Disappearing Gardens

Greater Kashmir published a story on Jan 27th indicating that the city had lost nearly 50 percent of its garden cover over the past decades. According to the story filed, cities like Varanasi, Bhopal, Chandigarh had already overtaken Srinagar in maintaining regular gardens. The lead in this respect had been taken  by Gandhi Nagar in Gujarat for being the greenest city in the country.  The reporter also stated that Srinagar had already lost at least five known centres of “Bagh”, and named them.

I found the story  interesting because  the subject after  many decades  had been taken to highlight a civic  aspect of the city which at one time was known with pride in the whole nation. Srinagar’s fame also rested as the center of the best Mughal Gardens in the Sub Continent. The latest story made no mention of the existing main gardens and simply stated that  the records maintained informed that the city had 169 known gardens and nearly 50 percent of the number had disappeared. The subject has a wider opportunity to enlarge the narrative to include the state of affairs of state maintained parks and gardens in the Valley and in Jammu  and even in Ladakh UT. Perhaps when the snow melts, we will be fortunate to see an editorial move to   read on the subject in installments.

   

Gardening is an imported art form in India. The Indians per se  had no culture of maintaining gardens. Gardening culture came to India  with the Mughals in the early 12th century AD. Emperor Babar was a cultured man from Samarqand and he brought with his retinue architects, painters, chronicle writers and garden experts. Unfortunately he did not have enough time  to enjoy the salubrious climate where his staff could improve the skyline as he wished, but the   men in the retinue  stayed back to train  those who  showed interest in the ways gardens needed to be created.

Gardening was already an advanced horticultural pursuit in Europe. The Romans,  when they laid out large structures and towns incorporated  gardens and park for the ordinary citizens to  walk through. The Moors when they started their rule in Spain, and  France, introduced   formal geometric designs in garden layout specially in France, which still fascinate us today.  Finally in the period of Renaissance three schools of gardening emerged, the French school, the English school and the Mughal school.

The French school of gardening extended the Moor culture and we have huge geometric designed gardens in circles, square, and  the like seen in flower beds, garden paths which added to the overall symmetry in the outdoor layouts.

The English came into India with their small garden patches. They did not upset the French style of gardens but added in their houses in the low hills, the English style of informal gardening consisting of mixed flowers plots, small bush, garden paths, and  use of rockery. Gardens seen in the lawns in the bigger plots in the Valley, normally contain a patch of English gardening traditionally extending since the past two centuries in Kashmir.

The Mughal stayed the longest in Kashmir and in India, and have left a deep influence in the art of developing parks and gardens. Kashmir represents the best in this culture. The school of Mughal gardening can be seen replicated over and over in various parts of the country by developing static and  moving water bodies, fountains, terraced flower beds  and long walks interspersed with stone arcades light shades and  ornate  stone walls.  A Mughal gardenmust have a big rose patch as a showcase.

The inspiration for the Mughal design has come from the Persian garden tradition which was again influenced by the geography of the original land.  Iran with its semi desert vegetation caused the gardeners to add levels in the area under development to break the monotony of the landscape. The craving for the sound of flowing waterfalls, rushing streams also led to creating of water channels, which is something unique in the Mughal gardening format.  Imperial India copied this  gardening style  wholesale in all the structures it developed and therefore this remains a signature also for the British presence in India.

When the writer of the latest feature mentioned that Srinagar had  recorded  gardens,  he did not mention the source of information. My bet is on the old gazettes of the area, first written in 1902 and based on Persian- Mughal literature.

One needs to be grateful to Hindi cinema to create the tourist interest  to visit  the Valley.  The whole area of the valley was quiet placid until 1964 with  a few visitors from Punjab moving during the Summers to escape the intense heat of the Plains. Then came film Kashmir Ki Kali in  full colour in 1965, which started drawing hordes of citizens even from down South, and the Valley was never the same.  The State government welcomed the new interest of the ordinary citizens to visit the Valley as it generated revenue and  fair weather business for the local people, but the vast unmanageable crowds visiting the Mughal Gardens in Srinagar began to take its toll. Over trodden lawns began to dry out, flowers beds walked over by children and flowers in bloom plucked, picnickers   dirtied the places with their  left over wraps, etc.  Suggestions to control the entry into the Mughal gardens were rejected as being anti-people. A solution had to be found out to stop this carnage.

It was in 1969 the first step in this direction was initiated when the newly appointed Director of Parks, Gardens and Floriculture, Prof Kailas Nath Kaul, former founding Director of National Botanic Gardens Lucknow, took charge. In 1970, he advocated the expanding of the  boundaries of the existing Mughal Gardens to  disperse the tourist crowd. Prof Kaul was the first person to launch the campaign to save the famous Mughal Gardens, create new gardens in other parts of the Valley and attempted to educate the local   people of Srinagar to protect their gardening heritage.

Prof Kaul’s contribution in redeveloping the Mughal gardens in the whole State of J&K included  creating new garden areas behind Nishaat and Shalimar Gardens, cleaning the Chashme Shahi Spring, activating its spring by excavation its debris,  excavating the Mughal garden at Pari Mahal, long  avoided by visitors who felt it was haunted by ghosts and  spirits, repairing Achabal and Nagin lake complex gardens, creating the new Rose Garden at Kokarnag Springs, repairing the Verinag channels and creating the gardens along this channel, and finally creating the big new Garden on the slopes of the hills  on the side of Raj Niwas and dedicating it as the ‘Jawaharlal Nehru Alpine Botanic Garden’, the first for the Sub Continent. People in Srinagar found this long banner a mouthful and all called it the more romantic, ” Mamaji Ka Bagh”, the mamaji being the uncle of Mrs. Indira Gandhi!!  For two decades the Mamaji ka Bagh was the place for visit by the Indian Film Industry to shoot the many famous songs, and only the militancy of 1989 onwards pulled back the film stars visits from this garden and even frightened away tourists from visiting the ‘Bagh’ after it  was visited by youth militants.

Prof Kaul  mooted the idea of setting up a Tulip Garden in the valley as a small scale horticultural enterprise and got a flower shop opened in the IG International Airport Terminal One to sell flowers from the gardens of Kashmir. Only a persistent harassment by the Delhi city sales tax department to charge tax on the sales, led to the closure of this popular service.

Prof Kaul began a systematic reading of old available Persian literature on the history of the Mughals in Kashmir and found evidence of the existence of old Mughal gardens which had now disappeared. He started an exploration drive in Jammu and Rajouri and managed to locate the place where latter day Queen Noorjahan was born, and  marked by a small Mughal Garden.  He began to excavate the site and  recovered the  layout of this garden  which should have  given Rajouri a gift of an old garden, when events in Srinagar led Prof Kaul to abandon the State within  three hours on a day, and he never returned to complete his dream project.  That was the last time the gardens in the State got a much delayed boost to their name, and saved.

Prof Kaul left a wish in his family that when he died, a part of his ashes should be buried in Kashmir, his old  family home. This wish was  fulfilled when his son  took a small urn of ashes and buried it under the old Chinar tree in ‘Mamji Ka Bagh’ and left it unmarked. A  minor earthquake in 1999(?)  under the Raj Nivas ground led to the shifting of rock causing the  natural water spring to shut which provided irrigation facility to the Bagh. A New  water pump was installed later to augment the irrigation water from Dal lake.

One  should not lament the depletion of gardens in the Valley and in Srinagar. The first thing to do is to  find out the sites of the old gardens from the maps  left by the British municipal authorities and  reacquire some of the more conveniently located lands and  wall them. All old  garden sites need to be recharged by excavating the land filled by rubbish, malba and repeated floods of the past. Effort should be made to dig out the old dried out water channels that fed  water to  the  gardens. The Bandh along the river Jehlum should be now developed  to create new slope gardens. Annual  competition for best small and big gardens, should be organized  for private and government office and opened to visitors.  Private shops should be encouraged to install flower beds on containers and hanging along the streets and a small  tax relief be considered  on the expenses incurred by the shop keepers. The municipality should create a new tax charge to tax those household who maintain high boundary walls and only  walls of international standard height of one metre, be allowed.

The Department of Floriculture should consider inviting garden experts from other lands to come and see the Mughal Gardens in Srinagar and Kashmir and suggest improvements. A new School for Gardeners be opened holding certificate course of eight months, to train unemployed youth to learn  professional gardening and be employed in  private and government gardens in the State/UTs.

The writer is Chairman Vitasta Healthcare Trust, Jammu, & ex DGP ITBP.

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