Did you know that nearly 250 years before Chennai became a centre for medical tourism, its hospitals — like the Government General Hospital (1664), the Eye Hospital (1819), Institute of Mental Health (1794) — pioneered medical advancements? That Bengaluru was a textile and arms manufacturing centre before it came to be known as the Garden City? That the Bezoras goats of Hyderabad’s droppings were as valuable as Golconda diamonds? Or that the spirit of Warren Hastings is rumoured to still visit Kolkata’s Writer’s Building at midnight?
Such interesting tidbits of history often remain buried in academic documentation or people are often unaware of stories behind places in the city they call home. This gap is bridged by local historians, many self-taught, who host guided tours and storytelling sessions around monuments, streets and bazaars. They cull out interesting facets from books, libraries, architectural records and grandma’s stories to put together cohesive, lively histories for growing audiences seeking information on the cities they visit, as well as the ones they call home.
In New Delhi, Swapna Liddle has been conducting walks in the capital for the last two decades. Armed with a PhD in History, she frequently lectures in colleges. “Heritage walks have been on in Delhi since the 1990s. Probably the earliest group to start them was the Conservation Society, a group of academics and architects. In the late 1990s, the India Habitat Centre (IHC) started including heritage walks in their programme calendar and their popularity grew. This was followed by INTACH in the mid-2000s and since then many people have started doing walks. Many of these are commercially a success too,” says Swapna who has trained many walk leaders and designed walks. In 2011 she wrote the book, Delhi: 14 Historic Walks .Between 2012 and 2017, she was a guest at the AIR phone-in show Barish Sawalon Ki , where she would answer listeners’ questions about Delhi’s history and heritage. According to Swapna, a lot of Delhi’s rich history is found in Persian and Urdu texts that were difficult to access due to paucity of translated material. Her research is based on primary as well as secondary sources like original documents and published books.
“When people try to re-imagine the present, they often call upon ‘history’ to justify their positions. History is a potential field for contestation because in popular imagination, our perception of the past is often closely tied up with our ideas about our identity in the present,” Swapna states.
Bengaluru-based filmmaker and writer Basav Biradar agrees: “Historians should come forward and interact with the general public as history is an important space to be in. It is evident that it can be used to misinform.”
On his return from the US in 2010, he began to study the history of Bengaluru. In 2011, he started Historywallahs, which curates content for museums and Government organisations. In 2012, he began conducting heritage walks in Bengaluru and Mysore. As these walks became more popular, he found a growing awareness on the value of heritage.
“Though the Karnataka Government is yet to come up with strong legislation on preservation of monuments, Bengaluru’s citizen engagement with heritage is high and acts as a safety net,” says Basav who has made several short documentaries on the city, the latest being on the Kolar Gold Fields.
Chennai-based businessman V Sriram’s interest in history was kindled by his stint in Kolkata and New Delhi where he was educated. He returned to Chennai in 1993 and came under the influence of renowned chronicler S Muthiah. It disciplined him, says Srirarm, who has also written biographies of corporate houses, museums, musicians and others. His grandfather’s library with around 5,000 books kindled his interest in history and he has built his own collection of around 1,500 books. Outside his professional reading, he reads only books on history and is fastidious about cross-checking and verifying facts. He pioneered heritage walks in Chennai; the first in 1999 had 35 participants. He had completed 80 different routes until the pandemic called a halt. Well-known monuments form 20% of the walks; the rest cover lesser-known aspects of the city.
CHENNAI,TAMIL NADU, 11/05/2019: FOR METRO PLUS, Heritage Walk by V. Sriram at VR Chennai Mall on Saturday. Photo: M. Vedhan/The Hindu
“Chennai may be a colonial town but its various temples show an enduring historical life via the Pallava, Chola and Vijayanagar rulers before the arrival of the colonials,” he says pointing to the loss of precious heritage. In 2008, the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) identified 50 homes of heritage value, where historically distinguished personalities had resided. Today just 10 remain; the rest have been consumed by land developers.
When speaking of facts, Sajjad Sajid believes that “there is a residual element of truth in the most improbable, impossible legends and stories.” The Hyderabad-based historian’s definition of history is not the straight and the narrow but includes oral histories, stories, legends and myths. His family’s roots in the city go back to around 600 years and his paternal family is descended from the Sufi poet Qazi Mahmud Behri.
Sajjad, a civil engineer, is currently a visiting faculty at the University of Hyderabad where he teaches Islamic art and architecture of Deccan and is consultant to the Aga Khan Trust’s project of restoring the Qutub Shahi tombs.
The tales that were
In 1995 he received a grant by the IFA (India Foundation for the arts) to document the “architecture of the Deccan: the kingdom of Golconda”. This brought him closer to the micro-history of the region. In his newspaper column, Tamarind Tales, he translated stories and facts from Urdu and Persian texts.
VN Venugopal in Kochi has a scrapbook of stories on Kerala, collected over the last 35 years. In his case love for history was triggered after receiving a copy of Arnold J Toynbee’s A Study of History from Justice Neelkantan Menon, former Chief Justice of Cochin State. “I used to read literature, mainly fiction. After he asked me to read history, it changed my understanding towards one’s situation completely,” says Venugopal. While he accepts that history walks are a powerful outreach mode, he rues that this culture is not yet thriving in Kochi. A conversation with Venugopal is replete with stories of events, characters, and places often offering small details like the dress code or cars used during an event or the material procured for building a bridge.
“I have seen Kochi grow from a small village to a bustling metropolis,” he says recounting some fascinating events in the history of the city as it stands today. He recalls watching Sir RK Shanmukham Chetty, the Dewan of the Cochin State, plant two divi-divi saplings in 1944. One of the huge umbrella-like trees was brought down in June 2020 by the Cochin Smart City Mission Limited (CSML) to make way for drains and footpaths. “It was heart-rending. These trees were planted for beauty and shade and uprooted in the name of development,” he says. His latest addition to his scrapbook is a story on Post Box No. 9 in Munnar, the oldest in Kerala.
Meanwhile, thanks to Rajeev Pallikkonam, history walks have become popular in Kottayam, a town in central Kerala. In 2011 he founded Kottayam Nattukoottam, a group interested in local history, heritage and conservation, and last year conducted the Old Kottayam Heritage Walk. Rajeev likes to unearth history on his own and undertakes travel, study and research. He shares his findings in articles and social media. “It is important to know the geography of a place to get an insight into its history,” says Rajeev about heritage walks and the importance of visiting the location.
In Kolkata, Anthony Khatchaturian’s popular Colonial Ghost Walk, has a macabre tinge and was inspired by the night walks in London. “I stitched together 75% history with 25% of ghost stories associated with these heritage buildings,” says Anthony, launching into the story of how the spirits of two murdered Anglo-Indian women still haunt New Market at night and why the sound of the piano is still heard at Garstin Place, or how the sounds of a carriage ring out at midnight at Writer’s Building.
Originally a three-hour walk, the Colonial Ghost Walk was restarted with COVID-19 protocols from November 6. “We now cover the four-kilometre route that begins in New Market and ends at Writer’s Building in cars,” says Anthony. Of Armenian descent, he belongs to the Galstaun family who were property developers till 1947 and constructed famous Kolkata landmarks like Queen’s Mansion, Nizam Palace and Freemason’s Lodge.
With important personalities like British Prime Minister Boris Johnson having been on his walks, Anthony emphasises on “the need to think beyond text books to enable history find its correct target, value and meaning.”
