Indian history Notes # 12

Source: VIII NCERT History Chapter 6

• For administrative purposes, colonial India was divided into three presidencies - Bombay, Madras and Bengal.
• The most splendid capital of all was built by Shah Jahan. 
• Shahjahanabad was begun in 1639 and consisted of a fort-palace complex and the city adjoining it. Lal Qila or the Red Fort, made of red sandstone, contained the palace complex. To its west lay the Walled City with 14 gates. The main streets of Chandni Chowk and Faiz Bazaar were broad enough for royal processions to pass. A canal ran down the centre of Chandni Chowk.
• Delhi during Shah Jahan’s time was also an important centre of Sufi culture. It had several dargahs, khanqahs and idgahs.
• Dargah - The tomb of Sufi saint.
• Khanqah - A sufi house often used as a rest house for travellers and a place where people come to discuss spiritual matters.
• Idgah - An open prayer place for muslims.
• Jama Mashid was the first mosque in India with minarets and full domes.
• In 1803, the British gained control of Delhi after defeating the Marathas.
• In 1911 Delhi became capital of British India. 
• The establishment of the Delhi College in 1792 led to a great intellectual flowering in the sciences as well as the humanities, largely in the Urdu language.
•  Many refer to the period from 1830 to 1857 as a period of the Delhi renaissance.
• In the 1870s, the western walls of Shahjahanabad were broken to establish the railway and to allow the city to expand beyond the walls. 
• The Delhi College was turned into a school, and shut down in 1877.
•  In 1877, Viceroy Lytton organised a Durbar in Delhi to acknowledge Queen Victoria as the Empress of India. 
• In 1911, when King George V was crowned in England, a Durbar was held in Delhi to celebrate the occasion. The decision to shift the capital of India from Calcutta to Delhi was announced at this Durbar. 
• New Delhi was constructed on Raisina Hill.
• Two architects, Edward Lutyens and Herbert Baker, were called on to design New Delhi and its buildings. 
• Harbert Baker designed Union building in the city of Pretoria in south Africa.
• The Delhi Improvement Trust was set up 1936, and it built areas like Daryaganj South for wealthy Indians. Houses were grouped around parks.
• The Mughal aristocracy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries lived in grand mansions called havelis which were large walled compounds with mansions, courtyards and fountains.