Word: mughals
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...authorities may not be much help either: a policeman in the heart of Delhi recently assured a bewildered tourist that the photo of the marble-domed building in a guidebook showed the Tomb of Hanuman, a Hindu monkey god. (It's actually the Tomb of Humayun, a 16th century Mughal Emperor). That's why Lucy Peck's Delhi: A Thousand Years of Building is one of the best things in years to have happened to Delhi's architecture enthusiasts...
...least three times). So many boastful tombs and forts designed for so many third-rate sultans! Know your history, and it's impossible to keep a straight face as you drive down the posh Lodi Road (named in honor of a dynasty that was routed by a small Mughal force in 1526) up to the gorgeous Safdarjang's Tomb (built for a Prime Minister who started a civil war during which Delhi was plundered by invaders), and continue along the even-posher Prithviraj Road (named after the city's last Hindu ruler, who lost his kingdom in 1192). Delhi...
...cartridges, which were rumored to be coated with the grease of pigs and cows, thereby forcing him to violate his Hindu beliefs. Pandey's putsch failed; he was court-martialed and executed. But the rebellion spread, with soldiers rising up across India and proclaiming an aging Mughal ruler as Emperor. The British brutally won back city after city, and extinguished the mutiny. But when the Indians finally threw the British out 90 years later, they celebrated 1857 as their first war of independence, and Pandey as its first martyr...
...Indian to dissent, I have to point out that the book has its problems. Sen gives too much weight to historical anomalies and aberrations to make his case. He loves to cite the Mughal Emperor Akbar as an illustration of how open-minded and inquisitive Indian monarchs could be. Yet Akbar was a one-off?none of his successors was as ecumenical, and a few were outright bigots. The might of orthodoxy and narrow-mindedness in Indian history is greater than Sen allows it to be, while acquired Western political traditions probably play a greater part in creating contemporary Indian...
...Part of the problem is that there is little effective legislation protecting ancient monuments, and while archaeological sites are granted nominal guardianship by the ASI, there is no system of architectural listing, and India's rich heritage of late Mughal and colonial domestic architecture is mostly unprotected by law. In the competition between development and heritage, the latter inevitably gives...