‘Between the river and the ridge’: Peeling back layers of Delhi history, from the Mughal period to the rise of key cultural institutions at Mandi House

A map from 'Sair-e-Delhi: Chronicles of Change' exhibition curated by historian Swapna Liddle. (Image courtesy DAG)

When the Belgian embassy in Delhi was finally completed in 1983, the cost of building it had reportedly exceeded 100 million Belgian Francs. This, when the cost of leasing the 5.4-acre plot for 99 years had been set at Re 1 back in 1954, and when the European nation itself was emerging from an economic recession following the oil shocks of the 1970s. On an early September evening, the Belgian ambassador to India – Didier Vanderhasselt – said the irony of it all was not lost on him even then.

“I was in school, and I heard about it on the news. I must have been interested (in the embassy building) even in the ’80s,” he explained to a group of 50-odd guests at the preview to the first Delhi edition of DAG’s City As A Museum – a fortnight-long programme with walks, talks, workshops, performances and an exhibition, to encourage re-explorations of the city.

(The Belgian embassy building, designed by artist Satish Gujral, features again in the City As A Museum – Delhi programme, as the site for a movement-based performance.)

The Belgian Embassy in Delhi

What is City As A Museum

DAG, formerly Delhi Art Gallery, has hosted editions of City As a Museum (CAAM) in Kolkata and Mumbai previously. DAG describes it as an arts and heritage festival. Mostly, it comprises discussions, walks, exhibitions, talks that highlight the heritage – including art heritage – of a city.

Most recently, the Mumbai edition of CAAM from March 7-23 gave the public access to a storied institution – the Sir JJ School of Art – where stalwarts artists like M.F. Husain and S.H. Raza studied. The Mumbai programme included a walkthrough of the murals at the famous art school and a discussion of its architecture. Other events included a visit to the Elephanta Caves with art historian and DAG curator Giles Tillotson; a roundtable on the role of research in art practice and art history; and a conversation on the early years of Tyeb Mehta and M.F. Husain when they were both working across art and cinema.

The Delhi programme – from September 6-21 – includes, among other things:

– Sair-e-Delhi: Chronicles of Change, an exhibition curated by historian Swapna Liddle;

– A visit to the Rashtriyapati Bhavan with an invitation “to explore the aesthetics of statecraft at the heart of the capital city through the art, architecture and interiors of this national institution” with art historian Naman Ahuja;

– A guided walk through Qudsia Bagh which was the site of the 1902-03 arts exhibition organized by the then Indian viceroy Lord Curzon to mark Edward VII’s coronation (walk leader Prof. Liddle explains the 1903 art exhibition was a very colonial event, but it had implications for art exhibition in other spaces including the Indian National Congress Sessions, like the one at Haripura in 1938);

– A visit to the Sunday book market in Daryaganj;

– A performance highlighting the architectural features of the Belgian embassy through movement;

– Explorations of the cultural institutions in and around Mandi House through discussions, immersive audio and music; and

– “An archival exploration through the pages of ‘The Illustrated Weekly of India’ with scholar and filmmaker Sabeena Gadihoke, revisiting the photographs, reproductions and essays that gave readers a window into the cultural life of post-independent India.”

Art historian and senior VP of exhibitions at DAG Tillotson said that while the genesis of the programme was in Kolkata, he’d like to see future iterations of CAAM in cities like Jaipur and Indore.

Professor Swapna Liddle at the Belgian Embassy.

Delhi – old and new

Delhi is famously a city of many cities. From the walled city of Shahjahabad to the Capital of independent India, there are sediments of different periods of history in its sprawl. Consider the Red Fort, which was commissioned by a Mughal emperor when he moved his capital from Agra to Delhi. The structure was later appropriated by the British, who razed structures in close vicinity to avoid casualties like the ones from the 1857 war of Independence.

The CAAM programme has a bit of all of these Delhis.

For instance, Sair-e-Delhi: Chronicles of Change – on at Bikaner House, near the India Gate C-hexagon, from September 7-15 – has paintings, prints, photographs, maps and plans that showcase Delhi “from the Sultanate and Mughal periods to Lutyens’ Delhi—through the eyes of travellers and connoisseurs…focusing on the layers of history that make up the various sites—Mehrauli, Shahjahanabad, Nizamuddin, New Delhi and others.” Speaking on the sidelines of the opening night at the Belgian embassy, exhibition curator Swapna Liddle said: “Delhi’s archaeology is very unusual. Normally when you have historic cities, different eras build on top of that one site. In Rome, if you dig down, you will see older layers. Delhi’s archaeological layers are spread out… it’s like a network of sites which are spread out over the Delhi triangle as we call it, between the river and the ridge. That is historic Delhi, with many, many, many sites… and it’s always been part of the lived heritage. Because many of the old cities were not completely abandoned; they still had some connection to the life of the later cities. I am hoping that through the exhibition, we can talk about the histories of these sites and that layeredness of Delhi’s history – I am hoping that this will remind us that we, who live in Delhi, interact with a history that is part of our city and that is part of our present.”

Where the exhibits in Sair-e-Delhi date from the 18th-20th centuries, the discussions around 'Illustrated Weekly' magazine and Mandi House – where some of independent India’s biggest cultural institutions are – bring the conversation squarely to the ideas of a new India post-Independence.

Photographer Ram Rahman who is on a panel on Mandi House, said his presentation will centre on how Mandi House became the hub of culture in the 1950s, how buildings like Rabindra Bhawan came up, and “how Joseph Stein ended up being the architect for Triveni (Kala Sangam).”

Rahman suggested that situating the cultural landscape of the Capital in this area – close to Connaught Place – was no accident. “(Jawaharlal) Nehru was very involved; he wanted that area to be a cultural hub. Rabindra Bhawan was built there. He gave land to Sangeet Bharati, to Sundari Shridharani who had started Triveni (Kala Sangam) in Connaught Place on an upper floor in the 1950s, and she had started to bring musicians, teachers of Bharatnatyam to Delhi. At the time, there were two dancers in Delhi – my mother Indrani and Yamini Krishnamurthy – who had brought Bharatnatyam to Delhi literally for the first time.”

Sohail Hashmi conducting a walk in Daryaganj.

Breadth and depth of a city

CAAM grew out of a contingency at the Kolkata leg of DAG, which is now developing a new museum space in artist Jamini Roy’s old home. After four editions in Kolkata, the programme launched in Mumbai in March 2025, and in Delhi in September.

Sumona Chakravarty, vice-president, museums outreach at DAG Kolkata, who was involved in drawing up the CAAM programmes across Kolkata, Mumbai and now Delhi, explained what visitors can expect from the programme: “People know the landmarks of Delhi… but hopefully we’re taking people through new routes and those routes are also being navigated in different ways through talks, pop-up exhibitions, performances… so you get a different perspective on it.”

Chakravarty gave the example of the walk at Qudsia Bagh, which she characterized as “a very lively park but almost like a forgotten monument." To illustrate the importance of the Qudsia Bagh art exhibition of 1902-03, Chakravarty added: "Abanindranath Tagore, who is the founder of the Bengal School of Art, his works are discovered there.” The Qudsia Bagh walk was scheduled for the morning of September 6.

“In general, the festival looks at state sponsorship, starting with the Delhi Darbar of the arts (the Qudsia Bagh walk with Prof Swapna Liddle) and how artists negotiated that, contested that and formed their own narrative. We are going from the big institutions of Mandi House and a space like Studio Safdar in west Delhi, where we are going to be looking at their community theatre initiative… We often associate art with certain kinds of spaces, so to be able to traverse an entire range of it is also exciting,” Chakravarty said.

Speaking of range, books historian and university lecturer Kanupriya Dhingra and Sohail Hashmi on Sunday (September 7) led some 50 participants on a walk through Daryaganj to the present location of the Sunday Book Market – where second-hand books are sold at bargain prices. The walk – through the older spaces where the booksellers used to set up shop amid the chaos of the larger market – was sprinkled with bits of information and historical trivia by city historian Sohail Hashmi. Sample this: 'Mughal-e-Azam' premiered at the storied Golcha cinema here. The reels came on elephant back, and the film ran houseful for two whole years, said Hashmi. What is less know, he added, is that the cinema used to have a cafe where young couples could hang out over coffee, even if they hadn’t bought movie tickets – a definite draw in a city where safe public spaces tend to be in short supply.

The walk culminated in a talk by Kanupriya Dhingra, who has studied the nature of the Daryaganj book market, both before and after its relocation to the present site at Mahilla Haat. Over mango kulfi at the Kathika Cultural Centre, Dhingra reiterated what’s lost in the relocation of the market: the opportunity for serendipity – to acquire a book you might love when you weren’t even out shopping for books.

DAG City As A Museum – Delhi is on till September 21. Prior registration for events is required. Full programme is at https://dagworld.com/events-programmes