A segment of history

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

One tower is in south Delhi. It came up in early 13th century. The whole world knows of it. After all, Qutub Minar is an UNESCO World Heritage monument, the first great experiment in Indo-Islamic architecture.

The other red sandstone tower came up 600 years later, in north Delhi. The world doesn’t know it that well. Originally called the Mutiny Memorial, the neo-Gothic minar is tall, tapering, speckled with long, lancet windows.

The British-era red sandstone tower stands atop a hilly ridge dense with trees and bushes. It is arrayed on all sides with marble plaques. The inscriptions on the white slabs summon up a significant segment of recent Indian history. One plaque commemorates “the memory of the officers and soldiers of British and Native of the Delhi Field Force who were killed in action or died of wounds or diseases between the 30th of May and 20th September 1857.”

This sunny noon, the tower is deserted except for a lone visitor. The desolate landmark is surrounded by a sweeping vista of treetops, which are surrounded by the vistas of an endless Delhi. Loitering around the stone edifice gives a bird’s eye perspective of the megacity’s daily life: the millions of roofs, the steel-grey metro trains sliding along the overland tracks, the many national flags hoisted across the landscape, the serpentine roads shimmering river-like under the noon sunlight. A devotional bhajan is playing somewhere on a speaker, probably far away. But it is being carried along to this remote tower on the day’s strong breeze.

Some of the tower’s arched plaques distinguish certain British fighters by invoking their names: Brigadier General J. Nicholson, Colonel C. Chester, Captain R.C. Facan, Lieutenant F.S. Tandy, etc. One plaque lists the numbers of “killed,” “wounded,” and “missing,” with separate entries for “British” and “Native.” Then there’s a tall plaque listing the “actions fought at or near Delhi.” That includes “Battle of Nujufgurh,’ “Capture of the Palace,” and “Action of the Subzee Mundi.” The last line on the plaque says: “City finally evacuated by the enemy.”

The “city” was certainly our Delhi. But who was the “enemy”?

A stand-alone plaque outside the tower responds to this curiosity: “The ‘enemy’ of the inscriptions on this monument were those who rose against colonial rule and fought bravely for national liberation in 1857.”

The other minar

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