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Quo vadis, Delhi? Urban heritage andgender: towards a sustainable urbanfutureYamini Narayanana

a School of Social Sciences and Humanities, La Trobe University,Melbourne, Australia.Published online: 25 Feb 2013.

To cite this article: Yamini Narayanan (2014) Quo vadis, Delhi? Urban heritage and gender:towards a sustainable urban future, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 20:5, 488-499, DOI:10.1080/13527258.2013.771790

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Quo vadis, Delhi? Urban heritage and gender: towards asustainable urban future

Yamini Narayanan*

School of Social Sciences and Humanities, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

(Received 13 August 2012; final version received 26 January 2013)

Historic architectural heritage is important to sustainable urban planning policy,particularly in cities that have heritage sites and/or themselves have ancientarchaeological value. Delhi is one of the oldest living cities in the world. How-ever, the vision of its planning policy is limited to valuing heritage for itself andfor its economic value instead of also exploring the ways in the city’s heritagemight contribute to the social organisation and utilisation of the urban publicspace. Particularly, like most national policy documents on heritage, it ignoresthe heritage/gender nexus, which has implications for the identity and status ofwomen in Delhi, community development and ecological preservation. Buttwenty women practioners and scholars of development in Delhi referred to her-itage as a challenge as well as opportunity for gender and urban sustainabilitywhen asked for their perspectives on the most important sustainability issues inthe city. I argue that Delhi’s urban planning strategies must acknowledge thegender/heritage nexus to enable holistic and gender-inclusive urban developmentfor the present and future generations of its citizens, which is an importantthrust of the sustainability agenda.

Keywords: architectural heritage; Delhi; women; sustainability

Introduction

Heritage’s inherent value to development has been noted in scholarship, particularlyin conservation planning (Gorgolewski 2006) and urban planning (Ashworth andTunbridge 2000). Studies have also noted the importance of heritage to sense ofplace and community engagement (Waterton and Watson 2011). However, heritage’srelation to sustainable development is yet to be sufficiently clarified (Powter andRoss 2005). Likewise, gender has been inadequately theorised in heritage (Smith2008) as well as urban planning (Greed 1994) and this combined neglect can havespecific outcomes for gender roles and identities, and equitable access to space andmobility in urban areas. Heritage is a subjective notion and has a close nexus withgender, and this link is perceived and felt through representations (or lack thereof),meaning, identity, status and power. By treating heritage as gender-neutral, planningpolicies can become complicit in reinforcing women’s unequal status in society. Inthis paper, I use the case of Delhi, one of the most historic cities in the world tosuggest that a gendered analysis of urban heritage which specifically elaborates onthe ways in which the complex relationship between women and heritage influences

*Email: y.narayanan@latrobe.edu.au

International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2014Vol. 20, No. 5, 488–499, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2013.771790

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the planning, space utilisation and women’s experience of built environments isimportant for cities in their transition towards sustainable and gender-equitableurbanisation.

Urban heritage can be understood by different markers of city development, suchas ‘the overall town plan, public open spaces and the buildings’ (Ahlberg 2005, 15–16), which preserve a city’s sense of place and distinctiveness where the homogenis-ing effects of globalisation can be otherwise acutely felt and perceived. In particular,I am attentive to Delhi’s architectural heritage, which contributes most significantlyand tangibly to Delhi’s sense of place and which was most often raised by respon-dents, interviewed for this study, in their discussions on Delhi’s urban heritage.

Within the heterogeneous social construct of ‘gender’, I am particularly inter-ested in women’s perspectives because of the noted consequences of gender-neutralor gender-insensitive conceptualisations of development (Shiva 1989). Post-develop-ment feminists have argued that the politically neutral perception of ‘gender’ hasmeant that significant gains have been lost or slowed for women, and they call forforegrounding women’s experiences within the gender and development discourse(Staudt 2002). I therefore use the views of twenty women practitioners and scholarsof development from Delhi who were asked about some of the most importantissues of sustainable urban development in the city from a feminist perspective. Iwas also curious to find out what themes might native expert women developmentspecialists in the city bring up that mainstream constructs of urban development inDelhi may have missed or superficially glossed over. Interestingly, one of the mainpoints that the women emphasised was that there is a clear relationship betweengender and the city’s urban, specifically architectural heritage that all planning poli-cies had hitherto ignored.

The following discussion on the heritage/women/sustainability nexus provides acontext to understanding these links in the section on Delhi.

Heritage and the gender-cities-sustainability nexus

Cities and heritage have an enduring inter-relationship. Historically, heritage hashad a defining role in the conception and construction of cities (Singh 1997) and inthe context of sustainability, heritage can mean ‘ensuring the continuing contribu-tion of heritage to the present’ (Punekar 2006, 103), in a manner that responds tosocial change and ecological protection. Developed countries have typically beenpreoccupied with the planning and management of the historic city as this is anexpensive exercise. However, the consumption of heritage ‘rises more than dispro-portionately with increases in disposable income’ (Ashworth and Tunbridge 2000,146). As emerging powers like India progress towards becoming middle/higherincome economies, the role of heritage in planning urban development is likely tobecome more prominent.

However, like the concept of ‘ustainable development’ which has been criticisedfor its lack of rigour in feminist grounding (OECD 2008), it has been noted thatheritage similarly lacks clear conceptual or empirical gendered links – and thatthese exist – which has further implications for sustainability. Smith (2008) arguesthat heritage has a gendered value and this is usually biassed towards the male gen-der. The contemporaneous ‘authorised heritage discourse’ (AHD) as Smith (2008,162) refers to the predominant meta-narrative on heritage as articulated by thenational and international policy-makers, assume a particular and latent value of

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heritage, which tend to be ‘masculine values and perceptions’, particularly of theprivileged classes. Wealthier countries are also likely to manipulate the conservationand management agenda of poor nations (Ashworth and Tunbridge 2000). TheAHD of Euro-centric heritage discourses tend to dominate heritage discourses intheir former colonies. Thus particularly in cities, the nuclei of social and politicalthought, heritage can come to be associated with privileged masculinity.

Three issues in particular emerge by considering the relationship between genderand heritage through a sustainability perspective: the issue of identities and self;community development; and ecological preservation. Firstly, the gender inequalityin heritage representation and conservation are both a cause and effect of the genderinequalities in society (Smith 2008), which may be obvious as well as unobvious(Maloutas 2006). Heritage is a potent instrument of voice and representation in poli-tics (Fraser 2000) and carries powerful messages. Smith argues (2008, 163), ‘ifwomen are invisible and devalued in the way they are portrayed through a nation’sheritage, this will reinforce the contemporary values and inequities given towomen’s identities, social values and experience’. In an urban space, this can trans-late into consequences for women’s safety, mobility and access to space. Feministgeographers Domosh and Seager (2001) have already noted that women find the‘public spaces’ in cities fearsome and Gill Valentine (1992, 27) has criticised the‘spatial expression of patriarchy’ in cities. Any threats, direct or indirect, that com-promises women’s equitable access to and mobility in public spaces and safety canbe considered a problem of urban sustainable development (Narayanan 2012).

Secondly, heritage that endorses women’s identity as equal to men’s has reso-nances for urban community development. Equity is one of the central concerns ofsustainable development and the Brundtland Commission (1987) is emphatic aboutthe importance of inter-generational and intra-generational equity. The relationshipbetween gender and heritage has clear political consequences in South Asia andshows that such analysis is mandatory. During the 1992 demolition of the Babrimosque in Ayodhya city in India, Hindu women workers of the right-wing partyBJP played a critical role in rallying the fundamentalist groups that destroyed the500 year old mosque, a heritage monument, based on their argument that it was pre-viously the site of a Hindu temple. The female form was arrogated by Hindunationalist parties for the demolition as ‘Mother India’ or ‘Bharat Mata’, and ‘Ash-tabhuja’, a goddess specifically created by the women’s wing of the RSS ‘to pro-vide women with an anti-Muslim rallying symbol’ (McDermott 2005, 3610). Inother instances, women have played a definitive role in environmental protection ofkey ecological heritage sites such as the Chipko Movement of the 1980s (Shiva1989) and more recently, in protesting the construction of the dam on the NarmadaValley river. Further, in a globalised context, feminist interpretations of heritagesites become necessary. Economic globalisation itself a patriarchal project requiresthat ‘head’ choices be made, which can undermine the emotive values associatedwith urban heritage (Handal 2006). Defensive identities may thus arise, particularlyfor women. In big cities, where heritage can get ‘lost’ (Ashworth and Tunbridge2000) or more easily appropriated to serve unsustainable ends, the heritage-genderengagement is critical.

Thirdly, heritage that promotes gender-inclusive values can help re-establish themuch-lamented lost connection with nature (Singh 1997). Heritage monuments areoften on important ecological sites such as protected parks, banks of urban riversetc and women have taken leadership roles in preserving these for community. The

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affirmative link between heritage and gender thus has deep resonances for humanvalues, democracy and environmental justice. This link is of much concern in therapidly growing cities of the developing world, and in the next section, I focus onDelhi, one of the largest and fastest growing cities of the Indian subcontinent.Specifically, I provide an overview of the city’s heritage and the masculinist meta-narrative that is associated with it.

PiccaDelhi: A historical overview

The poet Mirza Ghalib wrote of Delhi: ‘The world is the body, Delhi is its soul’,and just as the soul challenges descriptions, so does Delhi. No definite date has beenput on this historic city and Delhi is believed to be older than Jerusalem and Rome.Narratives on Delhi’s history are typically accounts of privileged and powerful malehistories, of, as Dubrow and Goodman (2003) put it, ‘great men and their deeds’ andunmarked by female presence. The ancient rulers who established their capitals inDelhi include: Raja Anganpan of Kanauj in eleventh century A.D., MohammedGhori in the twelfth century from the region that in the present day is Afghanistan,the Tughlak empire between 1320–1422 [which period itself included the two impor-tant cities of Sultan Mohammed bin-Tughlak who established Jahanpanah in the1420s, and Feroze Shah Tughlak who founded Ferozabad between 1351–88], andEmperor Humayun who created the empire around Purana Qila [Old Fort] in 1533(Bhattacharya 1977). The last Mughal capital, Shahjahanabad [Old Delhi] is situatedin the northernmost part of Delhi. The British established New Delhi as the seventhcapital of British India in 1911. The colonial ambitions claimed exclusive privilegesover space, access and mobility. In 1947, the city was reincarnated as the eighth cap-ital of the Indic civilisation, this time of independent India.

Women have been largely invisible in Delhi's history. In Jyoti Hosagrahar’s(2005, 59), historical analysis of Delhi over a century between 1857 to 1947, shenotes that women ‘concealed themselves from public view’ in the open bazaars andother public spaces in Mughal Old Delhi. She writes (2005, 81), ‘Despite the trans-formations [in both indigenously evolved modernities, as well as European-imposedtechnological advances], women’s spaces remained segregated and women largelyexcluded from both the public sphere and the public space.’ Delhi’s public space‘persisted as a male domain’ (Hosagrahar 2005, 81).

Unsurprisingly, an AHD perpetuated by the imperialist visions of Eurocentricand the older cities seem to control how Delhi’s heritage is managed in a gender-neutral manner. Preservation planning or the ‘focus upon the intrinsic qualities ofbuildings and sites’ and conservation planning, which ‘merges imperceptibly intomore general local land-use planning’ (Ashworth and Tunbridge 2000, 140) seemto influence Delhi’s heritage planning approaches. The conservation of the city’sbuilt heritage is a prominent aim of the Master Plan 2021, which is the city’s fore-most policy instrument on urban development and planning. It’s stated vision forthe next decade is

preservation of Delhi’s heritage and blending it with the new and complex modernpatterns of development; and doing all this within a framework of sustainabledevelopment, public-private and community participation and a spirit of ownershipand a sense of belonging among its citizens. (MPD-2021 2012, 17)

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It’s strategies, however, are focussed on the twin aims of ‘identification of heritagezones and archaeological parks’ and ‘development of Special Conservation plansfor listed building and precincts’ (MPD-2021 2012, 21). It notes that conservationefforts in Old Delhi must focus on retaining its character, and new developmentthroughout the city – the metro lines, roads, drains and ‘high tension lines’ (thebusiest arteries) must be constructed in a way that do not devalue the heritage valueof the sites they pass through. The responsibility for this is in the hands of theMunicipal Corporation of Delhi. The Plan gestures to community engagement, butthis reference is only made once and it is unclear as to how this would be facili-tated. At no point, does the Plan note the differential impacts that heritage has ondifferent categories of citizens or the creative/empowering relationship betweenwomen and heritage that needs to be understood, or even the environmentalprotection opportunities that the city’s heritage can offer. Neither does the Planconsider the social and ecological impact of the ‘clash’ between the city’s historicbuilt environment and the new, fast-based urban growth characterised by large-scaleshopping malls, corporate cities and the ever-burgeoning mushrooming ofresidential settlements.

Gupta (2000, 170) notes some of these concerns and argues that the new com-mercial development in Delhi must be considered in the light of the conservation ofDelhi’s heritage because ‘to be aware of the history of the place where one liveshelps situate oneself in that history and overcome rootlessness, the commonest dis-ease of city-dwellers’. She laments the lack of maintenance and continued criticalcare for heritage monuments in Delhi and accuses the officialdom and the citizenryof ‘playing Delhi’s favourite game – ‘passing the buck’, and believes that this islargely due to the unresolved dilemma that a country as old as India will constantlyface, over and over again – ‘is the modern not more desirable than the old?’ (Gupta2000, 170). This question is critical for sustainability and requires a gendered analy-sis. However, the gender-heritage relationship in Delhi has not been explored evenby feminist historians. I now provide an overview of the research methods used tooffer a feminist analysis of Delhi’s heritage and its relationship to the city’s sustain-able development.

Research methods

I interviewed twenty women from a development background to understand themajor sustainable development challenges in Delhi because of the strategic impor-tance of a gender perspective during rapid modernisation in India. The opinions andknowledge of native women experts who are in the field, who have a developedand insightful understanding of the issues, challenges and possibilities for develop-ment on the ground, were instrumental in serving as a starting point for thisresearch. These women come from a largely middle/upper-middle class backgroundand generally represent the more privileged castes of Indian society; however, theywere fully aware of the key theories and debates on caste, gender and development,and almost all of them were directly engaged with class and caste issues throughtheir professional work.

‘Soft’ issues like the value of historical heritage to urban development came tothe forefront in interviews with the women on Delhi’s sustainability challenges andopportunities, a theme that I was not to come across framed as a sustainability issueelsewhere. It could be argued that raising issues of heritage as a ‘development

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problem’ is a luxury of the privileged classes (and castes). However, societal tem-plates for morality and propriety is typically set by the middle class and uppercastes (Savala 2010) and restrictions on women’s mobility and access to space istypically justified on moral grounds. It is then unsurprising and also telling thatmiddle class women who are immersed in the politics and practice of development,and also intimately acquainted with the expectations and impacts of particularmoralities on women choose to critique heritage as a development problem and linkit to women’s unequal status in the city. As Savala (2010) notes, middle classmoralities are critical for development analyses given their impact on rights andpower, economic growth and consumption rates.

Interviews and analysis

To select the women and structure the interviews, I used ethnographer JamesSpradley’s (1979) key guidelines: the informant should be enculturated and becurrently involved in the cultural scene from which information is sought. I firstapproached some of the prominent women scholars and practitioners of develop-ment in the city, who then referred me on to other women interviewees, enabling asnowballing sampling technique. These women variously held senior positions inacademia (in urban planning and community development), had founded andheaded high-profile NGOs in the city (one of them subsequently won one of India’shighest civilian awards), were senior bureaucrats in national and international devel-opment bodies or major social activists in Delhi. At the point of saturation, theinterviews were concluded. The women have been identified as Respondent 1,Respondent 2 and so forth. This is because while some of the interviewees werehappy to be identified by name and affiliation, others did not give me this permis-sion. Identifying them thus is a way of presenting their views in a uniform manner.

I had approval from Murdoch University’s Human Research Ethics Committee toconduct the interviews. I started by asking them for their understanding of ‘sustain-able development’, particularly from a feminist and an urban development perspec-tive. Following this, I asked the women to identify what issues they considered to besome of the greatest challenges/opportunities to Delhi’s sustainable development.Delhi’s urban heritage was one such issue that the majority of the women raised.

I employed the domain analysis method to identify the major themes that arosein the interviews (Atkinson and El Haj 1996, 439). The interviews almost consis-tently problematised Delhi’s historical heritage as a ‘sustainability challenge’ as wellas an opportunity. By and large, I have retained actual phrases that the intervieweesuse since they more credibly represent the concerns that are important to them.Some of the respondents had the gift of expressiveness, insightfulness, personalinterest and often, greater knowledge about the themes explored. While they quicklybecame key respondents, I have, nevertheless been careful to highlight differentviews to each other and to my own, if/when they arose.

Heritage and sustainability: insights from Delhi’s women

The pervasiveness of Delhi’s historical heritage in the daily lives of the women,as a backdrop as well as a prominent feature of the city’s – and thereby theirown – identity was clear even in the lead up to their conversations on Delhi’ssustainability. Respondent 3 said:

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The enduring nature of important resources in a way that they affirm generation aftergeneration, physically and spiritually, is for me sustainable development. And inDelhi, the green lungs and the historical heritage that you see everywhere is a tremen-dous source of such affirmation for me. You cannot walk 20 yards anywhere withoutstumbling on an old fort, or at least, a plaque or a stone. The fact that Delhi has somany beautiful monuments – if only they were looked after, it is possible to not haveto go too far, even in the midst of all the hyper growth and spurt of new malls etc,and find little oceans of tranquillity.

Firstly, it is clear that sense of place and identity in Delhi comes from its heritagefor the women. They raised concerns about the conflict between history and moder-nity in Delhi, and its discordant effect on the sense of place and identity. In post-independence Delhi, the rationale for building is not clear and does not seem to becompatible with the existing architecture, thus giving rise to a sense of 'defensiveidentities’. Respondent 5 noted:

The remnants of Mughal architecture are a splendid aspect of the city. But Delhi ofthe post 1970s is not a very aesthetic space because it is, by and large an architecturalkitsch. It is trying to put together a dozen extraneous architectural forms, and notreally looking at harmonising structure and space. So here you will see a whole mot-ley group of buildings which don’t actually fit together or sit together, and each one istrying to jostle for space. And you get the feeling that the buildings are in competitionwith one another and not in harmony with the built environment or the natural envi-ronment. It is encroaching, invasive and you know, it is something which is impingingand not very happy with itself.

The style of architecture informs a specific political and social ideology. It has notcome to be that India’s reincarnation as a democracy has informed architecturalambitions since Independence. Neither has the post-independence AHD on the cityexpanded its identity to include and represent women. Interestingly then, the discus-sions linking heritage and identity turned specifically to women’s identity as theseviews became closely intertwined with another theme that the women raised – thatof the high rate of violence against women in the city’s public spaces including inthe historic monuments. This hindered women’s access, mobility and full participa-tion and ownership of the city. Respondent 8 emphasised that the city’s historicgrandeur has always celebrated masculine greatness but has rendered women, theiridentity and place in Delhi’s history invisible and irrelevant. She believes that Delhiwomen’s struggle to rightfully occupy a space in the city has historic roots:

We have fine monuments. But our museums, our historic sites have not sufficientlyvalued women. Razia Sultana for example has played such a prominent role in Delhi’shistory – she was one of the moulding rulers, and yet, nothing stands to the testimony toher greatness. No woman is celebrated … except the Indira Gandhi National Museum,and she is a controversial public figure. So I think in post-liberation India, where womenare visible in the public space, there is a fear and resistance to them because the city hasno tradition of acknowledging or celebrating its great women, only the great men –whether Muslim or Hindu, English or Indian. And you can see this now in the high crimein city’s public spaces. We have to celebrate women publicly, in a very multicultural,multireligious way. We must show that women have always been important to the city.

Respondent 12 noted that Delhi’s spatial character has always been masculine andlimited women’s access and mobility in the city. The current high crime rate is areflection of the sexual anxiety of women accessing public spaces more freely.

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Delhi has a long-embedded tradition of explicitly keeping women out of the publicspace. The havelis of Old Delhi had women’s quarters, the zenanas and that’s wherethe women were expected to stay. The houses were designed to segregate women,they did not even have full access to the private space, forget the public. Womenfreely [respondent’s emphasis] appearing in the streets is such a modern thing, only inthe last 20–30 years. The city’s infrastructure, all its spaces which were designed formen, all its attitudes which were fostered by men, has no idea about how to cope withall the women around. They take advantage of the disadvantages that women will nat-urally have in a city like this.

These views resonate strongly with a UNIFEM report (2011) that concluded thatcities that are designed in a manner that address women’s needs are sustainablecities for everyone. The UNIFEM initiative on Global Safe Cities for Women(UNIFEM 2011) specifically noted that ‘Women living in New Delhi experiencehigh levels of insecurity and harassment in buses, on streets and in other publicspaces, and ‘eve teasing’ of women and girls is all too common.’ This report didnot make the causal link with urban heritage; however, it is possible to suggestthat the invisible AHD of the Delhi’s monuments may be partially influential inunobvious ways in determining women’s experiences of the city.

Secondly, the women voiced concerns about how sustainable community devel-opment for a diverse and large population might be managed given the rapid urban-isation of the city, and the stated intention in the Master Plan 2021 to ‘upgrade’Delhi into a ‘world city’. As Respondent 7 says,

more people are being left out than included in the benefits of urbanisation. Poor peo-ple’s rights are taken away to make Delhi a world city … their right to hawk food inpublic is outlawed, they can’t vend in public places especially near heritage siteswhich is where they their living from.

Ninety per cent of the city’s street hawkers are women (Manushi 2001), and devel-oping cities like Delhi depend closely on street hawkers to sustain livelihoods andaccess to goods. The development potential of heritage sites is viewed exclusivelyfrom the perspective of tourism, in spite of the fact that substantial numbers of poorworkingwomen depend directly upon heritage sites for their livelihood.

Respondent 2 blames the structure and language of the Master Plan for the exclu-sion of women and emotive aspects of city planning in its policy. The technocratic,bureaucratic language of the Plan is seen as inimical to gender-inclusive planning.The Master Plan is silent even on issues of direct concern to women such as the highcrime rate against women (Narayanan 2012). However, gender-inclusive communitydevelopment must include unobvious impacts on women’s urban experiences, ofwhich male-gender biassed heritage is an important one. Respondent 2 says:

We should get rid of the Master Planning model and have alternatives like strategicspatial planning. The methods for this planning are more democratic and communityoriented and women, minority groups etc, are more likely to heard and what specificneeds they have will also be clearer. It will be less of the hard-nosed dry planning thatforgets to be human. I don't think this 2021 Vision is reflective of our needs or wherewe want to be as a city and citizens.

Respondent 2 elaborates on an alternative vision for Delhi as a world city, and shegrounds this vision in feminist perspective:

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[A city] where we can have very tolerant and open discussions on our history, theway we regard and use our heritage now, and the wrongs done, to all minorities –Muslims, Sikhs, women, and treat our heritage with respect but not uncritically, so thatwe may grow from it. A city that allows people to flourish fully – it's a bit like Amar-tya Sen’s human capabilities theory. A city that can guarantee that for all its women –especially its poor women – has it’s sustainability more or less sorted I think. Heritageis a valuable resource to engage the community, I think. It’s something we can all feelemotional about. I think if women participate in these discussions, we can be moreunited in something that can otherwise lead to conflict.

Thirdly, concerns about community development automatically lead to concernsabout Delhi’s natural environment, as many of the monuments lie on rich naturalareas like the bank of the Yamuna River or in protected parklands. Respondent 7notes, ‘The pollution is often thickest around heritage sites. We have assumed thatthe monument alone will bring the money in, to hell with the quality of the envi-ronment.’ The women note that in Delhi, ecology and heritage protection are inti-mately linked, and that considering heritage sites purely for their tourism potentialwill lead to the degradation of the surrounding environment. Respondent 10 says,‘Our historic monuments are usually situated on some of Delhi’s greenest lands andthese beautiful gardens and the tree head count must be maintained. Afforestationcan go hand in hand with this.’

Respondent 3 further elaborates the link between heritage, gender and ecologicalcare. She argues that heritage sites represent bureaucratic power, and women needaccess to this power in order to take responsibility for the care of the natural envi-ronment that is important to them, and that typically surrounds heritage sites inDelhi.

I work with slums on the Yamuna banks and we teach hygiene and ecological care tothe slum dwellers as a way of improving their lives, helping them make better choices.We work almost fully with women, not from our choice, but it is the women whohave been more interested in working with us and taking our help. It is such a pol-luted river and the entire area right up to Humayun’s Tomb stinks. And these peopleare forced to live in the middle of it. The women are interested in maintaining theriver. But the priorities of tourism from the tomb dominates the interest of the cityofficials. I have always seen the river and the tomb as interconnected, that’s why thetomb was even built on the river bank in the first place. The tomb has the drawingpower in the area at the moment and these women, interested in the river, have to beable to tap into that power.

In other words, there is need for a secondary and a more contemporaneous interpre-tation of the tomb that challenges its current AHD and its relationship to the cityand the city’s women. Underlying attempts to reconceptualise of a new sustainableecological and social urban identity for the city is also a desire to recall that face ofDelhi that is reminiscent of gentler and more cultured times. This is a challengingtask and Respondent 7 suggests the need for democratic community engagement:

It is a very difficult one, I think – we have to begin to think of how we can humaniseour city. How do we begin, how do we balance the extreme acquisitiveness of globalculture and a gentler way of life? I think it has to happen through a movement of peo-ple’s lives, assessing people’s alternatives, looking at the option that this is not theonly way of existing, of living. I think we need to highlight the fact that there areother ways to connect with ourselves, the universe, that there are alternative lifestyles,we need to celebrate those, and somehow, examine and think about these things. The

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way we choose to build our city will help us clarify our choices about all these things.Planning of Delhi in the twenty-first century must be aimed at social and genderequality and care for Mother Nature.

At the core of some of these questions is the issue of the quality and nature of thebuilt environment. One of the ways to sustainable transformation would be to re-assess Delhi’s built environment through collective participation and communityengagement that truly responds to the needs of its citizens, including its diversepopulation of women. Delhi’s composite spirit and sense of place draws profoundlyfrom its heritage and must inform its progress towards a gender-equitable, sustain-able and liveable city.

Conclusions

Indian historians have richly engaged in reflections on Delhi’s history and heritage;it must now become a subject of feminist analysis for urban planners of the city.Handal (2006) writes ‘sustainable urban futures depend on sustainable urban pasts’.Delhi’s past as sustainable is questionable; in its planning, design and heritage, ithas been almost entirely negligent of women’s needs, and hence, it is all the moreurgent that it’s heritage sites, one of the most visible features of its past, be cri-tiqued and re-understood in a manner that is gender- sensitive for a gender-inclusivesustainable future.

The twenty women practitioners and scholars of development in Delhi city wereunanimous in pointing out that the city’s heritage shapes their lived experience ofthe city and they linked it to discussions on the city’s sustainability. It emerged thatDelhi’s heritage had gendered dimensions that are critical in three ways to sustain-ability: women’s identity and hence their status and safety in society; communitydevelopment and flourishing; and its potential for ecological sustainability. How-ever, the women felt that heritage sites accord women and their identity a second-ary, or even an invisible status altogether in society. They pointed out that the cityhas been traditionally designed in a gender-exclusive manner, concealing womenfrom the public space, segregating them even in the private space and underminingtheir identity and status. The city’s heritage was thus a visual symbol of Delhi’spatriarchal character. Delhi’s high crime rate against women suggests that one unob-vious reason might be that the city’s public spaces and the heritage sites which pro-vide an explicit meta-narrative of patriarchal values and celebrations value womenfar less than men, and this has an impact on gender equality.

Secondly, the women called for a secondary gender-inclusive interpretation ofDelhi’s heritage through community engagement, and for more public ways to cele-brate the city’s women, historically and contemporaneously. The women criticisedthe Master Plan for its bureaucratic language that ignored the emotive aspects ofheritage and felt that this contributed to the sense of dislocation and rootlessnessthat one can experience in a city as old as Delhi. Lastly, the women pointed outthat in Delhi, environmental and heritage protection are closely linked to soundenvironmental ethics, and that large proportions of poor women who are directlydependent on them, have an important role to play in their preservation. Womenthus need to have meaningful and enduring leadership in heritage and environmen-tal management in the city.

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The lessons from Delhi may have important resonances for the cities of thedeveloping world, particularly the comparable megacities cities of South Asia likeDhaka, Karachi, Lahore and Mumbai, which also have a rich historical past andsubstantial, tangible built heritage from different historical eras, and usually with aclear masculinist narrative. These cities are urbanising at rates unprecedented in thedeveloped world. They face the conflicting trends of modernisation on the onehand, and the continued repression of women’s rights and freedoms by patriarchalvalue systems on the other. The UNIFEM (2011) report confirms that developingcities pose some of the greatest threats to women’s safety. These cities also repre-sent some of the most degraded environments in the world. Investigating a range ofalternative and emphatically gender-sensitive development options is a survivalimperative for these cities.

The lack of adequate critical attention to the challenges and opportunities thaturban heritage presents in these cities remain a substantial research and policy gap.Most developing cities use the Master Plan model to strategise and implementpolicy that has long been discarded in the planning of developed cities. The gender-neutral and the technical language used in Master Plans combined with themasculinist AHD perpetuated by national policies on heritage become complicit inwomen’s continued exclusion from public spaces. In this way, the unobvious andunstated links between gender and heritage can impact the way in which women’saccess to space and resources, mobility, safety and general empowerment isexperienced. Women’s adverse experiences in any of these aspects are a clearsustainability problem and compromises a sustainable city (UNIFEM 2011). Asdeveloping countries become middle and higher income countries, the role ofheritage in planning and understanding development is likely to become moreimportant. Challenging the masculinist AHD endorsed by the planning discourse ofthese cities becomes a critical task, and this small example from Delhi may providean important starting step.

Notes on contributorYamini Narayanan is a Research Fellow in Development Studies at La Trobe University,Melbourne. Her primary research interest lies in studying religious influences, including ofreligious heritage sites, on urban development as well as gender-sensitive urban planning.Her book Hinduism, Heritage and the City: Religion and Sustainable Urbanisation in Jaipur(Routledge-Earthscan, Oxford) is forthcoming in 2014.

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