Why Red
Fort?
By Kris
Tee
Every year on
Independence Day, the Prime Minister hoists the Tricolour and addresses the
nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi. It is a well choreographed ritual
known to every young school-going child. This is a tradition that has remained
unchanged ever since the first time the tricolor was hoisted in independent
India on 15th August 1947.
Why Red Fort?
Why is it not done at Rashtrapati Bhavan? After all that was where the
representative of the British crown resided. But the founding fathers chose the
Red Fort for a reason. Why is the flag hoisted there each year on Independence Day?
Herein lies a
tale worth telling.
Let us take a
peek at the history of this remarkable and iconic set of buildings. The Red
Fort was constructed between 1638 and 1649 by Shah Jahan. (Although there is
some debate on whether he actually built it, let us not go there for the
moment) It was constructed as a palace cum defensive complex, where the emperor
and his family and retainers resided. After Shah Jahan the last Mughal emperor
of significance was Aurangzeb. Thereafter it was downhill for the once mighty
Mughals.
The weakness
of the Mughals did not go unnoticed. A series of invaders followed – Nadir Shah
in 1739, after which the Jats led by Maharaja Suraj Mal in 1753 captured Delhi.
The serial invader Ahmed Shah attacked seven times between 1747 and 1767, On
one of his forays in 1756, he laid waste to Delhi. The following year, the
Marathas under Raghunath Rao defeated the Afghans and hoisted their saffron
pennant. In 1783, it was the turn of the Sikhs under Baghel Singh to enter the
Red Fort and hoist their flag. The Sikhs did not actually rule over Delhi and
eventually the control of Delhi and the Red Fort passed back to the Marathas. Meanwhile
the Brits had been quietly expanding their sphere of influence and in 1803,
defeated the Marathas led by Daulat Rao, at a battle fought near Patparganj.
Thereafter
the city remained under British control, while the Mughal emperor was allowed
to reside in the Red Fort. Things remained that way for the next few decades
till the uprising of 1857. Rebel soldiers from Bareilly, Meerut, Kanpur and
other centres of the revolt headed towards Delhi, overpowering the British
garrison there. Possibly they were the first ones to use the slogan ‘Chalo
Dilli’. An ageing and unwilling Bahadur Shah Zafar, the incumbent emperor was
appointed as the leader of the revolt, although the real power lay elsewhere.
The British
reprisal was swift and brutal. Bahadur Shah was captured by Capt Hodson, his
sons killed and the emperor packed off to Rangoon, where he eventually died in
1862. The fort was ransacked by the Brits, many of the Mughal buildings were
torn down and replaced with barracks. The East India Company’s flag was hoisted
on the Red Fort, till it was replaced by the British flag. However, Delhi
remained another city that the was taken over by the British, while the business
of governance was carried out from Calcutta.
Things went
on in this manner for over a half century, till the Brits decided to shift
their capital from Calcutta to Delhi. In 1911, King George V and his queen
visited India and the Royal Durbar was held in Delhi. They entered the Red Fort
and possibly even waved out to their subjects from one of the jharokhas.
Once again,
things moved along at a sedate pace in the fort while the world began to
undergo cataclysmic changes. The First World War came and went, swallowing the
cream of India’s youth in the process. A few years later, a second World War
erupted and young men began to be shipped off in droves to fight in places they
had neither heard of nor had anything to do with.
In the
turbulent wartime years of the 1940s, two important events that would have
their impact on the Red Fort took place far away. In August 1942, the Indian
National Army was formed by Rash Behari Bose from Indian soldiers captured by
the Japanese. The following year, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose set up the Azad
Hind Government in Singapore.
Subhas
Chandra Bose, reportedly visited the grave of Bahadur Shah Zafar and his reignited
the concept of marching to Delhi with his famous call Chalo Dilli, thus invoking
both, the rebels of 1857 and the emperor, and
the idea of the retaking the ancient citadel – He repotedly swore, ”Our
task will not end until our surviving heroes hold the victory parade on the
graveyard of the British empire, at the Lal Quila, the Red Fort of ancient
Delhi”.
The Azad Hind
Fauj was subsequently defeated by the Brits, and its leaders captured. Col Shah
Nawaz Khan, Col Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon
and Col Prem Kumar Sehgal were arrested and brought to the Red Fort
where they were incarcerated in one of the baolis converted into a prison. They
were then tried within the fort. By then, the entire country’s focus was on the
Lal Quila and there were mass upheavals in protest across the country.
The British
had inadvertently transformed Shah Jahan’s fort into a symbol of their own
dominance. It was the place where a century ago, the leader of the uprising and
the last Mughal Emperor had been imprisoned and tried, before he was exiled. It
was now the place where once again leaders of another uprising were being
tried.
In keeping
with the mood of the people and with prevailing sentiment, it was only fitting
that on 15th August 1947, the end of the British empire be marked by
a ceremony witnessed by the teeming masses, where the British flag was lowered
and the Tricolour hoisted in its place. The citadel had been reclaimed.
The first
Prime Minister of independent India then addressed the fledgling nation for the
first time, wherein he regretted the absence of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. It
has since become a standard practice for Prime Ministers to hoist the flag and
address the nation from the Red Fort.
References:
https://thewire.in/history/red-fort-history-independence-india
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_National_Army
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azad_Hind
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Delhi
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