Rediscovering Mehrauli through amateurs’ lens
The Centre collected 233 photographs of Mehrauli through the 1970s, 80s and 90s, during their neighbourhood museum project in 2017.
When Mohammad Tauhir was 12, he was gifted a camera by his parents. The excited teenager, who had moved into the south Delhi neighbourhood of Mehrauli in the 1970s, would dress up and stride around his neighbourhood with his brother carefully photographing everything around that fascinated him. More than 140 of these photographs will soon make their way to the Delhi visual archives of the Centre for Community Knowledge at the Ambedkar University.
The Centre collected 233 photographs of Mehrauli through the 1970s, 80s and 90s, during their neighbourhood museum project in 2017. “We have photographs of Mehrauli in the late 1940s as well. From these and the photos collected in the neighbourhood museum, we can see how little of the place was built up and how it would be covered with trees. We do not know the reason for the loss of tree cover, but we have visual proof now. This is an entire area of the city’s history which is not recorded anywhere, which we are covering through these archives,” said Surajit Sarkar, associate professor and co-coordinator at the Centre for Community Knowledge.
The photographs provide interesting insights into Mehrauli’s past. “It is interesting to note how the relationship between residents and their surrounding monuments changed,” said Mesha, who is a senior research assistant at the Centre. “For instance while showing us photographs of the Qutub complex, Tauhir told us that he would play in the area and just hang around there as a child. But now, he hardly goes there since it’s a ticketed monument,” she added.
A particularly noteworthy photograph is that of a phansi ghar (gallows), taken by Tauhir. When the Centre first came across the photograph, they were unable to trace where the phansi ghar is now located. After many conversations with the residents, the researchers concluded that it is the same spot where a Jain temple, by the name Ahimsa Sthal, is currently located. The massive cylindrical columns of the Phansighar which Tauhir believed had been constructed during the regime of Ghiyasuddin Balban (13th century) have disappeared.
While majority of the photographs for the archive have been provided by Tauhir and Anwar, few others have been contributed by other residents and frequent visitors to Mehrauli. Usha Kumar, the general secretary of Anjuman Sair-E-Gul Faroshan, provided 63 photographs of the popular Mehrauli festival Phoolwalon Ki Sair as it used to be held in the 1970s and 80s.
“The photographs of Phoolwalon Ki Sair shows how excited and involved the residents used to be about the event, and that it would be attended by the prime minister as well,” Mesha said.
The Delhi visual archives project of the Centre for Community Knowledged had started in 2015 and was titled ‘Cameras of the Past’. The archive currently holds a collection of 3,000 photos of Delhi dating between 1880 and early 2000s. Majority of them are photographs of Delhi in the 1930s and 40s, provided by Lala Narain Prasad in 2014. While photographs collected in the neighbourhood museums at Nizamuddin and Shadi-Khampur have already been archived, the Mehrauli photographs will become a part of the archive over the next few months.