Japan K Pathak

In this first season of History series, I am republishing some carefully selected old reporting/articles of historical value, curated from over 100 years old records. Such articles though deserving, never got placement in any book, journal or even Google search engine through all these years. They were once published and forgotten. After over a century, I am collecting such writings and putting them here with opening remarks on their historic value.

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A British newspaper in December 1911 published an account of travel by its special correspondent to Ahmedabad and Ajmer. Below here is the Ahmedabad article in full text.

A correspondent in this travel article complains that, ‘my bearer, Habib who insists on accompanying us, being a strict Mohammedan from the north, will never let us see a Hindu temple, if he can avoid it, and he shamelessly concealed from us the existence of the great Jain Temple, with fifty-three domes, which is the modern glory of the place. Also, he insisted on the fact that the mosques – or a large number of them had been built out of the remains of previously destroyed Hindu sanctuaries.’

A fifty-three domes temple referred here is probably Hutheesing Jain derasar located in Shahibaug area.

A traveler also mentions ‘there is no corner of the city where you may not look up and see an entrancing carved balcony or exquisitely fretted lattice window’. This reference is to the old wooden carved houses of wall city area in Ahmedabad that has now mostly replaced with just-another concrete buildings. The carved houses, our own architectural marvels, are increasingly becoming rare nowadays.

On presence of plenty of religious places, be it mosque, Hindu mandirs and Jain derasars in the city, the  traveler observes, ‘Ahmedabad takes you with a plunge into the religions of India. The most be-churched city of Italy or Spain is secular compared to it. One small sect of Hindus, the Jains, alone have 120 temples in it. All roads lead to mosques, tombs, holy places’

The character of the city, old and new is described by the traveller like this, ‘domes and minarets of the mosques are outrageously topped by the tall chimneys of a group of big factories which proclaim in advance of this ancient city into industrialism’.

Along with sirens of the mills, azaan noises from the mosques were noticed as well by this unnamed traveler, who was probably from Britain, ‘In the morning soon after five you are woke by a confusion of noises, in which tom-toms and calls to prayer mingle strangely with the sirens of the factories. This is India in the making.’

Read the travel writing, over 100 years old in full text

A British journalist pens down her Ahmedabad visit somewhere around year 1910:

A square patch of garden with roses in it, and stone bungalows round three sides of the square. This is the Hotel at Ahmedabad. The bungalows to right and left are bedrooms of the Indian type, and that in the centre is dining-room and kitchen. There are no other rooms. For a drawing-room or smoking-room, you use the verandahs of the bungalows, and these are fitted with the typical Indian easy chair, whose arms are extended to accommodate your legs. There are cocks and hens for breakfast, lunch, and dinner – I use these words to indicate a real difference between the Indian and English fowl – and if you want more, there are eggs for dinner, lunch and breakfast. Compared with man of Indian up-country Hotels, this is a Carlton or a Savoy; but the traveler fresh from Europe has to be broken to Indian methods of sanitation, and after the sunsets there is a deep darkness with mosquitoes in it which is barely mitigated by oil-lamps. And then, again, if you are new to it, there are the Indian noises, which suggest the near presence of very wild men, and are greatly heightened in effect by the entire absence of locks or barriers, and you own guilty knowledge that a thousand rupees are lurking under your pillow.

Still the sun shines in the morning, and in the little garden courtyard is everything that you have been led to expect – Pipal trees in the middle, scores of delicious little striped squirrels running up and down them and along the paths, two great brown kites, which threaten perpetually but do nothing, the mina bird with tremolo and crescendo on one note, stopping dead just when you think it is going to begin, hundreds of pigeons and doves, and of course the inevitable insatiable India crow. Let it be taken for granted that this is the inventory of almost every scene in India. Other things may be added, such as green parrots, mosques, temples and tombs, but these are almost always there. Having carefully counted them up, we started to explore Ahmedabad in the light-hearted manner of English tourists, in cloth caps, straw hats, tweed suits, serge dresses. The morning, we said, was cool and fresh, the sun diffused a pleasant and tempered warmth. Ten minutes later we had turned our horses back and were flying for cover. All of us simultaneously had felt something sharp and bitter on the nape of the neck by which the Indian or tropical sun proclaims his difference from all northern suns. One touch is enough; for ever afterwards you treat him with respect and submit to the solar helmet.

Ahmedabad takes you with a plunge into the religions of India. The most be-churched city of Italy or Spain is secular compared to it. One small sect of Hindus, the Jains, alone have 120 temples in it. All roads lead to mosques, tombs, holy places; the crowded populous city, as displayed to you by your guide, is but a labyrinth of alleys and passages leading from one to another. The town itself is incredibly squalid and vivid. The impression has since worn off, for all Indian cities are much alike in this respect, but never before had I imagined anything so untidy. The only things neatly arranged are the little square compartments of different-coloured grain to be seen on the stalls in the grain bazaar. All else is a disordered, dusty, garish litter. The entire contents of the house seem to have been thrown aimlessly into the roadway in front of them, and you pick your way between pots and pans and beds and broken chairs and delicately fretted brass vessels. There is the same sense of aimless litter about the people and the animals. Everybody is talking at once, but no one seems to be doing anything, except the drivers of the bullock-cards, who dig their teams in the ribs with a pole, and when that fails, catch hold of their tails and twist them vigorously. The sleek scared bull with the shambling gait wanders where he chooses, and takes his food from any shop that offers a diet convenient to him. The goat is everywhere – the silly-looking Indian goat with the tiny head and bulging nose – and fowls, of course, by the thousands. Everything is covered with dust, and a good many of the houses seem to be tumbling in, but there is no corner of the city where you may not look up and see an entrancing carved balcony or exquisitely fretted lattice window, and in the dullest, dustiest roadway the blaze and sparkle of the human throng under the midday sun assail the eye till it longs for a patch of grey.

But I am wandering from the temples and mosques which the guide-book tells you are the great features of the “strangely neglected (by the tourist) city of Ahmedabad. My bearer, Habib who insists on accompanying us, being a strict Mohammedan from the north, will never let us see a Hindu temple, if he can avoid it, and he shamelessly concealed from us the existence of the great Jain Temple, with fifty-three domes, which is the modern glory of the place. Also, he insisted on the fact that the mosques – or a large number of them had been built out of the remains of previously destroyed Hindu sanctuaries.

Whether this is the true explanation or not, the typical Ahmedabad mosque or tomb is Mohammedan in form and Hindu in ornament or workmanship, a curious medley which, so far, I have seen nowhere else in India. The Moorish arch is embroidered with intricate shallow-cut ornament of purely Hindu type. In the same building you may see over-loaded barbaric vaulting in the arches and windows of exquisite fretted stonework in the loveliest Persian designs. The sight of a dozen of these consecutively, ending with the beautiful and mysterious tombs of the Queens of Ahmed Shah, leaves the Wester mind in a complete muddle. One feels at last how much history and tradition lend to the appreciation of a European building. These buildings do not speak to you, the Shahs and Queens thus beautifully commemorated are names out of a guide-book. You grope in vain for dates and associations. You look and wonder as you might at an exhibition or arts and crafts, wonder, often, at the presence of everything which makes for beauty, and the absence of the last touch which gives soul. In the end you bear away with you a slightly blurred vision of brown stone wrought into a infinity of exquisite and extravagant forms, and of rich twilight in domed buildings, from which you emerge suddenly into the blue blaze of India midday, of good-humoured jostling crowds making great splotches of pantomime colour. Finally you go out over the ugly iron bridge which spans the Sabarmati river, and see half the population assembled in the river bed, washing themselves or their clothes, filling pig-skins with water, laying out acres of small square carpets – which are the chief industrial products of the place – to dry in the sun after immersion in the muddy stream. Then, as you look back, you see that the domes and minarets of the mosques are outrageously topped by the tall chimneys of a group of big factories which proclaim in advance of this ancient city into industrialism. In the morning soon after five you are woke by a confusion of noises, in which tom-toms and calls to prayer mingle strangely with the sirens of the factories. This is India in the making.