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Showing posts with the label Rashtrapati Bhavan's

Don't Be Shocked If Mughal Art, Cuisine Get New Names

As someone who grew up in Delhi, I have had some familiarity with Rashtrapati Bhavan's spectacular Mughal Garden, now renamed Amrit Udyan. While exclusive for most months of the year, during February and March, when winter morphs into spring, it is opened to the public. Like tens of thousands of Delhi residents, or visitors to the capital, I have often visited the garden and soaked up its charms.I have a deeper acquaintance with the garden. For two years (1948-1950), when he served as India's Governor General, my maternal grandfather, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, was the master of the mansion to which the garden belonged, which meant that along with cousins and siblings, I, then in my early teens, could roam the garden freely. I felt connected to it.My association with the garden did not cause my sadness at the renaming, though it certainly amplified it. It was the impulse behind the renaming that triggered the sadness. The renaming cannot, and will not, erase the historical fa...