea of vilayati
kikar covering the Reserved Forest section of the Southern Ridge.
And then, abruptly, the greenness ends, and the rider is deposited
in Gurgaon, amidst the malls and the dystopian, futuristic steel and
glass structures.
The Reserved Forest appears as an oasis, a calm refuge from the

twin urban centers now surrounding it. But the peaceful appearance
is deceptive, as this zone, along with the farmhouse belt around it, has
been the site of intense contestations, both ideological and physical,
between different land uses, and the different people who champion
those uses.
In this respect, it is a mirror of the city as a whole. Delhi, in its

Ridge and beyond, has followed Gurgaon’s lead in imagining itself as
a “world-class city”, with all the requisite, globally recognized symbols
of conspicuous consumption: a proliferation of malls and multiplexes,
store after store of international brands. But the re-imagining of Delhi
has not just been confined to its sites of consumption; economic pro-
duction has also gotten a makeover. Mines on the Ridge have closed,
as we saw in Chapter 1, but this is just one sign of a broader shift: the
DLF-ification of Delhi, with real estate, international investment and
IT taking the place of old-fashioned manufacturing, at least in the
dominant imagination of the city.
It was largely a matter of imagination: in reality, both before and

after liberalization, Delhi’s economy has been dominated, not by
manufacturing, nor the financial sector, but by trade and services.
This reality, however, did not stop the many re-imaginings of Delhi
as a “world-class city”, which had as their model, whether implicitly
or explicitly, the post-industrial, consumerist Western city.23 And this
imagination had a very real impact on Delhi and its Ridge.
In many Western cities, industry left of its own accord, as cheaper

labor markets emerged abroad. In cities like Delhi, the process was
quite different, as the courts and a section of Delhi’s citizens conspired

to push industry out of the city. The most dramatic case of this was
the M. C. Mehta PIL, discussed at length in the previous chapter,
which led the Supreme Court to order the closure of thousands of
industrial units, and which later spurred the expansion of the Ridge’s
Reserved Forests.
While Mehta’s motivation was clearly environmental, his PIL got
caught up in larger economic and aesthetic transformations of the
city. The Supreme Court explicitly acknowledged that factory land
would be more profitable if it was converted from industrial use to
commercial, residential and office use.
Reviewing the court order mandating the closure of industries,
it becomes difficult to disentangle economic and environmental
motivations. The order stipulates that a third of each industrial plot
should remain as the private property of the owner, but that the other
two-thirds should be given to the DDA to create open spaces, green
areas, and lung spaces, the language of Jagmohan returning in full
force. Despite their shrunken landholdings, the owners should be
grateful for this court order, since the beautification of the area would
push up property values, and hence the owners should “see a gold
mine in them”.24 Clearly, the court was using this term in a purely
metaphorical sense, since mining had also recently been banned in
Delhi, on very similar grounds, which had helped ignite the farmhouse
phenomenon, another sign of the increasing role of speculative real
estate in Delhi’s economy.
A slew of court orders and government policies like this cleared
the space for land uses that seemed appropriately modern, from
offices performing Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services to
farmhouses hosting lavish wedding parties. Along with industries
and mines, slums were a chief target of Delhi’s neoliberal transforma-
tion. The DDA now explicitly defines a “world-class city” as a “slum-
free city”.25 The courts also drove this message home, while stressing
Delhi’s heritage as a capital, a trope that should be familiar from the
previous chapter. One anti-slum court ruling mused,
Delhi being the capital city of the country, is a show window to

the world of our culture, heritage, traditions and way of life. A
city like Delhi must act as a catalyst for building modern India.
It cannot be allowed to degenerate and decay.26
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The rhetoric of a “world-class city” has two dimensions. The first
is a desire for the world to see Delhi in a certain way: as slum-free, as
modern, as developed. The second is a reconceptualization of Delhi’s
relationship to its surroundings. Though its role as national capital
is still emphasized, the city is increasingly seen, not as a hub for its
rural hinterland, but as one node among many in a global economy
connected through the magic of the IT revolution. These two aspects of
the “world class city” are closely linked: it is through the projection of a
“world-class” image that political and business leaders position the city
as an appropriate site of international investment. Both aspects show
a marked preference for style over substance: the important thing is
what the city looks like on the surface, not the exploitation and violence
and chaos beneath that surface.
This chaos can be seen in informal settlements like the one in the
shadow of Qutb Minar, described at the close of the previous chapter.
Such scenes of demolition and painful regrowth have proliferated
across the city. These demolitions are particularly galling because
they do nothing to address the root causes of the housing crisis in
Delhi. Settlements are destroyed, only to arise again due to the lack of
affordable housing and, in recent years, a set of government policies
that have explicitly encouraged the growth of cities. The post-1991 era
in Delhi has seen a flood of migration into the city, with rich and poor
alike streaming in. Between the censuses of 1991 and 2011, the official
population of Delhi rose by seven million, and this is almost certainly
an underestimate.
This increased migration is in large part due to the agricultural

crises facing Delhi’s hinterland in particular and the country’s rural
areas more generally, which have largely been neglected in the pro-
jection of a “New India”, and which find their most tragic manifes-
tation in the ever-increasing number of farmer suicides across the
country. In many ways, working-class urban neighborhoods, includ-
ing the many that dot the Ridge, are living histories of rural displace-
ment. Poor migrants have been swallowed up by a city ravenous
for workers to mine its quarries, to build its malls, to construct its
roads and buildings, and to clear the way for a new infrastructure
of internet cables and satellite TVs. They are absolutely necessary
for the creation of an appropriately world-class Delhi, but they fall

into the shadows of the city, seen as an affront to moneyed property
owners when at home and relegated to the shady, unregulated world
of subcontractors, middlemen and informality when at work.
Nouveau Riche on the Southern Ridge

The past several decades have also brought to Delhi those at the
upper echelons of these new value chains of informality and illegality,
masters of black money circuits, political influence and back-room
negotiations. The professional, salaried middle classes resent this new
bourgeoisie, who are operating by another, wilder set of rules. These
intruders are seen as uncouth and uncultured, as the nouveau riche
usually are, but their wealth is also envied. Their lives are shrouded in
secrecy, but two recent high-profile murders on the Southern Ridge
have offered a rare glimpse into the world of new money in Delhi. The
media coverage of these cases has shown the public the sheer wealth
of Delhi’s new elite, in contrast to the crushing poverty that marks the
lives of the city’s majority. But the grisly details of these stories also
show the volatility of these new fortunes.
It is no coincidence that these cases center on the Southern Ridge,

and specifically on Ridge farmhouses. By calling their luxury estates
“farmhouses”, Delhi’s elite can claim the water subsidies available
to Master Plan-zoned agricultural land, while enjoying the combi-
nation of relative seclusion from and proximity to South Delhi and
Gurgaon. In the memorable words of Dilip Bobb, the farmhouses
“display a bewildering range of architectural indulgences, from
Spanish villas, to American-style ranch houses and marbled mansions
that would give Beverly Hills an inferiority complex”.27 Following in
the footsteps of Metcalfe, the nouveau riche of Delhi have used their
property on the Ridge as prominent status symbols. But like Metcalfe,
two new claimants to Delhi’s prestige have met violent ends, felled by
a mix of political maneuvering and family feuds.
The most famous case is that of Ponty Chadha, the victim of

a highly publicized farmhouse shootout on the Southern Ridge.
Chadha presided over a diversified business empire, though he was
best known as the “liquor baron” of Uttar Pradesh. In November
2012, Chadha was killed in a confrontation with his brother outside
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the family’s sprawling DLF Farms mansion. But Chadha was a late-
comer to Delhi, and for him, the Ridge farmhouse was merely a status
symbol. The next high-profile farmhouse murder was different.
Here, the victim was Deepak Bhardwaj, who made his fortune in
Delhi and precisely through its real estate. For him, the Ridge was
not just a place to display his wealth; it was his means of generating
wealth as well.
Bhardwaj once entered the Lok Sabha elections, but was trounced.
His real success had come not from electoral politics, but from land
deals, with a focus on the Master Plan’s Green Belt, including many
properties on the Southern Ridge. The farmhouse in which he met his
demise was his residence, but it was also the site of a massive “hospi-
tality hub” called “The Nitesh”, named after Bhardwaj’s younger son,
who was married to Shah Rukh Khan’s sister-in-law for a time. The
venue hosts events, conferences, parties and (inevitably) weddings.
The website of “The Nitesh” details the facilities available: a

28-acre, four-lawn complex; acres of lush greens, shady trees and
flowers; exclusive in and out gates for each lawn; banquet hall space
of over 35,000 square feet; a 40-room hotel; well-appointed bridal
rooms and toilets; golf carts to ferry guests. Each lawn is described
in detail, with a focus on features like “premium wooden furniture”,
“large granite porch”, “vedi enclosed in a glass pyramid”, and “funky
props and accessories”. People familiar with the farmhouse/wedding
industry have estimated that the venue brought in a monthly revenue
of roughly `2.5 crore.28
In the days following the murder, revelations about the case

mounted, taking on a stranger-than-fiction hue. Subtlety was not the
preferred method of the killers. They drove straight to the front gate
of The Nitesh and asked to meet Bhardwaj. After going inside, they
shot Bhardwaj point-blank with country-made pistols. They then ran
out of the complex, guns drawn, and jumped into their getaway car.
The assailants were quickly apprehended by the police. But it

was clear that they were only following orders. Early news reports
indicated that the killers had gotten their instructions from Swami
Pratimanand, a self-styled godman from Haridwar. Pratimanand
wanted to establish his own ashram but did not have enough money.

He even attended the massive Kumbh Mela earlier in the year in
order to impress akhara gurus. However, other holy men did not take
him seriously because he did not remain at any one ashram for more
than a year. Restless, he was seeking ways to make a quick buck. He
was told that he would need at least `1.5 crore to create an ashram that
would attract foreign tourists. The contract for Bhardwaj’s killing was
supposedly `5 crore.
Pratimanand, then, was not the main mastermind of the killing. He

too was just a hired hand. It was soon revealed that Pratimanand was
working for a lawyer and real estate agent named Baljeet Sehrawat,
who nursed a grudge against Bhardwaj because of a real estate deal
gone sour. Sehrawat had helped Bhardwaj with a disputed property
deal, but after the deal was done, Bhardwaj refused to pay Sehrawat’s
commission and legal expenses. Sehrawat can be seen as a younger,
more ruthless, version of the man he had killed: an up-and-coming
real estate mogul with political ambitions.
But the most shocking revelation was yet to come: Sehrawat was
not the main conspirator in the case. He too was just following orders.
As the case unraveled, the true culprit was finally found. The hit had
been ordered by Bhardwaj’s younger son, the very Nitesh after whom
the family estate is named.
The cause of the family drama was allegedly a women named Sonia,
who had become Bhardwaj’s lover. Thirty-three years Bhardwaj’s
junior, Sonia had become an integral part of The Nitesh’s business
operations. This did not sit well with the family, invariably described
in media reports as estranged from Bhardwaj. According to the family,
Bhardwaj was withholding money from them and keeping them
in conditions of “near poverty”. The children feared that he would
disinherit them and give all his money to Sonia. While Sonia accused
the family of ordering the hit, the family in turn claimed that it was
actually Sonia behind the murder. The police were more convinced
by Sonia’s version of events; they arrested Nitesh. The police also
claimed, in a bit of tragic irony, that Nitesh used his father’s own
money to pay for the contract on his life.29
In this murky intersection of crime, real estate speculation,

religion, love and family, it is difficult to determine the true motive
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for the killing. Every accusation meets with a counter-accusation,
and one can hardly trust the leaked reports of the Delhi police.
However, it is quite possible to see the larger developments that led
to the proliferation of figures like Bhardwaj, a low-level government
stenographer who became the richest political candidate in Delhi’s
history and who owned a prized farmhouse on the Southern Ridge.
Bhardwaj himself described his rise simply and bluntly, “Real

estate is the surest way of getting rich.”30 His death led to extensive
reporting on his life, from his early childhood to his untimely demise.
The picture of Bhardwaj that emerges is not a pretty one.31 He was, it
appears, singularly obsessed with wealth, and with the acquisition of
real estate as a means of amassing wealth.
Bhardwaj was born in the village of Chetiya Oliya in Haryana.

His father worked as a carpenter, and the family grew up poor. After
completing a bachelor’s degree in commerce from Delhi University’s
School of Correspondence, Bhardwaj moved to Delhi and became a
stenographer for the city government’s sales tax office. His office was
located in the Tis Hazari Court complex, and here Bhardwaj got a
thorough education in the intricacies of land deals, including ways
to exert legal pressure and corner valuable pieces of real estate. He
began to save up money to invest in land.
When he was tired of the bureaucratic life, he decided to open

an automobile parts business so that he could take advantage of the
rising sales of scooters and cars—these were the early days of Maruti
Suzuki’s success. But he soon realized that there were more lucra-
tive occupations in the quickly expanding city. He became involved in
real estate deals, first part-time and then full-time. He specialized
in buying agricultural land and then either selling it as farmhouses
or exerting political pressure so that the land use was converted to
“industrial”. He made massive amounts of money when the govern-
ment acquired some of his land for the expansion of the city’s airport,
and he re-invested the money in various rural properties that he
thought would soon be urbanized.
Bhardwaj was one of hundreds of brokers working on the rural

edges of Delhi, away from the monopoly of the DDA, and away from
DLF’s growing Gurgaon empire. He, like many others, benefited

from the DDA’s failures to build enough housing in the “urbanized” part
of Delhi, which drove potential homeowners to so-called “agricultural”
areas. Bhardwaj also took advantage of the breakdown of the village
commons system. By exploiting various loopholes, powerful villagers
took private ownership of many “common” lands, just as had happened
in the villages surrounding Mangarbani (as detailed in Chapter 2).
They then sold these lands to real estate dealers, even though the
Master Plan technically prohibited this. A savvy middleman, Bhardwaj
allied himself with influential panchayat members in various villages,
buying up land himself or connecting villagers with wealthy buyers.
Business associates remember his ability to sweet-talk potential

business partners and his command of English. But he was also able
to relate to villagers who were just coming to terms with, and hoping to
profit from, the coming urban onslaught. During his early days in the
Delhi real estate business, he would ride around the hinterland on
a two-wheeler, wearing a white kurta-pajama, with a pistol strung
around his neck. The expansion of Delhi, and the conversion of barren
Ridge land into high-end real estate, depended on middlemen like
Bhardwaj, who were able to connect with both the villagers selling
their land and the Delhi elite buying it.
Bhardwaj particularly focused on properties that were under legal

dispute, stuck between the strictures of the Master Plan and the rather
messier realities on the ground. He would sell these properties to
third parties, knowing that this would almost certainly draw lawsuits.
He had hundreds of civil cases pending against him, but from his time
in Tis Hazari, he knew that such cases often dragged on endlessly,
and that he could make enormous amounts of money while they did.
Unlike most real estate moguls, he was happy to appear in court and
personally attended all his hearings. Backed by a team of lawyers and
with strong connections in the government, Bhardwaj was able to
turn huge profits on disputed lands. Bit by bit, he built up a massive
real estate portfolio.
While Bhardwaj had been quietly amassing wealth for decades,

the media spotlight first shone on him in 2009, when he decided to
contest Lok Sabha elections. He ran as a candidate for the Bahujan
Samaj Party (BSP), and, in keeping with government regulations,
he had to declare his assets: `600 crore. A vast majority of this was
Surplus 243
from “agricultural” land: 368 crore owned by Bhardwaj himself, and
100 crore in his wife’s name. After losing the election, Bhardwaj was
reportedly building his connections with BJP leaders, and, just before
his death, he hosted a yagna in honor of Narendra Modi.
Circling Back to the Vasant Kunj Ridge

The Bhardwaj and Chadha scandals brought out the moralistic side of
Delhi’s middle class. Though representatives of this class were often
the loudest cheerleaders for neoliberal reform, many have recoiled
at the “uncivilized” exploits of the nouveau riche who populate the
wild post-1991 economic landscape. In the comments section of an
online Times of India article about Chadha, the following remarks
could be found: “How much ever wealth you amass, legally or illegally,
you need to have certain amount of education and upbringing to
sustain or grow it, which Ponty & his brothers lacked” and “Money
without education is like a weapon of mass destruction”.32
As these comments suggest, middle-class resentment is equally

channeled towards the unattainable farmhouses and the sprawling
slums. In the mainstream, middle-class environmental discourse—
the one to be found in the pages of the English daily newspapers—both
slums and farmhouses are seen as encroachments that the govern-
ment should remove. This apparent even-handedness, though, does
not take into account the actual ways that power works in Delhi,
the larger political and economic networks shielding Delhi’s new
moneymakers from punishment no matter how brazen their illegal-
ities. In practical terms, this means that poor “encroachments” are
demolished, while rich ones are left unscathed.
This point was brought home forcefully during the decade-long

struggle over the fate of the Vasant Kunj Ridge, where DLF and Maruti
Suzuki proudly stand together. In some sense, this is an old story:
the state is using the Ridge as a prize, as a site to display prestige
and glory. But the story has a distinctly neoliberal twist: the state was
flanked by private actors in an effort to transform the Ridge into a
symbol of Delhi’s new grandeur.
The seeds of the controversy were planted in 1994, though few

recognized it at the time. When the tentative boundaries of the Ridge

(as Reserved Forest) were drawn in 1994, they were done using maps
provided by the DDA. According to the physicist and environmental
activist Vikram Soni, who became one of the chief advocates for
maintaining the Vasant Kunj Ridge as a forest, the DDA intentionally
left some Ridge zones off the maps so that they would not become
protected areas.
To activists working on this case, it hardly seemed accidental that

many of the missing Ridge zones were in South Delhi, where real
estate prices were continuing their ascent, and where speculation was
rampant. The DDA was a main player in this speculation and seemed
intent on “developing” Ridge land, not with forests or parks, but with
more lucrative ventures. A main area of interest was the plot of Ridge
land that lay between the DDA-approved neighborhoods of Vasant
Vihar and Vasant Kunj.
The DDA’s first move in this area was fairly minor. In 1995, the
government started to build a road between Vasant Vihar and Vasant
Kunj, cutting through Ridge land. Soni, however, found this alarming,
as he had been taking refuge in the quiet, wooded solitude of the
Ridge since moving to Vasant Vihar five years earlier. He recognized
that a road was just a warning shot in a larger battle over the land.33
The Vasant Kunj Ridge was, at the time, an accidental forest. It had
been used for quarrying until the 1980s, when mine workers finally
dug all the way down to groundwater levels and mining stopped.
The abandoned, denuded landscape did not stay barren for long.
Within a few years, ponds had formed in the quarry pits. Seeds had
blown in as well, lodging in cracks and crevices. Soon enough, trees,
shrubs and grasses started to grow. This created a dramatic, and
increasingly green, landscape of hills, valleys, trees and lakes. Here
is one more reminder that the Ridge is hardly a land of pristine glory.
The corollary to this lesson is that even drastic human intervention
like quarrying need not spell the death of the Ridge, and can even
provide new micro-habitats, if the land is given the space and time
to regenerate.
Soni had watched this regeneration first-hand, and he was not

ready to see the land fall into the DDA’s hands. He knew that Delhi had
passed a law outlawing the felling of trees without special permission.
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He asked the road builders if they had obtained permission, and he
was met with stony silence. After some more research, he and a friend
filed a PIL with the Delhi High Court and succeeded in halting the
construction of the road.
Their victory was short-lived. In 1996, even as the Delhi govern-

ment was taking away villagers’ common lands to make Reserved
Forests, the DDA announced that it would develop a luxury hotel
complex on the Vasant Kunj Ridge, which would house 13 five-star
hotels. This reveals much about the government’s imagination of a
clean, green city: a densely-packed cluster of high-end hotels, which
would consume massive amounts of water and electricity, could
profitably be placed on the Ridge, as long as other parts of the Ridge
were set aside for forestry (after being wrested from the villagers that
owned these lands).
Soni immediately began to campaign against the hotel complex.

He had an influential ally: Kuldip Nayar, also a Vasant Vihar resident,
a journalist known for his unbending integrity. He was one of the few
journalists who stood up to Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, and
he was jailed for it. Soni and Nayar started going on walks together
through the wilderness of the Vasant Kunj Ridge, and Nayar soon
joined the fight against the DDA and the hotels.
They were accompanied by others in Vasant Vihar who did not,

perhaps, share Soni and Nayar’s ecological appreciation of the Ridge,
but had other concerns about the hotel project. Many Vasant Vihar
residents worried that the hotels would lead to the creation of a busy
thoroughfare connecting their neighborhood to Vasant Kunj, which
they saw as decidedly down-market. This was, of course, a subjective
judgment. The DDA flats at Vasant Kunj were highly coveted by most
of the middle class; compared to the posh Vasant Kunj, though, they
lacked a certain glamor. Soni is quite frank about his neighbors’ moti-
vation, referring to this faction in jest as the “elite gentry of Vasant
Vihar”.34 He may have questioned their attitude, but he certainly
welcomed their support.
The DDA, meanwhile, had its own considerations in mind. A

luxury hotel complex was very much in keeping with the new, “world-
class” image that the DDA wished to promote. It would draw high-end

international tourism and make the city attractive to international
businesses. The Vasant Kunj Ridge was close to both the airport
and Gurgaon; it was thus the perfect location for those wanting a
global feel.
Again, Soni and his allies took their case to the court, and again,
they found a sympathetic judiciary. While the Vasant Kunj Ridge was
not included in the 1994 Reserved Forest notification, the Vasant
Vihar residents still believed that the law was on their side. They
pointed to the second Master Plan for Delhi (published in 1990, and
meant to guide development in the city until 2001), which defined
the Ridge geologically, as the “rocky outcrop of Aravalli hills”, and
mandated that “no further infringement” be allowed. The Vasant Kunj
Ridge clearly met this definition. The Supreme Court agreed with
this logic and ordered a stay on the project. The court also mandated
the creation of the Environment Impact Assessment Authority
(EIAA) to review this project and others like it. By this point, land
had already been cleared for the foundation of a hotel called the Hyatt
Grand, a collaboration between Hyatt, the American hotel giant, and
an Indian company called Unison. After the court order, construction
was halted.
But the DDA was patient, as was the Unison management. Kuldip
Singh, the judge who had pushed for the creation of the EIAA, and
who was most sympathetic to the petitioners, retired in 1997. After
Singh’s retirement, Unison kept on filing petitions in court, trying
different strategies to convince the judiciary to allow construction to
resume. By 1997, they had found the right formula. Advancing a very
questionable reading of the DDA’s initial plans and previous court
findings, Unison’s lawyers insisted that the DDA’s plan only referred
to 223 hectares of Ridge land, in a larger plot of 315 hectares. So when
courts had earlier ruled that the hotels could not be built, they were
only referring to the 223-hectare plot; however, since the Hyatt hotel
was located on the smaller, 92-hectare plot, its construction should
be allowed. This clever argument ignored the fact that the EIAA
had quite clearly stated that all 315 hectares should be considered
protected. Nevertheless, the argument was accepted by the court.
For this case, the hotel’s main lawyer was Harish Salve, a well-
known, well-connected senior advocate. But he got support in his
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creative interpretation of the law from the advocate representing the
DDA, Arun Jaitley, another legal and political heavyweight (most
prominently, he served as the Minister of Finance from 2014 to
2019). Soni, Nayar, and others had put their faith in the legal system,
figuring that they had an airtight case. But powerful forces and
influential figures, both in the government and in the private sector,
knew that, especially in the city of Delhi, the law is flexible, and can be
made to bend in all kinds of surprising contortions.
The construction of the Hyatt Grand thus resumed, and it now

stands on one corner of the Vasant Kunj Ridge. The hotel’s website
emphasizes its luxury (“a glamorous wonder”) and its international
pedigree. Its exterior was designed by a London-based firm, its interior
by a San Francisco-based one. The website also has the temerity to note
that the hotel has a “fine location near the [city’s] dense green belt”.
Round 2
Those fighting the DDA’s plans could console themselves with the
fact that, due to their efforts, only one five-star monstrosity was built,
not the whole 13-hotel complex. But the DDA knew it had stumbled
on a successful formula. The courts had admitted that the 92-hectare
plot fell outside of the zone where construction was prohibited.
The Grand Hyatt (now, with a new ownership arrangement, simply
called “The Grand”) only occupied four hectares of this plot —what
of the other 88?
The DDA soon answered this question. In late 2003, it started

advertising an auction for plots of land on the Vasant Kunj Ridge,
to be used for the development of malls and corporate offices. This
would take up 25 of the 88 hectares, and, from the beginning, was
projected as a prestigious, luxurious new development. Two of the
auction’s eventual winners were quite recognizable: ONGC, a public-
sector company and the biggest oil and gas company in the country,
which sought to build a new corporate headquarters on the plot,
and Ambience, a well-known mall developer. The other winners
did not seem as notable, at least to a casual observer. They included
companies called Beverly Park Maintenance Services, Regency Park
Property Management Services and Jasmine Projects.

But these names concealed the presence of bigger players, as
opponents of the malls soon found out. Beverly Park Maintenance
Services and Regency Park Property Management Services were
both subsidiaries created by DLF to pursue various construction
and development projects. The malls were eventually branded
with the DLF tag and became DLF Promenade and DLF Emporio.
Jasmine Projects was a real estate developer that had teamed up with
Maruti Suzuki.
These were powerful players at the height of their Gurgaon-based

success, eager to expand in the capital. In the ensuing legal battle
over the commercial complex, they were backed by the same high-
power lawyers, but with a slight twist. This time, Harish Salve, who
had earlier represented the hotels, now served as the DDA’s advocate.
Meanwhile, Arun Jaitley left his responsibilities with the DDA to
represent the malls and corporate offices. This neat switch was a
clear indication of the new political and economic situation in Delhi:
in the eyes of the project’s backers, the interests of the state and the
interests of private companies were identical.
Those fighting against the malls and offices thus had their work
cut out for them. An early legal challenge against the proposed
commercial complex was dismissed, and construction began in
September 2004. But the movement against the project had gained
steam, attracting the attention not just of Vasant Kunj residents, but
of environmentalists and NGOs across the city. The protest move-
ment also had the backing of some sections of the government. The
environmentalists fighting the case got an unexpected boost from the
Delhi Pollution Control Committee, which asserted that the malls and
offices had not submitted proper Environmental Impact Assessments
(EIAs), and ordered a halt to the construction. Further, the Central
Empowered Committee (CEC) of the Forest bench of the Supreme
Court found that the plot in question was definitely Ridge land,
and was a valuable water recharge zone as well, and thus deserved
protection as a Reserved Forest.
As lawyers for both sides presented their case to judges and to

government committees, another battle was taking place in the court
of public opinion. Environmentalists organized protests and drew on
their contacts in the media to launch a sustained campaign against
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the commercial complex. They also showed up in large numbers to
public hearings organized by the government about the controversy.
But their opponents also came prepared for these meetings. For the
largest, most contentious public meeting, in the summer of 2006,
the malls’ backers had brought in hired muscle to crowd out the
protesters and drown out their voices.35
Soon after this meeting, an Expert Committee from the Ministry
of Environment submitted its report on the case. It started the report
by reiterating what environmentalists had been arguing for nearly
a decade:
Various studies, including EIA documents submitted now for

obtaining environmental clearance, establish the environmen-
tal value of this area.... Therefore, DDA should have exercised
adequate environmental precaution based on sustainable envi-
ronmental management approach. There is no evidence that the
environmental impact of the construction of malls was assessed
beforehand.
But after stating all this, the report took an unexpected turn:
In hindsight it is evident that the location of large commercial

complexes in this area was environmentally unsound. Now
many proponents have constructed very substantially and really
speaking awarding clearances even with conditions is largely a
compromise with de-facto situation. The Expert Committee is of
the opinion that at this stage only damage control is possible.36
In essence: the project is an ecological disaster, but construction

has already started, so we can’t stop it now.
For the environmentalists working on this case, the Ministry’s

about-face was shocking. Construction had, indeed, started, but
hardly in a “very substantial” way. The foundations of the buildings
had barely been laid. “Very substantial” was the clout of the project’s
backers, and the prestige, money and power they had brought to the
table. In the end, the Supreme Court accepted the recommendations
of the Expert Committee. In its deliberations, the court also noted the
value of the malls in bringing international brands to the city.

The “damage control” referred to by the Expert Committee was
also hard to identify. The malls and office were built with no major
changes to their initial plans after the companies involved had
submitted perfunctory EIAs. As punishment for their environmental
crimes, the companies were fined a mere `5 lakh, this on a plot of land
that real estate insiders valued at `25,000 crore.
Though attention was focused on the malls during the legal battles
that took place between 2003 and 2006, parallel processes were
unfolding behind the mall construction site, on the remaining portion
of the Vasant Kunj Ridge. In fact, the malls and offices would only
take up 25 hectares of a plot of Ridge land that totaled 640 hectares.
Of this, 315 hectares were controlled by the DDA and 325 hectares
were controlled by the Army. In the early 2000s, the Army began
massive construction efforts on the Ridge, cutting down trees and
laying foundations for schools and housing complexes. Soni and his
allies tried to bring media attention to this case, with mixed success,
and he even arranged meetings with high-level Army representa-
tives. Though they resented the bad press, Army officials realized that
other branches of the state would not really put a stop to their con-
struction efforts. At worst, they would impose small fines. Their
building projects thus continued.
The DDA, in the meantime, contemplated what it would do

with the remaining 290 hectares of its Vasant Kunj Ridge land. 10
hectares were used to establish a small institutional area, which
would host, among other things, a university established by The
Energy and Resource Institute (TERI). The irony of this was not lost
on environmental activists; TERI presented itself as India’s leading
environmental NGO (its founder, Dr. R. K. Pachauri, was chairman
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change when that body
won the Nobel Peace Prize), and yet it was gobbling up land on Delhi’s
Ridge. When confronted by activists, TERI officials meekly replied
that the DDA had assured them it was not Ridge land.
This still left 280 hectares of land. Officials recognized that the
DDA was getting pilloried in the press for its callous attitude towards
the environment. Their solution was to convert the remaining portion
of the Vasant Kunj Ridge into a biodiversity park. This was the zone
that had been mined most intensively; it would have been difficult to
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construct either malls or Army buildings on such a pockmarked land-
scape. This area did, though, house a small working-class settlement.
It was promptly demolished, with little media fanfare.
Despite the dubious roots of the park’s establishment, the DDA

showed a genuine interest in the biodiversity project once it began
in 2004. (This is in marked contrast to the early years of the Asola
Bhatti wildlife sanctuary, when vilayati kikar proliferated, mining
continued, and trucks barreled through the “protected” zones.) DDA
officials sought the help of ecologists at the Centre for Environmental
Management of Degraded Ecosystems (CEMDE) at Delhi University,
who made careful forestation plans for different zones of the park. The
park now hosts guided nature walks and even has a small campsite
for visiting students.
Despite these outreach activities, the Biodiversity Park is largely

hidden from public view. In part, this is by design; the ecologists
who have spent over a decade designing the park are wary of visitors
who may litter, trample on plants, and generally wreak havoc. But
the invisibility of the park is largely determined by its surroundings.
It is sandwiched between, and dwarfed by, luxury malls and Army
settlements. These two complexes hide the park in different ways. The
Army, shunning media attention and valuing tight security, makes it
difficult to approach the Vasant Kunj Ridge from the west side. The
malls are more porous (although security guards are present to turn
away those who look like they can’t afford the goods offered inside),
but they draw all the attention to themselves. Style over substance:
the malls set the tone for the Vasant Kunj Ridge.
Why Malls?
The Vasant Kunj malls are among Delhi’s biggest and most luxurious.
They are a potent symbol of the city’s economic transformation
in the age of globalization. They underscore the economic shift from
the manufacturing sector to the service sector. But more importantly,
they signify a new kind of consumerism and a new image of India’s
gleaming future, a balance of global cosmopolitanism and Indian
tradition. In short, the malls bring together the generation of surplus
and the conspicuous consumption of surplus on the Ridge.

This is not what malls were initially intended to do. The shopping
mall’s inventor, Victor Gruen, was a fervent socialist. Born in Austria,
Gruen moved to the United States in 1938. In a 1952 article for the
journal Progressive Architecture, Gruen outlined his vision for the mall:
it would be a center of social life, not just for shopping, but for living,
working and socializing. Densely packed stores would be surrounded
by apartments, office complexes, hospitals and schools. Gruen saw
this as a remedy to suburban sprawl and as a way to create vibrant,
integrated meeting places. Gruen lived long enough to see his dreams
dashed, and to watch with dismay as malls only accelerated sprawl and
became isolated realms of intense consumption. Towards the end of his
life, he repudiated the entire idea of the mall, saying, “I refuse to pay
alimony for those bastard developments.”37
One of the reasons his ideas failed is that it is exceedingly difficult
to build a socialist space in the midst of a capitalist economy. More
specifically, the real estate market, so central to the story of contem-
porary Delhi and the Ridge, had functioned in similar ways halfway
across the world, encouraging speculation and foiling the best-
laid plans of urbanists and architects. Gruen’s first mall project, in
the midwestern state of Minnesota, envisioned the mall as the center-
piece of a multi-use 500-acre development, where people could
live, work, shop, eat and play. However, as soon as the mall itself
proved to be successful (75,000 people visited on its opening day),
property values around the mall skyrocketed. This made it difficult
to build schools, hospitals or parks in the vicinity; instead, the land
was snapped up by other commercial enterprises, as well as by high-
end housing developers, who proceeded to worsen the very sprawl
Gruen was seeking to contain.
After this, malls rapidly spread across the United States and
became the signature feature of American suburbia. This, in part,
explains their draw in Delhi; they are a symbol of the ‘developed’
world that many want to emulate. But ironically, by the time malls
started to flourish in India, they had begun their precipitous decline
in the US. By 2012, about one-third of all American malls were
either totally defunct or on the verge of dying, as they struggled with
low footfalls and the exodus of high-end brands who had started to
see malls as passe. In one case, a mall in Columbus, Ohio was torn
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down and replaced by a park, an inversion of the Vasant Kunj Ridge
process.38
Malls came to India in the 1990s. Depending on who you ask,

the first mall in India was either in Mumbai or Chennai, but Delhi
soon became the prime location for new malls. The political capital
of the country was increasingly remade as its consumption capital.
This trend extended to the larger National Capital Region; one
stretch of road in Gurgaon features a staggering 11 malls, with more
in the works.
Malls were attractive for their symbolic association with the West,
but also for more mundane, number-crunching reasons: study after
study has shown that malls offer real estate developers the highest
rates of return (at least in countries where malls are not dying).
Companies like DLF were eager to cash in on this trend, so much
so that, in 2009, retailers in DLF Emporio went on strike to protest
the high rents that DLF was charging. These luxury-brand managers
claimed they were being treated like “bonded labor”, a comparison
that real bonded laborers (like the ones once employed in the Ridge’s
quarries) would likely find quite distasteful.39 Despite the dramatic
rhetoric, though, the retailers and DLF reached an agreement about
rental prices, and the strike was called off.
Like the IT sector, malls have been projected as a key part of India’s
entrance onto the world stage. But like IT, malls play a relatively minor
role in the Indian economy. Their importance is largely symbolic. In
economic terms, malls are considered part of the “modern retail” or
“organized retail” sector. These seemingly neutral terms are in fact
quite loaded, suggesting as they do that the bazaars and corner shops
that dominate the retail market are quaint, old-fashioned, and in a
state of disorganized disarray.
Boosters of the new economy have salivated at the prospect of

“modern” retail’s rise. One early study predicted that, by 2013, more
than three-quarters of all retail space in the Delhi region would be
dedicated to malls. This has not come to pass, in part because the
financial crisis of 2008 disrupted many of the grander plans for mall
construction. In 2011, “modern” retail made up about 10 percent
of the total retail business in India, although even this may be an

over-estimate, due to the difficulty of accurately calculating cash
flows in the informal economy.40
Looking at the Vasant Kunj commercial complex, it is easy to see

why malls have impacted the popular imagination in ways that are
disproportionate to their actual economic weight. For one, the Vasant
Kunj development is huge. It dominates the landscape. The three
malls, Ambience, DLF Promenade and DLF Emporio, are located in
the center of the complex, flanked by the Maruti Suzuki corporate
office (now also shared by Bharti Airtel) on one side, and the ONGC
and ONGC Videsh offices on the other.
The malls, and particularly the centerpiece, DLF Promenade, are

built in a style that oddly recalls the domed, colonial-era buildings
of Lutyens Delhi, with neoclassical grandness and the occasional,
vaguely Indian motif. DLF Promenade is a Viceroy’s Lodge for the
neoliberal age. Both, not incidentally, are sited on the Ridge, and
both were heavily promoted by the state. For Raisina Hill, the state
employed private contractors, but of course retained ownership of
the site. For the Vasant Kunj Ridge, the state handed the land over
to its former enemy, DLF, its longtime friend, Maruti Suzuki, and
several others.
It’s not just the majestic exteriors of the Vasant Kunj malls that
announce their significance. The interiors are also grand, with
columns, chandeliers, and massive, high-ceilinged atriums. Nehru
once described dams as postcolonial India’s new temples; perhaps
the malls are the new temples of ‘new India’. Certainly, malls like
those in Vasant Kunj have been built to evoke a sense of wonder.
The interiors offer more worldly pleasures as well: the opportunity,

not just to shop, but to see and be seen, to socialize, to gossip, to escape
the heat and grime of the city. Although the malls sell themselves as
Delhi’s most luxurious, they actually cater to a range of customers,
although not, of course, to the poor. They are arranged in a clear
hierarchy: the relatively modest Ambience Mall on one end, the posh
Promenade in the middle, and the exclusive Emporio at the other end.
All the malls offer a mix of Indian and international brands, but the
prestige of the brands increases incrementally. The first, for instance,
houses Big Bazaar and McDonald’s; the second features a boutique
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called Kama Ayurveda along with Calvin Klein Jeans; the third boasts
of Manish Arora and Gucci.
High-end malls like Emporio are frequented by Delhi’s old elite,

but perhaps their more important function is as a rite of passage for
the new elite of the city and its hinterland. To be seen, and to make
purchases, at Emporio is to take part in cosmopolitan, high-end global
consumption. It is a way to get over one’s provincialism and to stake
a claim to power and status in the country’s urban(e) core. The owner
of an art gallery in Emporio noted that many of his customers come
from smaller cities and towns, and have never bought art before, but
see it as an opportunity to demonstrate their newfound worldliness.41
These dynamics also work at the lower end of the spectrum.

Richer, more discerning shoppers want to be seen at the right malls,
but for many who are just entering the middle classes, just going to
any mall is enough to feel distinguished. For those living in the city,
and even for those visiting it, a trip to a mall has become a kind of
status-enhancing tourist activity.
Malls, then, create a new kind of society, breaking down old

barriers and erecting new ones on the basis of a consumerism that is
open to all, providing that one has the money. In some ways, state-
promoted (though privately-run) malls have been more successful in
crafting a new citizen than the more heavy-handed methods of the
state-implemented (though private foundation-funded) Master Plan.
These social opportunities should not be dismissed as purely

superficial and crassly commercial. Despite the failure of Gruen’s
socialist dreams, the mall still creates a new kind of social space and
makes possible new kinds of social interaction, as the sociologist
Sanjay Srivastava has convincingly argued. Srivastava has conducted
extensive interviews with mall-goers in Delhi and Gurgaon, including
the sons of farmers who have sold their land to the state or to real
estate developers.42 These young men, located on the cusp of the rural
and the urban, see the malls as a way of taking part in the promises
of a new India.
However, this social space is always a constrained one, because

the ultimate goal of any mall is to make money. In Delhi, this means
they exclude the majority of the population, who can’t afford mall

purchases. But the focus on profit also impacts those who do venture
into the malls. Mall designers are faced with a dilemma: on the one
hand, they must create the kind of atmosphere that draws people in
and encourages them to socialize, but on the other hand, they must
motivate people to buy products and not linger endlessly. One way
of addressing this problem is named after the long-suffering Gruen,
although he disavowed such techniques: the “Gruen effect” of giving
malls an intentionally confusing lay-out, so that consumers get
disoriented, lose their original purpose, and are more inclined to
make random purchases.
There is something seductive about malls, and this seduction

cannot be completely disregarded. It is based on promises that
are not entirely false, just incomplete. Malls do indeed offer new
opportunities, and they do create new, unexpected social worlds,
but the liberation they promise is severely limited since it cannot be
independent of the act of buying and the show of consuming.
Greenwashing
More easily dismissed are other promises made by the Vasant Kunj
malls, particularly those of eco-friendliness. It’s one thing to build
a biodiversity park in a belated, PR-influenced recognition of the
Vasant Kunj Ridge’s ecological value; it’s quite another to argue that
the malls are actually good for the environment. This is precisely the
claim made by the Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) that
the project proponents hastily submitted to the Delhi Pollution
Control Committee (DPCC) after the courts started breathing down
their necks.
The EIAs are fascinating documents. Despite the air of secrecy

surrounding the development of the malls, the EIAs are now in the
public domain, albeit buried in the depths of the DPCC website.43
The most immediately striking feature of the EIAs is the considerable
space they devote to issues that seem outside the scope of environ-
mental impact assessment. These sections are concentrated at the
beginning of the EIAs and, though their content is extraneous, their
purpose is clear: to prime the reader to be favorably inclined toward
the project proponents.
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Some of these introductory remarks are incredibly broad, pre-
senting the familiar theme of Delhi as an important capital. As the
EIA for the ONGC office complex intones: “Delhi, the capital of India,
has always occupied a strategic position in the country’s history.”
What is more, “its many-layered existence is tantalizing and can
entice the curious traveler into a fascinating journey of discovery.”
Some of the remarks are rather more specific, as with the preface
to the EIAs prepared for Beverly Park Maintenance Services and
Regency Park Property Management Services, representing the two
DLF malls. Both EIAs begin with identical texts about the glory and
prestige of DLF, as well as its downright patriotic roots:
The saga of DLF... began in 1947 when India witnessed a huge

influx of people resulting in doubling of the population of Delhi
overnight. The Government at that time was hit by the need
to provide shelter for this burgeoning population. DLF took up
the challenge.
DLF was actually founded in 1946 and from the start engaged in
intense speculation that drove up land prices, but this of course is not
as endearing as a 1947 birth as a charitable organization.
But the most telling introductory remarks come from the Ambience
EIA. Perhaps aware of the controversy around the mall, the EIA takes
pains to clarify why the project is important. “The need for the pro-
posed project arises to meet the commercial space requirements of
the city and to stop the menace of unauthorized commercialization
of the residential areas with the retail revolution that has spread geo-
graphically in India.” This is a remarkable statement, arguing that
it’s acceptable to build on the Ridge, since this will stop the rise of
other illegal commercial establishments. If a real estate project is
big enough, the EIA seems to say, then it cannot possibly be illegal
or illegitimate.
The EIA continues, “Fuelling this growth are India’s sprawling

shopping malls, which are increasingly challenging high street stores,
corner shops and village market alike.” Here, “sprawl” seems to be
used in a positive way. There is no evidence given to suggest that malls
have objective advantages over smaller shops or markets, or that they

even contribute more to the economy. In fact, malls’ relatively small
role in the retail sector is briefly noted, but quickly followed by the
bullish prediction that the “organized” retail sector would grow by
97 percent in the next five years, yet another hope that was dashed
by the 2008 crash.
Having established the importance of Delhi, of DLF, and of malls,

the EIAs then get down to the actual matter at hand: environmen-
tal assessments. Given their preludes, it is hardly surprising that
the EIAs give the projects a clean chit. For example, the Ambience
EIA notes that the area is not a Reserved Forest, which is techni-
cally true. It then goes on to note that it is not on the Ridge, which,
at least geologically speaking, is patently false. It also gives the more
ambiguous claim that the area is not “ecologically sensitive”, but is,
in fact, “ecologically insignificant”. This is because no endangered
species were found on the land, and because there was relatively
sparse vegetation.
But even the environmentalists fighting the malls recognized that

the Vasant Kunj landscape had been disfigured by decades of mining.
It may not be ecologically sensitive, in that a surprising amount of
dense green foliage sprang up after mining stopped. But the issue at
hand was precisely how this land, now in the process of environmental
regeneration, should be used: as a budding forest and protected water
recharge area, or as a sprawling commercial complex?
The EIAs claim that the malls and offices would not affect the
local groundwater tables, since they would be getting water piped in
by the Delhi Jal Board, and, if that failed, they would get water sup-
plied by tankers. But, even by the EIAs’ conservative estimates, the
amount of water needed for the complex was staggering: 1,616,000
liters per day. The EIAs describe plans to collect rainwater and recycle
wastewater, but these are only mitigation measures that could, at best,
meet a fraction of the malls’ rapacious demands. Even if the water was
not directly taken from underneath the Vasant Kunj Ridge, it would
still be draining the city’s already threatened water supply. The EIAs
cover this up with bland platitudes: “Water conservation is an import-
ant part of sustainable living” and “The project proponents exhibit
a general concern for water conservation and desire to operate in
sustainable ways that would minimize any environmental impact.”
Surplus 259
The EIAs then go on to argue that the complex would, in fact, have
a positive impact. How? The term “green belt” is used liberally. One
EIA notes that the DDA would create a 50-meter-wide green belt
separating the two sides of the main road parallel to the mall. The
DDA has, in fact, built a wide divider on the road; about half of it has
been greened, but largely with vilayati kikar. The other half is full of
construction equipment, as work crews dig through the rocky ground
to lay electrical cables.
The EIAs also emphasize that a “green belt” will be built around
the malls. In practice, this has amounted to heavily manicured lawns,
with carefully trimmed hedges, rows of flowers, and the occasional
tree. This is just the kind of high-maintenance park that most ecol-
ogists disdain, as it requires considerable upkeep, including con-
stant watering. It is, much like the forestation around Raisina Hill,
window dressing, an aesthetic accoutrement to enhance the feeling
of grandeur.
Perhaps the most unusual claim is the DLF Promenade’s promise

to build a green belt “in the mall”. The interior of the mall is devoid of
greenery; perhaps this was supposed to refer to the other DLF mall,
Emporio, which features four massive palm trees, planted in huge
pots, sitting inside the mall’s posh atrium. It is less a green belt than
a sparse quadrangle.
The EIAs emphasize that the malls will not just be good for the
physical environment, they will improve the “socio-economic envi-
ronment” of the area by driving up real estate values (which will be
good for homeowners but not for renters), creating jobs (however
precarious and low-paying they may be) and improving “the aesthet-
ics and visual appeal of the region... by providing a cleaner and envi-
ronment friendly office and commercial area”. As the ONCG report
sums up, “the overall impact on Socio-Economic Environment is
positive and permanent in nature.”
Those fighting the malls had quite a different assessment. One

activist pointed out that the electricity used by the complex would
be enough to power the homes of 80,000 middle-class residents.
Others had more personal objections. Those whose homes had been
demolished to make way for the Biodiversity Park pointed out the

hypocrisy of clearing one small settlement on environmental grounds,
only to construct a gargantuan complex that would have a far bigger
environmental impact.44
These arguments were aired during contentious public hearings

in 2006, soon after the EIAs were released. They were not enough
to sway the courts. Even more disturbing, though, is that the EIAs
are describing the best-case scenario, a rosy future world in which
real estate developers and big corporations known for corner-cutting
would follow environmental regulations with the utmost care.
But there is already evidence that this is not happening. In 2013,

the National Green Tribunal found that the Ambience mall on the
Vasant Kunj Ridge had not followed the conditions laid out in its
EIA. Specifically, it had converted the basement, which was to be
used solely for parking, into a commercial zone. It had altered other
areas as well. The tribunal found that the mall had extended its
commercial area by almost 60 percent, which would inevitably lead
to more electricity use, more water consumption, more waste and so
on. In response, Ambience argued that they would lose money if they
cut the mall back down to its mandated size. The tribunal retorted,
“Financial burden cannot be the consideration for compromising
the environmental and public health interests.”45
This was a welcome ruling, but for the Vasant Kunj malls, it was
too little, too late. The Supreme Court ruling of 2006 had made it
quite clear that, on the whole, the state machinery considers the
balance sheets of private companies to be more important than
environmental concerns. It is this logic that has fueled the growth of
malls, on the Ridge and elsewhere.
Waste
Delhi’s seemingly endless growth has created different kinds of sur-
pluses: economic surplus for the nouveau riche; a surplus population
to feed the growing service sector and construction industry; and sur-
plus leisure time and surplus avenues of consumption for a privileged
section of the population. This has been accompanied by correspond-
ing shortages: a shortfall of reliable, decent-paying jobs for the majori-
ty of the population; a shortfall of housing for all (and especially for the
Surplus 261
poor); and a shortage of time for those desperately seeking work while
trying to support a household.
To this list we can add another pair: a surplus of waste, and a

shortage of places to put this waste. One environmental activist cal-
culated that the Vasant Kunj commercial complex would, as a whole,
discharge over a million liters of sewage each day, along with 13,500
kilograms of solid waste. And this is just one of Delhi’s many malls.
Contemporary Delhi and its Ridge-top malls may be an extreme

example, but cities, with their concentrated populations, have always
produced a corresponding concentration of waste. Zooming out
historically and geographically can help us better situate the current
waste dilemmas facing the Ridge.
Historically, urbanization has led to environmental problems both

in the city and in the countryside, especially in the case of what’s
politely called “human waste” or excreta. Shit (put more bluntly) is
good fertilizer; it is not actually waste if, after proper treatment, it
returns to the soil and nourishes the land. And this is indeed what
happened for most of human history.
As cities grew, especially in the aftermath of the Industrial

Revolution, the growing rift between town and country hurt both
locales. In the towns, there was too much shit; in the country, not
enough. As agriculture intensified, more was demanded of the soil,
but its nutrients were not being replenished. This led to bizarre
episodes like the guano boom of the mid-nineteenth century, when
countries like Peru exported massive amounts of guano (bird shit) to
European countries whose soils had become dangerously depleted.
The European soil crisis was eventually resolved with the invention
of artificial fertilizer, but this innovative measure did nothing to
address the root cause of the problem: the increasingly stark division
between city and countryside.
In cities, waste kept piling up. In both the East and the West, shit
(euphemistically called ‘night soil’) was generally removed from the
city manually, by sweepers, who loaded the shit onto carts and then
disposed of it outside of town. The link with agriculture was not totally
severed. The shit was generally deposited in large pits, composted,
and sold to farmers. This was the dominant system used in Paris and

London, for instance, along with Indian cities. Everywhere, this was
considered dirty work, but it was especially stigmatized in India, as it
was tied to age-old hierarchies and caste-based exploitation; this was
considered the polluting work of the castes deemed untouchable by
their high-caste oppressors.
In seventeenth-century Shahjahanabad, the manual system of

night soil removal was supplemented by a basic network of subsoil
sewers, which was occasionally flushed out with water from a nearby
canal. By the time the British took control of Delhi, though, this
sewer system was already in disrepair, another victim of the Mughals’
long decline.
British rule in India was marked by an obsession with sanitation.

The British set up their own kind of caste system, increasingly
paranoid about any kind of contact with a “native” population seen as
impure and disease-ridden. In Delhi, this paranoia perhaps reached
its zenith (or, more accurately, its nadir) when the Army’s General
Quarter Master recommended that Indian shit and British shit be
disposed of in separate trenches.46
This did not happen, although other kinds of segregation certainly

did, first with the creation of British Civil Lines as distinct from
Shahjahanabad, and then, more dramatically, with British New Delhi
prioritized over native Old Delhi. Both sides of the segregated city still
produced shit in increasing amounts as the city grew, and this needed
to be disposed of. As early as the 1870s, the sites used for dumping
and composting shit, which were located in the immediate outskirts
of the city, had reached their capacity. So the city turned to a space
that had long been labeled as ‘wasteland’ by the British: the Ridge.
What better place to store human waste than a place that was itself
perceived to be waste? Ridge land also had the advantage of being
sparsely populated and agriculturally unproductive; it thus became a
favorite dumping ground for the British and eventually for the post-
Independence managers of Delhi’s waste.
From the 1870s onwards, cartloads of shit were carried to increas-

ingly far-flung Ridge locations, starting just outside the walled city
and eventually reaching the outskirts of Qutb Minar, many kilome-
ters away. This caused problems later, as the British tried to expand
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the city’s infrastructure. In 1903, for instance, the British govern-
ment in Delhi was considering buying a tract of land just south of
Paharganj (literally, “hilly neighborhood”) to build housing for gov-
ernment workers tasked with managing the region’s growing railway
infrastructure. In a hand-written note on the request for acquiring
the land, an official wrote, “This is the very piece of high ground where
sewage was buried some years earlier.” Another added, “Inform the
railway that filth was buried all over this plot about three years ago.”47
The city was having a hard time escaping its shit.
As sanitation conditions worsened, the British began developing

a piped water system, which would be used for both the delivery of
drinking water and the flushing out of shit; in short, the modern
sewage system that is now a unremarkable staple of our daily lives,
but was, at that time, still novel even in most of Europe. In Delhi, as
in other colonial cities, the benefits of this system were distributed
extremely unequally, as the system catered to British residents and,
later, a handful of elite Indians. This inequality was exacerbated
by the construction of New Delhi and the concentration of urban
infrastructure, including sewerage, in the new city, at the expense of
the old.
The vast majority of Indians in Delhi, then, did not enjoy the new
“water closets” built by the British. They largely relied on public
latrines, but even these were built in insufficient numbers, especially
when the British started channeling their energies into New Delhi.
This meant, for many Delhi residents, especially those living in the
city’s outskirts, that the only option was shitting outside, “open
defecation”, that demon that the Indian government is still trying
to exorcise.
British officials, with their sanitation obsession, found this quite

alarming. For the most part, their solution was not to build more
latrines, far less to extend the sewer system. It was to police the
“native” parts of the city with ever increasing vigilance, as the colonial
archives amply demonstrate.
In 1872, for instance, British officials in Delhi started to complain

about a site on the Northern Ridge near Hindu Rao’s house, where
locals were supposedly encroaching, and were using a local drain as

their toilet. In the quaint, euphemistic British English of the times,
officials bemoaned the “unsanitary” nature of the drain, since locals
would “ease themselves all around it.” The main agencies involved
in this case were the army and the city’s Municipal Committee. The
land in question belonged to the army (a legacy of the 1857 Uprising),
and civil authorities wanted it transferred to them so that they could
manage the draining of the area and improve its sanitation.48
The exchanges about this issue are filled with the usual bureaucratic
tussles over jurisdiction, as well as the usual politely worded barbs
aimed at rival officials. Although sanitation was the main issue, time
and money were never far from the minds of the officials. One wrote
drolly to his counterpart: “I cannot agree with you that, ‘no great
delay seems to have occurred in this case which calls for explanation,’
unless it be by way of contrast with other cases.” Later, the same
official, in high dudgeon, decried the “continuance of the nuisances
in drainage and conservancy..., of the encroachments and their non-
removal, and other glaring evils... They are all remediable if only the
matter be taken up with energy, perseverance, unity of purpose and
mutual help.” He was to be sorely disappointed.
The army was unwilling to part with the land, but they still wanted
the Municipal Committee to improve the infrastructure (“for the
public good,” military officials hastened to add). Letters flew back and
forth, and money emerged as the crux: if it couldn’t own the land, the
Municipal Committee felt it should at least be able to collect taxes on
it. The military refused.
Officials could not even agree on the root cause of the problem,
although they all agreed that “natives” were shitting on army land.
One official confidently stated: “Since the removal of a latrine
nearby... the people residing in that quarter have no place where
they can resort to and it is therefore not to be wondered that they
should ease themselves wherever they could find a convenient spot.”
Another, though, countered that the site in question “is too far to be
affected by the removal of the latrine.”
As officials debated the precise cause of the problem, they also dis-
agreed on an appropriate solution. Some thought that the “encroach-
ing” huts should be demolished; others demurred. On one issue,
Surplus 265
though, there seemed to be consensus: the land should be leveled.
Besides the contours of the Ridge, the landscape was pockmarked by
holes from quarrying, which was prevalent even at this early date.
Several officials used aesthetic arguments to decry quarrying, saying
that it ruined the picturesque summit of the sacred Northern Ridge.
But the more serious problem was sanitary; the quarried pits were
being used as toilets.
Leveling the land would remove these impromptu latrines. It

would also have other benefits. As one official noted, there had been
less “nuisances” in the area,
but this will last only so long as strict watch is kept over the
locality. The surface of the ground is so uneven that it is difficult
to keep up this watch so that in course of time it will relax....
But if the space be leveled it will be impossible for persons
to defile the place without being seen from a considerable
distance.
It was the same basic logic that Balban used when cutting down all
the trees around Hauz-i-Shamshi: create a clear line of sight, and thus
improve the state’s surveillance capabilities.
Here, however, the archival record stops. We don’t know if the

land was ever transferred to the Municipal Committee, or if the huts
were destroyed. The area in question is still quite hilly, so it’s unlikely
that the British took any drastic land-leveling measures. Indeed,
given the persistence of in-fighting between officials and the abrupt
end of the official correspondences, it seems probable that little action
was taken.
We do know, though, that the colonial logic of sanitation and

surveillance continues to this very day. Perhaps the most gruesome
example of this was a violent incident in 1995, when residents from
a middle-class neighborhood of Ashok Vihar, along with two police-
men, chased down an eighteen-year-old man, whom they suspected
of using a neighborhood park as a toilet, and beat him to death.
When residents of the nearby working-class neighborhood pro-
tested, the police again resorted to violence, shooting and killing
four people.49

Such intense violence says much about the callousness displayed
by many of Delhi’s wealthier residences. It also suggests that Delhi
has not come any closer to solving its sanitation problems. On the
contrary, with the city’s ever-growing population and the DDA’s
persistent failure in providing adequate housing, the problem of
human waste has only become more severe. The Ridge continues to
be a favorite location for people who need a place to shit.
In many Ridge areas, in the early morning, it is common to see men

and women from nearby settlements streaming into the Ridge, water
bottles in hand, searching for a spot to relieve themselves. As more of
the Ridge has been set aside as parks and forests, it has become even
more attractive as a makeshift toilet, since it offers shade and relative
isolation. Sometimes this practice has even been institutionalized. At
a shrine in the Mehrauli area of the Ridge, water mugs are placed at
the edge of forest, with a big sign in Hindi saying, “TOILETS”, with an
arrow pointing to the left for ladies and right for gents.
Shit is not the only waste dumped on the Ridge, even if it’s the one
that has induced the most medical and moral panics. In a city where
the real estate market has played such a dominant role, construction
waste has been produced in ever-increasing amounts. In 2016, Delhi
produced roughly 3000 tons of construction waste per day. And
a significant part of this waste gets dumped onto the Ridge, simply
because of its convenience as an isolated, non-populated space. The
National Green Tribunal, in response to PILs, has tried to address
this issue, but its rulings usually have little effect on the ground.
The problem is not just limited to private construction companies.

The state itself has been a major culprit in improper construction
waste disposal. In 2004, the DDA was caught dumping 5000 tons
of construction waste on the Ridge. In 2009, the Central Public
Works Department was also caught in the act, emptying rubble into
small ponds on the Southern Ridge. These sites have eventually,
grudgingly, been cleaned up, but the agencies involved have received
no punishment.50
Delhi’s waste problem is, of course, not just confined to its human
waste and its construction waste. It produces massive amounts of
waste, period. If it is not illicitly dumped on the Ridge, then it likely
Surplus 267
makes its way to one of Delhi’s massive landfills. But just like the shit
pits in 1870s Shahjahanabad, these landfills are overflowing.
Delhi’s dumps have rewritten the contours of the city. Earlier,

Delhi’s topography was largely defined by its geology: the Ridge, of
course, along with two byproducts of the distant Himalayas, namely
the Yamuna River and its alluvial soil. This geological base has,
over the years, been significantly modified, with parts of the Ridge
leveled to make way for new neighborhoods, and other parts quarried
to create pockmarked landscapes.
Meanwhile, landfills are creating new hills and reconfiguring the

landscape. From a distance, they look like looming mountains, far
taller than the crests of the Ridge. Closer up, their solidity melts away,
as pieces of garbage shift, merge together, disintegrate, topple. The
three functioning landfills of Delhi are packed to the brim, and they
still receive roughly 9,000 metric tons of garbage a day. At the core
of these dumps, the waste is so densely crushed together that it is
breaking down and releasing high levels of methane. Fires break out
with alarming frequency.
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) is desperately search-

ing for new landfill sites in the city, but no one wants a new dump
in their backyard. The MCD has repeatedly suggested turning part
of the Bhatti Mines into a landfill. There is something poetic about
this vision. The craters of Bhatti were created to feed the construction
boom in Delhi. Now that they’re closed, the holes can be filled up with
the waste of those living in the city’s countless new buildings.
Environmentalists, the Delhi High Court, and even the Delhi

Government have opposed this plan, even as the World Bank has
promoted it. For the time being, the MCD has shelved the plan,
perhaps waiting for the controversy to die down. Meanwhile, in
2014, the DDA cleared seven new sites for creating landfills. None
of these sites are in Bhatti; two, though, are further down the road,
in another part of the Southern Ridge near Maidangarhi, one of the
many villages whose common lands were taken to create a Reserved
Forest in 1996.51
This is one more underside of Delhi’s explosive economic growth.

Piles of shit; piles of construction waste; piles of undifferentiated

solid waste creating a new map of the city. The Ridge has fed Delhi’s
growth: its thorny scrub forest has fed the city’s livestock; its quartzite
has fed its magnificent palaces; its Badarpur sand has fed its roads and
its concrete buildings; its rising land values have fed the rapacious
real estate industry. It is only fitting that the waste from all these
processes finds its way back to the Ridge.
Surplus 269
5 Spirits
Transcendence, Sacred and
Secular
Purity/Pollution
In the morning, the Northern Ridge’s Kamla Nehru Park is a bustling
place. With its neatly manicured hedges, its spotless paths and its
proximity to Delhi University, it draws many walkers, joggers, and
yoga enthusiasts. There is even an open-air gym for fitness buffs.
Next to the gym is a small Hanuman Mandir, appropriate given the
proliferation of monkeys in the area. Like most of Delhi’s mandirs,
this one claims to be pracheen (ancient), a view contested by the
caretakers of the gym, who are in a longstanding feud with the temple
pujaris over the boundaries of their respective institutions.
I visited this temple one morning along with a friend, and we tried
to interview the head pujari. He was sitting serenely, in a spotless
white kurta and dhoti, a mala around his neck. When I mentioned
that I was interested in environmental issues, he became agitated.
Before I could finish describing my research, he exploded, “You want
to talk about pollution?! Then talk to all these boys and girls who come
here together. They’re the ones who are really polluting the place! Ask
the Prime Minister why they’re spreading pollution!”
The pujari was referring to the young men and women, many of
them college students, who come to Kamla Nehru Park for romance.
If mornings are for exercise, then the languid afternoons are for
love. Couples sit on the park’s benches or on the grass between the
trees, holding hands, whispering to each other, sneaking kisses.
If the couples want more privacy and intimacy, they slip a hundred
rupees to the security guard patrolling the area, and he lets them
retreat to a more secluded, densely forested part of the Ridge, where
he leaves them in peace.
The security guard, as long as he gets his payment, seems to have

few moral scruples about the arrangement. The pujari, on the other
hand, sees this as a kind of spiritual contamination, sullying the
positive aura of his temple. And he can draw on a long tradition of
demonizing the forest, and all the impurities and dangers it contains,
a tradition that still reverberates in the present day, on the Delhi
Ridge and beyond.
For instance, the ancient legal text Manusmriti advised kings to

establish their kingdoms in dry, open areas, with sparse vegetation—
not coincidentally, the kind of savanna ecosystem that was ideal for
pastoralism, and that was often actively created through the use of
fire. The civilized, largely pastoral area was lauded as ritually pure.
It was contrasted with the anupa, or wet, wild forest, the abode of
barbarians and fearsome beasts, a horribly impure zone.1
The purity/pollution distinction did not just work to separate

the barbarous outside from the civilized inside. It also created hier-
archies and social controls within the bounds of civilization. Caste
hierarchies, for instance, were (and are) justified with the assertion
that the “higher” castes are the ritually pure ones, the “lower” castes
ritually impure. Women, too, especially menstruating women, are
seen as impure, and thus inferior to men. The oppressive logic of
these hierarchies is distilled in the Manusmriti, a text that presents
a Brahminic vision of an ideal society and consistently associates
marginalized groups with untamed, impure nature.
In such visions, “nature” was shunned in part because its power

was feared. Gail Omvedt notes that early caste-based societies “had…
a notion of sacred powers in nature which were potentially danger-
ous, and a conceptual linkage of these with certain occupations and
activities and with women.” Over time, “the ‘dangerous’ became the
‘polluting’, and eventually ‘impure’ and ‘low’.”2
However, the process of taming “nature”—whether by pushing

it to the fringes of civilization, as with “barbarous” populations, or
by punishing and demeaning it in the heart of civilization—has
always been a difficult, incomplete project. This is both because of
the resistance and rebellion of oppressed peoples, and because of the
ultimate impossibility of definitively separating humans from nature.
Further, while Brahminical traditions in India have sought to

create gender and caste hierarchies through spuriously naturalized
notions of “purity” and “pollution”, there have been a proliferation
of other spiritual traditions in India, ones far less concerned with

social distinctions and far more embracing of nature. The tradition of
wandering sadhus, of yogis and yoginis in forests and caves, is a potent
reminder of the sacred power of the wilderness. These wanderers have
typically had no concern for caste and social convention, preferring
the freedom of a nomadic lifestyle.
The tension between the civilized and the wild, the orthodox and
the heterodox, the rulers and the rebels, has long been felt in the Delhi
region. The coexistence of uptight pujaris and furtive lovers in the
present-day Ridge is evidence of this. But the fight is not just between
secular students and the sacred guardians of morality. It is a battle
to define what constitutes the spiritual itself, with the moralizers
facing off against the mystics. Not that this battle has fixed formations.
With the vicissitudes of time and the compulsions of more worldly
politics, mystics have often become moralizers, and vice versa; and
spiritual movements traversing that Ridge have often struggled to
contain contradictory impulses.
The history of transcendence on the Ridge is thus a complex, bewil-
dering one, which stretches from the mythical past to contemporary
times. In an attempt to tackle this complexity, this chapter is divided
into three parts, though the borders between them are inevitably
blurry. The first looks at transcendence within the realm of religion,
of the mystics of various stripes who have played a prominent role
in the Ridge’s history. The second looks at more ‘secular’ attempts at
transcendence, as the lovers of the Ridge make a return, along with
drinkers, revelers, criminals and down-on-their-luck royalty. The
final section recognizes that the division of the previous two parts of
the chapter is ultimately an artificial one: sacred and secular spirits
co-mingle, as they are brought down to earth and into interaction
with the subjects of the previous chapters.
Part I: Sacred Spirits
Rebels on the Ridge

One figure that pops up with surprising frequency on the Ridge is that
of the Nath yogi. These holy men are often referred to as kanphata
(split-eared) yogis, due to the round wooden rings that pierce a large
hole in their ears; the yogis themselves prefer the term “Siddhas” or
Spirits 273
“perfected ones”. The historian Narayani Gupta mentions the presence
of Nath yogis on the northern end of the Ridge, both in pre-British
times and in the present day, “with their trademark black blankets”
and “their camping-places and shrines”.3 In recent years, Nath yogis
have had an expanding presence on the southwestern portion of the
Ridge, specifically in the Reserved Forest area now called Sanjay Van,
an area we will visit several times in this chapter. And finally, Nath
yogis have a long historical association with the Kalkaji mandir on
the slopes of the southeastern Ridge, in a portion of hills that have
not earned government protection as forest. Even today, Nath yogis
perform Tantric aartis for Kali, the deity worshiped at Kalkaji.
The confluence of Nath yogis, Tantra and Kali on the Ridge is

suggestive. Though representations of Kali vary greatly over time and
space, the goddess is undoubtedly associated with fierceness, unruli-
ness, indomitable wildness. These resonances are highlighted through
Kali’s pride of place in Tantric traditions. Tantra’s relationship to
more orthodox traditions roughly parallels the relationship between
the forest and more civilized spaces. That is, Tantra offers the possi-
bility of escaping the stuffy confines of societal norms, but in doing
so it is simultaneously liberating and dangerous. Tantriks often come
from humble backgrounds, and Tantric traditions generally have little
regard for the caste boundaries that orthodox traditions have so pains-
takingly erected. Tantra also offers the promise of spiritual transcen-
dence in this very life, and not in some distant future. But yogis and
tantriks are associated with all kinds of taboos: sex, drugs, violence,
black magic and much more.
The mystery around Tantra is compounded by the fact that

most Tantric traditions are intensively secretive, in part because of
the suspicion their activities arouse. It is also difficult to make any
generalizations, since Tantra is a diverse tradition spanning many
centuries, and since many once-transgressive traditions have been
cleaned up and incorporated into more orthodox, hierarchical
practices, thus gaining societal acceptance but losing their radical
edge, as is the case, we will see, with some sections of the Nath yogis,
despite their Tantric roots.
Whatever the present-day compromises they have made, Nath

yogis have long practiced hatha yoga, or literally, “the yoga of violent

exertion”. Through the solitary practice of hatha yoga techniques,
Nath Siddhas are able to achieve superhuman feats, or so they claim,
traveling through time and flying from mountaintop to mountaintop.
Their ultimate goal is to achieve bodily immortality. These legends
still hold today, as siddhas and yogis dot the landscape of both rural
and urban India, including Delhi’s own Ridge.4
Tracing the Nath Siddhas through Delhi’s history, alongside Sufis

and goddesses and other mystics who have frequented the Ridge,
reveals the tenacity of the wild and the transcendent in the city, as
well as the difficulty of maintaining airtight categories and binaries:
nature vs. culture, spiritual vs. material, wild vs. civilized. Siddhas,
yogis, Sufis and goddesses have knowingly blurred the lines between
these categories, drawing on the power of wild nature to intervene in
“civilized” affairs, often in historically decisive ways.
Mystics and Goddesses of the Arid Zone

The life of Gorakhnath, the original Nath Siddha, is shrouded in mys-
tery. His historical existence is obscured by competing, overlapping
legends and mythologies; he is often portrayed as immortal, disap-
pearing and reappearing at different points in history, but it seems
his lineage emerged sometime in the eleventh or twelfth century.
This suggests that the Nath tradition was born during the turbulent
days of Arid Zone dynamism, a time that brought Delhi and its Ridge
to political prominence (as we saw in Chapter 2). The Nath yogis
were just one of many heterodox sects that gained prominence in this
time, and that made use of the expanding networks of trade, piety
and plunder throughout the semi-arid borderlands of India. In these
days, yogis mixed freely with Sufi mystics, exchanging techniques and
building a new set of popular devotional practices.
But the yogis did not restrict their activity to the religious realm.
During this time, the line between mystic, mercenary and merchant
was often quite indistinct.5 This was aided by the secrecy of many
Tantric sects, which made it difficult to distinguish between a genuine
and a spurious yogi. It was thus easy for merchants or warriors to
don a yogic guise in order to ease their travels and avoid detection
when necessary. The reverse was also true, as yogis searched for
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ways to make money and put their physical and spiritual training
to use.6
Even when they did not directly hold economic or political power,
Nath Siddhas were seen, in medieval India at least, as the quintessen-
tial king-makers. This was, again, due to their grounding in the Tantric
crafts. They had, it was believed, achieved a mastery of the material
world, which gave their blessings and curses great weight for those
seeking to build an empire.7 Their closest analogue in the medieval West
is probably the wizard. And just as Merlin propped up King Arthur, so
too the Nath Siddhas supported Arid Zone kings.
The mythical links connecting Nath Siddhas to Delhi start with

the pivotal battle between Prithviraj Chauhan and Mohammad Ghori.
As we’ve seen in Chapters 2 and 3, Ghori’s victory over Prithviraj has
been given outsize importance by later Hindu nationalist commen-
tators, who imagined the early fortresses of the Ridge as key (if ulti-
mately ineffective) barricades against foreign invaders. Circling back
to this battle, we find yet more suggestions that this was not a simple
struggle between the righteous Hindu Indian king and the diaboli-
cal Muslim outsider. Rather, alternative versions of the story, found
in folklore and oral narratives, reserve pride of place for heterodox
tantriks flexing their supernatural muscles.
Specifically, folktales tell of two Nath Siddhas, Guga and Ratan

Baba, both of whom had ties to mystical Islamic practices, and both
of whom, in mysterious, idiosyncratic ways, aided Mohammad Ghori
in his march to Delhi.8 Ratan Baba demonstrated his yogic greatness
by producing a magical water bowl that quenched the thirst of Ghori’s
entire army, no mean feat in the perilous Arid Zone. He then sent
Ghori off with his blessings. Ghori then visited Guga’s tomb, which
was poorly maintained. Troubled by this, Ghori vowed that, if he was
victorious, he would return to the tomb and restore it to good con-
dition. With the backing of Guga and Ratan, the hybrid yogi/sufis,
Ghori went on to defeat Prithviraj and take control of his Ridge-top
fortress, as well as his other territories. He then kept his promise to
Guga, repairing and renovating his tomb.
If these folktales suggest that Mohammad Ghori may not be the

outright villain of 1192, other stories, from regional martial epics,

indicate that Prithviraj Chauhan may not be universally regarded as
a hero, even by other Hindus. For instance, Prithviraj is shown in a
far-from-flattering light in an epic known as the Alha, which focuses
on the intra-Rajput disputes that weakened North Indian kingdoms
before the arrival of Mohammad Ghori. The Alha is a fascinating tale
that undercuts the legend of Prithviraj while shining light on new
characters: lower-caste heroes, strong women with links to the divine,
and holy men who are not what they seem. The Alha also redraws
the lines of military conflict in this era: the battles of the epic are not
portrayed as Hindu versus Muslim, but rather as a fight between
minor kingdoms, often associated with low-status populations,
versus growing empires, confident in their elite superiority.9 And in
a strange, circuitous way, the story of the Alha eventually brings us
back to the question of transcendence on the Ridge.
The heroes of the Alha come from the small city of Mahoba in
present-day Madhya Pradesh, then the capital of the Chandel Rajputs.
Mahoba was the center of a small kingdom that got swept up in larger
inter-imperial battles. For the protagonists of the Alha, Prithviraj is
the big bad enemy with imperial ambitions. He threatens to swallow
up their little principality and has little regard for their claims to
sovereignty. For minor kings like the Chandels, Prithviraj is as bad
as Mohammad Ghori—both are imperial schemers with expanding
ambitions, and their differing religious backgrounds hardly matter.
This point is underscored by the Chandel’s alliance with the Muslim
statesman Mira Talhan, who was also trying to fend off the imperial
ambitions of Prithviraj.10
The titular hero of Alha is not the Chandel king but rather one of his
trusted lieutenants, who hails from the Banaphar clan. The Banaphars
also identify themselves as Rajputs. Throughout the epic, though, they
have various caste slurs hurled at them by higher-status Rajputs who
claim that the Banaphar line is contaminated with the blood of Ahirs,
a nomadic pastoral community. These slurs underline the hardening
of caste boundaries, as royal Rajput groups, who themselves had
emerged from pastoral or tribal communities generations earlier, cor-
doned themselves off from nomads at the periphery of their empires.
The Banaphars are an embodiment of the wandering warriors of this
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period, who sought (though often failed) to raise their status by taking
on a mix of military and mystic guises. At one point in the epic, four
Banaphar brothers, along with Mira Talhan, disguise themselves as
warrior-yogi-musicians so they can take revenge against a clan that
murdered several Banaphar elders.
But this is just a side-story in the epic. The main focus is the fight
against Prithviraj Chauhan. The extent versions of the Alha, which
have been told and retold over many centuries, place Prithviraj
in Delhi, even though the Chauhan king did not actually rule from
here. But Delhi’s centrality as an imperial capital (which only took
shape during the reign of Iltutmish) has rebounded through time,
and in the epic, it’s the natural home for Prithviraj. The Delhi-based
king earns the resentment of the Alha’s heroes when he refuses to
go through with his daughter’s proposed marriage to the Chandel
prince Brahma.
The daughter, Bela, is no mere princess. She is, in many tellings, a

reincarnation of the Mahabharata’s Draupadi, who is herself revered
in many parts of India as a reincarnation of Kali, who is known to drink
blood and even to eat corpses. And even though Bela is Prithviraj’s
daughter, she is, in the Alha, symbolically and thematically linked
to his enemy the Banaphars, as the goddess who strives (in the end,
unsuccessfully) to defend their land.
Bela’s role in the Alha mirrors the role of Draupadi in folk

retellings of the Mahabharata. Both women are, like Helen of Troy,
the immediate cause of a war. But their position is much loftier than
that of mere instigators. As incarnations of Kali, both Draupadi and
Bela oversee a divinely ordained destruction, sweeping away petty,
squabbling kings and clearing the ground for a new era. In the case of
the Mahabharata, this new age is the dreaded Kali Yug; for the Alha,
it is the age of Central Asian incursions and Muslim influence.
In the Alha, Bela’s main enemy is her father. Prithviraj keeps

postponing Bela’s marriage to Brahma, eventually luring the prince
to come to Delhi and try to take Bela by force. One of Prithviraj’s
advisers, the deceitful brahmin Chaunra, dresses up like a woman
and pretends to be Bela. Upon meeting Brahma, Chaunra stabs the
unsuspecting prince with a poison-tipped dagger. Fatally wounded,

Brahma retreats, but only makes it halfway to Mahoba. He clings to
life, though, for the next few days.
Learning of this treachery, two of the Banaphar brothers travel to

Delhi, posing as freelance soldiers who want to work for Prithviraj.
They infiltrate the palace and free Bela, who is desperate to see
Brahma before he dies. Before she leaves Delhi, she curses it, damning
her father and his meddling, and ridiculing his imperial ambitious.
She says, prophetically, “There will be widows in every house in
Delhi... A river of blood will flow in Delhi... a thunderbolt will fall
on Delhi.”11
In keeping with her Kali energy, she then presides over great
bloodshed and gory battles. At Brahma’s urging, she disguises herself
as a male warrior and faces her brother in battle. Victorious, she
beheads him and brings the head back to Brahma, so he can die in
peace. She then sets herself on fire as the battle between Alha and
Prithviraj rages around her. Both armies are decimated, and all the
Chandel princes are killed. This spot is commemorated by a small
shrine in a village near present-day Bhopal.
But Bela has lived many lives, and her final resting place is difficult
to pin down. She appears in other stories as well, tales that have not
been recorded as diligently as the Alha. These other legends spread
more quietly, circulating by word of mouth, in stray textual references,
and, very recently, emerging into the online world in the form of
blogs and travel websites. It is one of these elusive narratives that
brings us squarely back to the Delhi Ridge.
I quite literally stumbled upon this tale. Within Sanjay Van park,
in the Mehrauli section of the Ridge, are ruins from the Tomar fort
Lal Kot, crumbling remains of the oldest walled compound in Delhi.
From the top of these old ramparts, there is a magnificent view of
the nearby Qutb Minar, while the landscape below is densely packed
with vilayati kikar. One day, following the path of the crumbling
walls, I ventured deep into the forest and saw a clearing in the trees
below. A rough rectangular courtyard had been created, bounded by a
makeshift quartzite wall that provided an elegant framing for the two
graves in the courtyard’s center. The graves stood on a small platform,
painted green, and were covered with colorful sheets.
Spirits 279
The courtyard was empty, and I soon turned back, as my path
petered out in a maze of shrub and thorn. But I returned several weeks
later with a friend, and we were lucky to find three men near the court-
yard, gathering wood from the surrounding forest. It was January, and
the sun shined weakly through the winter haze. One of the men was
preparing a small fire with vilayati kikar branches he had gathered.
When the men saw us, they guided us down the steep crumbling path
that led from the ramparts to the courtyard.
The caretaker of the graves was a migrant, in keeping with the
proud Delhi tradition. He came from a small village in Bihar. He told
us that, one night, he had an intense spiritual vision, in which he saw
this very shrine and was told that he must come to Delhi and find it. So
he did. He initially apprenticed under the elderly caretaker he found
there. When the old man died, he took over the position. He now lives
at the shrine year-round, though the chill of the winter and the fiery
heat of the summer, sleeping next to the graves, giving prasad to
visitors like us, guiding the slow trickle of pilgrims that come to see
the shrines, and fending off the occasional snake or porcupine.
But who, we asked, is buried here? The caretaker responded that
one shrine belonged to Haji Roz Baba, one of the first Sufi saints to
come to Delhi, a great mystic and a venerated teacher. Next to him,
said the caretaker, was the grave of Bela, Prithviraj’s daughter, who
had been initiated into Islam by Haji Roz Baba and had become a
spiritual master in her own right.
Bela: not just Draupadi, not just Kali; now also a Sufi mystic.
This Bela legend has little purchase in scholarly circles, although it
was circulating in Mehrauli at least as far back as 1922, when Zafar
Hasan compiled his list of Delhi’s monuments.12 Despite the legend’s
marginal status, it resonates with other Bela tales, including those
told by tribal communities in Uttar Pradesh, which position Bela as
the sister of Lakhan, a king from Kannauj, the former stronghold
of the Pratihara Gujjars. In these tales, Lakhan goes to Delhi and con-
verts to Islam, and he prospers due to the blessings he has received
from Bela.13 So Bela travels, changing shape and shifting religions,
but always powerful in her blessings and her curses.
A part-Hindu, part-Muslim, part-human, part-divine prophet of
tragic love and violent destruction, Bela deserves her location in the

midst of Sanjay Van, in a wild part of the Ridge. It seems appropriate
that the shrine is located outside the walls of Lal Kot. Like any true
mystic, she could not be confined within the city’s bounds. More
broadly, Bela represents the mysticism and cultural mixing that
spread through the medieval Arid Zone, and still lives on in the Delhi
Ridge. This is especially true in the Ridge zones around Mehrauli,
infused with centuries of history and dense with spirits.
Sanjay Van’s Sufis

Bela and Haji Roz Baba are not the only Sufi mystics whose presence
graces the Ridge, and particularly the part of the Ridge now referred to
as Sanjay Van. Centuries earlier, this patch of land was located in the
hinterland of the Ridge-top fortresses controlled by the Rajputs and
then the early Slave Dynasty. As Delhi developed as an urban center,
Sufis began to populate its hinterland. The sultan Iltutmish sought
to contain the power of popular Sufis, including the famed Qutb
Sahib, whose blessings and curses rivaled those of the yogis. Though
Sufis were never tied to the kind of extreme taboo-breaking that
characterized some Tantric sects, they still had an uneasy relationship
with orthodoxy, especially as represented by the conservative clerics
that often aligned with state power.
In many ways, the mystical Sufis had more in common with the
Nath yogis than either group shared with orthodox Muslim clerics
or orthodox Brahmin priests. Sufis were more open to sensuality and
were known for their singing and trance-like dancing (the famous
whirling dervishes). Like the yogis, they had little patience for social
hierarchies.
This affinity was not just an ideological one. It had real grounding
in meetings and exchanges between the two groups. The Sufis were
attracted by some of the more inward-looking techniques of the Nath
Siddhas, especially the breathing techniques highlighted in hatha
yoga, and they soon incorporated this into Sufi practice.
The Sufis and the yogis also shared a love for the wilderness, and
they were known for their meditative sojourns in far-off mountain
caves and dense forests. In Mehrauli, local legend has it that Baba
Farid, Qutb Sahib’s disciple and Nizamuddin’s teacher, liked to
Spirits 281
meditate in an isolated patch of jungle not far from Bela’s tomb. He
used to venture to this spot for 40 days of meditative solitude. Near
this spot is another shrine, this one belonging to Sheikh Shahbuddin.
Little is known about Shahbuddin, but the present-day caretakers say
he is Qutb Sahib’s nephew.
The current guardian of the shrine, Akbar Shah, is considered an
accomplished mystic in his own right, a “mazjoob” who is so absorbed
in his spiritual trance that he can appear to outsiders as slightly mad.
He never speaks more than a few words at a time, and he does not
eat solid food, subsisting mostly on water and the occasional chai.
According to the shrine’s attendants, he too is a miracle worker. One
day, the attendants at the dargah found that the shrine’s well had
become dry. In present-day Delhi, these kinds of water shortages are
a chronic problem, as the population grows, elite consumption sky-
rockets and the groundwater levels plummet. Akbar Shah meditated
on this and said that water would reappear in the well the next day;
and so it did.
Within a stone’s throw of this well is a spot even more shrouded
in mystery and mystic legend. Behind the shrine is a steep quartzite
slope, and on the other side of this slope, a narrow, rough, rock-hewn
staircase leads down to an isolated cave. The cave has a metal grate
closing it off to the public, with the key kept on the premises of the
nearby shrine. This cave is used for 40-day meditative trances, and is
opened only for accomplished Sufis.
But its more esoteric purpose is to summon Khwaja Khazr, the
legendary “Green Saint” of Islam. Khwaja Khazr, known in Arabic
as al-Khadr, is at the center of a bewildering, ever-expanding set of
myths and legends, which stretch back to the genesis of the world and
spread across the globe. He appears as a guide for those who are lost,
especially those stranded in the wilderness. He is immortal, it is said,
and has provided solace to Moses and Alexander the Great and kept
watch over the mythical Fountain of Youth. Spilling over into other
faiths, he is believed to be an incarnation of Vishnu or the Zoroastrian
deity Sraosha, or an alter-ego of John the Baptist. He has been tied to
characters in the Epic of Gilgamesh and even in the Book of Genesis.
Wherever he appears, Khwaja Khazr is associated with verdure.
When he kneels down and prays to the soil, shrubs, grasses and

trees immediately spring up, truly miraculous for a sage of the Arid
Zone. And he is known to haunt the Delhi Ridge, and specifically that
corner of the Ridge now known as Sanjay Van. However, for decades
now, Sufis have been unable to call up the Green Saint.14 Perhaps the
deathless sage is simply away on one of his international sojourns. Or
perhaps he is the secret guiding force behind the greening of Sanjay
Van, which has been selected by the government as a model city
forest, and which is indeed quite verdant as a result of the plantation
efforts of the DDA and various environmental NGOs.
Syncretism and Status in Mehrauli

Mehrauli’s most popular Sufi, Qutb Sahib, is now no longer in the
wilderness. Though his shrine is less than one kilometer south of
Sanjay Van, it has been swallowed up by the urban settlements
of Mehrauli. The shrine has been a popular devotional site since
Qutb Sahib’s death in 1235 ce, and it provides one of the few lines
of continuity through Delhi’s fragmented, fickle history. Qutb Sahib
himself chose the location for his future tomb when he was passing
through the jungle outside of the walls of the city. He was heading
back from a Ramzan festival near Hauz-i-Shamsi, which at that time
was still surrounded by dense vegetation and plagued by nomadic
raiders and bandits. The fact that this now-bustling spot was once
forbiddingly remote is indication of how tiny the original Delhi was.
Historical accounts of the shrine suggest that it has retained its

wild side through the centuries, even in its now-urban surroundings.
This is especially true on the occasion of Urs, the ritual celebration of
a Sufi saint’s death anniversary. In the Sufi tradition, this is generally
seen not as death, but as union with the divine Beloved. Urs is not a
time for mourning, then, but for celebration, more wedding anniver-
sary than funeral remembrance.
Today, the Urs at Qutb Sahib’s shrine draws a huge, heteroge-

neous crowd. The highlight of the Urs festivities is the performance
of qawwalis, but there is something here for everyone. Kids bounce
off each other in a huge inflatable playpen. Small stalls sell religious
books and trinkets. Cooks prepare biryani and sweets of all kinds.
Chaiwalas brew tea.
Spirits 283
The massive crowd can be roughly divided into three main com-
ponents: itinerant Sufi mystics from various orders who travel from
shrine to shrine; mainstays of the Sufi community, caretakers of
important shrines, religious scholars, wealthy Muslim donors, and
respected community elders; and, finally, ordinary devotees from
Delhi and the surrounding region, who are drawn to Qutb Sahib’s
shrine largely because of the saint’s healing presence. Many Sufi
healers, drawing on the strength of the saint, gather here to tend
to the physical and emotional wounds of those who visit. Like the
yogis, the Sufi healers are considered masters of the material world,
able to remedy chronic illnesses and relieve psychic torment.
Those searching for healing are generally (though not exclusively)

poor, and the network of healing shrines and temples constitutes
an alternative system of healthcare, which both competes with and
complements the more mainstream medical system. Many attending
Qutb Sahib’s Urs have come to celebrate, but also to seek solace and
find respite for their woes. The shrine welcomes all, even those on the
margins of society: prostitutes, drug-dealers, petty criminals. This is
not advertised, of course, but in the rambunctious, celebratory atmo-
sphere of the Urs, there is an unmistakable air of quiet acceptance,
as people from all different social groups and classes come together.
This is quite an established tradition at the centuries-old dargah.

A Mughal chronicler, describing Qutb Sahib’s Urs, notes that
In every lane and street pleasure seekers search for carnal

pleasures and dance with joy. Those who drink do so without
worrying about the public censor…. The bazaars and lanes are
crowded with aristocrats and nobles and every nook and corner
is abuzz with the rich and the poor.15
As this passage suggests, despite the permissive atmosphere, there

were still stark status distinctions. This remains true even today. The
ordinary devotees generally sit on the ground in front of the qawwali
performers. The community notables, on the other hand, are elevated
above the crowd, sitting on a wooden platform, dressed resplendently.
Their power is both spiritual and secular; sitting on the stage are
those who lead the management of the shrine and who continue to

refine its devotional practices. They maintain close connections with
the leaders of other shrines, to whom they are bound by ties of belief
and, more practically, of marriage.
Seated behind the notables are a more raucous crowd, who have
given up the ties of family and have devoted themselves to the ascetic
path. However, being a Sufi mystic, just like being a Nath yogi, does
not involve giving up the pleasures of the world, but spiritualizing
them. There is an ecstatic love of the divine, a love aided by quite
literal intoxication. When I attended the Urs celebrations in 2016,
the mystic side of the crowd was ensconced in a haze of marijuana
smoke. The renunciates smoked from chillums and rolled joints to be
passed around the mystic crowd.
These rollicking mystics had little patience for the more scholastic
Sufis, including some of the notables. A verbal fight broke out, which
threatened to become physical, when a senior spiritual leader of the
shrine, the author of several books on Sufism, asked the qawwali
performers only to sing songs in honor of Qutb Sahib. The request
was part of an ongoing tussle between Sufism and more orthodox
forms of Islam, which portray Sufis as promiscuous in their worship-
ing of different saints at different shrines. Only invoking Qutb Sahib’s
name in the saint’s shrine was one way of obliquely responding to
this criticism.
This irked many of the mystics, who had traveled to Mehrauli from
many different shrines, and anyway spent little time worrying about
orthodox criticisms of their behavior. Several stood up and started
shouting when the performers weren’t allowed to sing paeans to other
saints, and a crowd soon formed around the two sides. The qawwali
singers, seasoned players, said some soothing words and quickly
launched into a new song, which defused the tensions and sent the
mystics back to their joints and their chillums, and their swaying,
swooning reveries.
Stoner Sadhus
Love of marijuana is yet another commonality linking the Sufis to
the yogis. In many of the tantric texts, the virtues of the intoxicating
plant are extolled. One text avers that marijuana is essential to ecstasy.
Spirits 285
The plant is referred to as “victory” and “Gorakhnath’s root”.16 And, as
Sufis gather at Qutb Sahib’s shrine to smoke, sway and (occasionally)
scream and shout, groups of Nath Siddhas convene close by, on the
northern edges of Sanjay Van, where three Gorakhnath Mandirs have
been erected.
One of these temples, by far the biggest, adjoins the main road
and regularly holds large gatherings, culminating in a biannual mela
that draws significant crowds. The smallest of the temples, by con-
trast, is just a low brick wall surrounding several idols, protected by a
solitary priest who sleeps beside the temple in a makeshift tent. The
third temple combines the remoteness of the small mandir with
the sociality of the big one. It is set back, away from the paved roads,
in the midst of the jungle of Sanjay Van. It houses a small community
of Nath yogis, who receive regular visits from devout Hindus residing
in the nearby neighborhoods.
The third temple is a relatively new structure. It likely dates back

only to the 1970s and many of the additions are much newer than
that. But its founding, like many structures on the Ridge, from the
Hauz-i-Shamsi to Bela’s tomb, was divinely ordained. This, at least,
is what I was told by two men from Katwaria Sarai, the neighborhood
directly north of Sanjay Van. Not long ago, they said, a sadhu had a
dream of Gorakhnath himself appearing in the forest. The immortal
sage asked the sadhu to dig at the spot where he was standing. When
the sadhu located the spot and dug as instructed, he found several
clay idols. The temple was erected on the spot to commemorate the
miracle.
This temple happened to be situated along my commuting route

when I would walk through Sanjay Van, from Mehrauli on one side
to the Delhi State Archives on the other. I spent many afternoons
there, talking with the sadhus and their guests. They were as curious
about me as I was about them. They invited me into their smoking
circle, as they packed chillums and rolled joints. Once, when visiting
with a friend, we asked where they got their supplies from. At first,
they didn’t quite understand the question, or, more accurately, they
thought that the answer was so obvious that they didn’t understand
why we had asked. Eventually, they just gestured in front of them, and
there, growing in the lawn outside the temple, were several marijuana

plants. It seems that the barrenness of the Ridge’s soil was not enough
to keep the miraculous victory plant from taking root.
Marijuana plants aside, the temple always struck me as an idyllic

place. The sadhus spent their time playing with a small white dog
named Rocky and a big black dog named Julie, along with a small
litter of unnamed puppies. They cooked hearty meals over an open
flame. During one of my visits, a sadhu was hard at work preparing
lemon pickle. Another day, the sadhus were crowded around listening
to Shiva chants on an old CD player.
I am hardly the first to note the playfulness and lighthearted-

ness of sadhus. In the late seventeenth century, the French traveler
Francois Bernier noted that yogis are those who “scoff at every-
thing, and whom nothing troubles”.17 The yogis think of themselves
in this way too. In one text from the Nath tradition, this attitude is
summed up:
Whose friend is a Yogi when he plays? It takes so little to please

him. He doesn’t give a thought to what’s high or what’s low.
Whatever he wants to do, he just does it... When you’re carefree
you want for nothing. From a pauper to a king, from a king to
a pauper, never bothered over the difference between the two.18
But for all their playfulness, life with the sadhus is not a total free-
for-all. At the Sanjay Van temple, as elsewhere, there is a strict hierar-
chy amongst the sadhus. The youngest of the sadhus, who never told
me his age but who looked to be in his late teens, was constantly being
sent on errands. Older sadhus would throw crumpled banknotes at
him and order him to go to nearby Katwaria Sarai to pick up milk for
tea, or to buy vegetables for the day’s dinner. The senior sadhu, who
acted as the head of the temple, was revered, and always was the first
to be greeted and bowed to. Once, as a token of appreciation for the
sadhus’ hospitality, I had brought them a pre-rolled joint. They were
quite pleased with the gift, and insisted that I light the joint, and then
immediately give it as an offering to the senior sadhu, who accepted it
with a serenity that bordered on indifference.
Despite their apparently free-spirited life, their tattered clothes

and their copious marijuana use, the sadhus were treated with the
Spirits 287
utmost respect by the nearby residents and, perhaps more surpris-
ingly, by the immaculately-dressed pujaris who occasionally came to
the temple to perform rituals. It was an odd sight. The sadhus spent
hours smoking up, playing with puppies and drinking chai, and yet,
they commanded the unwavering respect and devotion of those who
were, by normal standards of society, far more upright and indus-
trious. Residents often came bearing gifts of vegetables or money,
and the head sadhu kept a thick register book to keep track of all the
transactions.
The deference accorded to the unkempt sadhus, though surprising

at first glance, confirms the picture of Nath yogis that has been passed
down through generations of legends and folklore. Precisely because
they are renegades who care little for social norms, they evoke a
mixture of fear and wonder. They work miracles but keep their secrets
hidden behind a cloud of marijuana smoke and arcane ritual.
With those who know the sadhus better, however, the general
attitude of fear and respect has its limits. There are several local
residents who have bonded with the sadhus, smoking beedis and
joints with them, wiling away summer afternoons and exchanging
small talk. These guests are also drawn into the informal economy of
the temple, running errands and helping organize the donations that
come pouring in. Once, as I sat smoking at the temple, one of these
residents, following the instructions of a sadhu, took a 500-rupee
note from a construction worker who was temporarily living in the
temple, putted off on his scooter, and returned a half hour later with
a bottle of whiskey and some change, both of which he handed to the
construction worker.
His duties discharged, the man turned to the circle of sadhus

and saw, next to them, a litter of puppies suckling at the teat of their
mother. The man was dismayed and shouted at the sadhus for letting
such an impure practice take place at the doorstep of a temple. He
then turned to the dogs, shouted at them, and drove the mother away
from the temple. Still incensed, the man got into a fight with one of
the older sadhus, the details of which I could not catch, but whose
main content was clearly related to the dogs. The sadhus all gathered
around, but playful smiles danced on their faces, and soon enough,
the man had calmed down and sat down for a smoke.

This was the only time I saw a resident question the sadhus and
puncture the aura of respect that surrounded them. It’s significant
that this fight took place over an issue of purity and pollution,
and specifically, the polluting influence of maternal fluids (even if
they’re just a dog’s). Though their transgressive ways add to the yogis’
mystique and enhance their image in the popular imagination, these
very practices can also lead to their ostracization if they overstep
societal bounds one too many times.
Part II: Secular Spirits
Breaking the Rules on the Ridge

As the Sanjay Van stories suggest, Sufis and Nath yogis are not the
only ones pushing the boundaries of “civilized” behavior on the Ridge.
At Qutb Sahib’s shrine and at Gorakhnath mandirs, they are joined
by local residents and other visitors in their pot-smoking sessions.
Away from these holy sites, hidden in densely forested parts of Sanjay
Van, there are signs of enjoyment that seem far from religious: emp-
ty Old Monk rum bottles, discarded condoms, cigarette butts, torn
playing cards. The forest becomes a place of transgression, a place to
pursue taboo activities and forbidden loves.
These perceptions and uses of the forest have quite a long lineage.
In the Mahabharata, for instance, Arjuna was familiar with the
wild side of the forest, and, for him, it was not entirely a bad thing,
despite its seemingly dire, “impure” reputation. He was drawn to
its adventure, its danger, its mysteries. In fact, he seemed to prefer
it to the responsibilities and rigors of courtly life. After moving to
Indraprastha, but before setting fire to the Khandava Forest, Arjuna
voluntarily exiled himself to the surrounding wilderness.
During his exile, within three pages of the Mahabharata, Arjuna

has had three different encounters with mysterious beauties.19 Despite
their sexual nature, these are presented as auspicious meetings, in
accord with the laws of Dharma, condoned by the seers, sages and
bards who accompany Arjuna in his forest exile.
First, he spends the night with a seductive snake princess named

Ulupi, who brings him to her father’s underwater palace and confesses
Spirits 289
her love for him. Arjuna then heads east and meets Chitrangada,
the “buxom daughter” of the “law-minded king of Manalura” and
“desired her”. The King hears of his desires and replies, “So let her
bring forth a son, who shall be the dynast; this son I demand as my
price for her. By this covenant you must take her.” After his tryst
with Chitrangada, Arjuna heads to the “fords of the southern ocean,
very sacred all and ornamented with aesthetics”. But the fords are
inhabited by five vicious crocodiles, who have been preying on local
sages. Arjuna takes it as his duty to defeat the crocodiles in battle and
jumps into the ford. Arjuna wrestles with the first crocodile he finds,
pulls it out of the water, and lo and behold, it turns into “a beautiful
woman decked with all the ornaments, fairly blazing with beauty,
celestial and wonderful”.
This is just a small sampling from the epic that famously proclaims,
“whatever is found here may be found somewhere else, but what is
not found here is found nowhere!” Even this three-page fragment is
enough to show the tensions that the forest carried, with the text’s
desperate, often post-facto attempts to justify Arjuna’s wild behavior
and his predilection for the temptations of the forest and of the flesh.
Despite the effort to tame it and to make it submit to the codes

of Dharma, the forest is nonetheless a place to find something
transgressive, something beyond the pale of normal society and the
structures and strictures of civilization. This makes the forest a place
of pleasure, but also of danger. For every snake princess, there is a
real snake, ready to attack.
What’s remarkable is how much these ancient views of the forest,

and these ancient tensions, still hold true today in the Delhi Ridge.
The present-day Ridge forest may be of quite recent vintage. It may
be filled with Mexican mesquites and ornamental flowers. The new
trees of the Ridge may obscure centuries of pastoral use and state
dispossession. And yet, in patches, the Ridge now undeniably exists
as a forest, and it is used by an admirably wide swath of the population
for activities that would not be unfamiliar to the bards of ancient
India, even if there are many modern twists and surprises. The
forest is still seen as a realm outside of civilization, with all the good
and all the bad this implies. But in the end, on the Delhi Ridge (as
elsewhere), the strict separation of the two eventually breaks down;

the realities of “civilized” life impinge on the idylls and the dangers of
the forest, and vice-versa.
Intoxications on the Ridge

Like Arjuna, the young lovers in Kamla Nehru Park, seen in the intro-
duction of this chapter, experience the forest as an erotically charged
space. Their escape just happens to be in the middle of the city, not in
far-off mountains and fords. And unlike Arjuna, they don’t have the
privilege of being backed by a brigade of Brahmins rationalizing their
behavior. Instead, they get scolded by moralizing pujaris.
However, there are zones of the Ridge where a truce has been reached
between the guardians of morality and the romantically inclined. People
seem to understand the necessity of an escape valve for the sexual
energy of the city’s youth. For students living in single-sex hostels, or
cooped up with their parents, there are not many outlets for romance.
Delhi’s proliferating malls have become a favorite spot for couples
(here, apparently, public affection is accepted as part of the Western
package), but these spaces are out of reach for wide swaths of the
population. A much more diverse cross-section of couples can be seen
in Delhi’s parks.
The very publicness of the parks is what often makes it so appealing

for some of the young women who frequent the Ridge. Sitting on a
bench along a well-traveled path, within earshot of guards, there is
a guarantee that things won’t go too far. As women balance their own
desires with both the pressures from their boyfriends and the insistent
judgments of society, the parks offer a measure of anonymity, but not
total isolation.20
But then, the Ridge is both park and forest; indeed, the tension
over these two uses has long been a source of conflict between
wilderness-orientated environmentalists and horticulture-oriented
government agencies. These two different ecological visions of the
Ridge also turn out to produce very different moral and emotional
landscapes. If the parks of the Ridge are sites of measured romance,
of pushing, but not too hard, against moral norms, then the forests
of the Ridge are something more transgressive: passionate, hidden,
unrestrained, wild, but also risky, dangerous, perilous.
Spirits 293
Forbidden love thus finds its way to the Ridge. This sometimes
leads to tragedy, especially when the contradictions between idealized
love and social convention are too great. The Ridge transforms from
a temporary escape to a final retreat from the crushing realities of life.
In 2013, two lovers went into the depths of the Northern Ridge and
committed suicide together, overdosing on sleeping pills. They were
distraught that their families would not accept their relationship.
History repeated itself a year later, as another young couple was found
dead in the Northern Ridge. Their bodies were discovered hanging
from a vilayati kikar tree.21
According to local legend, these suicides have historical precedents.

Buried at the nearby Lothian Cemetery is an English civilian who
came to Delhi in colonial times and fell in love with an Indian woman.
His lover, though, could not fight the weight of tradition. She was
married off to an Indian. Upon learning of the marriage, the young
man shot himself. The young man, it is said, still haunts the cemetery
and its surroundings.
Not all cases of forbidden love are so tragic, nor so haunting, but
all carry an undercurrent of pathos. This is particularly true of men
seeking liaisons with other men in the Ridge. Many of these men don’t
identify as gay; some of them have never even heard the term. The idea
of a gay identity has been imported from the West, along with malls.
This is not to say that same-sex couplings were not a part of Indian
tradition—they clearly were, as many texts and works of art attest. But
there was a different vocabulary, a different, more fluid set of norms,
distinct from the current conception of being gay.
Under the weight of a Victorian morality imposed by the British

and a Brahminical sense of moral purity, these indigenous tradi-
tions have largely been submerged, though they still have a subter-
ranean existence, and they still bubble up in unexpected ways. Until
the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 2018, the notorious
Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, yet another colonial law, out-
lawed “carnal intercourse against the order of nature”, under threat of
“imprisonment for life”.
Such antiquated laws are not usually enforced. More typically,

they have been used by the police as a means of harassment, to

threaten people and collect bribes. This hardly stopped same-sex
relations in India, but it has driven them to places like the Ridge. This
is something I found out quite unexpectedly, when, during one of my
early explorations of the Ridge, on a warm summer afternoon, I was
propositioned by a man who appeared like an apparition out of the
shade of the forest.
This was my sole first-hand experience with the Ridge’s same-

sex cruising grounds. These places, after all, don’t advertise their
existence, as the draw of the Ridge is largely its secrecy. But a
remarkable portrait of one of these spaces has been sketched by
Jeremy Seabrook, a British journalist.22 Seabrook gives snippets of
extended interviews he has conducted over many months with men
in a place he simply refers to as “The Park” in an effort to protect their
privacy. But there’s little doubt that the Park is somewhere on the
Ridge; it shows telltale signs of both its geology (large, crumbling red
rocks) and its ecology (scrub and thorn forest).
The men in the Park make up a telling cross-section of present-

day Delhi. In keeping with Delhi’s centuries-old association with
state power, many of the men are military personnel, policemen
or government employees. In a nod to Delhi’s new role as a center
of high-end consumption, a sizable proportion of the men work in
nearby five-star hotels. One of the men works as a security guard for a
Japanese-owned factory in Gurgaon. Still others are in management
and finance, enjoying the fruits of upward mobility and an expanding
corporate sector. But many of the men are testaments to the flipside
of the neoliberal dream; they have come to Delhi to escape rural crisis
and oppression, but find themselves stuck in dispiriting, draining
jobs. The Park is one of few places in Delhi where people on different
sides of the class divide mingle unabashedly. The site also breaks
down older barriers of caste and religion, as Dalits and Brahmins,
Hindus and Muslims meet for trysts.
It is appropriate that such an unusual co-mingling would happen

on the Ridge, that escape from staid societal norms. Men are drawn
to the Park on the Ridge precisely because it is an atypical place. But
calling it a park is slightly misleading. Like much of the Ridge, it has
the dual character of park and forest. The latter, in local parlance, is
called jangal; this is where the English word “jungle” comes from, and
Spirits 295
in Hindi, it carries the same connotation of wildness, even barbarity.
The men may have their initial meetings on benches in the park-like
section of the Ridge, but for their sexual activities, they retreat to the
shade of the jungle.
The forest thus plays its age-old role as a place of heightened

pleasure and unusual encounters. The men consider the Ridge to be
a refuge, a haven, an almost dream-like escape. Seabrook calls it “the
site of a holiday from heterosexuality”.23 The adventures in the Ridge
are in poignant contrast to what the men see as their familial duties:
to marry, to have children, to land a reliable, well-paying job. One
man uses the metaphor of day and night: the Ridge is where people
come to live out their dreams, their fantasies, their unspoken desires,
which dissolve with the harsh light of day, and all the responsibilities
the day entails.
This is the function of the jungle. At first, it seems paradoxical

that this jungle should be in the midst of a crowded city. But for
many of the men, especially those from rural backgrounds, Delhi as
a whole plays the same role that the Ridge plays in miniature. It is
an unusual place, a place for the unexpected, for hidden loves and
lusts and dangers. The alluring, disorienting role of the big city has
long been a theme in Bollywood. For a country that, in the popular
imagination, is largely rural (and still, for the moment, has more
people in the countryside than in cities), the village is idealized as the
heart of Indian civilization, the homeland of traditional values. But
these values, this civilization, can also be constricting. Then the city
becomes an escape, just as the forest was in the times of the epic. With
the Delhi Ridge, the forest and the city are collapsed into one.
But this urban wilderness is no perfect utopia. Many of the men

rue the shortness and brusqueness of encounters on the Ridge. They
want to linger with a lover in the privacy of a bedroom, an opportunity
few of them have. There are more immediate concerns too, as the
police regularly raid the park. They patrol the jungle paths, looking
for men with their pants down, arresting those that they find or letting
them off after they pay a bribe. But one policeman, who frequents
the park as a lover, not a raider, argues that these police actions are
not just acts of simple repression; rather, the police themselves are
battling with repressed desire. He says,

They will pretend they do it because they despise them, but really
they want to enjoy also. If they arrest them, they will get free sex
and at the same time say they are doing their duty. This is very
convenient. I do not blame them. Who will not abuse the power he
has, if he has the opportunity?24
Besides opportunistic cops, the men face more subtle dangers as

well, which threaten the necessarily shadowy existence of the Park and
other places like it. Another covert cruising ground, on the Northern
Ridge, is located near the residence of Delhi’s Chief Minister, which
at the moment, is occupied by Arvind Kejriwal, leader of the Aam
Aadmi Party. Kejriwal rose to fame as an anti-corruption crusader,
and he often invokes the rhetoric of transparency, of shining the light
on dark secrets to expose crime and shady dealings. Sometimes he
means this quite literally. One of his main plans for reducing crime
in the city, especially crimes against women, is by placing bright LED
streetlights throughout the city, along with CCTV cameras.
This has had some unintended consequences. One is that couples

looking for privacy, whether same sex or opposite sex, have fewer
places to escape the gaze of a judgmental society. The new lights on
the Ridge near Kejriwal’s residence, for instance, have rendered it an
ineffectual cruising ground. The city needs a place to keep its secrets,
but, for now, the government seems intent on taking the wildness out
of the Ridge wilderness.
Sexual couplings are hardly the only frowned-upon activities that

take place in the Ridge. It is, for instance, a favorite place for drinking.
Against the metaphorical intoxication of love, this is a much more
literal intoxication, as people drink to escape their daily routine, to
forget about the indignities and exhaustions of work, to cover the
sharp realities of life with a fuzzy haze. Again, it is used for people
who can’t do such things elsewhere, who—because of social norms or
parental pressures—can’t drink at their leisure at home, or—because
of economic compunctions—can’t afford pubs or bars.
This leads to an odd mix of people who use the Ridge as a favored
place for alcohol consumption. On one end of the spectrum, there
are students from the super-elite embassy schools near the Central
Ridge, who throw wild parties in the Ridge at night (after bribing
Spirits 297
the guards, of course), escaping from the strictness of hostel or
home life. On the other end of the spectrum are elderly, working-
class men who come to the Ridge to drink country liquor and smoke
cheap beedis, whose gatherings on the Ridge are much less lavish
and much less loud than the students’, but are a more regular, more
sedate affair.
Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum are the college students

who frequent the Ridge for binge-drinking. In a mix of competi-
tiveness, machismo and thrill-seeking, young men (and it is almost
entirely men, at least in the Ridge) drink themselves into oblivion.
For the most part, the consequences of this are fairly harmless: a
pounding headache the next day, some scratches and bruises from
stumbling through thorny thickets of vilayati kikar.
But there have been more tragic cases. In 2003, in the Northern
Ridge, a group of male students from the nearby Delhi University
were out drinking and carousing. They reached one of the Ridge’s
ponds. One boy boasted to his friends that he would jump into the
deep waters of the pond and go for a swim. In his drunken playfulness,
he forgot that he did not know how to swim. Within minutes, he
drowned in the pond.
His death was attributed to drunken recklessness, but the pond

had dark connotations well before this tragic incident. Locally, it
is called “Khooni Jheel”, or bloody pond. Many tie it to the bloody
events of 1857, since significant fighting took place in this area. Some
say the jheel’s name refers to Indians who drowned themselves after
the British had suppressed the rebellion, as they preferred suicide to
death at the hands of the savage British. Others say that it was actu-
ally slain British troops who were dumped into the pond, and that
ghosts still haunt the area, including a headless British officer. Even
for those seeking drunken revelry and escape on the Ridge, then, the
forest, with its past and present dangers, remains a place of shadows
and sometimes morbid surprises.
Ghosts and Tragedies of a Different Sort

Even humans on the Ridge can have a haunting presence, appearing
as relics of a lost era, their past traumas echoing with present-day

suicides and deaths. This was certainly the case with the long-time
inhabitants of the Central Ridge’s Malcha Mahal, one of the quartzite
hunting lodges built by Firoz Shah Tuglaq. Several websites describe
Malcha Mahal as haunted, yet none of these sites actually provide
information about ghosts or other spirits haunting the palace.
Rather, they give details about the strange tale of Malcha Mahal’s
very human residents, who lived there between 1984 and 2018. The
residents closed themselves off to the world and immersed them-
selves in long-shattered memories, including, they claimed, past glory
as descendants of royalty.
This case long fascinated international journalists, who competed

to get an audience with the reclusive family living in the palace. Very
few were successful, but those who did emerged with a bizarre story
that stretches back to 1856, when the British overthrew the kingdom
of Awadh, roughly 250 miles from Delhi.25 After Independence,
former rulers of the “princely states” were given generous government
allowances, but because the King of Awadh was deposed long before
1947, his descendants were out of luck.
In 1971, in a populist move, Indira Gandhi pushed for remov-

ing the privileges of royal descendants, arguing that a democratic
country did not need such monarchical relics. After this, a woman
called Begum Vilayati Mahal, claiming she was a descendant of the
Awadh royal family, decided to protest Indira’s anti-royal-privilege
policies (despite the fact that the Awadhi family never received these
privileges). She did so by occupying the first-class waiting room of
New Delhi Railway Station, where she lived for ten years, demand-
ing that the government return her ancestral properties. She was
joined by her two young children (a son and a daughter) and a host
of servants.
She was not thrown out because she guarded herself with eleven
Doberman Pinschers and vowed to drink snake venom if anyone
tried to remove her. In 1984, shortly before Indira Gandhi’s death,
Begum Vilayati Mahal had an impromptu meeting with the prime
minister. Indira, her populist phase long over, sympathized with the
begum: they were both, after all, inheritors of a dynasty, and they
were both strong, defiant women. Indira promised to find a solution
for the princess.
Spirits 299
But Indira was assassinated before she could follow through
on her vow. Her successors settled on a compromise, although the
terms were rather unfavorable for the princess: she would not be
given any of the ancestral homes in Awadh, but she could take up
residence in Malcha Mahal, which now lay in ruins in the thorny
underbrush of Delhi’s Central Ridge. The building had no windows,
no doors even, and certainly no electricity or water connections. But
the princess, stir crazy after a decade in the railway station waiting
room, agreed to the deal, though she vowed to keep fighting for her
ancestral properties.26
Thus old royalty settled into an even older palace. From their new
home, they could gaze out on the future; Malcha Mahal sits oppo-
site a high-tech ground station run by the Indian Space Research
Organisation (ISRO). Initially, staff members at the ISRO were sym-
pathetic to the eccentric family and helped them set up water and
electricity connections. However, Begum Vilayati Mahal’s son, Ali
Raza, broke the streetlamp that the ISRO staffers had set up outside
the palace, since he worried that it would attract the attention of the
rowdy young men who frequented the Ridge at night. As punishment
for this, the staffers cut off the electricity connection, and the palace
was once more plunged into darkness.
Over the decades, the family turned increasingly inward. A sign

hangs over the entrance, littered with typos, but with its message
nonetheless quite clear: “Entry Restricted. Cautious of Hound Dogs.
Proclamation. Intruders Shall Be Gundown.” Ali Raza was known to
threaten journalists and other thrill-seekers with a gun. But it seems
he was doing this more out of weariness than malice. He may have
owned hound dogs, but he was the one who felt hounded by media
sources that couldn’t get enough of this story.
In the 1990s, tragedy struck. Begum Vilayat Mahal, tired of her

fruitless fight against the government, committed suicide, report-
edly by swallowing crushed diamonds. The children, now grown up,
buried their mother behind the palace. But people started to appear
on their property at night. Several young men attempted to dig up the
body of the begum, convinced that she would be wearing expensive
jewelry. The prince and princess, harried, dug up their mother’s body
and burned it.

The prince and princess stayed on in Malcha Mahal. They reported
that much of their property had been stolen, including a silver table
and several pieces of gold cutlery. While Ali Raza generally had testy,
terse interactions with journalists, he was not initially a total recluse.
His closest contact, it seems, was a Sufi mystic named Ali Khan, who
spent his days wandering through the Ridge. The two would often
meet at a nearby dargah. But as Ali Raza got older, he started cutting
off even from Ali Khan. He became even more elusive than the renun-
ciates of the Ridge. His sister passed away. And, in early 2018, staffers
at the ISRO found him dead on the floor of his crumbling abode.
But the final twist in the saga came in late 2019, when the New
York Times reporter Ellen Barry filed a stunning story revealing
that the family’s background was more complicated than it seemed.27
The claims to royalty were, it seemed, a smokescreen, obscuring
a story of violence, forced migration and delusions of grandeur. The
story deserves to be read in full, but Barry suggests that the real
tragedy of the family was Partition, whose effects caused Begum
Vilayat Mahal to become unhinged, and whose ghosts haunt not just
Qutb Sahib’s shrine and other sites of Delhi violence, but the entire
subcontinent.
When Wildness Becomes Brutality

The deaths on the Ridge, from star-crossed lovers to drunken swim-
mers to harried “princesses”, reveals a darker side of the Ridge and
an essential truth of the forest: escaping from civilization can be lib-
erating, but it can also be terrifying. The literal and metaphorical
darkness of the Ridge is a double-edged sword. It lets people find
hidden love and seek transcendence in both mundane and profound
ways, but it also hides violent passions and demonic forces. Delhi has
a reputation as an unsafe city, and the Ridge is seen as a particularly
dangerous zone, a shadowy space of physical and sexual violence.
In post-Independence Delhi, the Ridge first entered the conscious-

ness of the city’s middle class not due to environmental concerns,
but because of a horrific crime.28 On 26 August 1978, two teenagers
attempted to hitch a ride across the city. The kids were siblings, Geeta
Chopra (age 16) and her younger brother Sanjay (age 14). Their father
Spirits 301
was a naval officer, and the family lived in the military cantonment
on the western slopes of the Ridge. The kids needed to travel from
their home to the All India Radio office in central Delhi. They found
a willing driver near their house, but he only took them as far as Gol
Dak Khana, a major post office. Their route traversed the lonely road
through the Central Ridge; a small part of this Ridge zone had recently
been converted into Buddha Jayanti Park, but the rest remained wild
and isolated.
When the siblings tried to get a second lift, from Gol Dak Khana
to All India Radio, they quickly realized they were in trouble. After
getting into the car of two men who offered them a ride, they saw that
the inside door handles had been removed. They were trapped. They
started to fight with the two men, first verbally and then physically.
Several passersby, including motorists and cyclists, saw the siblings
struggling with the men in the front seat, trying to break free from their
grasp and escape from the vehicle. The men, though, were driving
recklessly, careening through the streets and jumping red lights. None
of the witnesses were able to keep up, though two noted the license
plate number and reported it to the police. The bureaucratic inertia
that has long plagued Delhi had dire consequences in this case, as the
police at Rajendra Nagar station decided that the criminals were not
in their jurisdiction.29
Later, it was revealed that the two men had come to Delhi from
Mumbai, where they had already established themselves as car thieves
and kidnappers, and that they were on the run from the Mumbai police.
The men, who went by the aliases Billa and Ranga, initially intended
to kidnap the siblings and hold them for ransom. When they learned
that the children’s father was a naval officer, they realized, first, that the
family might not be as rich as they had suspected, and second, that
the father might confront them instead of paying the ransom.
Panicking, they drove the car into the Central Ridge and stopped the
car in the parking lot of Buddha Jayanti Park. They then dragged
the siblings to the edge of the park and into the wilds of the Ridge.
Both of the teenagers fought back—the men later went to the hospital
to get their injuries treated, and Billa had a serious head wound—
but they were overpowered. Geeta was raped and both siblings were
stabbed to death with kirpans.

The case was quickly picked up by the media, which explored
every angle of the gruesome crime. News reports emphasized the
wildness of the Ridge, its unruliness and danger. This tragic event
was a catalyst for turning the forest of the Ridge into a park, which
could be used as a safe space for morning walks and yoga and other
respectable pursuits.
This, however, was an incomplete, uneven process, complicated

by the many political and economic factors discussed in previous
chapters. The wildness of the Ridge, though tamed in some areas, was
not completely suppressed. From lovers to drinkers, people still seek
out the wilder sides of the Ridge, which also means that its darker
aspects has not disappeared. On occult websites, people tell stories
of a ghost emerging from the forests of the Central Ridge. She is the
archetypal Indian ghost: a woman in a white sari. But the rumors
surrounding her have disturbing echoes of the Billa-Ranga case. She
is, it is said, a hitchhiker who got lost in the forest and starved to
death. She re-emerged as a ghost who tries to hitch rides from cars
passing by. If the vehicles refuse to stop, she chases after them, easily
keeping pace with even the rashest drivers.
The untamed image of the Ridge has also made it into fiction, with
a short story called “Last In, First Out”, appearing in the anthology
Delhi Noir in 2009.30 The narrator of the story is an auto-rickshaw
driver who plies his trade around Delhi University. He is driving
by Kamla Nehru Park one night and stops, thinking he may be able
to pick up a passenger who fears traversing the Ridge at night. He
hears a tube-light breaking inside the park. Driving into the park to
investigate, he finds a young man, head gushing blood, and then the
young man’s girlfriend, who has been raped. The narrator helps
the couple as much as he can, comforting them and taking them to
Hindu Rao Hospital nearby.
This being a noir story, the narrator then refashions himself as

an informal detective. He vows to track down those responsible for
this horrific crime. He eventually does. It’s a pair of men, just as in
the Billa-Ranga case. The narrator gives them names that suggest the
beastly cruelties of the forest: Mongoose and Cobra. Mongoose claims
that he has been coerced into helping Cobra commit his crimes
(in real life, Ranga made similar claims). Mongoose also explains
Spirits 303
Cobra’s motive: “He says they need to be taught a lesson. They keep
coming here and polluting the morals of the nation.”31
This is a chilling extension of the pujari’s logic that young lovers

are polluting the Ridge. If the forest is outside the bounds of civi-
lization, then the punishments meted out on the Ridge can also go
beyond civilized notions of justice, into the realm of cruelty and
twisted violence. Trying to escape the prison of society, young lovers
find themselves facing something far more horrific: a shadowy vigi-
lante justice, a dark torture chamber that enforces its moral code in
barbarous, terrifying ways.
Crime meets Ecology

Both in real life and in fiction, the Ridge has been the scene of trau-
matic, violent crimes, which represent a disturbing reversal of the
sexual freedom that the Ridge forest promises. Sometimes, though,
criminal phenomena on the Ridge, and in Delhi more generally, have
been less brutal, and more mysterious in nature, more spectral, more
haunting.
In the summer of 2001, a beast that the newspapers dubbed

“The Monkeyman” started terrorizing the city. The Monkeyman only
struck once in the Ridge, in a working-class settlement called Sangam
Vihar, which sits opposite the northern boundary of the Asola
Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary. But, as his name implies, the beast was a
hallucinatory take on the iconic Ridge mammal: the rhesus macaque.
Descriptions of the monkey man varied wildly; in early reports, he
was simply a “monkey-like shadowy figure”.32 Most of these reports
came from areas with high monkey populations, where it was not
uncommon for monkeys to attack people who were sleeping on their
roofs. Over time, as his notoriety spread, the Monkeyman morphed
into something more like a cyborg, with glowing green eyes and a
futuristic belt used for navigation.
Disparate incidents in different parts of the city were attributed

to the Monkeyman, and rumors about his powers rapidly spread. He
was lightning fast and could jump off high-rise buildings with grace
and ease. One victim claimed that when he reached out to grab the
Monkeyman, the monster turned into a cat.

Over time, the Monkeyman scare died down, but not before stirring
deep fears and violent conspiracy theories. The Monkeyman episode
played out like a collective fever dream, brought on by the heat of
the summer, the darkness of Delhi nights and the stress of living in
a densely packed city. As the Police Superintendent R. K. Chaturvedi
astutely noted, all of the attacks happened in working-class and
lower-middle-class neighborhoods, where buildings were crammed
together and, without the luxury of air-conditioning, most slept on
their roofs.33 Further, almost all the attacks took place just after a
power outage, as the neighborhoods were submerged in darkness.
These neighborhoods were largely on the outskirts of Delhi, where
much of the city’s poor had been pushed by successive demolition and
resettlement drives.
In this case, mysterious danger was emanating, not from the green
jungle of the Ridge, but the urban jungle. Just as men cruising in
the Park saw the city of Delhi itself as a disorienting, unpredictable
place, the city’s poor residents, pushed to the fringes by a capricious
government, saw Delhi as wild, beastly. In the Sangam Vihar case,
it’s quite possible that the Monkeyman sighting was in fact a monkey
escaped from the prison in the Wildlife Sanctuary. The government
has tried to push the city’s “undesirable” elements, whether human
or simian, to the edge of the city. This violence haunts the city;
Monkeyman is only its most surreal manifestation.34
There were other resonances in the Monkeyman scare, which

reveal the fears, desires and prejudices lurking in the city’s subcon-
scious. Some of these were perhaps not unexpected. The Delhi branch
of the Shiv Sena claimed that there was not just one Monkeyman, but
rather 131 killer monkeys that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) had sent into Delhi to sow terror. Nativist political parties clearly
could not resist the opportunity to link the wild Other attacking the
city to the religious Other that has long haunted the imagination of
Hindu nationalists.
But perhaps the most interesting interpretation of the Monkeyman

phenomenon was put forward by the intellectual Sudhish Pachauri,
who saw erotic undertones in the events: romance transferred from
the Ridge to the rooftops.35 The adjoining rooftops and terraces of
densely packed neighborhoods, whether in small towns or in big
Spirits 305
cities, have long been used for furtive flirtations that threaten the sta-
bility of staid social norms, a kind of homegrown equivalent of the
forest. This rooftop love is often unrequited, but sometimes leads
to more than suggestive glances. In the heat of the summer night,
lovers, unable to sleep, sneak from one terrace to the other, hoping to
consummate their budding relationships.
Perhaps, then, the Monkeyman grew out of erotic encounters gone
wrong, men who ended up on the wrong terrace or who crossed the
line from flirtation to aggression. Whatever the case, the Monkeyman
lives on in popular memory in Delhi. He stands as a potent symbol
of the city’s hidden longings and tensions, whether romantic,
economic or religious. His cyborg form, half monkey, half machine,
is particularly suggestive. Like so much in the city, the Monkeyman
is a hybrid, part of him drawn from the mythical forests of the epics,
part of him drawn from the high-tech playground of the cyberworld.
Part III: Sacred AND Secular Diverge and

Converge on the Ridge
Ridge, Religion, Real Estate

As the case of the Monkeyman suggests, Delhi’s spirits are not ethere-
ally transcendent beings, floating above reality. Instead, they too are
bound up in economic circuits, in urban upheavals, in state-sponsored
displacement and violence. This applies to both the “sacred” and the
“secular” spirits on the Ridge, who have found themselves in the midst
of two inescapable contemporary trends: the increasing dominance of
real estate in the economy of Delhi, and the increasing polarization
of Hindu and Muslim communities as the Hindu right finds itself
politically ascendant.
Despite centuries of exchange and intermingling, the mystics on
the Ridge have not been immune to the increasingly stark religious
and economic divisions that now characterize Delhi. This is evident
in the geography of Sanjay Van: the three Gorakhnath temples, along
with several small Hindu shrines, are all clustered on the northern end
of the park, closer to the Hindu-dominated neighborhood of Katwaria
Sarai, while the dargah, several graves and Bela’s mysterious tomb
are located in the park’s southern reaches, closer to Mehrauli.

The division between the two communities has been exacerbated
by the increasingly high-stakes competition for control over land in
Delhi. In a way, this is nothing new. Religious institutions have long
been important landowners, and even the itinerant Sufis and yogis
of the medieval Arid Zone sometimes gave up their nomadic ways so
they could set up lucrative trading posts. But religious competition
over real estate has taken on a distinctly modern flavor in post-
Independence Delhi, as both the rich and poor scramble for space
and compete for profit in an increasingly dense, chaotic city.
This has led to both intra-religious and inter-religious fights over

land, as well as a proliferation of renunciate real estate agents. We’ve
seen them make appearances in previous chapters. There was, for
instance, the local priest at the Mangarbani sacred grove, who called
in hired goons to beat up the Gurgaon birdwatchers. Or, at a more
elite level, there’s the Radha Soami Satsang Beas, which established
an upscale retreat in the Southern Ridge, just beyond Sanjay Colony/
Bhagirath Nagar.
In Sanjay Van, each of the three Gorakhnath temples has expanded

considerably over the years. Sohail Hashmi, Delhi’s popular oral
historian, told me that he once encountered a pujari outside one of
the temples, giving instructions to two assistants who were wielding
chainsaws and cutting down wide swaths of forested land to make
way for a temple expansion. The two larger temples have water
and electricity connections and continue to grow both vertically and
horizontally.
This kind of expansion has become so common that it is almost a

running joke among Delhi’s environmentalists. The temples, regard-
less of their age, brand themselves as “pracheen” (ancient). Hashmi
recounts seeing a sign on the outskirts of Delhi, where the foundations
of a new building were being laid: “Under Construction: Pracheen
Hanuman Mandir”. A new structure will often start, not as a full-
fledged temple, but as a small set of idols under a tree. This is even-
tually fenced in, then made into a small building, then into a bigger
one. Government officials, despite their tough talk about “encroach-
ments”, usually let such temples flourish, in part because demol-
ishing a temple could draw the wrath of an increasingly assertive
Hindu community.
Spirits 307
However, some Hindus still see themselves as the aggrieved victims.
During one of my first sojourns in Sanjay Van, on a dusty, lonely trail
near the Gorakhnath temple, I met a man who was out for his after-
noon walk. I had come with a more seasoned Sanjay Van chronicler,
and she immediately struck up a conversation with the man about the
park and his associations with it.
With very little prompting, the man launched into a tirade about
the hypocrisy of the government (then Congress-run), which know-
ingly let Muslim shrines proliferate on the Ridge, while simultane-
ously cracking down on Hindu temples. The temples, he asserted,
were built before the government declared this land a forest in 1980
(never mind their continuing expansion, which government officials
have condoned), and the Hindu community had done an admirable
job planting trees and feeding the animals of the forests. Unlike the
Muslims, he said, who ate neelgai.
The problem, he averred, was not just a local one: it was a national-
level plan to appease Muslims. His language got increasingly abusive
as he warmed up to the theme. Rahul Gandhi is a coward. Sonia
Gandhi is a whore. “Did you know,” he muttered conspiratorially,
“that Lalu Prasad Yadav visited this very area to encourage Muslims
to keep on building encroachments?”
The man’s impromptu speech was, in many ways, standard-issue

Muslim-bashing. Even though countless reports have documented
the prejudices, oppression and material deprivation that most
Muslims in India face, Muslims are still seen as a coddled, protected
population. This line of argument has been sharpened by Hindutva
ideologues over the years, in parallel with historical arguments that
portray the Muslims as a homogeneous block of invading fanatics.
Though the man in Sanjay Van was largely regurgitating propa-

ganda, his invocation of figures like Sonia Gandhi and Lalu Prasad
Yadav aptly shows how local spaces like the Ridge are drawn into
national circuits of politics and religion. If some national political
figures are supposedly appeasing Muslims, others have staked their
careers on aggressive assertions of Hindu identity. One famous
Hindutva firebrand is Yogi Adityanath, the Chief Minister of Uttar
Pradesh and the mahant (head priest) of the Gorakhnath Mandir in

Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, in other words, a key figure in the present-
day Nath tradition. Several analyses have emphasized the extreme,
often violent ways in which Adityanath has strayed from the earlier
syncretism of the Nath tradition.36
The polarized geography of Sanjay Van is thus evidence of broader

trends. The polarization continues unabated; in early 2020, reporters
from the famously right-wing channel Zee News approached environ-
mentalists who had documented encroachments in Sanjay Van, and
pointedly asked only about Muslim places of worship (all of which
long predate Sanjay Van’s status as Reserved Forest, as opposed to
the more recent Hindu temples). Yet if the Ridge exemplifies the frac-
tures increasingly dividing society, it also provides some rays of hope,
some sparks of inspiration about how these fractures can be healed.
Polarization and Resistance

While tensions simmer in Sanjay Van, more explosive confronta-
tions have occurred in other parts of the Ridge, particularly in the
former mining belt that has been a battleground for real estate
developers, environmentalists and state officials ever since quarrying
was banned. Near the village of Rangpuri, for instance, is a settlement
called Israil Camp. It is named after the founder of the settlement,
Israil Pradhan, one of the many middlemen whose fame and fortune
rose with the quarrying boom in Delhi. His official job was as a driv-
er, transporting stones, but he pursued a side-business in real estate.
Using muscle power and connections, he set up a small settlement on
what had earlier been the commons of Rangpuri. The settlement was
initially inhabited by quarry workers and their families, who had to
pay bribes to Israil and the police.
The workers were playing the precarious game familiar to many

of Delhi’s marginalized residents: bribes, uncertainty, the constant
threat of eviction or demolition. After quarrying was banned, the
neighborhood continued to grow, largely housing those who catered
to the needs of nearby Vasant Kunj residents: cooks, maids, vendors,
security guards, construction workers and drivers. Part of the neigh-
borhood was regularized in the mid-2000s, a welcome relief for many
who had lived in Israil Camp for decades.
Spirits 309
But in 2014, a new danger emerged.37 The neighborhood’s
Hanuman temple was taken over by members of the RSS. Residents
of the settlement, both Hindu and Muslim, were initially pleased when
RSS members used their influence to reduce police harassment in the
neighborhood. But the RSS members soon started demanding bribes
themselves; they were no saviors, but simply another set of middlemen.
The RSS leader in the area, Nagendra Upadhyay, wanted full

control of the neighborhood and objected to the continued presence
of a small Kali temple. The Kali temple’s resident priest, Jogeshwar
Pandit, complained that Upadhyay forced him to hand over all the
Kali temple donations. In an interview with the journalist Neha
Dixit, Pandit underlined a key difference between the temples: the
Hanuman temple was only open to upper-caste Hindus, whereas
the Kali temple was open to people of all castes and creeds.38
As the RSS attempted to impose its orthodox ideology on the set-

tlement’s Hindu community, it also began targeting Muslims. It tried
to provoke fights between the two communities in a variety of ways,
from organizing protests against the construction of new mosques to
physically confronting Muslim street vendors. But the neighborhood’s
Muslims refused to take the bait, and they were largely supported by
their Hindu neighbors, who had their own reasons to resent the new
RSS presence.
These events must be put in a larger political context. In December

2013, the upstart Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), running largely on a plat-
form of anti-corruption and promising to prioritize the interests of
the “common man”, exceeded everyone’s expectations in the Delhi state
elections, and formed a minority government with conditional support
from Congress. Forty-nine days later, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal
announced his resignation, citing lack of support and inability to imple-
ment his agenda. The government was dissolved, and Delhi was left
without a state government for a year, as AAP squabbled with the BJP
and Congress about how to take things forward.
The old established parties used this hiatus to push for measures
that had little democratic support, including the demolition of set-
tlements deemed “illegal”. With the legislative assembly dissolved,
considerable power lay in the hands of Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor,

the modern-day equivalent of the British-era Chief Commissioner.
In Delhi’s centuries-old, ongoing struggle between local and central
power, the latter temporarily had the upper hand. Taking advantage
of this, the BJP lobbied the Lieutenant Governor to approve the dem-
olition of Israil Camp and several other neighborhoods, frustrated
by the residents’ support of the Aam Aadmi Party and their staunch
resistance to the RSS’s communal polarization efforts.
On 27 May 2014, two crucial letters were sent. The first was written
by RSS honcho Upadhyay, addressed to the area’s former MLA, the
BJP politician Satya Prakash Rana, and copied to the Lieutenant
Governor. It read,
Jhuggis are being sold illegally at a large scale. This is carried

out by people from the Bangladeshi and Muslim community... If
this is not stopped immediately, a large Bangladeshi community
will settle here. Since the area is close to the airport and the
aeroplanes are really low while landing, there is a threat of a
terror activity on the planes [sic].39
The fevered Hindutva imagination is hard at work here: wherever

there are Muslims, there must be Bangladeshis; wherever there are
Muslim Bangladeshis, there must be terrorists.
The RSS and BJP were clearly working in concert, because on
the same day, Rana sent his own letter to the Lieutenant Governor,
steering clear of Upadhyay’s conspiratorial tone, but essentially
asking for the same thing: “Some organized groups are settling on this
forest land and immediate action should be taken to remove them.”40
The Lieutenant Governor was sympathetic to their plea and
forwarded their complaint to the Forest Department. This land, after
all, was technically a Reserved Forest, even if there were no trees in
sight, and even if the settlement effort for notifying the forest had
been delayed and postponed indefinitely. The demolition request took
some time to process, but finally, on 25 November 2014, bulldozers
appeared in Israil Camp, along with a handful of Forest Department
officials and a phalanx of policemen. The residents were given 10
minutes to vacate their homes, and then the bulldozers leveled the
entire site, destroying approximately 400 homes, rendering roughly
2,000 people homeless and crushing most of their possessions.
Spirits 311
After the demolition, the BJP MLA flatly said that the action was
meant as punishment for the intransigent residents, who had strongly
supported the Aam Aadmi Party in the December 2013 elections. His
previous emphasis on “forest land”, in an area that had been thor-
oughly barren for many decades, was clearly a subterfuge, hiding
both religious and political motives.
This was not an isolated case; the BJP was using the rhetoric of
“clean and green” environmentalism as a complement to their strategy
of religious polarization. The latter strategy had helped catapult the
BJP to victory in the national elections in 2014, most notably with
the stoking of religious tensions in Uttar Pradesh. In Delhi, with the
state assembly dissolved and new elections looming, the BJP tried
this strategy on a smaller scale, sparking communal tensions in the
working-class neighborhoods like Bawana and Trilokpuri. When this
didn’t work, as in Israil Camp, they switched tactics and spoke of
environmental preservation.
After the Israil Camp demolition, their efforts faltered. Working-

class residents in nearby neighborhoods, especially those with large
Muslim populations, knew that they could be next, as rumors of
impending demolitions had been swirling for several months. At the
same time, middle-class activists working on housing rights issues
began preparing legal strategies to aid those whose neighborhoods
were under threat.
When the BJP continued their offensive, their opponents were

better prepared. In the last days of November, residents of Dalit
Ekta Colony received a notice that their houses would be demolished
the next morning. It was later revealed that this neighborhood had
long been on the BJP radar; Dalit Ekta Colony was named in Rana’s
27 May letter to the Lieutenant Governor, along with several other
settlements on the Southern Ridge.
The colony, whose population is half Dalit and half Muslim, is

another Ridge neighborhood whose residents mainly work in nearby
Vasant Kunj, part of the half-hidden service sector that keeps the
upscale side of the city running. The residents protested against
the demolition, and a housing rights NGO filed a PIL on their behalf.
The Delhi High Court ruled that the demolition should be postponed,

since the DDA had not shown that the eviction was in keeping with
government policies, and since no government officials had yet
been punished for allowing the “encroachment”. It was a significant,
if temporary, victory.
The reprieve was welcomed by the Dalit Ekta Colony residents,

but their anxiety about the future was mixed with anger at the BJP
and nostalgia for the brief, 49-day rule of the Aam Aadmi Party, when
police harassment had reduced, demolition threats had ceased and
utility bills had been slashed. A journalist who interviewed colony
residents in January 2015 found overwhelming support for AAP,
along with disdain and resentment directed not just towards the BJP,
but also Congress, a party many of them had previously supported,
but which had repeatedly failed to fulfill its promises.41
This restive mood was not confined to Dalit Ekta Colony, nor
to similar neighborhoods dotting the Southern Ridge. When state
elections finally took place in Delhi, on 7 February 2015, the Aam
Aadmi Party stormed to victory in a historic landslide, winning 67 of
70 seats. Many saw AAP’s stunning victory as a major transition point,
marking the ebbing of the wave of “clean and green”, “world-class”
Delhi propaganda. After its victory, one of the party’s first moves was
to place a temporary ban on all slum demolitions so that the party
could review government procedures and revise them to ensure that
all residents were treated justly. AAP’s sensitivity to these issues, and
the fact that it was the only party that even mentioned the Ridge in
its election manifesto, also suggested that AAP could usher in a new
era of management for the Ridge, one that recognized its ecological
significance without relying on coercion and slum demolitions to
police its boundaries.
Initially, AAP struggled to maintain the momentum generated

by its stunning Delhi victory. Part of this was due to the age-old
tensions between the local and central powers in the city. AAP’s
leaders had goaded the BJP from the beginning, and they had
just scored a remarkable political victory over the party that was
otherwise in ascendance nationwide. The central government, which
has considerable control over Delhi, struck back at AAP, using every
tool at its disposal to hamper the city government. But perhaps
even more troubling for AAP were internal tensions, which led to
Spirits 313
the expulsion of key party members less than two months after their
sweeping victory. One of the expelled members, Yogendra Yadav,
was frequently described as the party’s ideologue. He was pivotal
in AAP’s efforts to reach beyond its initial middle class base and to
sketch out a transformative vision that would capture the energy of
working-class Delhites in places like Dalit Ekta Colony. With Yadav
gone, there were worries that AAP would just be a blandly “post-
ideological”, technocratic party. And despite grand ambitions, it
struggled to expand beyond Delhi, causing some to write it off as a
spent force.42
But requiems for AAP were premature. Despite the BJP’s intense
campaigning and further attempts at religious polarization, AAP won
in another landslide in the 2020 Delhi assembly elections, taking
62 seats to the BJP’s 8. The party remains popular in Delhi in part
because it has publicly fought with the central government on the
issue of slum demolitions, protesting a demolition that led to the death
of an infant in the neighborhood of Shakurbasti in 2015, and taking
issue with the DDA’s destruction of a Ravidas temple on Ridge land in
2019.43 The latter issue again shows the complex interplay of religion,
land, class and caste, as the temple was extremely popular with Dalit
worshippers, and the demolition has highlighted the hypocrisies of
the Hindu nationalist project—calls for Hindu unity, but at the expense
of the so-called “lower” castes. In the 2020 election, however, AAP
largely steered clear of religious issues, reverting again to its image
of a party of good governance, able to get things done in a pragmatic
way. The full impact of this approach for the Ridge—and for Delhi as a
whole—remains to be seen.
Messengers and Messiahs on the Ridge

If AAP’s is a largely technocratic vision for Delhi’s environment, what
of other, more spiritual, visions? Delhi has no shortage of godmen
claiming to work for the betterment of its environment. Leaving the
Ridge briefly, there was the much-publicized “World Culture Festival”
organized by holy man Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and his Art of Living
Foundation, which took place on the flood plains of the Yamuna
River. Sri Sri is a sadhu for the modernized, office-going middle
classes, and those who aspire to that lifestyle. But his festival, which,

amongst other things, claimed to clean up the Yamuna by showering
it with a mysterious “enzyme” developed by a quack in Thailand,44 was
roundly criticized by environmentalists, again suggesting rifts within
Delhi’s middle classes. Many pointed to the hypocrisy of demolishing
working-class settlements on these flood plains, only to repopulate
them with the Commonwealth Games Village and the occasional
religious mega-event.
On the other end of Delhi, on the Southern Ridge, another con-

troversial holy man made his presence felt. The sage in question was
Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, the now-disgraced head of the Haryana-
based organization Dera Sacha Sauda (DSS). Several years in a row,
on 15 August (also, conveniently, Independence Day), Singh orga-
nized massive tree plantation drives. Earlier drives took place near
DSS headquarters in Sirsa, Haryana, but, like all ambitious leaders,
Singh soon had his sights set on Delhi. In 2015, thousands of Singh’s
followers, largely from Haryana, descended on the Asola Bhatti
Wildlife Sanctuary and embarked on a large-scale planting effort.
Like Sri Sri, part of his appeal is his orchestration of mega-events.

But if Sri Sri, in his austere white clothes, appeals to those who want to
show their refined sensibilities, the technicolor Singh appeals to those
who dream of acquiring wealth to flaunt. Before his arrest in 2017, Singh
was perhaps best known for the four movies he has written, directed,
edited, produced, scored and starred in, garish showpieces that elicited
the mockery of the urbane wits populating Facebook, Twitter and other
social media sites. Beneath the mockery was a familiar phenomenon:
disdain towards the flashiness of the nouveau riche.
Even his Ridge plantation efforts can be seen in this light. This is
reforestation as a form of striving, in a world where bigger is better,
where everything must be quantified, where world records show one’s
international prowess. The DSS website lists the relevant figures:
19 World Records, as certified by Guinness, some ostensibly charitable
(including “Most Trees Planted Simultaneously at Multiple Locations
in Eight Hours”), some more whimsical (“Most People Tossing Coins
Simultaneously”).
Mega-events like the plantation drive also have the benefit of being
interactive, and of involving huge numbers of people in activities
Spirits 315
that make them feel like they are contributing to the social good.
And indeed, Singh’s organization has contributed significantly, not
just to tree plantation drives, but to relief efforts after earthquakes,
cyclones and other natural disasters. These deeds are generally
performed by the organization’s Shah Satnam Ji Green ‘S’ Welfare
Force Wing, which outfits its volunteers in matching beige uniforms
and dispatches them around India.
In Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary, the Green ‘S’ Welfare Force

was a formidable sight, as I witnessed in August 2015. They marched
down a dirt lane in the sanctuary in a seemingly endless procession,
most on foot, some in cars or tractors, all carrying plants. There was
a lightness in the air, a sense of joy and camaraderie, despite the
sweltering heat. Singh has an enormous following among Dalits, who
feel alienated by the caste biases of other religious organizations, and
who take a clear pride in contributing to an organization that sees
them as equals.
I had gone to the sanctuary that day to check out a native tree
plantation drive organized by a civic society group committed to pro-
moting Delhi pride. It was led by an environmentalist who stressed the
importance of reforesting the Ridge with trees that were native to
the northern Aravallis. Our group, several dozen at most, was minus-
cule compared to the DSS Welfare Force, and we clearly came from
a different social background: English-speaking, college-educated,
urbane, middle to upper-class. In short, we were the kind of people
who made fun of Singh’s movies.
Our group leader was upset that the DSS group was not planting
native trees, though he recognized that this was hardly their fault:
the Forest Department provided them with saplings, and, two
decades after the sanctuary’s founding, they still did not have an
adequate supply of native seeds. Others were less restrained in their
complaints. I heard some grumbling: “They’re making so much noise”,
leavened with a patronizing, “But they’re happy”. An uncomfortable,
undeniable sense of “us” vs. “them” had emerged.
The Wildlife Sanctuary, with its high border fences, its strict rules
for entry, and its costly recreational programs, has generally tried to
keep people out of Ridge. The DSS event was a striking reversal of

that: here were people from all classes and backgrounds, storming the
gates of the sanctuary, bringing with them blaring music, mountains
of fried snacks and boxes full of religious paraphernalia, to be sold
in the sanctuary’s parking lot. Delhi’s environmentalists bemoan the
fact that no one seems to care about the city’s ecology, but when
the masses do show their caring, they are viewed with suspicion: they
are brainless followers, they’re just carrying out the godman’s order,
and so on.
As it turned out, there was ample reason to be suspicious of DSS,

just not for the reasons environmentalist were suggesting. In 2017,
no longer able to outrun the rumors that dogged him with increasing
persistence, Singh was arrested on charges of raping two of his female
followers. A recent expose of Singh detailed the full extent of his crimes:
bribery, murders, forced castrations, sexual assault and more.45
Yet despite the utter depravity and criminality of their leader, the
sight of devotees filling the Wildlife Sanctuary with such bustling
energy, devoting their time to the Ridge, was genuinely inspiring. It
hints at the possibility of a mass mobilization for a Delhi that provides
a true greenness and ecological health for all its residents, not just the
privileged few.
Transforming the Ridge, Transforming the City

The DSS plantation drives are, though, just a hint. Leaving aside
Singh’s moral bankruptcy, the DSS approach barely scratches the
surface of the problems—ecological, political, economic, social—
facing the Ridge and the rest of Delhi. It offers spiritual healing as a
band-aid, covering up the wounds of a traumatized society, but not
addressing the root causes of societal illness. It caters, in large part,
to those who have been dragged across the growing city-countryside
rift, and have emerged battered and bruised.46 A real solution has to
involve closing this rift, and re-integrating Delhi’s citizens into their
larger, more-than-human world.
This is a tall order. It is unlikely to be achieved within the current

economic system, which adds layer upon layer of separation between
humans and their ecological means of sustenance, while depending
on the exploitation of both nature and workers. Nor is it likely to be
Spirits 317
achieved within the current political system, which especially in Delhi
is weighted towards elite interest and wary of mass involvement.
But the enormity of the task at hand need not induce a sense of
indolence. There are signs of hope. On the other side of the Wildlife
Sanctuary wall, for instance, the Ods of Bhagirath Nagar have been
showing that there are ways forward, immediate demands that can
initiate the long march towards a transformed future. The continuing
saga of the Ods, including their continued collaboration with a varied
set of political actors, suggests that the solution to the problems
plaguing Delhi may not be spiritual in the conventional sense. But it
will inevitably be animated by a spirit of struggle: of camaraderie, of
ingenuity, of a near-religious faith in the possibility of a better world
in the here and now.
When we last saw the Ods in Chapter 2, they were fighting to hold
onto their land in the face of a sustained government onslaught. But
their fight has not been merely defensive. They have made concrete,
positive suggestions about ways in which their community can be
integrated into the healthy functioning of the Wildlife Sanctuary.
Some of these suggestions are incredibly simple, but they have not yet
been implemented precisely because they overturn the established
pattern of state-sponsored forest management, which sees humans
living in or near forests as threats. For instance, Od villagers have, by
and large, been excluded from the sanctuary’s reforestation project,
despite their proven skills and practical knowledge of the soil. There
is much work to be done in the sanctuary, especially because it is not
“pristine”. The overabundance of vilayati kikar, for instance, could
be seen as an opportunity for community forest management. Ods
living nearby who need firewood would actually be doing an ecological
service by cutting down vilayati kikar provided that indigenous plants
are simultaneously encouraged to grow. But they have not been given
the opportunity to do so.
In late 2014, several activists in the Od community began a cam-

paign demanding recognition under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), a
law formulated largely to address the glaring faults of the colonial-
era Indian Forest Act.47 The FRA gives legal rights to “traditional
forest-dwellers”, including ownership rights over the land, as well
as rights to use the land for pasture, agriculture and other purposes.

Although it mainly applies to Scheduled Tribes, the FRA also provides
provisions for communities who can prove that they have lived in,
and depended on, a certain stretch of forest for over 75 years. Passed
in 2006, the FRA was a belated recognition that many tribes have
been the victims of massive land-grabs engineered by a forest-hungry
state, and that tribal people can actually play a positive role in forest
conservation. This suggests that the nature/culture divide that plagues
environmental thinking is not just being questioned, but is also being
overturned in practice, at least in some small ways.
The Ods’ request for recognition under the FRA is highly unorth-
odox, pushing past the original intentions of the Act. For the most
part, the Act was envisioned as a way of empowering tribes in dense,
vast jungles far away from urban habitations. The Ods, on the other
hand, are in the middle of a bustling metropolis. Further, they are
not recognized as a Scheduled Tribe (though they have asked for
this recognition as well), and they have not been in the area for more
than 75 years.
But the Ods’ campaign is inspiring precisely because it questions

the rigid categories on which even progressive legislation like the
FRA is based. They may not be ST, but it is hardly their fault that
the state has not yet deigned to categorize them as such. And they
may not have lived in Bhatti for the required period of time, but that
is because their tribe is nomadic. It seems odd that a law developed
as a defense of tribal life makes little room for one of the chief charac-
teristics of that life: mobility. Such considerations make it clear that
the Ods’ request certainly accords with the spirit of the act, which is to
recognize the rights of tribal groups that have long been marginalized
by the state.
The Ods’ argument is strengthened by the simple fact that their

residence in Bhagirath Nagar significantly predates the arrival of
the “forest” in the Bhatti Mines. Many of the Od families have been
there since the 1960s and 1970s; the Wildlife Sanctuary was only
extended into Bhatti in 1991, and even this was just on paper. The
actual “forest” started to emerge in Bhatti only after the intervention
of the army. And this “forest” is largely a weed-filled thicket, which
was formerly a pockmarked mining landscape, which was formerly a
pastoral grazing land, which was formerly a savanna. Logically, then,
Spirits 319
the Ods really are the original inhabitants of the so-called forest, since
they were the ones living there when plantation efforts began.
In a sense, one can understand why some environmentalists
might resist this logic. Once the Ridge is connected to larger trends—
to quarrying throughout the Aravallis, to construction booms and
real estate expansions, to migrant populations—then it becomes very
difficult to control. Far easier just to draw a strict boundary around
it, both temporally and spatially: from 1996 onwards, 80 square
kilometers of the Ridge is Reserved Forest. Period.
But seeing the Ridge as interconnected can also be empowering,
even for conservationists. If everything is interconnected, then one
can start implementing positive changes anywhere, and this change
has the potential to ripple outward. For instance, the Ods are the
second urban tribe to use the FRA, after tribals in a national park in
Bombay; if this approach is successful, it could spread to other cities,
pioneering strategies for balancing use and conservation even in the
most challenging of scenarios.
The Ods have submitted their FRA request to the state and have
yet to receive a response. Several Od activists, though, have been
heartened by the rise of the Aam Aadmi Party, whose government
now controls the state-level Forest Department, as well as the Labour
Department. It is too early to say if this new energy, both among
activists and politicians, will lead to lasting changes in the Wildlife
Sanctuary and beyond, but it is a sign that new movements are
emerging, and old patterns are being challenged. India’s tribes, often
dismissed or stereotyped as primitive, are showing potential ways
forward. This is not a backward-looking idealization of a rosy past,
but tentative steps towards an uncertain future, towards healing the
rift between town and country, human and nature.
There are other glimmers of hope as well. The plight of the Ods
underscores the fact that questions about nature cannot be separated
from questions about work and livelihoods. The long-term solution to
Delhi’s environmental problems can’t just be banning factories and
quarries, and then just relocating them to other parts of the country
and continuing to consume what they produce. This just makes the
production process, with its human and environmental costs, more
obscured, and perhaps even more dangerous.

In Delhi, there have been many attempts to bring these costs to
light, not just from elite “clean and green” environmentalism, but from
the workers at the heart of “polluting” industries. Moving outside the
boundaries of the Ridge, but staying within the realm of Delhi’s parks,
we find an instructive example: a small green space called Raja Park
near the Wazirpur Industrial Area. In times of struggle and conflict,
Raja Park has become a community planning and protest ground for
the workers nearby. This included a major rally in 1996 to protest
slum demolitions; more recently, the park has been used during
major disputes over production conditions in the Industrial Area.
Industrial production first came to Wazirpur in the late 1970s.

Many of its initial employees were those who had come to Delhi as
construction workers for the Asian Games building boom and had
remained in the city after the Games ended. Although initially, most
of the factories were hosiery manufacturers, from the mid-1980s,
small stainless-steel factories came to dominate the landscape. The
working conditions in the steel plants were, and still are, inhumane.
Highly dangerous acids are used. Carbon fumes cloud the workplace.
The workers know from first-hand experience the dangers of
industrial pollution. Skin diseases and tuberculosis are common, as
are constantly swollen hands and lacerations.
There is a long history of labor activism in this area, as workers

have sought to improve their work conditions. There were major
strikes in 2012, 2013 and 2014.48 In 2013, along with other tactics, the
workers and their supporters occupied Raja Park, using it as a space
for meetings, protests and much-needed rest. They repeated this
action again in 2014, even setting up a community kitchen to support
workers who had not been paid in many days.
This transformation of a green space into a vibrant site of commu-

nity support and engagement, in a very politically charged moment,
would likely be anathema to politicians like Jagmohan, or, more
recently, Sheila Dixit, who longed for a peaceful, quiet, conflict-free
Delhi, and who sought to achieve it by suppressing and demoniz-
ing those who did not fit the image of a “clean and green” city. But
for those interested in constructing an environmentalism from
the bottom up, one that links ecological and economic issues and
remains committed to social justice, the transformation of Raja Park
Spirits 321
was a moment of admirable democratic assertion and spirited com-
munity solidarity.
The End
On a more day-to-day basis, this kind of democratic spirit suffuses the
Ridge’s more traveled parks and paths. In Sanjay Van or Kamla Nehru
Park, despite the state’s intentions, the Ridge is used by all castes and
classes, for a bewildering array of uses—for love, for enlightenment,
for recreation, for grazing, for firewood-gathering, for shortcuts and
detours, for food, even for burial and cremation.
The Ridge, especially around Mehrauli, is covered in graves and
dotted with crematoria. In a neighborhood with centuries of human
history, the living jostle with the dead for space. Death has an odd
way of bridging divides on the Ridge: between nature and culture,
between Hindu and Muslim, between the spiritual and the material.
No one can escape death. It is the ultimate, unavoidable return to
nature: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. No matter how much we try
to distract ourselves from this inevitability, through work, through
play, through conspicuous consumption, we cannot avoid it. The
Ridge’s graveyards and cremation grounds are a reminder of a sacred
truth: that death is necessary for life, that tragic endings are the
required fuel for new beginnings.
On the Ridge, one generally finds Muslim graves and Hindu cre-
mation grounds, but even these categories get blurred: yogis often
prefer burial, and they join their Sufi brethren in this repose. The
Awadhi “royals” on the Central Ridge chose to cremate their mother,
although they are from a Muslim family, when a grave proved to be
an unsafe final resting place. In Sanjay Van, a medieval Sufi lies next
to Bela Chauhan, who was, depending on who you ask, either a Sufi
mystic herself or an incarnation of Kali.
Perhaps these two incarnations are not so different. They are
a reminder that, for all the disenchantment of nature, for all the
attempts that have been made to tame nature (and those genders and
caste groups associated with it), it still has a wildness and a sacred,
mysterious aura. And as the Tantric tradition has suggested, this
mystery is not just out there in nature, but within us, suffusing the
material world that includes both humans and their environments.

The yogic mystic, rejecting the hierarchies and orthodoxies of the
world, smeared in ash, meditating in graveyards, seems far distant
from the striking steel-factory worker, seeking sustenance after
an exhausting day of protest and confrontation. But both exist in
Delhi’s green spaces. Both blend a spiritual strength with a direct,
material engagement with the world. Neither will appear in the latest
ad campaign for a clean, green, pristine Delhi. They point to another
vision for the Ridge, one full of surprises and hybrids, of struggle
and serenity. A Ridge re-enchanted, its riches redistributed and
enjoyed by all.
Spirits 323
Notes
Seeds
1. For ease of reading, I do not use diacritics when transliterating names
(of both historical figures and places). Instead, I rely on the most
commonly used English-language transliterations.
2. Beg, Bahadur Shah, 20.
3. The findings have since been updated; Delhi has dropped to sixth place on
the list, but is still alarmingly polluted. See World Health Organization,
“WHO Global Pollution Database”.
4. Delhi Development Authority, Master Plan 2001, 4.
5. Beg, Bahadur Shah, 22.
6. Srishti and WWF-India, Saving the Delhi Ridge, 21.
7. van Buitenen, The Mahabharata Book 1, 417.
8. See especially Dove, “Dialectical History of ‘Jungle’” and Karve, Yuganta,
146.
9. Diamond, “The Worst Mistake”.
10. Graebar and Wengrow, “How to change”.
11. Greabar and Wengrow, “How to change”.
12. Scott, Against the Grain, 38.
13. Weisman, The World Without Us.
14. Botkin, Discord Harmonies.
15. Kathleen Morrison suggests that these two narratives sometimes converge,
noting that an eco-romanticist strain of Indian environmental thinking
posits a ‘Hindu Eden’ and imagines caste as an ecological niche keep-
ing humans in balance with each other and with nature. See Morrison,
“Conceiving Ecology”, 44.
16. See, for instance, Press Trust of India, “Spiritual traditions”, and Mishra,
“Modi’s Idea of India”.
17. For a good summary of Jagmohan’s impact on Delhi and its environment,
see Pati, “Jagmohan: The Master Planner”.
18. Ghertner, “Green evictions”, 146.
19. Roy, Pollution, Pushta, and Prejudices.
20. Delhi Planning Department. “Economic Survey of Delhi 2012–3”.
21. Baviskar, “Between violence and desire”.
22. Christ, “Water related informal processes”, 137–140.
23. Mawdsley, “India’s Middle Classes and the Environment”.
24. The classic analysis of the estrangement and alienation of labor under
capitalism is elaborated by Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts”.
25. For a similar argument, elaborated with more theoretical sophistication,
see Smith, “Nature as Accumulation Strategy”.
Chapter 1: Stones
1. Singh, Ancient Delhi, 14–20.
2. Panditi, “Signature Bridge”.
3. Wiedenbeck, Goswami, and Roy, “Stabilization of Aravalli Craton”.
4. Verma and Greiling. “Tectonic evolution of Aravalli”.
5. Lahiri and Chakrabarti, “A preliminary report”.
6. Trivedi, “On the Surface”, 58.
7. Mellars et al., “Genetic and archaeological perspective”.
8. Sharma, “Prehistoric Delhi”, 19.
9. Kohn and Mithen, “Handaxes: Products of sexual selection?”
10. Lam, “The First Commodity: Handaxes”.
11. Mellars et al., “Genetic and archaelogical perspective”.
12. Mellars et al., “Genetic and archaelogical perspective”.
13. Petraglia et al., “Population increase and environmental deterioration”.
14. Trivedi, “On the Surface”, 64.
15. According to another account, the inscription was in fact first discovered
in 1966, in the process of—what else—real estate surveying and construc-
tion in the area. See Lahiri, Ashoka in Ancient India, 335.
16. For a broader reflection of Ashoka’s use of stone inscriptions, see Lahiri,
Ashoka in Ancient India, especially Ch 9.
17. Mann and Sehrawat,“City with a View”, 561.
18. Singh, Mukherjee, and Kapoor, New Delhi, 97.
19. W. M. Hailey to Deputy Commissioner, Delhi, February 16, 1916,
“Correspondence Regarding Quarries”, Deputy Commissioner’s Office
[hereafter D.C.O.]. 19/1915, Delhi State Archives [hereafter D.S.A.].
20. H. M. Griffiths, Executive Engineer, 5th project Division to Superintend-
ing Engineer, March 27, 1916, “Correspondence Regarding Quarries”,
D.C.O. 19/1915, D.S.A.
21. Chief Engineer to Secretary of Imperial Delhi Committee, April 17, 1916,
“Correspondence Regarding Quarries”, D.C.O. 19/1915, D.S.A.
22. H. M. Griffiths to Deputy Commission, Delhi, May 6, 1916, “Correspon-
dence Regarding Quarries”, D.C.O. 19/1915, D.S.A.
23. Deputy Commissioner, Delhi to Chief Engineer, May 22, 1916,
“Correspondence Regarding Quarries”, D.C.O. 19/1915, D.S.A.
Notes 325
24. Deputy Commissioner, Delhi to Chief Commissioner, Delhi, June 23,
1916, “Correspondence Regarding Quarries”, D.C.O. 19/1915, D.S.A.
25. Deputy Commissioner, Delhi to Chief Commissioner, Delhi, July 13,
1916, “Correspondence Regarding Quarries”, D.C.O. 19/1915, D.S.A.
26. Deputy Commissioner, Delhi to Chief Commissioner, Delhi, July 13,
1916. “Correspondence Regarding Quarries”, D.C.O. 19/1915, D.S.A.
27. This process is described in Soni, “Urban Conquest”, 84.
28. Talib, Writing Labour, 31.
30. Talib, Writing Labour, 34–44.
39. Talib again provides a compelling analysis of this process. See Talib,
Writing Labor, esp. Chapter 3.
40. The notification is reproduced in Sinha, The Delhi Ridge, 142.
41. Soni, “Urban Conquest”, 86.
42. Hansen, “Albert Smith, Alpine Club”.
43. Rosler, “Culture Class, Part III”.
Chapter 2: Soil
1. Krishen, Trees of Delhi, 19.
2. For a painstaking summary of this consensus, see Witzel, “Autochtho-
nous Aryans?”
3. Mayaram, “Pastoral Predicaments”, 205. For a more speculative take,
see Khari, Jats and Gujars, 2.
4. Chattopadhyaya, “Emergence of the Rajputs”, 163.
7. Tripathi, History of Kanauj.
8. Singh, Ancient Delhi, 92.
9. Khari, Jats and Gujars, 89–90.
10. Gommans, “The silent frontier of South Asia”, 4.
11. Gommans, “The silent frontier”, 11.
12. Goel, Heroic Hindu Resistance.

13. Mayaram, “Pastoral Predicaments”, 197, and Khari, Jats and Gujars,
Introduction.
14. Khari, Jats and Gujars, 89–90.
15. This is not to deny the well-documented violence of the Mughals, and
the brutality that is common to all empires, whether they are ostensibly
Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, secular or atheist. When the corner-
stone for Shahjahanabad was laid, “the bodies of several freshly behead-
ed criminals were put in the trenches round the cornerstone.” See Blake,
Shahjahanabad, 30.
16. Gupta, “Delhi and its Hinterlands”, 142.
17. Chakravarty-Kaul, Common Lands, 169.
18. Punjab Government, Gazetteer Delhi District, 1912, 140–1.
19. For an overview of this corrupt history, see Dirks, The Scandal of Empire.
20. The term “wastelands” is still used in discussions of Indian ecology, both
by governmental groups and by academics and environmentalists; one
government publication features maps that label the entire Southern
Ridge as “wasteland”—and this several years after the zone had been
named a Reserved Forest! See National Capital Region Planning Board,
Delhi 1999.
21. For an extensive analysis, see Guha, A Rule of Property.
22. See Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition, 82–96.
23. Quoted in Chakravarty-Kaul, Common Lands, 67.
24. Punjab Government, Gazetteer of Delhi, 1883–4, 74.
25. Shail Mayaram, for instance, describes “mixed caste bandit groups
including gangs of Minas, Gujars, Mewatis and occasionally, even
Brahmans and often organised by Rajputs.” See Mayaram, “Pastoral
Predicaments”, 198.
26. See, for instance, Stokes, The Peasant and Raj.
27. This argument goes against the commonsense imagination of savannas
as grassy, treeless plains; ecologically speaking, some savannas, especially
those with higher rainfall, have a fairly high density of trees. Their defining
characteristic, rather, is a mix of grasses and trees that are fire tolerant and
shade intolerant. See Ratnam et al., “A ‘forest’ a savanna?”
28. Chakravarty-Kaul, Common Lands, 177.
29. Gazetteer of Delhi, 1883–4, 2. This gazetteer was based, almost verbatim,
on Machonachie’s Settlement Report.
30. The rivalry continues in present-day Delhi, with Jats still holding the
upper hand in terms of both population and political clout. See Khari,
Jats and Gujars, Introduction.
31. Gazetteer of Delhi, 1883–4, 41.
32. Gazetteer of Delhi, 1883–4, 55.
Notes 327
33. Quoted in Mann and Sehrawat, “City with a View”, 552.
34. Quoted in Chakravarty-Kaul, Common Lands, 169.
35. Henry Beadon, “Relationship Between Forests & the Retention of Atmo-
spheric Moisture & Soil Moisture”, D.C.O. 19/1908, D.S.A.
36. Beadon, “Relationship Between Forests”, D.C.O. 19/1908, D.S.A.
37. He does, at least, show some (false?) modesty at the end of his letter,
noting, “In conclusion, I must apologize for the very egotistical tone of
my letter, in which I have referred to my own reports, but it just happens
that I have been on special duty for four years in connection with forests
and so my opportunities for observation have been unusual.” See Beadon,
“Relationship Between Forests”, D.C.O. 19/1908, D.S.A.
40. The notification is reproduced in Sinha, The Delhi Ridge, 132.
41. Kumar, “Birdwatchers Thrashed”.
42. This process and its consequences are described in greater detail in
Baviskar, “Urban Jungles”, 47–50.
43. These controversies have been explored in some depth by the journalist
Chander Suta Dogra. See Dogra, “Aravallis being gobbled up”, and
Dogra, “Village common property”.
44. It may, though, be shrinking. See Ahlawat, “Forest official’s kin”.
45. This section is based on field visits to Od communities in Bhagirath
Nagar, Delhi, between 2011 and 2015, which also included conversations
with the activist/scholar Anita Soni. I have also drawn on Soni’s writ-
ing, including Soni, “Displacement Woes I”, and Soni, “Displacement
Woes II”.
46. Singh, “Delhi: Forest dept”.
47. Environmentalists have worked hard to re-alienate it, with statements
like “It may seem churlish to resist popular usage, except that (a) it is
confusing and (b) it is founded on ignorance.” See Krishen, Trees of
Delhi, 278–9.
48. Shrivastava, “Simians’ Sanctuary”.
49. Vij, “Monkey Business” and Vij, “Indian Parliament’s monkey problem”.
50. Richard, Goldstein and Dewar, “Weed macaques”.
51. Maestripieri, Macachiavellian Intelligence, 33.
Chapter 3: State
1. Quoted in Fanshawe, Delhi: Past and Present, 222–23.
2. The following account of the pillar draws on Singh, “The Later Histories”,
and Hashmi, “The Lives And Times”.

3. Max Weber, one of the so-called “fathers” of sociology, famously defined
the state as an organization that has a monopoly of the legitimate use of
violence; see Weber, “Politics as a Vocation”, 33.
4. Quoted in Kumar, Emergence of Delhi Sultanate, 115.
5. Quoted in Kumar, Emergence of Delhi Sultanate, 93.
6. For more on this claim and the meaning of Qubbat, see Kumar, Present
in Delhi’s Pasts, 32.
7. See Kumar, Present in Delhi’s Pasts, 41.
8. Kumar, Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, 357.
9. Timur, Malfūzāt-e Tīmūrī, 196. This particular quote, and the ones that
follow, are taken from an English translation of Malfūzāt-e Tīmūrī, a
supposedly autobiographical account of Timur’s life; however, scholars
have long doubted whether this document was actually penned by
Timur, or was cobbled together by later court chroniclers based on other
accounts of Timur’s life.
10. Timur, Malfūzāt-e Tīmūrī, 214.
12. Romila Thapar, for instance, accepts at face value Timur’s account of the
raid of Delhi, and reports that Timur attacked the Sultanate because
“the Tughluqs were not good Muslims, and therefore had to be punished.”
See Thapar, A History of India, 280.
13. See for instance, Chandra, Essays on Medieval Indian History, 125.
15. Chandra, Essays on Medieval Indian History, 154.
16. Quoted in Chandra, Essays on Medieval Indian History, 154.
17. The centrality of Delhi to the Uprising is one of the main theses of
Dalrymple, The Last Mughal. In my description of the events of the
Uprising, I have drawn extensively from that book’s meticulously
documented narrative.
18. Keith Young, Delhi—1857, 273.
19. A fascinating examination of these intra-British tensions can be found in
Stanley, White Mutiny.
20. Fanshawe, Delhi: Past and Present, xii.
21. Quoted in Sengupta, Delhi Metropolitan, 208.
22. The story is recounted in Beg, Bahadur Shah.
23. Quoted in Dalrymple, The Last Mughal, 419.
24. Not that the British had no role in the historical violence of Partition.
Perry Anderson holds Louis Mountbatten, last Viceroy of British India,
particularly to blame for insisting on a “ludicrously early date” for
Partition. Says Anderson, “Having lit the fuse, Mountbatten handed over
the buildings to their new owners hours before they blew up, in what
Notes 329
has a good claim to be the most single contemptible act in the annals of
empire.” See Anderson, “Why Partition”.
25. Quoted in Anderson, “Why Partition”, 18.
26. Kumar, Present in Delhi’s Pasts, 2–52.
27. Lord Crewe, Secretary of State for India, to Lord Hardinge, November 1,
1911, National Archives of India [hereafter N.A.I], From Ghalib’s Dilli, 2.
28. Crewe to Hardinge, N.A.I., From Ghalib’s Dilli, 2.
29. Delhi Town Planning Committee, First Report, 4–5.
30. Delhi Town Planning Committee, First Report, 4.
31. Quoted in Bajaj, “Building of New Delhi”, 63.
32. Quoted in Bajaj, “Building of New Delhi”, 64.
33. George S.C. Swinton to Lord Hardinge, December 19, 1912, N.A.I. From
Ghalib’s Dilli, 66.
34. These optical considerations are emphasized in Mann and Sehrawat,
“City with a View”.
35. The Delhi Town Planning Committee captures this ambivalence with
typical understatement: “Incidentally the land which will be acquired
for this site [around Raisina Hill] is extremely cheap, and while no
consideration of expense should... limit the acquisition of land... it is a
fortunate circumstance that the moderate price of land in this part of the
Delhi district will render it impossible to entertain even a thought of such
limitation.” Delhi Town Planning Committee, First Report, 8.
37. See, for instance, Henry Beadon to the Commissioner of Delhi, January
19, 1912, N.A.I. From Ghalib’s Dilli, 153.
38. The fiasco is recorded in a series of letters in “Contour maps of land to be
acquired for the new capital”, D.C.O. 62/1912, D.S.A.
39. Henry Beadon to Secretary, Government of India, Home Department,
August 5, 1912, N.A.I. From Ghalib’s Dilli, 183.
40. “Final Report of the Imperial Delhi Committee on the Land Acquisition
Procedures connected with New Delhi.” D.C.O 68/1917, D.S.A.
41. My account of the Malcha saga, including all direct quotes, draws largely
from two outstanding articles on the ongoing legal battle: Parashar, “The
natives strike back” and Parashar, “Still waiting”.
42. Parashar, “Still waiting”.
43. Mann and Sehrawat, “City with a View”, 557.
44. Coventry, Scheme for Afforestation, 1.
45. The notification is reproduced in Sinha, Introduction to Delhi Ridge, 131.
47. Parker, “Afforestation of the Ridge”, 25.

49. The notification is reproduced in Sinha, Introduction to Delhi Ridge,
132.
54. Details about Mustoe’s intervention in the Ridge can be found in
Baviskar, First Garden, especially chapters 1 and 3. Particularly notable
is Baviskar’s assertion that Mustoe had a leading role in creating both the
“wild” part of the Ridge and the exquisitely manicured gardens behind
the Viceroy’s House; “wilderness was cultivated as much as the rest of the
landscape.” See Baviskar, First Garden, 15.
55. The notification is reproduced in Sinha, Introduction to Delhi Ridge,
134.
56. This account of the DIT draws largely from Mehra, “Planning Delhi”.
57. This account of the Master plans making relies on the first chapter of
Sundaram, Pirate Modernity.
58. Mehra, “Planning Delhi”, 373.
59. Delhi Development Authority, Master Plan for Delhi.
60. Sundaram, Pirate Modernity, 38.
61. Sundaram, Pirate Modernity, 55.
62. Delhi Development Authority, Master Plan for Delhi, 34. Their geogra-
phy is a bit off; Hyde Park is in London. But this conflation of the US and
UK underlines the main sources of inspiration for the plan.
63. Delhi Development Authority, Master Plan for Delhi, 34.
64. Baviskar, “Cows, Cars and Cycle-rickshaws”, 397.
65. These reports are quoted in Bhan, “Planned Illegalities”.
66. Jagmohan, Shaping India’s New Destiny, 199.
67. Jagmohan, Shaping India’s New Destiny, ii.
68. Jagmohan’s fondness of Haussmann, and his overall planning
philosophy, are discussed in Pati, “Jagmohan: The Master Planner”.
69. Quoted in Pati, “Jagmohan: the Master Planner”, 51.
70. Jagmohan, Island of Truth (Delhi: Vikas Publishing, 1978).
72. These notifications are reproduced in Sinha, Introduction to Delhi Ridge,
136–7.
73. Jagmohan’s notifications are reproduced in Sinha, Introduction to Delhi
Ridge, 138–40
74. Jagmohan, Challenge of Our Cities, 7.
75. Baviskar, “Spectacular Events”, 149.
76. Baviskar, “Spectacular Events”, 152.
Notes 331
77. Donthi, “Under Jagmohan”.
78. Jagmohan, My Frozen Turbulence.
80. Balban’s campaign is detailed in Kumar, Emergence of Delhi Sultanate,
333–4.
82. Kalpavriskh, The Delhi Ridge Forest.
83. See, for instance, the account in Baviskar, “Urban Jungles”, 51.
84. The activities of Kalpavriksh and other early Ridge advocates are narrated
in Agarwal, “Fight for a Forest”.
85. The ever-expanding ambit of industrial closures, and the militant re-
sponse to this phenomenon, are explored in Nigam, “Industrial Closures in
Delhi”.
86. This language can be seen in Kalpavriksh, The Delhi Ridge Forest.
87. For more on this groundswell of activism, see Srishti and WWF-India,
Saving the Delhi Ridge.
88. The report is officially known as the Government of NCT of Delhi,
“Report of the Committee to Recommend the Pattern of Management of
the Delhi Ridge”.
89. Sinha, Introduction to Delhi Ridge, 143.
90. Sinha, Introduction to Delhi Ridge, vii.
91. Sinha, Introduction to Delhi Ridge, 145.
92. These cases are summarized in Department of Forests and Wildlife,
“Pending Court Cases”.
93. Ashok, “Asola Sanctuary encroachments razed”.
94. Nandi, “Revenue dept to demarcate”.
95. See, for instance, Press Trust of India, “Delhi ridge” and Gandhiok,
“Reclaimed land”.
96. Crowley, “Demolitions in Aya Nagar”.
97. Quoted in Nandi, “Revenue dept to demarcate”.
Chapter 4: Surplus
1. Quoted in Dalrymple, City of Djinns, 109.
2. Dalrymple, City of Djinns, 142.
3. Dalrymple, City of Djinns, 139.
4. Bayley and Metcalfe, Golden Calm, 146.
5. Quoted in Varma and Shankar, Mansions at Dusk, 90.
6. For more on Metcalfe’s demise see Dalrymple, The Last Mughal, espe-
cially chapter 4.
7. Quoted in Mehra, “Planning Delhi”, 19.

8. This, and other aspects of the scandal, were exposed in great detail in a
471-page report commissioned by the Janata Party after Emergency; see
Government of India, “Inquiry on Maruti Affairs”.
9. See Chibber, Locked in Place.
10. The workers’ struggle is detailed in People’s Union for Democratic
Rights, Driving Force.
11. Quoted in IANS, “K.P. Singh”.
12. Delhi Development Authority, Master Plan for Delhi, 3.
13. See, for instance, Verma, “Haryana TCP”.
14. Rao, “Black, bold and bountiful”.
15. For more on this process, see Searle, “Conflict and Commensuration”.
16. Kannoth and Nimkar, “Realty faces reality”.
17. On the complex interplay of local and transnational capital in these dry-
ups, see Searle, “The contradictions of mediation”.
18. Srivastava, “DLF: The ailing giant”.
19. Monga and Mangal, DLF Limited: A Crumbling Edifice.
20. Singh, “Behind Robert Vadra’s fortune”.
21. Marx, Capital: Volume 3, 465.
22. Kumar, “Gurgaon on its deathbed”.
23. This vision is analyzed in Negi, “Neoliberalism, Environmentalism and
Politics”.
24. Quoted in Negi, “Neoliberalism, Environmentalism and Politics”, 187.
25. Quoted in Ghertner, “Green Evictions”, 149.
26. Quoted in Ghertner, “Green Evictions”, 155.
27. Bobb and Gupta, Delhi Then and Now, 11.
28. This figure is cited in Jenkins and Malik, “Deepak Bhardwaj”.
29. Press Trust of India, “Deepak Bhardwaj murder case”.
30. Quoted in Vij, “The BSP Billionaires”.
31. See in particular Jenkins and Malik, “Deepak Bhardwaj”, and Narayan
and Apurva, “Making of a Tycoon”.
32. Chauhan and Ghosh, “Ponty Chadha”.
33. Soni recounts his story in his book Naturally: Tread Softly.
34. Soni, Naturally: Tread Softly, Prelude.
35. Staff Reporter, “Residents term public hearings”.
36. Quoted in Soni, Naturally: Tread Softly, Prelude.
37. Quoted in Byrnes, “Victor Gruen”.
38. The mall’s dwindling popularity in the U.S. is discussed in Badger, “The
Shopping Mall”.
39. The retailers are quoted in Express News Service, “Retailers down
shutters”.
40. These figures are taken from Gooptu, “Neoliberal Subjectivity, Enterprise
Culture”.
Notes 333
41. The owner is quoted in Srivastava, Entangled Urbanism, 222.
42. Srivastava, Entangled Urbanism, esp Ch. 9.
43. The publicly available EIAs, quoted extensively in this section, include:
Ambience Developers Pvt. Ltd., “Environmental Impact Assessment,
Ambi”; Jasmine Projects Pvt. Ltd., “Executive Summary”; Ultra Tech,
“Executive Summary of Environmental Assessment”; EST Consultants
Pvt. Ltd., “Environmental Impact Assessment ‘Promenade’”; and EST
Consultants Pvt. Ltd., “Environmental Impact Assessment ‘Emporio’”.
44. See Staff Reporter, “Residents term public hearings”.
45. Quoted in Press Trust of India, “Developers of Ambience Mall”.
46. For more on this sanitation paranoia, see Mann, “Delhi’s Belly”.
47. “Acquisition of a Plot of Land Between Paharganj & Kutab Road for Staff
Quarters,” D.C.O. 11/1903, D.S.A.
48. The following exchanges are taken from “Transfer to the Civil Authorities
of Land Lying South of the New Road Through Hindu Rao Estate”, D.C.O.
8/1872, D.S.A.
49. This incident is recounted in Baviskar, “Between violence and desire”.
50. See, for instance, Press Trust of India, “NGT prohibits dumping”.
51. Bhatnagar, “Yes and No”.
Chapter 5: Spirits
1. See the analysis in Dove, “Dialectical History of ‘Jungle’”.
2. Omvedt, Dalits and Democratic Revolution, 36–7.
3. Bobb and Gupta, Delhi Then and Now, 13.
4. An excellent analysis of the Nath siddhis, in both their historical and
contemporary manifestations, is White, The Alchemical Body.
5. For the synergies between these three professions, see Gommans, “The
silent frontier”.
6. This is reflected in folk tales like the Alha, analyzed later in this chapter.
See Hiltebeitel, Rethinking India’s Epics.
7. White, The Alchemical Body, 8.
8. More details on this surprising syncretism can be found in Bouillier,
“Nāth Yogīs”.
9. My analysis of the Alha draws heavily from Hiltebeitel, Rethinking
India’s Epics.
10. Hiltebeitel, Rethinking India’s Epics, 300.
11. Quoted in Hiltebeitel, Rethinking India’s Epics, 168.
12. Hasan’s description of this tomb is quoted in Lewis and Lewis,
Mehrauli, 5.
13. See Hiltebeitel, Rethinking India’s Epics, 158.

14. This fading of the Khwaja Khizr myth is recorded in Dalrymple, City of
Djinns, 298–310.
15. Khan, “Portrait of a City”, 176–7.
16. Quoted in White, The Alchemical Body, 412.
19. The relevant pages are van Buitenen, The Mahabharata Book 1, 401–3.
20. This balance is described in Baviskar, “Urban Jungles”, 51.
21. See IANS, “Couple Attempt Suicide” and TNN, “Lovers found hanging”.
22. Seabrook, Love in a Different Climate.
23. Seabrook, Love in a Different Climate, 172.
24. Seabrook, Love in a Different Climate, 52.
25. See, for instance, the account in Miller, Delhi, 137–8.
26. For early reporting on this, see Kaufman, “Riches Gone”; a later summary
of reporting can be found in Shekhar, “Lonely in life”.
27. Barry, “The Jungle Prince”.
28. This point is emphasized in Baviskar, “Urban Jungles”, 50–1.
29. The details of the crime can be found in the court case, State vs. Jasbir
Singh.
30. Sealy, “First In, Last Out”, 65–83.
31. Sealy, “First in, Last Out”, 80.
32. This account is from a Hindi newspaper quoted in Nigam, “Theatre of
the Urban”, 23.
33. See Nigam, “Theatre of the Urban”, 24.
34. For a similar argument, see Sethi, “The Monkeyman of Delhi”.
35. See Nigam, “Theatre of the Urban”, 27.
36. For Adityanath’s rise, see Gatade, “Hindutvaisation of Gorakhnath Mutt”;
for an analysis of the syncretism he is betraying, see Karwoski, “Far from
Hindutva”.
37. My account of Israil Camp draws from the expertly reported story by
Neha Dixit, “A shanty town”.
38. Dixit, “A shanty town”.
39. Quoted in Dixit, “A shanty town”.
40. Quoted in Dixit, “A shanty town”.
41. Ashraf, “Slum cluster Vasant Kunj”.
42. For an early assessment of AAP’s “post-ideological” posturing, see Crowley,
“India’s Post-Ideological Politician”; for a later assessment, see Kumar,
“Requiem For AAP”.
43. Press Trust of India, “Aam Aadmi Party”; Press Trust of India, “Ravidas
Temple Issue”.
44. For more on this dubious enzyme, see Verchot, “Happy Birthday Sri Sri”.
45. Tripathi, Dera Sacha Sauda.
Notes 335
46. Ashis Nandy has convincingly argued that the spate of new godmen
(and godwomen) are actually functional replacements for isht devta, or
personal gods. With mass migration, breakneck urbanization and the
attending social upheaval, these gods are disappearing, and people are
looking for guidance that is at once practical and spiritual. Singh and
his ilk fill this role for the unsettled, uncertain, aspirational masses. See
Nandy, “Indians love Radhe Maa”.
47. For more on this, see Sambhav, “Indigenous Civil Engineers”.
48. See, for instance, Hafeez, “Wazirpur steel factory workers”.

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About the Author
Thomas Crowley has spent over a decade researching and writing

about environmental politics and history in India. From 2010 to 2017,
he conducted intensive research on the Delhi Ridge for the NGO
Intercultural Resources, as well as for the “City as Studio” fellowship
program at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS),
New Delhi.
Crowley received his B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University in

2007, completed a Fulbright Scholarship at the University of Pune
from 2008–2009, and served as a Social Science Fellow at the
Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany from 2016–2017. He
has written extensively on Indian politics for Jacobin magazine.
He has also written for Kafila, as well as for peer-reviewed academic
journals, including Emotion, Space and Ecology and Ethics and the
Environment. He is currently researching the politics of water and
caste in Maharashtra as a doctoral candidate in the Department of
Geography, Rutgers University (USA).

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Fractured Forest,

Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne

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Vivek Mehra, Managing Director and CEO, SAGE India.

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First published in 2020 by

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944535

ISBN: 978-93-5388-554-0 (PB)

Chapter 1. Stones: Shifting Geologies of the Ridge 21

Chapter 2. Soil: Mobile Ecologies, Hybrid Histories 61

Chapter 3. State: Warfare, Pageantry, Politics 121

Chapter 4. Surplus: Production, Consumption, Speculation 209

Chapter 5. Spirits: Transcendence, Sacred and Secular 271

P.T. George at Intercultural Resources (ICR) in Delhi made all of

From my time at Sarai, I made lasting friendships that also trans-

Ujjwal Utkarsh, a fellow-traveler both figuratively and literally,

Deepani Seth, who created the indispensable illustrations for this

I am extremely grateful to the scholars, activists and civil society

viii Fractured Forest, Quartzite City

For helping me conceptualize this project in book form, and giving

And finally, I must give profound thanks to my earliest and most

Delhi has not always been this polluted, I am told. Especially

Although Mehrauli lost its role as a center of imperial power in the

The epitome of this pastoral beauty was a place commonly

The sooty snow, the stagnant, putrid stream: Delhi’s landscape is

And yet Delhi is also remarkably green, especially for a mega-

2 Fractured Forest, Quartzite City

A chief confusion was how to define the Ridge. Government

Poring over Ridge-related documents, I began to realize that

Every city depends on its geological and ecological foundations,

A thriving city with millennia of history, Delhi has long attracted

The migrants drawn to Delhi have been a motley mix, including

4 Fractured Forest, Quartzite City

A Tour through the Ridge’s History

And yet this logic keeps on reappearing in discussions about

A whirlwind tour through Delhi’s history is enough to show the

Our tour begins in the 1930s, when Mirza Farhatullah Beg, an

Now, the pleasantness no longer exists.... No longer does the

Perhaps Delhi’s environment was better in the nineteenth century?

But it is hard to discern any balance and harmony in nineteenth-

Going further back, we find that historical records of deforestation

6 Fractured Forest, Quartzite City

The two tigerlike men started a vast massacre of the creatures

It is difficult to draw straightforward connections between myth

Specifically, these grisly scenes may be allegorical references to

Perhaps it existed before the incursion of pastoralists? After all,

Other scholars, though, have questioned Diamond’s fall-from-

8 Fractured Forest, Quartzite City

Finally, then, we could look to the pre-human past to identify

Following Botkin’s advice, we can abandon the search for Delhi’s

Pristine Glory of Another Kind

In the ecological version, this intruder is the human race, or the

At present, the Hindu nationalist view of Delhi is not the dominant

12 Fractured Forest, Quartzite City

A nuanced history of the Ridge undermines this Manichean under-

Just as a narrow insistence on the Ridge’s “pristine glory” dilutes

My meanderings through dystopian Mehrauli could, at first glance,

Chapter 1. Stones: Shifting Geologies of the Ridge 21

Chapter 2. Soil: Mobile Ecologies, Hybrid Histories 61

Chapter 3. State: Warfare, Pageantry, Politics 121

Chapter 4. Surplus: Production, Consumption, Speculation 209

Chapter 5. Spirits: Transcendence, Sacred and Secular 271