Heritage walk: Delving into Delhi’s mysteries — the Town Hall and Dara Shukoh

Saturday marked the second heritage walk in a series that the Municipal Corporation of Delhi is conducting

A group of history enthusiasts on Saturday morning gathered near the Town Hall at Chandni Chowk to discuss an important piece of the city’s historical jigsaw puzzle — what is believed to be the last resting place of Dara Shukoh.

The heritage walk at the Town Hall in Chandni Chowk on Saturday. (Raj K Raj /HT Photo)

But before the group began its discussion on the Mughal prince, they delved into the history of the Town Hall — itself a heritage building that was built in 1866.

Saturday marked the second heritage walk in a series that the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) is conducting. Sanjeev Kumar Singh, an executive engineer affiliated with the MCD heritage cell, started the day’s history lessons with a walk through the Town Hall — which housed the offices of the civic body for decades, till MCD got its swanky new building at Minto Road in 2011.

Singh pointed out the intricate network of design that runs along the upper beam of the front structure of the Town Hall, and said, “This was made by pressing wooden slabs onto wet chuna or lime. That is how they got the net-like design along with the leaves.”

Today, the structure is in desperate need of repairs.

“We have signed a memorandum of understanding with the Aga Khan Foundation for consultancy on the conservation of the Town Hall. We are hoping that the reports and estimates will be ready soon,” Singh said.

A hidden gem within the building is the old library, which the MCD heritage cell now uses to record documents. A floor above the main library is a dusty room which is now a storage space for portraits of eminent personalities such as Rabindranath Tagore and Indira Gandhi, along with broken typewriters and old-fashioned rotary dial telephones.

The search for Dara Shukoh’s grave

Dara Shukoh was Mughal emperor Shah Jahan’s eldest son. While there is documentation that he was killed, his final resting spot remains a mystery — one that has tantalised historians across generations.

Talking about the extensive research that went into finding Dara Shukoh’s final resting place, Singh shared insights on the methodology he adopted to reach a theory on where Dara Shukoh is buried.

“I am an engineer so my thought when I started researching was that if everything, including architecture and city planning changes with every single era, then the style of graves must be changing too,” he said, adding that he explored more than 400 graves in Delhi, Agra, and Lahore to try and find a clue.

“It was finally Alamgirnamah, the court history of Aurangzeb, which acted as a beacon,” Singh said.

In the northwestern chamber of Humayun’s Tomb, Singh said, he found three cenotaphs —two had motifs and architectural features specific to Akbar’s period, while the final one had designs specific to Shah Jahan’s period. It is this third grave that he believes is that of Dara Shukoh.

“While Singh’s work in 2022 has been acknowledged by a committee formed by the Union culture ministry, the findings were not made public. However, several members of the committee have accepted this as a definitive work in the discovery of the tomb of Dara Shukoh,” a senior MCD official aware of the matter said, adding that several renowned historians, including Irfan Habib, have congratulated Singh.

Officials said that there are a number of walks that MCD has planned till March, with the next expedition to Humayun’s Tomb on January 4. The walks will be free of cost, they said.