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| Kashmere gate, Delhi. Indianexpresscom. |
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| Kashmere gate, Delhi en.wikipedia.org |
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| Cannon ball marks, Kashmere gate, Delhi, 1857.gounesco.comAdd caption |
When the British had settled down here in 1803, they immediately took action and strengthened the walls of the old city that were damaged during the siege by the Maratha army led by Holkar in 1804.The Marathas were against the British hegemony and their army was a force to reckon with. Later the English company again reinforced the gate as well as the damaged walls abutting the gate. The British gradually had begun settling down and set up residential colonies in the Kashmere gate area. This place once had beautiful Mogul mansions and palatial houses of nobility.
The 1957 first war of Independence that was started by the frustrated Indian soldiers of the Bengal Cavalry at Meerut Cantonment (here the proportion of Europeans to Indian soldiers was far higher than other places) began to spread like a summer bush fire and it engulfed many parts of northern states. When Delhi was under siege during this revolt, the Kashmere gate gained historical significance.
It was in the vicinity of this prominent gate, there ensued a tough and fierce battle between the English army and the rampaging Indian soldiers and others. As already mentioned, the reasons for this revolt were : the British atrocities against the natives, ill-treatment of soldiers in the army, exploitation of natural resources and land owners, dishonesty in business deal, etc -- all these went beyond the limits of tolerance. The soldiers and others got a chance to let out their pent-up hatred toward the English domination over them and their native land.
The Indian soldiers assembled near the gate and developed several plans to resist the English soldiers. The British army needed further enforcement from near by garrisons like Meerut to deal with the large siege of Delhi. They got the first break and on the morning of 14 September 1857, the English army broke open the sturdy gate by breaking the bridge and the left leaf of the gate using gunpowder.
This was the first beginning of the final assault on the rebels towards the end of the famous siege of Delhi. The existing structure here carries the evidence of the historic struggle that finally ended in favor of the British. After a four-month long bloody siege of Delhi, the British forces saw victory on September 14, 1857, The gate took the brunt of heavy attack on both sides and suffered damages. The Kashmere Gate incident is the silvering in the dark cloud for the British army, a major break through and a symbol of victory. The edit of god could never be changed. India had to suffer one hundred years more from that time on under the British yoke.
The unfortunate fact is although both Hindus and Muslims, upper and lower castes fought in the First War of Independence, the wrath of the British Empire fell on an innocent man and the Muslims. That man was the last Mogul ruler Bahadur Shah Zafar, a fine gentleman who had nothing to do with all the killings going on. The Mogul ruler was ‘captured’ by Major Hodson, a notorious British officer (who on 22 Sept, 1957 also killed the other three mogul princes near Khooni Dharwaza) who brought him back as prisoner to the walled city Shahjahanabad, now an empty one. The British protected those who sided with them. The British were angry because the rebels fought under the banner of the Mogul king. The old man was later banished to Burma where he died in obscurity.
In the wake of this worst rebellion, the administration of India passed from the East India Company to the Crown. The capture of Delhi from the mutineers was vital to the British due to the city's symbolic importance as the seat of India's Mogul rulers.
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| siege of Delhi, 1857, Alamyi com |
Since this area became a traffic bottleneck, in 1965, a section of the Kashmere Gate was pulled down to allow free flow of vehicular traffic. However the traffic was not allowed to pass through it, as it became a protected monument under the ASI - the Archaeological Survey of Indi .
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