Critics complain that the government often looks the other way when heritage sites are threatened. Urbanization has destroyed theoretically protected monuments. The Archaeological Survey of India, a government agency that monitors 3,600 sites nationwide including 174 in Delhi, has neither the funds nor the manpower to police them all. Under 1992 regulations, new construction is barred within about 100 yards of historically significant buildings, yet some of the apartment blocks near Khirki Mosque have gone up since then. Hundreds of monuments have been legally protected only since 2009.
"The protection we have is empty," says Nalini Thakur, a leading conservationist and a professor at Delhi's School of Planning and Architecture. "Delhi is under tremendous pressure of development, and it is killing our heritage."
What Delhi needs, conservationists such as Thakur say, is to become a UNESCO World Heritage city. It is their longtime goal to join the likes of Edinburgh and St. Petersburg in winning that designation, and they hope to apply for recognition this year. History would then be central to Delhi's identity.
But sites such as Khirki Mosque suggest the city's shortcomings as much as its wealth. There are rarely informational signs outside sites - you have to guess at their names or whether you've even found the right place - nor is there security or good maintenance. UNESCO requires that World Heritage cities have effective management and legal protection for its sites, and until recently, Delhi has fallen short.
It also lacks the tourist infrastructure that is a matter of course in most historic cities: information booths, maps and interpretive signs. Apart from its three World Heritage sites - the Red Fort, Humayun's Tomb and the Qutb Minar complex - and major attractions such as the Lodi Gardens, Delhi doesn't publicize its monuments or make them easy for tourists to access.
That may be slowly starting to change. Spurred by last fall's Commonwealth Games, the city launched its first hop-on, hop-off bus (www.hohodelhi.com) - to mixed reviews - and the tourist board has teamed with the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) to provide informational booklets on board. INTACH also restored and lit 17 monuments near the Games sites so that they stand out at night.
These are early steps in INTACH's Delhi Heritage Route project, which would link monuments around the city with landscaping and guides, as on Boston's Freedom Trail. Supported by the World Monuments Fund, INTACH hopes that the heritage routes would make historic sites focal points for neighborhoods and give locals a sense of ownership.
"We need to project heritage," says A.G. Krishna Menon, head of INTACH's Delhi chapter. "In any other city, a place like Khirki Mosque would be a star attraction. But we have to make these sites accessible to both tourists and citizens, so they become part of the city's image."
Treasure hunt
For now, the curious are basically on their own. Though it's challenging, seeking out Delhi's lesser-known monuments is hugely rewarding and can overturn grating first impressions of the city. I arrived loath to spend an entire week there, but after finding sites recommended by conservationists, I left wishing that I had more time to explore. With a detailed Eicher city map, available in most bookstores, and a patient driver, I approached Delhi like a treasure hunt.
As at Khirki Mosque, the startling juxtaposition of old and new is everywhere. As much as purists may bemoan concrete encroachments, historic sites woven into the fabric of the modern city feel especially powerful, like humbling whispers from the past.
When the British began building New Delhi in 1911, they wiped away nearly everything that stood on the site of their modern new city. Architect Edwin Lutyens designed a gleaming city of tree-lined boulevards and perfect order, spiraling out from India Gate, the memorial to British soldiers at the heart of his plan. Now home to luxury hotels and embassies, New Delhi seems to possess nothing hinting at what came before, and little is known about the villages that did.
You would hardly expect to glimpse the area's past life at a stepwell on residential Hailey Road, two blocks from Connaught Place, New Delhi's commercial center. The stone wall on the street is easy to pass by. But then you turn into a metal gate, walk through an archway and gasp: Before you, 100 steps tumble three stories down, bounded by thick walls with pointed niches and arcades. Though mere municipal infrastructure, the 15th-century Agrasen ki Baoli is classically grand and looks far sturdier than the office blocks behind it.
Simply built by carving into the earth to reach underground water channels, stepwells can be found around Delhi but are rarely this large. There must have been a village nearby, and people would have come here not just for water but also to sit out the heat. It may also have been used for religious rituals, which perhaps explains why the British left it alone. The well's modest purpose gave me a rare sense of everyday life 500 years ago, a connection hard to feel at royal palaces like the Red Fort.
A jewel box
Though Agrasen ki Baoli and Khirki Mosque sit amid apartment buildings, neither is the sort of neighborhood focal point that INTACH hopes the Delhi Heritage Route would create. The Hauz Khas madrasa is. At the edge of chic Hauz Khas village in South Delhi, this elegant, two-story Islamic seminary overlooks a reservoir and treetops, and was built in 1354 by Firoz Shah, who is buried in an ornate tomb here.
In the Tughlaq era (1321-1398), students from around Central Asia came to the madrasa to learn about Muslim jurisprudence, astronomy and medicine. Contemporaries praised the beauty of its long, pillared halls, carved balconies and fragrant courtyard. It is still a peaceful, contemplative spot, only now the young men sitting in the archways bring guitars and girlfriends here for the romantic view. In the United States, these precipitous perches would be fenced off, made safe and austere. Kept open, the madrasa is part of the local back yard.
On my final afternoon, I went to Mehrauli Archaeological Park, behind Qutb Minar. The park's more than 300 ruins date from the 11th-century city of Lal Kot to the 19th-century Mughals. At the highest point in South Delhi, they cluster around a ridge that drains the monsoon rains, which made it a healthy place to settle. This fascinating jumble includes a 12th-century water tank and brilliant blue tiles in Quli Khan's tomb, where East India Company agent Sir Thomas Metcalfe bizarrely set up a country residence in the 1840s. His landscaping remains in the surrounding area, with small pavilions, or "follies," on hilltops.
Though you could pass days here, I had just an hour; it was hard to know where to start. Inside the main gate, I turned right up a bumpy dirt road and stopped at the 1528 Jamali Kamali mosque and tomb. As I peered through the locked gate, a caretaker appeared and motioned me inside. Leaning on a walking stick, he led me up to the sandstone prayer hall, with its five large arches and niches decorated with Koranic inscriptions. Up to 800 people would have come here on Fridays, a crowd hard to imagine in the park's pastoral calm today.
The caretaker walked across a courtyard to the simple square tomb, and we took off our shoes and stepped inside. Bright reds and blues popped before my eyes: The plaster ceiling is intricately carved and painted, arabesque shapes fanning out as in a kaleidoscope. Nearly every curve in the pointed arches is covered with blue stars or circles. In the middle of the small chamber lie two graves, one unknown and the other belonging to the Sufi saint and poet Jamali, whose verses are inscribed on the wall.
When we left and closed the door, it was like clicking shut the lid of a music box. Inside, vibrant colors swirled around us; outside was drab stone. Finding the tomb made the city feel magical. Its magnificence, like Delhi's, was utterly unexpected.
Dalzell is a writer and urban historian living in New York.
