Collage produced by participants in the community arts programme initiated by KHOJ in Khirkee

The idea of the urban system as discussed by Anthony Leeds, frames Delhi’s special urban history and habitats like Khirkee, in an interesting way. He rejects the idea that such villages were ‘rural’ spaces. He sees them as functional components of political kingdoms that were ruled by powerful, urbanized centers.

If political kingdoms were urban systems, Delhi was one par excellence, way before it reinvented itself in the twenteith century as a suburb of its own past in the form of New Delhi.

Unfortunately Delhi’s dynamic urban past sits uneasily with its bureaucracy mired and aggressive modern avatar.

Khirkee village – Window village – in a literal translation (deriving its name from the Khirkee Masjid built in the sixteenth century) is a large heterogenous collection of neighbourhoods weighed down by contemporary India’s confused official stance on what its urban life should be.

You see in its present, signs of dynamic civic initiatives in the last few decades, as the older village morphed into buildings and parks and decent roads thanks to the contribution of its several dominant communities. You also see familar middle class zealousness in guarding boundaries and some contempt or pity for its poor cousin, the unauthorized Khirkee extension.

Unauthorized colonies can be so for a number of official reasons ranging from being transgressive of history (ASI, The Archaeological Survey of India,  believes that the monuments deserve more civic respect through substantial evacuation of civic life) to being hostage to local officials who find it more remunerative to keep colonies in that unstable status. They are also unauthorized since processes of authorization are slow. The gaps in time are filled in by over eager builders and local landlords who make a quick buck by pushing construction activities  through bureaucratic hurdles and then get entangled in them.

During this process, the relative depression in real estate value, makes it ideal for new migrants to come and rent and live and set up shop – or even buy. A walk down Khirkee extension makes you see global faces along with regional migrant communities making it a truly cosmopolitan neighbourhood. And yet, its unauthorized status also means living with bad civic amenities, overflowing drains, uneven and crater filled roads and diseases of all kinds.

Things simply do not have to be this way. The sincere initiatives taken by so many of the residents of the neighbourhood during the last decade do not have to end in disaster. But for things to go in any other direction we need to go beyond the obvious and we hope that the workshop, with all your inputs, can enrich and exploit our understanding of this neighbourhood, its ability of transcending an undervalued urban past, its harnessing of the regenerative potential of community art initiatives and its explorations of the most genuine processes of participation in civic life.

The Urban Typhoon Workshop 2010, in New Delhi is being co-organized between URBZ and KHOJ and will be held in Khirkee village.