The following is an excerpt from The Shortest History of Delhi by John Zubrzycki, published by Pan MacMillan.What had been the ‘greatest mass migration’ in modern history now became the world’s ‘biggest land resettlement operation’. Much of that resettlement would occur on the Indian side of bifurcated Punjab, but it also took in large parts of New Delhi. India’s capital was now ‘Partition City’. In 1946, it had a population of around 950,000. Most of its Urdu-speaking Muslims, approximately 330,000, left after Partition, leaving around 600,000 mostly Hindus and Sikhs. Between 1947 and 1950, half a million non-Muslim Punjabi-speaking refugees flooded into New Delhi, overturning its demography, its language and its culture. John Zubrzycki The Shortest History of Delhi Pan MacMillan (2026)The Kingsway Camp on the site of the durbar grounds became a vast tented mini-metropolis housing 300,000 Sikhs and Hindus. When it reached capacity, the new arrivals spread out into areas around the Red Fort and the walls of the Old City. ‘They thronged in camps, schools, colleges, temples, gurdwaras, dharmsalas, military barracks and gardens. They squatted on railway platforms, streets, pavements and every conceivable space,’ writes the historian V.N. Datta. ‘No physical, economic, and administrative infrastructure existed to cope with it. No extra housing, water supply, sewage, or transport was available.’ Many of the refugees were city dwellers from West Paki stan. They included landlords, moneylenders, doctors, lawyers, teachers, traders and small shopkeepers. They were industrious and entrepreneurial, in contrast to the laid-back locals. ‘On the one hand there was drive, patience, and the competitive spirit; on the other, conservatism, smugness, and caution. One gave smiles, the other, scowls. The Punjabi was frank and ingratiating, the resident, apathetic,’ Datta remarks. Temporary encampments gradually became permanent colonies. A newly established ministry of rehabilitation resettled nearly 300,000 people by the end of 1950, with more than half moving into properties left behind by Muslims. The new colonies included Vijaynagar and Azadpur in North Delhi; Jangpura, Bhogal, Lajpat Nagar, Malviya Nagar and Nizamuddin East in South Delhi; and Tilak Nagar, Patel Nagar and Rajendra Nagar in West Delhi – many named after independence leaders. Each colony was equipped with amenities such as a marketplace, a shopping centre, a Hindu temple and a Sikh gurdwara, a police station, a school and a post office. Delhi’s predominantly Urdu-speaking culture fusing different traditions and religions was now unrecognisable. Hindus and Muslims from established families looked down on what they saw as the boorish and provincial newcomers. Punjabi culture prioritised displays of wealth, property and possessions. The city was ‘completely rattled by the loudness, aggression and entrepreneurship of the migrant Punjabis’, a member of one of Delhi’s august Muslim families told Das Gupta. ‘That older personality, all that tolerance and eloquence, was effeminate, they seemed to say, and it only got us screwed. Now we will care about nothing that we cannot touch, and we will let nothing stand in the way of us getting more out of it.’ The birth pangs of India’s independence went far beyond the violence that accompanied Partition and the resettlement of millions of refugees. In 1948, India went to war with Pakistan over Kashmir and ordered the invasion of the princely state of Hyderabad to thwart its bid for independence. Britain had left India with an enviable network of railways, roads and canals, but the country’s industrial base was minuscule. The literacy rate was just 16 percent. In rural areas, just 4.9 percent of women could read and write. Average life expectancy was thirty-two years. India needed schools, universities, hospitals and housing. A constitution had to be drafted and millions of people added to electoral rolls. On 26 January 1950, a distinctly celebratory mood descended on New Delhi. The occasion was a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan (President’s Palace, the new name for Viceroy’s House) to announce the birth of the Republic of India and the adoption of a new constitution. A year later, India held its first general election. Posters displaying pairs of bullocks, elephants, earthenware lamps, rising suns and even a star covered the walls of the capital, each symbol enabling the illiterate voters to identify political parties. Congress won by a landslide, picking up 364 seats in the 499-seat Lok Sabha, the parliament’s lower house. New Delhi was now a predominantly Punjabi metropolis with a population in 1951 of 1.8 million, a near doubling in size since the 1941 census. Industries returned. Between 1945 and 1951 the number of registered factories in New Delhi grew from 227 to 431, producing items such as sewing machines, bicycles, electronic goods, cloth and automotive parts. It was also becoming an international city. To create buildings that would reflect India’s modernist ethos, Nehru commissioned his favourite architect, Habib Rahman, to design the headquarters of the World Health Organization, the fine arts precinct Rabindra Bhavan and the headquarters of the Post and Telegraph Department. The transition from ‘Walled City to World City’, as a newspaper headline writer declared, was now underway. On the fringes of Lodi Gardens stood Joseph Allen Stein’s India International Centre and the adjacent Ford Foundation. After being ruled since independence by a chief commissioner appointed by the central government, Delhi became a union territory in 1956 under the control of a lieutenant governor. In 1995, the National Capital Territory was declared, expanding the city’s geographical area to 1484 square kilometres. Delhi now has a seventy-member elected legislative assembly and a cabinet. Matters relating to law and order and land are administered through the lieutenant governor, who is responsible to the president of India. The demand for full statehood has been taken up by all major political parties but resisted by the central government and courts due to security and governance concerns relating to the city’s role as the national capital. The pride of the capital was the Ashoka Hotel, wedged between Lutyens’ Delhi and the city’s diplomatic enclave on 25 acres of prime real estate. Nehru had ordered its construction to house delegates to the ninth UNESCO conference in 1956.