The Mughal Empire - Itthi Poldeenana

After I visited Delhi, and experienced the city I felt there are enormous gap between the rich and the poor. And after few minutes of walking, I easily witnessed the different urban fabrics right next to each other contrasting the different level of income. That stuck in my mind. The impression grew when a question was given to me by the two Ajarn, Taylor and Camille. It was the question related to the role of foreign architect and the change in politic.

From one point of view, there are ideas of foreign people, who has or has no experience in environmental and cultural understanding in certain context. From another point of view, there is no idea of foreign when dealing with land conquering. It is just a matter of time, when flux of certain people of empire take over the land, to be called native. The change of power from hand to hand would directly effected on how people live, through architecture, planning, and economic structure. From the reading, Mughal Emperor distributed the lands to amir, who would collect the tax from people who live within. The land was developed into haveli, which almost like a complete district, including every career within such as farmer, artist, doctor, etc. There would be three ranges of people the emperor, amir, and commoner.

After the British Raj, the city and its people changed. Emperor and amir system was demolished, leaving the capitalism behind. The change of the foreign power contributed to the denser population in Delhi, as a result of people flux and subdivision of haveli. Today from what I saw, people’s life condition is very disheartened. Kids beg for money, while other use the public park as their toilet. A lot of people eat unclean food, while some even find their meal out of garbage. Parts of Delhi is so packed and dirty when the clean and organize one is right next to it.

This raised me the question of whether the Mughal ruling or the capitalism structure would benefit for most of the Indian. Along with this question, does it matter for foreign architect to plan the most modern urban fabric or architecture. Where in the end most of the decision, for the people, is done by the ruling class. My thought is out of Modern or Mughal art and architecture style. Here foreign architect would be less concerned than the foreign power. And yet the different influential power is obtain by owning the land at different time.

From my point of view, people are just victim of these kind of power. I believed living under Mughal Empire would be much better than capitalism incase of Delhi.