The Gardens of Delhi – Public Spaces, Private Lives, by Stuart Freedman

Women gossiping amongst flowers in the garden at a society party.
© Stuart Freedman

Following text and photos by Stuart Freedman.
 

Delhi, one of India’s most polluted and brutal cities, is rarely thought of as a place with an abundance of scenic beauty. However this, and all the previous cities of Delhi have had extraordinary links with gardens and green spaces.

In this work I have been trying to image the city in a new way: an attempt to show the city without the clichés of traffic, extreme poverty and affluence. Over the last two years, I’ve tried to use Delhi’s gardens, plants and green spaces to give me an insight into the lives of its people in a way that reflects the changing India and how the city’s relationship with nature has endured in some of the most surprising places.

A couple share an intimate moment in the Garden of the Five Senses.
© Stuart Freedman

These gardens – these greens spaces – are a pause in the city allowing a dialogue between what Delhi was, what it is and its ever changing people. Delhi has always been a city of migrants. Every peasant that comes shoe-less to Nizamuddin railway station from Bihar to build the new ‘Shining India’ brings with him the memory of the quiet of the fields of his village. His garland offering at a shrine is his version of the planted garden in affluent South Delhi. The memories clash and mingle with the previous generation’s space and greenery and those layered memories build what Delhi is becoming as a city.

A woman’s floral sari and a concrete wall.
© Stuart Freedman

Gardening has been popular in India from ancient times. The Mahabharata, the Ramayana and the Kama Sutra all have passages that describe and recommend gardens and their layout. It is said that the Buddha was born under a peepal tree in a garden and the Bodhi tree under which he attained nirvana is holy to Buddhists. Islam has always had a fascination with the garden and Delhi, always a Muslim city at heart, has many fine examples of Mughal gardens. It is certainly true that gardens provide a secular space in the city and in an increasingly divided India where some see its minorities as a threat, (particularly) Sufi shrines attract worshippers from Hindu and Muslim backgrounds seeking solace and offering prayers.

A gardener fills a birdtable with seed in the Mughal Gardens at Rashtrapati Bhawan.
© Stuart Freedman

The creation of ordered European-style landscapes was pivotal to the process of colonization and it was against this backdrop that gardens emerged as a cultural symbol of British control. The Victorian ideals of parks as ‘improving spaces’ were key as were the design of Lutyens’ wide boulevards. Functional on an impressive scale to show the city’s inhabitants who was in control they further facilitated movement of troops and traffic where needed. In that sense, the colonial space sent conscious and unconscious messages to the locals and the English alike. The ordered plantings of Western gardeners, influencing a generation of Indian gardeners, have worked in that tradition: trim hedges, cut grass that are still seen all across the Bungalow zone of New Delhi.

Syed Yahya Bukhari, President of the Jama Masjid Mosque in Old Delhi, relaxes on his lawn in his secluded garden next to the Mosque.
© Stuart Freedman

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