Nizamuddin: A timely museum

Earlier this year, the doors finally opened on the Humayun World Heritage Site Museum, completing a 27-year restoration of one of Delhi’s most celebrated areas: the Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti.

Since 1997, the Nizamuddin Urban Renewal Initiative has meticulously renovated four major heritage sites here: the 90-acre Sunder Nursery, the 16th-century Batashewala Tomb-Garden Complex, the Mughal-era Azimganj Serai and Humayun's Tomb itself.

The Museum – built underground to preserve the integrity of the tomb complex – now provides a place to showcase the art, culture and architectural history of the Nizamuddin area, and marks the culmination of this major feat of heritage preservation.

Such projects can appear aloof from the material concerns of the people who live in their vicinity, but the work of the Nizamuddin initiative has yielded socio-economic benefits far beyond the physical preservation of the sites.

Visitor numbers have rocketed, while locals have been employed as craftspeople, upskilled as guides and empowered as entrepreneurs. Local infrastructure has been upgraded, women have moved into employment, and children have been educated through the initiative. In Sunder Nursery, locals now have a green space of exceptional beauty, providing cleaner air and a refuge for contemplation, meditation and relief from the pressures of the city.

Such developmental outcomes are hugely rewarding, and a prerequisite for this kind of work. AKTC does not undertake cultural heritage restoration anywhere without demonstrating that it will lead to improved quality of life for local residents.

Historic sites on the scale of Humayun’s Tomb are critical assets in their locality, with economic potential not only for today but for future generations. Often, they are the only viable asset the local community has, and it is only fair that their value is realised.

But the Nizamuddin area is not only an economic asset, it is a cultural one. Its restoration does far more than create jobs or drive economic activity, it preserves a priceless cultural inheritance for India and the world. Now, the Humayun World Heritage Site Museum explains and communicates this inheritance to the area’s millions of visitors.

It is a legacy India should cherish. The Nizamuddin area is a living testament to the deep veins of ethnic pluralism, religious syncretism and cultural tolerance that run through the country’s history. India’s radical diversity is physically embodied in the tangle of architectural styles that interweave in the precinct, evidencing over five centuries of continuous building activity. Tughlaq, Mughal, Sufi, Rajput and Colonial structures can all be found within a few hundred metres of each other, reflecting this wealth of influences.

Humayun’s Tomb is a microcosm of the same phenomenon, incorporating a range of pre-Islamic Hindu elements into its Mughal architectural style. Its finials, roof canopies, lattice work and striking red sandstone construction all reflect the influence of Hindu artisans, speaking to the fusion of styles and techniques that characterised Mughal architecture.

Taking its name from Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya – a Sufi saint whose teachings emphasised love, tolerance and spirituality – Nizamuddin has always attracted poets, musicians and scholars, making it a natural cradle for Hindustani culture.

Many of the area’s tombs house the remains of giants of the arts, including the legendary poet Amir Khusrau, credited with pioneering Hindustani classical music and poetry, and with laying the foundations for genres like qawwali and the ghazal – still central to Hindustani culture. Other celebrated bones are interred nearby, such as those of Mirza Ghalib, the famed Urdu poet, Jahanara Begum, the daughter of Shah Jahan, and Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khana, whose dohas are still widely read in Hindi school books today.

The lives of such people, as much as the precinct’s architectural polychromatism, exemplify the mutual enrichment that has prevailed here between Hinduism and Islam over the centuries, especially between the more mystical Sufi and Bhakti strands.

It is inevitable that a country as diverse as India will experience episodes of tension, as well as harmony, as its history amply testifies. But if history does repeat itself, nations are entitled to ask the question: which history? As modern India works to unify the sprawling cultural diversity it embodies, Nizamuddin is a reminder of how much has already been achieved.