Mukul Kesavan: Growing up in Lutyens’ Delhi – an urban history in anecdotes

“Lutyens’ Delhi” means the colonial-era government and residential district associated with New Delhi and its grand, planned buildings. The name comes from Edwin Lutyens, a principal architect of New Delhi. It matters because the district represented political authority, official work, and social status. The author uses “Lutyens-wala” for the stage of life spent in government housing.

The article compares this world with older Delhi. Belvedere House in Calcutta is described as “Lutyens-like” because it stood behind walls, gardens, and large trees. The author’s later sarkari neighbourhoods connected family life to government employment and official institutions. This was different from Kashmiri Gate, where the family lived in a crowded older estate near the former city wall.

Today, “Lutyens’ Delhi” commonly evokes central government offices, official residences, and elite access. The article’s larger point is that geography can mark privilege. Moving into government districts changed the author’s relationship with the city, while private southern colonies later created another form of elite urban identity.

These neighbourhoods represented different layers of Delhi. Kashmiri Gate lay in Shahjahanabad, close to Civil Lines and the old city wall. Civil Lines had once served colonial officials and sahibs. New Delhi became the newer political and commercial centre. The southern colonies were private residential areas where the author spent adulthood.

The contrast appears in the author’s daily life. Kashmiri Gate had ageing shops, a gun shop, a luggage store, and the Sultan Singh Buildings estate. St Xavier’s occupied the former Cecil hotel, a grand 11-acre property beyond the wall on Raj Niwas Marg. Later, sarkari neighbourhoods made the author a “Lutyens-wala,” before private colonies made him a “south-Delhi-type.”

The city therefore changed not only physically but socially. Older areas lost status as New Delhi gained importance. Government neighbourhoods offered a different environment from the walled city, while southern colonies represented later private prosperity. The author presents this movement as a map of class, caste, and changing urban identity.

The source does not state how much Delhi’s population or built-up area grew between 1962 and the present. It also does not identify migration streams or give figures for people arriving from particular regions. Any precise answer would require outside demographic and urban records, not just this memoir. The article instead offers a personal window into change.

Its evidence is spatial and social. The author begins in Kashmiri Gate, moves through sarkari neighbourhoods during childhood and youth, and later lives in private colonies south of the Ring Road. The text also notes that New Delhi had become the city’s centre, while Kashmiri Gate’s older shops had declined.

This means the article supports a conclusion about expanding and shifting urban life, but not a measured scale of growth. A fuller history would compare census populations, municipal boundaries, and satellite or planning records. It would also need migration data. Those facts are not supplied here, so they should not be inferred from the author’s experience alone.

When Delhi’s centre of gravity shifted toward New Delhi, Kashmiri Gate lost much of its earlier status. The area had once been an upscale shopping node for sahibs living in Civil Lines. By the early 1960s, however, its shops had “run to seed.” The change shows how political geography can reshape commercial life.

The author gives vivid examples. A gun shop and a large luggage store still advertised links to viceroys and other colonial grandees, but both had seen better days. Carlton’s, described as a “family” restaurant, felt like a down-market version of Kwality’s. Behind the shops stood the Sultan Singh Buildings residential estate, reached through a dark passage smelling of sewage.

Kashmiri Gate did not disappear. It remained a lived-in neighbourhood with family homes, schools, and older property histories. Yet its decline in prestige reveals how a new capital district can redirect money, attention, and elite activity. The article uses this shift to explain why the author experienced the area as socially different from later government and southern neighbourhoods.

Colonial buildings and estates were not simply abandoned after independence. They were reused by new institutions and families. This matters because built spaces carried older histories into the postcolonial city, while their functions changed. The article presents reuse as one way colonial landscapes became part of independent India’s everyday life.

Belvedere House in Calcutta had been built by Mir Jafar and gifted to Warren Hastings in the 1760s. Later, it housed the National Library, where the author’s father worked and where the family lived. The Cecil, a colonial hotel until 1959, was bought by Jesuits and turned into St Xavier’s School. Its tennis courts, rose garden, swimming pool, and grand buildings remained.

These examples show continuity and change together. Colonial architecture survived, but libraries, schools, and family homes replaced earlier elite uses. The article also links estates to social mobility: institutions such as St Xavier’s occupied prestigious spaces, while older properties such as Skinner’s estate entered new family and educational histories.

After the 1857 rebellion, the article describes a post-Mutiny mercantile class rising into Delhi’s elite. This group included banias, or merchant communities, who acquired property and used education and public institutions to establish social standing. Their ascent mattered because it changed who controlled Delhi’s estates and represented colonial modernity.

Sultan Singh was a Jain banker who bought the estate associated with James Skinner’s family. His descendant, Brigadier Virendra Singh, owned the Sultan Singh Buildings where the author’s grandmother rented a home. The family also founded Modern School in the early 1930s. Buying property and supporting education helped convert commercial wealth into lasting influence.

The author presents this as a broader pattern, not just a family story. Traditional Anglo-Rajput ownership gave way, in this example, to a mercantile family’s control. The Singh family’s property, institutional work, and public identity show how Delhi’s elite could be remade through wealth, real estate, and education.

Neighbourhoods preserve privilege by controlling access to space, institutions, and social networks. The author openly describes a comfortable life and identifies class and caste as part of that position. Family property, government employment, elite schooling, and later private colonies created connected advantages rather than isolated benefits.

The family lived in Sultan Singh Buildings because the author’s grandmother rented a home there, while the author attended St Xavier’s because it was nearby. The mother worked as an acoustical engineer at All India Radio, and an aunt taught at Daulat Ram College. Later, the author lived in sarkari neighbourhoods and then private colonies south of the Ring Road.

These arrangements made the city easier to navigate and helped preserve status through family and institutions. The article does not measure caste or class mobility across Delhi as a whole. It does show how one social sliver could move from old-city property networks into government housing and southern private colonies while retaining comfort and connection.