Book Review: V.B. Soni’s “Untold Story of Lutyens Delhi”

Ambassador V.B. Soni, a valued if somewhat junior colleague in the Indian Foreign Service, has written a fascinating story of the building of Lutyens’ New Delhi, in which his family was deeply involved.

The family had its humble beginnings in Makrana, Rajasthan, where in the mid-1800s, the family set up a small business to mine by hand the marble extracted there (that) requires no chemical reinforcement, which even Italian marble does”, and was the source of the marble used by Emperor Shahjahan in building the Taj Mahal. Under the supervision of Soni’s grandfather, Nanig Ram, the hero of the story, to create through the last decade of the 19th century and into the first decade of the 20th century, a group of expert marble sculptors who specialized in intricate stone work for chhatris (umbrellas), chajjas (sun-breakers), jaalis (latticed windows) and lotus replicas.

All these Indian motifs were incorporated at Henry Baker’s instance, over-riding Edward Lutyens’ more Imperial/ Greece and Rome-oriented reservations. And Nanig Ram got the contract for such works in the Viceregal Place, Durbar Hall  and the Parliament complex (then known as the Council Chamber) after Nanig Ram demonstrated immense courage before the British engineers by going down a shaft when the dynamite failed to ignite. The fuse ignited just as he reached the spot and shrapnel entered his eye, forcing him to wear a false eye through the rest of his life. But he won the contract, to which was later added Central Vista (now Kartavya Path) and the canopy over the statute of King-Emperor George V (now replaced by Netaji Subhas Bose) installed right behind India Gate, the monument to the Allied victory in the First World War and Indian soldiers’ little acknowledged contribution to the victory. This required either advanced or intuitive knowledge of trigonometry.

Nanig Ram had no education in mathematics but an excellent eye for perspective. So, he won not only the contract but also world praise for the accuracy of the canopy’s placement.

Clearly recognizing that he lacked the sophistication and Europeanization to meet with the colonial British on their terms, he tied up an arrangement with the far more renowned Sir Shobha Singh, the major contractor, who had found a way of pleasing the stuffy British by respecting their desire to eschew all “bribery” but were delighted to receive Shobha Singh’s abundant and carefully packed gift hampers on Christmas, Easter and other Christin festivals! Shobha Singh’s people were put in the “front-office” to deal with the Brits in English, while Nanig Ram’s artistes were put to the task of aesthetically carving the stone work that lends Indian magnificence to the essentially Europe-based structures that went into the  making of Lutyens Delhi between the 1911 Durbar announcement of shifting the capital from Calcutta (now Kolkata) to the Viceroy moving into his new palace in 1931. Raisina Hill, not the environs of Shahjehanabad, became  centre-piece for Imperial British New Delhi (why not ‘Nayi Dilli’, as most Indians call it?). Nanig Ram meanwhile died in 1929, having completed his life’s work, displaying not only huge native talent but also dragging his family out of destitution into high prosperity by buying “decent sized plots at Hanuman Road, where Kothi number 53 became his dwelling place”. He also branched into cinema, making a second fortune of the venture.

It was into this family that the author was born in 1942. The abiding influence in his life has been his father, Bankey Lal, son of Nanig Ram, the family patriarch. There follows abiding cameos of New Delhi’s shopping plazas and residential colonies, Jantar Mantar and other landmarks of the new city, temples and gurudwaras already in place or coming up. The secular, Ganga-Jamuni composite culture of the country before Partition is symbolized by Nanig Ram’s principal partner being a practicing  Muslim, Haji Nathu, named after Nanig’s father’s closest friend, Nathu Ram. Bankey Lal. It does not prepare one won for the terrible Partition riots, described accurately, succinctly and horrifically.

The Bankey Lal family leaped into the highest echelons of India’s post-Independence elite. The eldest, the author, joined the Indian Foreign Service and served as Ambassador in various exotic posts, his brothers made names for themselves as bankers, the law and the hospitality business. The sisters were married to IAS officers, other civil services and the judiciary. It is an inspiring tale of moving over two generations from minor marble mining to millionaire status, a striking demonstration of how a poor family with entrepreneurial “animal spirits” can make it big in both colonial and post-colonial India.

The end is, however, discouraging. It shows how the abandonment of family traditions and the lust for Mammon can bring down the best of the best. The author, however, ends his family’s “Kaliyug” with the heartening phrase, “the next cycle starts afresh”.

I would strongly recommend this book to all those who love our city, New Delhi, as much as I do.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mani Shankar Aiyer is a senior politician, a former IFS officer and a seasoned author. He has served as Union Minister in the Congress regime, and been a Rajya Sabha MP.

 

 


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