describe briefly delhi after partition
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Delhi is currently divided into nine districts. The smallest district in population terms is central Delhi, with a population of close to 600,000 (it was more than 580,000 in 2011). The second smallest in terms of population is north Delhi, with approximately 900,000 people (it was 887,978 in 2011). In 2011, the population of the largest district of Delhi, the north-west, was 3,656,539, six times the population of all of Delhi in 1941. Comparing this to the population of Delhi at the time of the 2011 census, which was 16,787,941, there has been an 18-fold increase in less than 80 years.
Delhi was a very different city in 1947. The city of Shahjahanabad, also known as Dehli or Dilli, was enclosed within a high wall. To the north was Civil Lines and the Mall Road, extending to the Kingsway camp, where the 1911Darbar was held to commemorate the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary as Emperor and Empress of India. To the south and detached from the city of Shahjahan was new Delhi; to the west and just outside the city wall was Paharganj, Qarol Bagh and Sadar Bazar and to the east was the Jamuna river across which was the old settlement of Shahdara. The rest was degraded forests, rocks jutting out of the ground, ancient villages interspersed with agricultural land and the ruins of old cities, Tughlaqabad, Purana Quila, Bijay Mandal and Siri.
Delhi had seen riots on an unprecedented scale and according to Gyanendra Pandey’s accounts of violence in the city, between 20-25 thousand Muslims were killed. More than 330,000 Muslims had left Delhi for Pakistan and the population of the city had declined by almost 350,000 by the time the riots ended. The total population of the city would have gone down to about 570,000 before it began to grow rapidly; so rapidly that by 1951, within four years of Partition, it had risen to 1,744,072, a little more than a million in four years, or a quarter of a million every year. Meanwhile, the population of Muslims in the city declined from 33.22% in 1941 to 5.33% in 1951.
This is the scale of change that the city saw in the wake of freedom. The breakneck speed at which the city is growing currently was triggered by the arrival of refugees in tens of thousands from Punjab, Sindh and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).
Initially, the refugees headed for Delhi but there was little space and a lot of resistance as they were outsiders. The Hindu population did not want homeless people moving into their neighbourhood and the Muslims who had chosen to stay back were fearful of the refugees – most of the new arrivals had suffered and had lost members of their families to the killings in Punjab, many were looking for revenge and the Muslims in the city who had seen much killing were afraid. So a joint delegation of senior citizens of the city went to meet Mahatma Gandhi, who asked Jawaharlal Nehru to talk to the home minister and ensure that people are not settled in the old city without the consent of the local residents. So the new arrivals began to be moved out to newer areas. In any case, the old city, despite having lost almost one-third of its earlier residents, could not have accommodated this massive influx of close to a million and it is then that Delhi began to grow in every direction.
People occupied all available spaces; tented accommodations came up in old forts, in deserted mosques, in ruined medieval structures, open fields and under the abysmal shade provided by the arches of the wall that ran around Shahjahanabad. Very soon, Mehr Chand Khanna was appointed the minister for rehabilitation and all kind of schemes were hastily put together to find accommodation, start schools, find jobs, process claims of compensation and to find missing people, out of which many were young girls and women.
Agricultural lands began to be acquired and hectic construction began – initially to throw together makeshift arrangements and then to build more permanent structures. Those with property papers had an advantage; those that had no documents ran from pillar to post, begging for a roof over their heads. Cramped accommodations came up at newly created residential areas thrown up virtually overnight in Lajpat Nagar, Amar Colony, B.K. Dutt Colony. Rajendra Nagar, Malviya Nagar, Ramesh Nagar, Tilak Nagar and Hari Nagar Ashram.
The bulk of the Sindhis, poor peasants and petty traders had just walked across from Karachi, Thatta, Tharparkar, Umarkot and Sukkur into Rajasthan and Gujarat and settled there. Many were later moved into Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. Many, especially the poor, had no papers and had to fend for themselves for decades, eking out a living in thatched shelters thrown up in inhospitable patches on the ridge near Bhuli Bhatiyari and other such locations.