What Mumbai can learn from a project that records the oral narratives of the residents of Delhi-s 12th century village, Khirki
Khirki village, which is located in the heart of South Delhi, dates back to circa 1145 AD, when a zamindar, Khoobi Singh Chauhan, moved from Indore in MP to Delhi, and settled down on a huge stretch of farmland. Today, it is dotted with haphazardly built
To Mumbai, the labyrinthine alleys of Khirki village in New Delhi, would be as alien, as its 190-odd gaothans would be to the capital. What binds them is their determination to survive, even as rampant development threaten to mar their existence. Today, reduced to urban villages — when they were once shining torchbearers of community living — the likes of Khirki either suffer from government neglect, or closer home, risk being bulldozed.
But, simultaneously, a culture is also being lost. It’s what compelled Mumbai-based The Citizens Archive of India CAI to touch base with 24-year-old Khirki resident Ekta Chauhan, who for long has endeavoured to collect the stories of her people — the earliest settler being her ancestor, Khoobi Singh Chauhan, who migrated from Indore in MP to Delhi in 1145 AD, and decided to till land.
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Today, Khirki is no longer the land of farmers. In fact, with residents haphazardly adding floors, and eating into their own land to accommodate their burgeoning population, the village struggles to breathe — some lanes are so narrow that just one person can pass at a time. Yet, 90 families of the Chauhans, who Ekta describes as her extended family, continue to live here. There are others, including the migrant population of Malayalees, and residents from African nations and Afghanistan, who reside on the fringes. It’s in the midst of this fast-changing narrative of Khirki, Ekta and the CAI have collaborated to record the oral accounts of its elderly residents.
Before all is lost
Boasting of Khirki Masjid, a mosque constructed by Khan-I-Jahan Junan Shah, the Prime Minister of Feroz Shah Tughlaq 1351–1388 of the Tughlaq Dynasty, and Satpula, a 14th-century dam built by Mohammad Bin Tuglaq, which also served as the outer wall of the fourth city of Delhi — Jahanpanah, Khirki is not just culturally vibrant, but also historically significant.
Ekta, a heritage enthusiast who studied the subject at St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and did her Master’s in public policy at National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, currently conducts walks at the village over the weekend. She felt an urgent need to tell Khirki’s forgotten story, because of how little the present generation of kids knew about the place. “When I was a child, my grandparents would tell me stories about how Khirki was this self-sufficient and thriving farming heartland, with a lake of its own,” she recalls. “Because everyone was related to each other, we were like a big family,” she adds.
The Citizens Archive of India team led by Malvika Bhatia right has collaborated with Ekta Chauhan for her project, Dilli Ki Khirki. Pic/Datta Kumbhar
Things changed rapidly, when the village land was bought off by the government during 1960s and 1970s. “These farms covered what is now Select Citywalk Mall, Saket district court, colonies of Malviya Nagar, Saket and Greater Kailash,” she says. Not only was the place around the village transforming, people also began losing their livelihoods. Her grandfather was among the first generation of men to find jobs outside the village.
With the passing away of the elderly in her family and that of the rest, the stories of a ‘life lived’ were dying too. “I also felt a general lack of enthusiasm among my younger cousins to know more about Khirki,” she says. This is when Ekta reached out to her former colleague Malvika Bhatia, who currently helms The Generation 1947 project at the CAI, where they “interview anyone born before 1947, with a story to tell”. Khirki’s distinct story immediately caught Bhatia’s interest, and CAI decided to back Ekta’s project, Dilli Ki Khirki. “The idea is to interview residents, mostly those over 60 years old, and to get them to share their stories about life in Khirki before things changed,” says Ekta. Bhatia and her team at CAI currently provide Ekta with the back-end and technical support.
“Before she started the interviews, I took her through the entire interview process and followed up on the questions she could ask the interviewees,” says Bhatia. After the interview is recorded on both video and audio, the data is then shared with CAI. That’s where CAI’s work begins. “We extract the audio, clean it up, and then get down to the tough part of transcribing,” says Bhatia. Since March, Ekta has interviewed over eight residents, and the archival material is currently available with the CAI. They are also trying to acquire old photographs from the villagers, which will be scanned and kept in the archives.
Ekta Chauhan, 24, a resident of Khirki, has been conducting heritage walks, to highlight the historical significance of the village, most known for Khirki Masjid, a mosque constructed by Khan-I-Jahan Junan Shah, the Prime Minister of Feroz Shah Tughlaq between 1351 and 1388. Pic/Nishad Alam
Everyone has a story
Misri Devi Kaushik, who is around 95 years old and currently, the oldest surviving member in the village, was Ekta’s oldest interviewee. While the interview didn’t last more than 15 minutes because of her poor health, through Kaushik, Ekta learned of how the Chauhans revered the Brahmins, the minority community that she belonged to, and resided in the village. Khirki also had three separate wells — one for the Chauhans, the other for the Brahmins and one for the untouchables. The so-called untouchables were pushed to one corner of the village. “I have been told that some members from this community still reside in Khirki, and it would be interesting to hear what they have to say about life here,” says Ekta.
Her most interesting interview though, was with 65-year-old Nathuram Rai, who belongs to the Brahmin clan called the Bhatts, known to be designated record keepers of the community. “They visit every village [a village’s turn might come in 5-6 years] and make a record of all the marriages, births, deaths etc. Nathuram’s ancestors have been following this profession for ages. Earlier, the records were kept orally, then maintained on palm leaves and now in handwritten notebooks. Nathuram has around 150 villages in Delhi-Haryana-Western UP under him. The community uses a script called the Chakaravarti script, which is supposedly understood only by them and is passed down the generation,” she says. It was from him that Ekta learned about the story of her ancestor Khoobi Singh.
Mumbai’s gaothans next?
Bhatia, who recently interviewed a few residents from the East Indian heritage village, Matharpacady in Mazgaon, as part of The Generation 1947 project, says it would be interesting to record the oral narratives of communities that have lived in similar neighbourhoods in Mumbai too. However, lack of funds is proving to be a huge impediment, and CAI is looking for donations in order to undertake more projects. Matias Echanove, co-founder of urbz: user-generated cities, a research collective, which has been actively involved in preserving the stories of another heritage village, Khotachiwadi in Girgaum, says, “Collecting oral history is obviously important from a historical point of view because there is no better way to understand the city than from the point of view its inhabitants. It is also important for urban planning.”
While not on the lines of CAI, Echanove is working on preserving Khotachiwadi’s story too. “Many students visit Khotachiwadi — they take photos, videos, sketch the streets and bungalows. Unfortunately, none of that stays back. This rich material dies in folders and drawers. Khotachiwadi needs a heritage cell, where it can collect this material. We are systematically putting our work on Khotachiwadi online urbz_khotachiwadi. We are also putting together a new site with interviews of residents and photos of their houses and chawls.”
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