The decision by Britain to move its capital in India to Delhi was a rushed affair, which left the families of administrators fighting for space in pre-existing bungalows that were insufficient to house the thousands of people who migrated from Calcutta, the old seat of government.
The problem was that King George V, at the Delhi Durbar of 1911, simultaneously announced both the immediate transfer of the capital and the decision to build a new city to house government services and servants.
The viceroy, Lord Hardinge, hoped that “New Delhi” would be ready within four years. But due to the First World War, which imposed stringent funding constraints, it would take 20 years, until 1931, for the British to officially inaugurate their new city.
For two decades, the families that migrated to Delhi had to make do with living in Civil Lines, an area outside the northern walls of the old Mughal city where a small European community had made their home since the nineteenth century.
The area was not particularly developed, largely because Delhi, which was not a major trading center, had until that moment played a rather cursory role in British rule.
The British had first come to Delhi in 1803 after defeating the army of the Maratha Empire, which itself had eclipsed the Mughals. Many of the earliest European residents lived in the northeastern part of the walled Mughal city, unlike the later officials of the Raj who built exclusive residential areas.
Typical of this era was James Skinner, a half-Scottish, half-Rajput former mercenary, who fought for the British East India Company in the early nineteenth century. St. James’s Church, built by Col. Skinner, still survives in the northeastern part of Mughal Delhi, near Kashmiri Gate, as do a number of colonial-era shops in this area.
After the Indian Uprising of 1857, during which Indian troops rebelled against British rule and seized much of the old town, things changed.
The British razed a large amount of the walled city after their victory and most European residents moved outside the northern walls to Civil Lines, a triangular area bordered by Delhi’s northern walls, the Jamuna River and a ridge of hills.
Rich foreign residents had built manor houses in this area before 1857. The most imposing was Ludlow Castle, a sprawling country estate constructed in the early nineteenth century by Samuel Ludlow, a British medical officer, and later an official residence for British Residents to the Mughal Court. (The house was destroyed in the 1960s to make way for a government school.)
But it was not until after the Uprising, with the walled city viewed as too dangerous, that the British began to develop Civil Lines as the center of British life.
They constructed bungalows and shops and a Gothic-style memorial to their victory over Indian forces on the ridge, although the area remained leafy.
When the British decided to move the capital to Delhi, administrators at first planned to transform Civil Lines and land further north to house government servants and their families. In the event, Edwin Lutyens, the chief architect of New Delhi, argued instead to place the new city to the south of “Old Delhi,” the walled Mughal city.
But while New Delhi was under construction, Civil Lines took on the surprising role of hub of Britain’s massive and profitable Indian empire. Lutyens himself lived in the Maidens Hotel – now the Oberoi Maidens – a smart accommodation that had been built in Civil Lines at the turn of the century.
“All the VIPs used to stay here,” said B.S. Parmar, who has managed the hotel for the past 15 years. We asked to see the suite where Lutyens had stayed. But an Oberoi corporate affairs official declined, asking for official letters of request and press credentials, which made us think that perhaps bureaucratic ghosts of the Raj were lingering in the hotel’s historic corridors.
Another luxury hotel from that era, Hotel Cecil, also survives and is now on the grounds of St. Xavier’s School. The guards will let you in after the students have gone home to have a look at the building, which now serves as the school’s chapel.
British representatives in India not lucky enough to get into these hotels fought over a small number of bungalows, and rents shot up. You can see some of these – now private residences or crumbling hulks – on Underhill Road and the area behind the Oberoi Maidens.
Lucy Peck, in “Delhi: A Thousand Years of Building,” a book with an interesting chapter on Civil Lines, says many families resorted to living in the tented encampments which had sprung up to house government and royal officials during the 1911 Durbar, a gathering of Indian and British royalty during which George V had proclaimed Delhi as the new capital.
The British worked swiftly to establish a temporary seat of government in Civil Lines. In 1912, they constructed a secretariat building to house government offices while North and South Blocks were constructed on Raisina Hill in New Delhi.
“For a building whose main use was to last such a short time,” Ms. Peck writes, “it is impressively grand.” The building now houses the Delhi State Assembly and offices.
The viceroy – Britain’s top official in the country – gave up a sumptuous mansion in Calcutta (now Kolkata) to move to a more modest building, constructed in 1902 as a British government guest house. After New Delhi was complete, the viceroy lived in the palatial Government House, now renamed Rashtrapati Bhavan, also on Raisina Hill. The residence in Civil Lines now houses offices of Delhi University.
The commander-in-chief of British forces lived in Alipore House built in 1917 near the Maidens Hotel, which is currently the campus of Indraprastha College for Women. In the 1930s, the commander-in-chief moved to the more sumptuous Flagstaff House in New Delhi, now known as Teen Murti House, a building which later became the residence of Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister.
After the exodus to New Delhi in the 1930s, Civil Lines saw a quick decline, becoming a much less-congested place. Some of Delhi’s wealthier families moved in after independence and today it’s much quieter and leafier than other parts of town, visited mainly by students heading to Delhi University’s sprawling campus or a number of Christian colleges.
Developers are now targeting the area, which could see it regain some of its pre-1930s bustle. Parsvnath Developers is planning a more than 20-floor luxury condominium development called La Tropicana in Civil Lines, an unusual project for a city of low-rise garden bungalows.
You can follow Mr. Wright on Twitter @TomWrightAsia.
Follow India Real Time on Twitter @indiarealtime.
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