At Purana Qila today, Delhi govt to celebrate Indraprastha of the Pandavas

On Saturday, Chandni Chowk MP Praveen Khandelwal wrote to Union Home Minister Amit Shah requesting the renaming of the city, its airport, and Old Delhi railway station after Indraprastha.

The event at Purana Qila has been organised by the Delhi Tourism Department in collaboration with Draupadi Dream Trust, an art and culture organisation. Minister Mishra will be the Guest of Honour, and will release an “Indraprastha Anthem” on the occasion.

Several other Delhi government functionaries are expected at the event, besides senior officials from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

Since 1954, the ASI has carried out seven rounds of excavations at Purana Qila in search of evidence that would establish a link between the area and the events described in the Mahabharata. In 2014, the ASI found sherds of Painted Grey Ware (PGW) at the site, a type of pottery that is broadly associated with the period of the Mahabharata, but the jury is still out on whether that find in itself establishes that the fort stands at the location of the historical Indraprastha.

Invites for Wednesday’s event sent on Mishra’s letterhead mentions the “Inauguration of the Indraprastha Anthem”, and the commemoration of the inscription of the Bhagavad Gita and Natyashastra in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

The “special evening” at “the historical precincts of Purana Qila (Indraprastha), New Delhi”, will “revive the spirit of the Dwapar era through music, dance, and reflection on the ideals of righteousness, sensitivity, and women’s empowerment”, says the invitation. Dwapar is the third of the four yugas (ages) of Hindu philosophy, which succeeded the Treta Yuga and preceded the Kali Yuga.

Draupadi Dream Trust chairperson Neera Misra told The Indian Express that the event is taking place on a “significant date”, since “on this day almost 5,300 years ago, Pandava King Yudhishthir had taken a dip in the Yamuna and established the capital of Indraprastha, as per textual references”.

The trust has been working for more than 20 years to restore to Delhi the cultural status of the ancient Indraprastha, Misra said.

In late 2014, after the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) proposed that Delhi’s fourth archaeological park be named after Dinpanah, the city built by Mughal emperor Humayun, Misra wrote to the ASI, Ministry of Culture, and then Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu registering her objection as an “Indian citizen and conservationist”, and contending that archaeology is not just built heritage, but also remains of “lost built heritage”.

In August 2015, the ASI wrote to DDA saying the Ministry of Culture and ASI believed that “it would be in the fitness of things to name this as Indraprastha Archaeological Park”.

In 2018, the area was designated as Indraprastha Archaeological Park.