BRITISH RESIDENCY IN DELHI

In 1639, during the Mughal period, Shah Jahan’s oldest and favourite son, Dara Shikoh, commissioned the building of a library in his mansion. When Shah Jahan fell ill in 1657, there was a crisis of succession because the Mughals never had in place a system of succession like primogeniture. Each time a ruler died or fell ill, there would be fratricidal struggles between the princes – which ultimately contributed to the eventual decline of the Mughal Empire in the war of succession after Aurangzeb’s death in 1707. During the crisis of succession after Shah Jahan’s death, Aurangzeb murdered Dara Shikoh and, according to the Venetian traveller Niccolao Mannuci, presented his head as a ‘gift’ to Shah Jahan that night. Thus began Aurangzeb’s reign.

After Dara Shikhoh’s death, the mansion was abandoned. Over time, the rest of the mansion was destroyed but the library remained; it changed hands many times until 1803, when the British captured the building and gave it to Sir David Ochterlony, the first Resident of Delhi.

The Residency system originates in the system of Subsidiary Alliances – a system of coercive agreements started by Lord Wellesley of the British East India Company between Indian states and the Company. Taking advantage of infighting between Indian states, Wellesley intended to pseudo-annex them with agreements, granting them protection from each other by the company and its superior weapons. The states would have to pay for the company armies they would receive, house them within their territory, and agree to not hold political communication with any other state without British approval – including other European states. In effect, this meant that the company controlled the Indian states which signed the agreements – including once-mighty states like Mysore and Hyderabad.

The resident in Delhi was arguably the most important one (before 1857) because of the tension between the Company and the declining Mughal Empire. Ochterlony, the first Resident in Delhi was an interesting figure because he adapted completely to Indian culture. He wore Indian clothes, smoked a hookah and had a harem of 13 wives, who paraded around Delhi behind him on separate elephants. He also held frequent dances at the Residency. Instead of tearing down Dara Shikoh’s old library building completely, he built a driveway, verandah and added pillars to the front, leaving whatever remained of the old Mughal structure intact (the basement and back walls).

After independance, the building became a storehouse for the Archeological Survey of India. Today, the building is a Partition Museum, telling the history of India and Pakistan’s bloody partition.