THE BRITISH TREATMENT OF HISTORIC GARDENS IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT: THE TRANSFORMATION OF DELHI'S NAWAB SAFDARJUNG'S TOMB COMPLEX FROM A FUNERARY GARDEN INTO A PUBLIC PARK

摘要

The British occupation of the Indian Subcontinent laid before them a large corpus of built heritage of pre-British origin, especially in pre-colonial settlements such as Agra, Delhi, and Lahore and Lucknow. This corpus included gardens, both funerarygardens and leisure retreats, belonging to the Mughal royalty and nobility. Viewed as assets, the British made interventions in gardens to make them compatible for their own use. This paper examines the British treatment of historic garden sites by positioning it in the colonial domain where coeval political developments, significantly the Mutiny of 1857, influenced how gardens were treated. It locates Delhi's historic gardens in this scenario and takes up the case of an eighteenth-century funerary garden, the tomb complex of Nawab Safdarjung, for a closer scrutiny to examine the British response.