New Delhi's 100th birthday gets barely a nod

The Indian capital of New Delhi marked its 100th birthday on Monday without any official celebrations of a day that revives memories of British rule over the country.On December 12, 1911, visiting King George V told crowds at an elaborate imperial ceremony that India's capital would be moved from the eastern port of Calcutta to a new city to be built next to the ancient settlement of Delhi. "New Delhi" was designed on a grand scale with tree-lined boulevards, a 340-room palace for the British viceroy and elegant public buildings -- all of which remain intact today. The centenary of the decision has been the subject of public lectures and discussion seminars, but there has been no programme or parades organised by city authorities. The only scheduled event is Sheila Dikshit, the chief minister of Delhi, attending the launch of a book about the series of cities built in the same area over the centuries."There is ambivalence on what to celebrate and how to celebrate," Dikshit admitted last month. While officials have been wary of focusing on the pomp and circumstance of 1911, newspapers have covered the run-up to the anniversary with pages of archive pictures."The best may be still to come," the Times of India declared in its editorial on Monday, pointing out that the sprawling city now had about 160 times as many residents as in 1911.The Hindustan Times printed black-and-white photographs of British architect Edwin Lutyens riding on an elephant to survey the site, and of India Gate, a triumphal arch, under construction before the city was finished in 1931."From the seat of government of the British Raj... to the capital of independent India that has grown by leaps and bounds in recent decades, Delhi has indeed come a long way in the last hundred years," said the Mail Today.Delhi is planning year-long "cultural" celebrations starting in January, government officials told AFP, though no details were available. The park where King George V made his announcement is also being renovated.A few days after the December 12 declaration, the king and his wife Queen Mary unveiled New Delhi's foundation stone at a spot to the north of the old city near the "durbar" ceremony grounds.However engineers soon rejected the location as too marshy, and a new site to the south of the existing city was chosen for work to begin.With India undergoing a dramatic economic transformation in the past 20 years, the country's time under British rule before independence in 1947 has little resonance today for many Indians."Colonial rule was often painful, but it is seen here as just another layer of history," historian Mahesh Rangarajan told AFP. "India lived under an occupying power then, and the British thought they would be here for centuries when they built New Delhi. But the empire was gone just a few years later."For A.G. Krishna Menon, the Delhi head of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), glossing over the events of 100 years ago is to try to re-write the past."As conservationists, we say it is part of history that must be recognised," he said. "New Delhi was designed by the British but could not have been built anywhere else due to the Indian craftsmen, builders and Indian sensibilities."