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The colonial entombment of the Mughal habitus : Delhi in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

University of British Columbia

In this paper I examine changes in the way in which the city of Delhi was perceived by its residents and visitors over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. B y the eighteenth century, the built environment of Delhi was interpreted by residents and visitors via a distinctively Mughal habitus of urbanity that ultimately depended on a matrix of Mughal technologies and institutions, and particularly the management of water resources in the urban environment. After the British assumed control of the city in 1803, residents' perceptions of Delhi began to change in response to the manner in which colonial authorities envisioned the city and changed the way in which water was used and distributed through the city. The desire of colonial authority to remake the city in its own image in order to secure hegemony is evident in its ways of gathering and processing knowledge of the city. By scrutinizing the city through a mausoleal modality, the British administration began to identify Delhi as a 'dead' city that needed to be ordered, classified, interpreted, and ultimately placed within the confines of History. In doing so, the British regime made previous modes of seeing and inhabiting the city irrelevant and introduced a colonial habitus of urbanity that privileged their own rule. This process reached its logical culmination in the destruction of the city during the war of 1857 and the creation of yet another city of 'New Delhi' as a reflection of imperial grandeur.

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2010-01-06

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/17656

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