A Walk along the Northern Ridge with Prof. Sanjyukta Datta

 

The First Heritage walk by the History society for the year took place on 1^st February, 2020. Saturday had about 10 of us had accompanying Prof. Sanjyukta Datta in and around the Northern Ridge, visiting various monuments of the region. We had just entered the ridge area through the gate opposite Delhi University at around 11 in the morning and were looking forward to the day ahead.  As we approached the Flagstaff tower, our first stop of the day, Professor Datta informed us that the local Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) team was waiting for us.

The Flagstaff tower was built in the early 19^th century and was used to hoist the British flag all the way up to 1947, said Professor Datta. This was where women and children hid during May 1857 when the Meerut rebels/mutineers had taken the city. They later fled from there to Ambala.

The ASI officials allowed us access into the structure. The inside is a single circular room with a spiral staircase in the centre, leading to a first-floor balcony, and finally a terrace on top with a 360 degree view.

Taking some group photos here, we walked down the path to a guardhouse, from the Tughlaq era.

The Southern guardhouse

The ridge has two major groups of monuments: Those from the Tughlaq era, and those connected to 1857 in some way. The guardhouse was a Tughlaq era monument, from when the ridge was Firoz Sha Tughlaq’s hunting grounds, and he had a hunting lodge here (evidence of which survives).

The guardhouse does not leave us with too many clues to the past, and we soon moved on to the Chauburji. This structure takes its name from the four domes that had adorned it in the past, only one of which currently survives. It has a large open area on the ground floor, and the first floor is an open-to-sky mosque with a large platform in the centre. One of the domes is in the corner of the terrace. In the last few years ASI has managed to restore what is left of the structure. Again, thanks to our ASI friends we were allowed to go in and explore.

The mosque on top of the structure has faded inscriptions around the doorway and the motifs have deteriorated over time, but the overall charm remains. Professor Datta pulled out a book on the 1857 events in Delhi, and showed us the photo of the Chauburji from soon after that. It looked quite different from the photo there, with half the building missing, and the structure was quite different. We decided to see if we could identify which part of that mosque coincided with the existing structure. After some effort, we were able to piece together which part corresponded to which, through inference. Here the ASI officials took their leave and we headed on.

We then left the ridge and headed to Pir Ghaib, that combined both eras of monuments; a Tughlaq tower that contained the myth of a 19^th century disappearing Djinn, passing the sign to Hindu Rao Civil Hospital on the way.

Hindu Rao was a Marathi and brother-in-law to the Scindias of Nagpur, who had broken away and moved to Delhi. In 1835, William Frazer, a British official, was murdered, and his house on the ridge was acquired by Hindu Rao. The house acted as the headquarters to the British on the ridge in 1857, and later became a hospital (we passed the building a couple of stops later, and the current structure bears little to no resemblance to the early 19^th century one).  

Pir Ghaib sits in the middle of modern residences, and looks completely out of place, yet comfortable in its unfamiliarity, like old furniture in a fancy new apartment. The structure was purportedly built in the time of Firoz Sha Tughlaq, again, a part of his lodge, and was perhaps an observatory, due to the holes built into the ceiling.

Pir Ghaib

From here we passed a Baoli, or stepwell of around the same time period, and passing Hindu Rao Civil Hospital (which I had mentioned earlier), in whose vicinity Timur, the Turkic warlord, is said to have pitched his tent when in Hindustan, we arrived at the Ashoka pillar.

Erected by Ashoka in Meerut, this was one of two pillars brought to the Delhi region by Firoz Shah Tughlaq. It contains a series of lines in Brahmi from the time of Ashoka, with a shorter, later inscription below. It was said to have been blown up around the middle of the 1710’s, and was later put back together and deciphered by the British in the 19th century.  After admiring this round rock shaped by a human 2300 odd years ago from all sides, it was time to move to the last stop of the day, the mutiny memorial.

The Ashoka pillar

This was the most modern monument of our walk as well. Built in the 1860’s, it provides a timeline of events for the British recapture of Delhi, as well as acting as a memorial to those who died on the British side during 1857. Later some of us opined that if we hadn’t known better, it could have looked like a church from a distance.(For more on the Mutiny memorial click here) Built at a height, it dominates the surroundings. This was also the area the British set up camp during their retake of the city.

With the walk now over, we all headed our separate ways. Most of us headed back to campus. It took a while for us to realise that the walk had been so long, we had missed lunch. But it didn’t matter. The walk had more than made up for it.  

Flagstaff tower

The path up the ridge as seen from the flagstaff tower

Chauburji

The crumbling mosque atop the Chauburji

The signpost to Hindu Rao Civil Hospital(now much further away)

Hole in the ceiling, possibly for Astronomy at Pir Ghaib

Ashoka pillar

The plaque at the base

Mutiny Memorial 

Locations: 

Vidhan Sabha metro station/ DU side gate to the ridge

Flagstaff tower

Guardhouse

Chauburji

Hindu Rao signpost (rough location, next to the garbage dump)

Pir Ghaib

Baoli

Hindu Rao Hospital

Ashoka pillar

Mutiny memorial

This article first appeared in The Edict magazine of Ashoka University, it has been slightly modified for this blog