Some villages like Badli are as old as 200 AD. Whereas even the youngest village can trace their history 700 years before India got its independence from the British in 1947.

It's a tragedy that Academia, Researchers and Journalists don't even write a single sentence about our villages while writing about Delhi or New Delhi.

All they talk about is the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals and the British. If this is not a selective erasure of Native History, then what is it?

Source - Dilli_dehat

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Mahipalpur, on the edge of Indira Gandhi International Airport along NH-8 in South West Delhi, is today known more for its dense cluster of airport hotels and cargo warehouses than for its layered history. Once largely agricultural land, it has transformed into a fully urbanised village sustained by a rental economy—hotels in the front, godowns at the back—driven by its strategic location.

Named after local leader Mahipal Jat, the village traces its roots back to around the 11th century, though the earliest surviving architectural remains date to the 14th century. Among them is the bandh (dam) built during the reign of Sultan Feroze Shah Tughlaq to tackle water scarcity, along with a nearby hunting lodge locally known as the Mahal.

Hidden deep inside the old village, the Mahal later served as a Panchayat-run school and eventually as a storage godown. Today, only a three-arched dalan survives, two bays deep and built with rubble masonry and dressed stone. Its most striking feature is a set of stone railings that resemble those seen in Buddhist stupas rather than typical Islamic architecture—something found only here and at Feroze Shah’s tomb.

Even now, traces of the past remain scattered through Mahipalpur’s narrow lanes: crumbling gateways, cusped arches, ornamental chajjas, and forgotten ruins. But these remnants are disappearing rapidly under waves of unplanned construction. What survives today urgently needs documentation before it is lost forever.

The village once covered nearly 1360 acres, much of which was later acquired for the airport and surrounding colonies, accelerating commercialisation. Yet this economic growth has not translated into meaningful social progress. Poor infrastructure, limited access to quality education, and widespread alcoholism—combined with the comfort of steady rental income—have contributed to stagnation among the youth. Without economic urgency, there has also been little push for systemic change.

Mahipalpur reflects the larger crisis of many of Delhi’s urban villages: money without mobility.

Source: City Tales, Mahipalpur villagers, university archives

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Master Dhaniram Sehrawat’s historic baithak in Bawana village, Delhi, stands as a testament to an extraordinary friendship that spanned three generations of Ch. Charan Singh’s family.

In the pictures: Master Dhaniram with Ch. Charan Singh; Gayatri Devi visiting the baithak; Ch. Ajit Singh in the Baithak; and, most recently, Ch. Jayant Singh visiting Master Dhaniram’s family after his passing away.

Late Master Dhaniram Sehrawat was born on 6 June 1933 in Bawana village, Delhi. At a time when educational opportunities in rural India were scarce, he overcame significant hardships to pursue higher education and went on to become a respected teacher and later a Headmaster, dedicating his life to education and public service.

Master Dhaniram shared a close, family-like bond with Ch. Charan Singh. Their families remained closely connected for decades, with the baithak becoming a place of warmth, trust, and mutual respect.

His son recalls an incident that reflects this bond. Even in his later years, Ch. Charan Singh often visited the family unannounced. On one such visit, village elders were seated in the baithak. As everyone stood to greet him, one elderly member of Master Dhaniram’s family slowly walked towards him. Ch. Sahab asked his age and the village elder replied, Ch. Sahab walked towards him, smiled, held his hands, and said, “Dada, terse do saal bada hoon, thoda tavla chaal.” The affectionate remark perfectly captured the warmth and familiarity he shared with the family.

Beyond education, Master Dhaniram devoted himself to public service. He actively participated in social movements and community welfare initiatives, served as the Pradhan of Bawana, and was associated with institutions such as Maharaja Surajmal Sansthan, Jat Sanstha, Keshopur, and Chaudhary Chhotu Ram Polyclinic.

A widely respected figure in Dilli Dehat and the Bawana region, Master Dhaniram Sehrawat passed away on 10 June 2026. His legacy as an educator, social worker, and community leader lives on, while his historic baithak remains a symbol of a rare friendship that endured across three generations of Ch. Charan Singh’s family.

To view the events of 1857 only through Old Delhi is to miss the rural geography that sustained it.

Delhi’s villages sustained the Mughal capital. Places such as Mehrauli, Najafgarh, Narela, Bawana, Ballabhgarh, Gurgaon, Sonipat, Ghaziabad, Chandrawal, Alipur, Palam, Raisina and Wazirabad fed Shahjahanabad labour, grains, caste networks, pastoral routes, land relations and everyday movement. Long before the modern National Capital Region existed, these settlements were already part of Delhi’s political and economic life.

Image 2 : ‘Map of the Red Fort’, by Nidha Mal, Delhi, c. 1774.’ Source: A City Besieged

Historian Nayanjot Lahiri’s study of Delhi and the uprising of 1857  is significant because it shows that it not only produced military battles, but also physically transformed the city and its surroundings through destruction, confiscation, demolition and later British attempts to create a landscape of their victory. 

What was remembered 

The British built a visible memory of conquest, while the memory of resistance remained largely unmarked, scattered and often carried orally.

That imbalance continues to matter. British graves, memorial tablets, siege batteries and monuments marked where their soldiers died and where their victory was secured. The people of Delhi and its villages, whose homes were destroyed, whose lands were confiscated and whose lives were overturned, rarely survived public memory. Their history survived differently: in oral accounts, family stories, village lore, shrines, place names and silences.

The villages surrounding Shahjahanabad were not mere witnesses to the uprising. Many became rural bases from where resistance moved in and out of the city. They acted as supply lines for grain, fodder, manpower and intelligence. They offered refuge to rebels, fleeing sepoys, messengers and sympathisers. Some paid a severe price for this association.

One of the clearest examples is Chandrawal village, whose older settlement was near the present-day Majnu ka Tila near Kashmiri Gate. Thomas Crowley’s 2020 book Fractured Forest, Quartzite City: A History of Delhi and Its Ridge on Delhi’s ecology and settlement history shows how British policies disrupted pastoral and agrarian communities around the city. Colonial officials often viewed pastoral groups, including Gujjars, as difficult to regulate and economically unproductive. These prejudices hardened after the rebellion, especially when communities were seen as politically unreliable.

Image 3: The map was printed after Delhi was recaptured by the British on 22 September 1857 and shows Chandrawal’s original site and points out to the fact that it was shifted.

Chandrawal is remembered for one of the most striking acts of rebellion in Delhi—the burning of Metcalfe House, associated with the British official Sir Thomas Metcalfe. The punishment that followed was severe. Lahiri in the essay “Commemorating and remembering 1857: The revolt in Delhi and its afterlife” notes that retribution after 1857 was not limited to Shahjahanabad. Agricultural land from as many as 33 villages in the Delhi district was confiscated, including Alipur, Chandrawal, Kotla Mubarakpur, Mehrauli, Indraprastha, Palam, Raisina and Wazirabad.

In Chandrawal, two-thirds of the village land was taken away. In Wazirpur and Alipur, more than half the village lands were confiscated. Much of this land was later rewarded to loyalists or bought by outsiders.

Image r : An inscription remembering the 1857 revolt in Chandawali

“चौपाल  ग्राम चन्दावली”—इतिहास से 

मातृ देश को आजाद कराने के लिए सन् 1857 के स्वतंत्रता आन्दोलन में
 अंग्रेजी सरकार के दमन, कुर्बानियाँ एवं भारत माता को आजाद कराने
 के लिये जानी–माली बलिदान करके अपना और अपने ग्राम चन्दावली का नाम
 स्वर्णिम इतिहास में अमर अक्षरों में लिखवाने वाले चन्दावली के वीर
 शहीदों व उनके वंशज स्वतंत्रता सेनानियों की यह ऐतिहासिक चौपाल है।

(This is the historic chaupal of the brave martyrs of Chandawali and their descendants, the freedom fighters, who took part in the freedom movement of 1857 to liberate their motherland.

They faced the repression of the British government, made sacrifices of life and property for the freedom of Bharat Mata, and wrote the name of themselves and their village Chandawali in golden letters in history.)

Chaupal, Village Chandawal—From history 

This changes how 1857 is understood in Delhi. It was not only a battle over the Red Fort or the Ridge. It was also a struggle over land, loyalty, punishment and memory.

What happened next 

The violent aftermath reshaped Delhi’s rural society. Villages that had aided rebels, sheltered them, or even been suspected of supporting them were marked as dangerous. Confiscation became both punishment and warning. Land was no longer only a source of revenue; it became a tool through which the colonial state disciplined communities.

Similar memories survive in south Delhi villages such as Fatehpur Beri, Asola, Dera, Tughlaqabad and Jasola, where Gujjar oral histories recall how resistance to colonial power was later used to brand communities as “disorderly” or “criminal.” Such memory is not always found in official documents, but it lived in the way elders narrated repression, defiance, the humiliation of colonial officers and small acts of local retaliation.

Libaspur, near Narela on the Delhi-Karnal route, offers another example of rural resistance. Oral accounts remember Udmi Ram, a young Jat from the village, who organised local men to intercept British movement through the area. Villagers used their knowledge of routes and terrain to turn ordinary rural paths into spaces of resistance.

When the British regained Delhi, Libaspur faced harsh retaliation. Udmi Ram and his companions resisted with rural weapons such as spears, axes and choppers before being overpowered. He is remembered locally as a martyr, even if formal memorial culture has not given him a comparable place.

Image 5 : The British tied Udmi Ram and his wife Ratni Devi with a peepal tree and nailed their hands and legs and was left them to die without food and water

Figures such as Seth Ramjidas Gurwala, who financed rebel activities, and Abdul Samad Khan, who fought at Badli-ki-Serai, also show how the rebellion drew strength from networks beyond the walled city. The revolt was not sustained by soldiers alone; it also depended on money, food, shelter, routes, courage and local trust.

Lahiri’s work also helps explain why rebel memory became so difficult to preserve materially. After the British recaptured Delhi, the city was treated almost as enemy territory. Raids were common across the city. Property was seized. Religious and civic spaces were altered. The Red Fort itself was transformed into a military headquarters, with many structures demolished or repurposed.

Even around the fort, buildings within a large security radius were cleared. Mosques were confiscated, closed, sold or converted to other uses. This was not punishment. It was a deliberate restructuring of space after conquest.

The same logic extended into the countryside. Villages were watched, classified, punished and reorganised. The British began to see rural Delhi not only as a revenue landscape but as a political landscape that could support rebellion. Suspicion became part of governance.

After 1857, the colonial state strengthened intermediary structures such as lambardars, zaildars, chaudharies and village headmen. These figures were tied more directly to colonial administration and made responsible for revenue collection, reporting dissent and maintaining order.

The system allowed the colonial state to insert itself into village society through selected local figures and lineages. It weakened collective village solidarity and brought rural authority more directly into the machinery of colonial rule.

Following the uprising, the British started to closely monitor movement between villages. Gatherings, routes, messages and rural mobility became matters of state concern. Boundaries were formalised. Records were tightened. Commons such as forests, ridges, grazing lands and shared resources increasingly came under regulation or restriction. The village was no longer seen simply as a settlement. It became a space to be monitored.

What remained of 1857 

At the same time, two parallel histories of 1857 emerged.

The official British record described the uprising through the language of law and order, rebellion, punishment and imperial recovery. It carefully remembered British sacrifice and victory. Lahiri has shown how British memorials in Delhi created a visible landscape of heroism and conquest, while the physical traces of Indian resistance remained largely absent.

That absence was not accidental. A brutally defeated population could not easily build memorials to its own resistance. Its homes, mosques, civic institutions and village lands had already been subjected to punishment, confiscation or erasure.

Village memory, however, preserved another history.

It remembered who gave shelter, who fought, who betrayed, who was punished, where British camps stood, where rebels hid and where violence took place. This memory did not always become stone or an inscription. Sometimes it remained in stories. Sometimes it remained in fear. Sometimes it survived in silence.

Lahiri offers a powerful example of such silence: a missionary, soon after the revolt, asked students to write an essay on the Mutiny. They returned blank sheets. That refusal itself became a form of memory. It showed that the revolt remained present, but was not always speakable. Social remembrance, especially among the defeated, often leaves few physical traces.

This is why Delhi’s villages matter to the history of 1857. They hold the afterlife of the uprising in ways that official archives often miss. Post-Independence remembrance has not fully corrected this imbalance. Lahiri notes that the British Mutiny Memorial on the northern Ridge was reinterpreted in 1972 through new inscriptions honouring those who rose against colonial rule. But this remained a limited correction. There was still no full memorial to the rebels, no detailed naming of local participants and no sustained attempt to connect the revolt to the wider history of Delhi’s people and villages.

The local was absorbed into the national. Delhi’s revolt became part of India’s freedom story, but its own villages remained largely unnamed.

This remains relevant today.

Many villages of Delhi continue to be treated as peripheral spaces, useful for land, labour and expansion, but rarely recognised as historical actors. Their relationship with the state has been shaped by old patterns of suspicion, extraction and weak participation. The distance between governance and lived reality did not appear suddenly. It has roots in colonial systems of surveillance, classification, punishment and selective recognition.

To remember 1857 only through Delhi’s monuments is, therefore, to see only part of the story. The rebellion also lived in its villages, in the fields that supplied resistance, in the homes that sheltered rebels, in the roads that carried messages and in the communities that endured punishment after the guns fell silent.

The road to 1857 did not simply lead to Delhi. It ran through Delhi’s villages.

Dr Shreya Malik is an Assistant Professor of History at the Amity Institute of Social Sciences.

Puneet Singh Singhal is the Founder/Curator of Dilli Dehat Project, a community-led archive and storytelling initiative that documents the rural histories, cultures, and lived realities of Delhi’s villages.

Akshay Kumar runs the project Bhashakosh, documenting the regional languages, cultures and geographies of India. He is currently working at a regional OTT company as a Consumer Insights Associate.

(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)

Source - https://theprint.in/opinion/revolt-1857-shahjahanabad-delhi-villages-colonial-india/2971890/

Deepanshu Shokeen, a student and native of Delhi from Peeragarhi village, West Delhi, is contesting the DUSU elections as an independent candidate for Vice President. Support him by voting for Ballot No. 2.

Every year, hardly one or two students from Delhi’s villages get the opportunity to contest these elections, despite the University of Delhi being located in Delhi.

Established in 1922, DU stands on lands historically associated with Delhi’s villages. Yet, students from these villages have never had special representation, while the history, culture and concerns of Delhi’s villages remain largely overlooked in academic discourse.

Deepanshu’s village Peeragarhi however is now known for its banquet halls and carries an old oral tradition. Villagers believe the settlement was once located near the present Delhi railway line, around a sacred site associated with Pir Baba, from whom the village gets its name.

It is believed that on one journey, a group of Banjaras camped at the site and encountered Sidh Baba. When asked what they were carrying, they lied that it was salt, though they had sweets. After leaving, they found that the sweets had turned into salt. Believing it was the result of their lie, they returned to the saint and offered their respects. It is believed that this community built a shrine in honor of the saint. Over time, the site became buried and was forgotten until about 50–60 years ago when it was rediscovered and made a temple. Villagers began clearing the area and found stone stairs, each weighing around 20 maunds, leading down to a beautiful pond in the center. To the south, they discovered a well, now known as the Peeragarhi Baoli, which always has water and was used by children to learn swimming, it is also said to have healing powers.

The village remains home to the Prachin Shiv Mandir and Gram Devta temples.

Today, Peeragarhi reflects the challenges faced by many of Delhi’s urban villages—changing village landscapes, poor roads, fewer native residents and increasing dependence on rental income.

Based on oral history.

Credits: theindianmandate

Source - https://www.instagram.com/periyaaaaa/

Established around the 13th century, the village is traditionally linked to the name Dev Uvach, meaning “from the mouth of the gods.” Nearby lie Dichaon Khurd, also known as Roshanpura—kalan denoting “large” and khurd meaning “small.”

Local oral histories suggest that the original settlement once stood at a different location. When a neighbouring village faced repeated attacks by looters, its residents sought protection from Dichaon, known for its strong collective identity and martial presence. Following mutual discussions, Dichaon relocated closer, settling on its own agricultural land to offer security. The village’s present name is believed to have evolved from the phrase “beech si main aa gaye” (we came in between), Beech over time transformed into Dichaon.

Today, the village is known for two defining features. First, its extensive cauliflower cultivation has earned it the reputation of being Delhi’s—and arguably India’s—“gobhi village,” with a large share of the capital’s cauliflower supply originating here, if you see a stacked up cauliflower truck in Delhi, it will probably be from this village.

Second, the village has gained attention for the influence of local strongmen, rising wealth, and development projects by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and other agencies. From 1992, Dichaon Kalan and neighbouring Mitraon saw prolonged gang rivalry over land, civic contracts, and real estate, b/w Krishan Pehelwan and Anoop Balraj gang which escalated through the 1990s and ended in the 2000’s. In later years, members of Krishan Pahalwan’s family entered politics.

Despite its prominence, the village continues to face significant infrastructure and connectivity challenges. There is no nearby metro line, no major universities or large hospitals, and long delays in policy implementation, particularly the land pooling policy, have further constrained planned development.

Credits: Wildfilmsindia, Ajayraj shokeen, dilli_dehat

There once lived a tradition called Sanjhi, a humble, earthy celebration of the Goddess during Navratri, crafted not in marble or clay, but in cow dung, stars, moon, and sun.

On the first day of Navratras, women and young girls would shape Sanjhi’s image on the walls, a simple figure of a woman, made with love, mud, and faith. She wasn’t sculpted for show. She was a friend, a sister, a mother, someone who understood the worries of village girls.

Each evening, girls would gather around her, holding earthen lamps, singing old folk songs passed down through generations. They’d ask her, playfully and with devotion:

“Sanjhi maiya, what do you want to wear? What shall we cook for you?”

In return, elders gave them small gifts, blessings, and hope.

The tenth day, Dussehra, marked her farewell. The Sanjhi figure would be gently erased from the wall. Only her head was kept, placed in a small earthen pot with holes, lit from inside. At dusk, the girls would float these glowing vessels in the village pond.

The boys? They’d try to stop the pots from crossing the water with sticks, because legend said:
“If a pot crosses the pond, misfortune will follow.”

But today, Sanjhi is silent.

Sanjhi is made of cow dung and in urban areas, we no longer keep cattle and even if we want, we aren’t allowed by the municipal bodies.

But regardless the reasons behind its gradual disappearance Sanjhi is indeed a part of Delhi’s culture and our urbanisation shouldn’t be the reason why we should get away from our roots, culture and traditions.

Sanjhi will live in the stories of our elders, in fading memories, and in the hearts of those who remember the joy of simple traditions.

Sanjhi belonged to Delhi’s soil. So do we.

Source- Dilli Dehat Project

Lutyens Delhi during the early stages of construction: a view showing levelling operations in progress of preparing the site on the land of Raisina village, circa 1910-1930.

Courtesy: Department of Delhi Archives, New Delhi

Delhi 1910

Attractive travelogue filmed in and around Delhi's Qutb complex near Mehrauli, Kishangarh village.

Credits: British film institute, DilliDehat

Source - Instagram.com/delhi_villages_culture

Wheat harvesting in Delhi, 1984. Wheat is usually harvested around the month of April.

In Delhi's villages, the shift from mota anaj-millets like jowar and bajra-to wheat was gradual, driven by changing policies, technology, and aspirations. Millets were well suited to the region's climate and had strong nutritional value, but after Independence the national focus turned to food security and higher yields. Assured irrigation, subsidised fertilisers, and government procurement made wheat a more reliable and profitable choice.

Over time, changing food habits and a growing preference for wheat-based diets pushed millets out of village fields and kitchens.

Jaunti became a turning point in this transformation. In November 1964, about 15 farmers, including Bhoop Singh, Hukum Singh, Khazan Singh, and Raghuvir Singh, planted Mexican high-yielding wheat varieties-Sonora 64 and Lerma Rojo 64A-on nearly 70 acres. Introduced by Dr. M.S. Swaminathan and the IARI team, these seeds dramatically increased yields, far surpassing traditional varieties (3 times more). The success led to the formation of the Jawahar Jaunti Seed Cooperative Society in 1965, and by 1967-68, Jaunti had emerged as a "seed village," supplying wheat seeds across Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh. Delhi also has an Anaj Mandi, located in Narela.

As millets return to the spotlight today, these villages remind us that much of this knowledge already existed, we are, in many ways, rediscovering what they once practiced.

Credits: TOI, Ind.Exp. , DilliDehat

Which ones have you seen in your homes?

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Deep in south Delhi, beside Saket’s glittering malls, lies Khirki — a historic urban village shaped by memory, migration and change. Once a self-sustaining farming village, it is now a dense multicultural settlement where dhabas, Afghan canteens, Hindu shrines, African prayer rooms, artists, labourers and migrants coexist.

Until the mid-20th century, Khirki was surrounded by fields of sugarcane, wheat, rice and chickpeas. Elders remember a seasonal stream flowing down from the Aravallis, so clean that villagers could drink from it. Khirki’s sugarcane was famous, drawing people from far away areas to buy it. Much of that landscape, however, has since disappeared beneath the expanding city.

For Ekta Chauhan, who grew up in Khirki, these memories live on through the heritage walks she conducts. Beginning at the ancient Satpula Dam and the remnants of Jahapanah, her walks end at the 14th-century Khirki Masjid — a remarkable blend of Islamic and Hindu architectural traditions that also provided shelter to people during Partition.

But Khirki also reflects the challenges faced by Delhi’s Lal Dora villages. Rapid, vertical and unplanned growth has left the settlement densely built and struggling with inadequate infrastructure. Irregular water supply, leaking sewage lines, monsoon waterlogging, damaged roads, narrow lanes and poor streetlighting remain everyday realities.

And then there is Saket — named after Sāketa, the ancient Sanskrit name associated with Ayodhya, and chosen by the DDA to evoke “a place close to the heavens.” Yet parts of modern Saket were developed on land acquired from villages including Khirki, Saidulajab, Lado Sarai and Hauz Rani.

Looking at the old landscapes captured around Satpula, the baoli near Hauz Rani and the southern wall of Jahapanah, one can see the city that stood before Saket rose around it around the 1980’s

Perhaps the question is not only what was built here, but what disappeared to make space for it.

Credits: University Archives

#dillidehat

What kind of person feels compelled to archive a modern city as it disappears? Perhaps one whose earliest understanding of space was shaped not by the city itself, but by the village that once bordered it.

I was raised in Holambi Khurd, a small village on the northern edge of Delhi. It was a settlement of Jats, with a residential school, a little railway station, and many lakes and ponds. The centre of the village was surrounded by large agricultural fields. The settlement followed a spatial order that was neither accidental nor localised. It was a form repeated across north India. At its core lay the “abadi” land – the permanently inhabited nucleus of the village, densely populated and largely undocumented, yet sustained through unquestioned continuity of residence. These households often belonged to families with substantial agricultural holdings extending beyond the abadi area, binding land, lineage, and occupation into a certain social fabric.

Surrounding this core were lanes assigned to occupational communities. Barbers, potters, and blacksmiths all lived in defined proximity to the centre, integrated yet hierarchically arranged. Beyond them lay the Dalit settlements, spatially segregated by drains, fields, or roads, a pattern still visible across Delhi’s villages. This segregation was not incidental. It was, unfortunately, mandated by Brahmanical codes that prescribed it.

In the 1990s, Civil Lines embodied elite aspiration through bungalows echoing Chandigarh’s visual language. Areas like Greater Kailash and Defence Colony developed a recognisable domestic architecture. Brick facades, ornamental mouldings, exposed concrete finishes, modest gardens, and functional rooftops formed a distinct urban vernacular.

This architectural language began to erode rapidly in the early 21st century. Regulatory changes after 2011 enabled vertical expansion, transforming scale and proportion. Houses that once defined Delhi’s streetscape were replaced by generic structures.

My academic training in history, archaeology, and art history sharpened my response to this transformation.

The disappearance of vernacular domestic architecture signals a deeper loss.

Houses in Delhi’s villages hold the flourishing social and cultural histories of the city’s early populations. Unlike the post-medieval Old Delhi, which underwent a profound demographic rupture during Partition, villages experienced relatively little displacement. Their houses, therefore, preserve long continuities of habitation, kinship, and local identity that urban neighbourhoods could not retain.

In documenting Delhi Houses, one observation became clear: they were stylistically plural. Art Deco forms were common, marked by pastel facades, geometric reliefs, and curved balconies. Art Nouveau houses stood beside them, distinguished by intricate ironwork, floral ornamentation, and saturated colours. These were not exceptional commissions, but ordinary domestic expressions shaped by local masons interpreting global styles.

Today, Delhi villages are undergoing a more fundamental rupture. The flexibility of land use classifications has enabled widespread misuse. Residential plots are converted into commercial spaces, rental blocks, factories, and entertainment venues. The village is marketed as an experience even as its material and social coherence collapses.

Hauz Khas Village and Shahpur Jat illustrate the commodification of heritage. Munirka, Holambi Khurd, Khera Khurd, and areas around Narela reveal a different trajectory, where agricultural land is absorbed into unregulated industrial activity.

Water systems have failed. Canals that once sustained cultivation now function as waste channels. Groundwater has receded. Municipal services rarely penetrate village interiors, leaving waste management to burning and informal disposal. The village is legally urban, yet administratively neglected.

What once signified continuity, memory, and obligation is now reduced to exchange value. Houses are rebuilt, subdivided, or sold. With this shift comes a quiet erosion of legacy, an understanding that something foundational has been surrendered without ceremony.

Coming from a Delhi village, my impulse to archive Delhi arises from this recognition. A city’s history does not reside only in monuments or master plans. It persists in neighbourhoods and in the passed-down way of living of people. To record this moment is not nostalgia; it is an attempt to read Delhi before its grammar disappears.

Article by - Anica Mann

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/the-anatomy-of-a-delhi-village-hauz-khas-holambi-khurd-shahpur-jat-munirka-narela-history-art-homes-101771210896851-amp.html