Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi, British India.
Photographer: Felice Beato.
Produced some six months after the siege of Delhi had ended with an E.I.C. victory on the 21st of September 1857, a lifeless Chandni Chowk emerges in this photo by Felice Beato – an Italian photographer who had toured the war-ravaged country in the latter half of the 18th century.
Beato who had arrived at the docks in Calcutta on the 13th of February 1858 was one of the earliest western photographers to capture the sights and landmarks of British India. Born in Venice, Italy in 1832 and having started his career as a photographer in Constantinople while working for his brother-in-law, he had documented the Crimean war in 1856 before the Indian mutiny had drawn him to capture the aftermath.
As a commercial photographer who earned a living by selling prints, Beato had initially focused on photographing battle sites to cash in on the enormous public interest the insurrection of 1857 had generated in Europe.
Later, however, he had shifted his focus to architectural landmarks and people albeit to once again profit from the demand of exotic eastern imagery – a venture that had taken him to the yesteryear cities of Kanpur, Lucknow and Delhi among other places, and allowed him to compile a large collection of now historic photographs.
The Chandni Chowk, Beto had visited on this day was the heart of the Mughal capital of Shahjahanabad commonly known in present time as old Delhi. It was the main street of the fortified city and was designed in the 17th century by the Gurkani princess Jahanara, the eldest daughter of the emperor Shahjahan and the first lady of the court during both her father’s reign and that of her brother, the emperor Aurangzeb.
In the old days, it had a water canal running in the middle of the street and was a lover’s destination at night. Amorous couples who had wished to keep their affairs away from prying eyes had met here in secret and disappeared among the confusing maze of alleyways, shops and houses on either side to elude observers and spies.
The shopping plaza was built in the shape of a crescent moon and had a water pond in the centre that had mirrored the reflection of the moon at night, and from which had arisen its name Chandni Chawk or the moonlit square. There was also a silver market present here, which was quite famous during the time of the British.
Which comes to the fore in George Bruce Malleson’s epic historical work on the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, in which Malleson identifies Chandni Chowk not with the reflection of the moon in the water pond but for the silver market.
Though bustling with people and activities during the day, the Chandni Chowk Beato had captured in this photo was a deserted one largely for the massive depopulation Shahjahanabad had suffered during the insurrection of 1857.
This had initially taken place at the hands of the rebel Sepoys of the Bengal Army who had terrorized and extorted food and money from the citizens when thelast Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, had been unable to pay their wages, and later in the massacre and plundering that had followed upon its reconquest by the forces of the E.I.C and their local allies.
After documenting British India, Beato had moved farther east. In 1860 he had visited China to document the exploits of the imperial British army and then on to Japan. He is believed to have retired from active photography in 1877, almost 31 years before his death in 1908. He was then 76 years old and living in Burma, where he had set up a photography studio and a wood carving business.
In spite of Beato having also produced a large volume of non-military photographs, he is more widely regarded as a military photographer, primarily for his inclination towards documenting military subjects and his adventurous way of life.
His photographs continue to hold immense historical value and the architecture he captured in the 18th century can still be seen in bits and parts in the modern locale of old Delhi. Including sections of the walls of Shahjahanabad, the city’s once-imposing gateways, and at Chandni Chowk itself – which in spite of progressing into the twentieth century has somehow managed to still retain its old-world antiquity.
