As an act of space, the Red Fort in Delhi has got to be one of the most politically significant. It is a building where history is made and power affirmed, a nationalistic hub and a stage on which rajas (even republican ones) take their stand before the praja. Only the Bastille in Paris and the Kremlin in Moscow come near its mystique. Except that both those buildings are associated solely with violent uprisings. Whereas the Lal Qila’s most glorious hour, despite its many gory moments, was the trial of the three INA heroes, binding India’s diverse peoples ever tighter as they sought to wrest independence by nonviolent means.With the fort locked permanently into India’s modern history as our prime minister’s stage on Independence Day, it’s surprising that no scholarly work on the fort by a modern Indian has emerged in the domain of popular reading. Now, happily, the gap seems filled by OUP’s new book, The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad by Delhi-based architect-conservation consultant Anisha Shekhar Mukherji.A handsome coffee-table size with over 300 b&w photos, charts, maps and diagrams, this book is equally interesting for its approach. Treating her narrative as an “architectural biography”, the author traces the development of the fort through recreating its spaces and functions and how these changed over time from their start-up. Making full use of court chronicles, travelogues and other documents, she packs her narrative with human drama (less euphemistically, the book also happens to be delightfully rich in gossip).At a deeper level, Mukherji makes us understand the “whys” of the Lal Qila’s architecture. For instance, Mughal rule was played out in the fort as a psycho-spatial drama, since space is used on the basis of power zones. The seraglio, the private quarters, the outer spaces, the Emperor’s daily triumphant procession climaxing at the “jharokha darshan” are all described not as dry inventories but in terms of how they were used by people, imperial certainly, but none the less, human.The fort’s “sanctity” is twice violated. Once, by Nadir Shah, the Persian freebooter who takes away the Peacock Throne and the Kohinoor. The Mughal king Muhammad Shah “Rangila” has to vacate the royal quarters for the invader, which is a severe blow to Mughal dignity. Then, after the 1857 war of independence, the British build barracks inside the fort: as much an act of military strategy as a symbolic rape of Indian power.The author has many other little tales of cheer to share, especially about the seraglio. It was made maze-like, with limited points of entry and exit, in order to deter intruders and “movement was planned and organised deliberately in this part of the palace, which was reserved solely for Shah Jahan and his numerous wives. In addition, his mother, stepmothers, aunts, concubines and adult daughters along with their attendants also resided here”.Mukherji then tells us what befell the unfortunate young man who sneaked in to rendezvous with wicked Princess Roshanara, the favourite sister of that national pet, Aurangzeb, while slipping in wall heights and architectural details. A smart book and a good read!
