On the cultural festival, ‘Meer ki Dilli, Shahjahanabad: The Evolving City’

Different panels investigated the ways in which history and political interest coalesced into the shaping of a Delhi that has since found representation through artistic mediums such as poetry. During a session focussed on the trial for treason of last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, historians Amar Farooqui and Sanjay Garg and former minister of external affairs Salman Khurshid ruminated on the historical import of the mutiny of 1857. “In 1857, if there was a mutineer it was the East India Company,” Farooqui stated while Khurshid noted that Bahadur Shah Zafar being tried for treason post the recapture of Delhi was akin to “a judge being accused of being in contempt of his own court”. He pointed out that it was a way for the colonizing forces to delegitimise the authority of the sovereign. Speaking of the Mughal emperor’s exile and subsequent death in Rangoon, where he is buried, Khurshid mentioned that “Burma’s last king lies buried in Maharashtra”, adding in a poetic vein that we “share with Burma the extinguishing of the last flame”. The panel discussions on history, language and the plurality of cultures that coexisted in the city and the question and answer sessions were laced with a certain nostalgia for the Delhi of yore. Khurshid, while talking of his play Sons of Babur noted, “Aaj history ki behas hoti nahi, bata diya jaata hai ki yeh history hai” (Today, we don’t argue about history; we are told that this is history).

Najeeb elucidated on how the subjects for discussion were chosen: “We wanted to cover different topics, exploring different aspects of Shahjahanabad. It was about covering as much as we could about the city in the time that we had and we looked for people who were experts in those particular fields”. One of the best-attended sessions was the closing cultural soiree on day three, which saw Naseeruddin Shah reciting Mir’s verses while talking about his own relationship with the city and with Urdu. Shah’s conversational tone with the packed auditorium, his impeccable recitations, and the presence of his partner, artist Ratna Pathak Shah, brought the day to an enjoyable conclusion.

The fourth day opened with a session on Partition and looked at how that singular moment in the history of India changed Delhi’s landscape, and how certain portions of the city retain the character of post-Independence refugee camps to this day. The panel, which included Zubaan publisher and author Urvashi Butalia and academics Rachna Mehra, Debjani Sengupta and Asim Siddiqui, highlighted how the architecture of the city was shaped by the event. Mehra’s slideshow, in particular, showed how the city may be seen “as a palimpsest of memory”. Butalia said that, in the aftermath of the Partition and the large scale separation of women from their families, the government initiated a huge rehabilitation drive that resulted in “many more women becom(ing) publicly visible”. The theme of various ways of memorializing the past was then taken forward by the next panel, which featured writers Swapna Liddle, William Dalrymple and Anisha Shekhar Mukherji taking turns at revealing the ways in which Delhi and the figures as well as the monuments associated with the historical city have continued to be remembered through various artistic media. Pointing to the current politics of naming, renaming, constructing and reconstructing parts of the National Capital, Mukherji stated that evolution is about modification and adaptation not en masse destruction.

The last session of the day had senior journalist Vir Sanghvi and chef Sadaf Hussain talking about what actually constituted Delhi ke khaane. “The colonial influence on Indian food is much underrated,” said Sanghvi, adding that ingredients and vegetables such as corn, tomatoes and potatoes came in as a result of colonialism. He also broached the topic of identity politics in relation to the ongoing conversations around khichdi and biryani, noting that the Mughal emperor Jahangir had tasted khichdi in Gujarat and on his return, had made the cooks of the royal household emulate the dish. He added too that the current case concerning Butter Chicken is “one of the most pointless lawsuits in history”.

The closing cultural event was an absorbing dastangoi performance by Darain Shahidi and Mahmood Farooqui on Mir’s life and times, entitled Dastan-e Mir, produced by Anusha Rizvi of the Dastangoi Collective.

At the end, a point that Akhtarul Wasey made in his closing address condensed what many showcased at the festival: “Zabaan samvaad ke liye hoti hai, vivaad ke liye nahi” (Language is meant for opening up dialogue not for starting disputes).

Mir would have approved.

Simar Bhasin is an independent journalist.

A four-day cultural event celebrating 300 years of poet Mir Taqi Mir was held at the India International Centre in Delhi from February 15-18. ‘Meer ki Dilli, Shahjahanabad: The Evolving City’, organised by Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind), honoured the city’s rich poetic heritage and traced the ways in which the idea of Delhi as a political, cultural and civilisational hub has evolved through the ages. The different sessions, whose titles were taken from Mir’s poetry, had historians, artists, writers and scholars talking about the enmeshing of the history of the Urdu language with Delhi’s cultural past and its poetic renditions in a myriad of ways. The gathering followed a smaller scale online event that was held along similar lines.“We wanted to organise something that has substance and is not just for entertainment purposes; something deeply rooted in culture and history, which is also related to the Urdu language,” said Ayesha Najeeb, curator of the festival and cultural coordinator at Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind).

Different panels investigated the ways in which history and political interest coalesced into the shaping of a Delhi that has since found representation through artistic mediums such as poetry. During a session focussed on the trial for treason of last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, historians Amar Farooqui and Sanjay Garg and former minister of external affairs Salman Khurshid ruminated on the historical import of the mutiny of 1857. “In 1857, if there was a mutineer it was the East India Company,” Farooqui stated while Khurshid noted that Bahadur Shah Zafar being tried for treason post the recapture of Delhi was akin to “a judge being accused of being in contempt of his own court”. He pointed out that it was a way for the colonizing forces to delegitimise the authority of the sovereign. Speaking of the Mughal emperor’s exile and subsequent death in Rangoon, where he is buried, Khurshid mentioned that “Burma’s last king lies buried in Maharashtra”, adding in a poetic vein that we “share with Burma the extinguishing of the last flame”. The panel discussions on history, language and the plurality of cultures that coexisted in the city and the question and answer sessions were laced with a certain nostalgia for the Delhi of yore. Khurshid, while talking of his play Sons of Babur noted, “Aaj history ki behas hoti nahi, bata diya jaata hai ki yeh history hai” (Today, we don’t argue about history; we are told that this is history).

Najeeb elucidated on how the subjects for discussion were chosen: “We wanted to cover different topics, exploring different aspects of Shahjahanabad. It was about covering as much as we could about the city in the time that we had and we looked for people who were experts in those particular fields”. One of the best-attended sessions was the closing cultural soiree on day three, which saw Naseeruddin Shah reciting Mir’s verses while talking about his own relationship with the city and with Urdu. Shah’s conversational tone with the packed auditorium, his impeccable recitations, and the presence of his partner, artist Ratna Pathak Shah, brought the day to an enjoyable conclusion.

The fourth day opened with a session on Partition and looked at how that singular moment in the history of India changed Delhi’s landscape, and how certain portions of the city retain the character of post-Independence refugee camps to this day. The panel, which included Zubaan publisher and author Urvashi Butalia and academics Rachna Mehra, Debjani Sengupta and Asim Siddiqui, highlighted how the architecture of the city was shaped by the event. Mehra’s slideshow, in particular, showed how the city may be seen “as a palimpsest of memory”. Butalia said that, in the aftermath of the Partition and the large scale separation of women from their families, the government initiated a huge rehabilitation drive that resulted in “many more women becom(ing) publicly visible”. The theme of various ways of memorializing the past was then taken forward by the next panel, which featured writers Swapna Liddle, William Dalrymple and Anisha Shekhar Mukherji taking turns at revealing the ways in which Delhi and the figures as well as the monuments associated with the historical city have continued to be remembered through various artistic media. Pointing to the current politics of naming, renaming, constructing and reconstructing parts of the National Capital, Mukherji stated that evolution is about modification and adaptation not en masse destruction.

The last session of the day had senior journalist Vir Sanghvi and chef Sadaf Hussain talking about what actually constituted Delhi ke khaane. “The colonial influence on Indian food is much underrated,” said Sanghvi, adding that ingredients and vegetables such as corn, tomatoes and potatoes came in as a result of colonialism. He also broached the topic of identity politics in relation to the ongoing conversations around khichdi and biryani, noting that the Mughal emperor Jahangir had tasted khichdi in Gujarat and on his return, had made the cooks of the royal household emulate the dish. He added too that the current case concerning Butter Chicken is “one of the most pointless lawsuits in history”.

The closing cultural event was an absorbing dastangoi performance by Darain Shahidi and Mahmood Farooqui on Mir’s life and times, entitled Dastan-e Mir, produced by Anusha Rizvi of the Dastangoi Collective.

At the end, a point that Akhtarul Wasey made in his closing address condensed what many showcased at the festival: “Zabaan samvaad ke liye hoti hai, vivaad ke liye nahi” (Language is meant for opening up dialogue not for starting disputes).

Mir would have approved.

Simar Bhasin is an independent journalist.