Design
When Landscape Became King | Venugopal Maddipati
LA 53
A look into how Rajghat was once much more than the place of cremation of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and its significance in the strife over sovereignty in Post-Independence Delhi. Under the many layers of Gandhi's memories, one discovers the site is more than what meets the eye.
The site of Rajghat, or the king's bank by the Yamuna river, is only too well-known, in the present, as the place of the cremation, in 1948, of the Indian political leader and non-violent revolutionary, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

But it was not always that way. With a little bit of curiosity and imagination, one can vault past the more immediate, settled contours of the Gandhian history of Rajghat, and convey oneself into the presence of a far more antiquated landscape. One only has to leaf through the pages of Dastan-e-Ghadar: the poet ZahirDehlvi's eyewitness account of the events of 1857 in Delhi, to learn that the moniker Rajghat is an old one.

In Dehli's remembrances, a bathing ghatwas once emplaced adjacent to the RajghatDarwazawhich was one of the many gates of the Mughal city of Shahjahanabad, closer to the southern flank of the Red Fort.2 It is here, in 1857, at the bathing ghat by the RajghatDarwaza, at a short distance from what is today known as the Sunehri Masjid, that baghisawar, or rebel cavalrymen, had marched into the then British-requisitioned city of Shahjahanabad.

Walking north-west, as the crow flies, from what is presently Gandhi's memorial at Rajghat, towards the area closer to Sunehri Masjid and also closer to what is today known as the GhumshudaTalash Kendra, NayiKotwali, Daryaganj, one is apt to find oneself in the thick of place-markers that may have once hearkened, in the memories of individual witnesses, to a revolution against the authority of the British East India Company. In short, beneath the soft skin of a more recent Gandhian history at Rajghat, there may well lurk deeper veins of memory related to the strife over sovereignty in the nineteenth century. One merely has to wander away from Rajghat in the general direction of the city of Shahjahanabad, and seek more discerningly for these deep veins of memory...



 


ISSUE NO: 53
History of architecture - a discourse
International Conference on History of Architecture

Organized by greha

Past continuous is future perfect
Past Continuous is Future Perfect
Landscape foundation students' design competition 2017

Ayla khan

Jury & Results
Competition prize winning entries

List of participants 2017

Landscape continuum: repository of cultural value
Suneet mohindru

View from within
A Decade of Learning
Landscape foundation students' design competition

Geeta Wahi Dua

Landscape Research & Documentation
The Delhi that few of us know

Nikhil dhar


When Landscape became King
A short note on the ascendancy of the immediate
Present as the sovereign of Rajghat

Venugopal maddipati


Landscape design
Imperial aesthetics as inspiration
Parliament house Annexe Extension, New Delhi

Design Accord

Baghs to socialist ideology
Janeshwar mishra park, lucknow

Rajat kant


Profile
Enhancing Ecology of the site by design

Krishan c singal

Interview
Developing urban forests
In conversation with shubhendu sharma

Afforestt, bangalore

South asia
Days at the Brief garden, Srilanka

Deepthi c b

Heritage and conservation
Rejuvenation and Reincarnation
History as a means of living the present

Narendra dengle


Book review
Search for self through architecture
Cosmic dance in stone

Review by mn farhat nasreen

Stories to discover India afresh From water scarcity to plenty
The water catchers: 12 inspirational stories of
How communities went from scarcity to plenty

Review by shishir r raval


Unravelling the layers
Monuments matter: india's archaeological
Heritage since independence

Review by narayani gupta

Documenting Nature
Forest camping and trail guide to yelavali,
Bhimashankar wildlife sanctuary

Review by chetan sahasrabudhe


Garden calendar
Winters

Grotech landscape developers pvt ltd

Landscape industry
Automation in Irrigation systems: A Step towards Sustainability

Rumi prakash

























ABOUT US | CONTACT US

© LA JOURNAL | 2022