Delhi-7: A Sweet sweep

Full story here

New Delhi: Soul-searching: Besides mandate for Manmohan, drubbing a referendum against BJP’s state leadership, say Delhi BJP insiders

The Congress swept the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi, with the party pocketing all seven seats in the city-state. Saturday’s results, after the convincing victory in last November’s Assembly elections, have as good as made the Capital a Congress fortress.

The scale of the sweep is found in the victory margins, the lowest being 93,000 for the party’s South Delhi candidate Ramesh Kumar. The victory margin was over a lakh in each of the other six seats.

Meanwhile, after the massacre, the postmortem has begun for BJP in Delhi. But before that, it’s the frustration and rage of the party’s cadre with the top state leadership that held sway on Saturday. While voters said the Congress landslide — a 7-0 victory — has been a vote of confidence for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, BJP workers say it is also a referendum against the Delhi BJP leadership. “The results show the BJP has completely lost its relevance in Delhi for now,” a senior Delhi Congress leader said. BJP insiders stopped just short of agreeing. In South Delhi constituency, now a rural belt that showed one of the lowest victory margins (just over 90,000 votes), BJP leaders said infighting led to Ramesh Bidhuri’s defeat. In fact, Ramesh Kumar, brother of former Congress candidate Sajjan Kumar, was trailing in the morning — till the late surge in the afternoon saw the result take a U-turn.

Rakshanda Jalil

Rakshanda Jalil, originally uploaded by Jahane Rumi.

Entrance to Bakhtiyaruddin Kaki’s tomb

Entrance to Bakhtiyaruddin Kaki’s tomb, originally uploaded by Jahane Rumi.

Sufi Solace – II

Sufi Solace – II, originally uploaded by Mayank Austen Soofi.

Moments captured during the Urs of Amir Kuhsro in the dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya.

Qutb Minar, Delhi, India

Qutb Minar, Delhi, India, originally uploaded by balavenise.

The tomb of Slave Dynasty ruler, Iltutmish, is also part of the Qutb complex at Mehrauli. Though the dome of the structure has collapsed the front facade with its ornate carving is still standing at far end of the Qutb complex.

Text and picture by balavenise

Mehrauli Bomb Blast And Phool Walon Ki Sair

Written by Kaleem Kawaja · September 29, 2008 · 

Mehrauli, a suburb of Delhi was in the news last week as the site of a bomb blast that killed three persons and injured about a dozen people. In this same late monsoon month going back about 170 years, starting in early 1800s, the same Mehrauli, a suburb of Delhi, has been the site of the glorious annual communal harmony event called, “Phool Walon Ki Sair”.

PHOOL WALON KI SAIR

Qutb Complex – The Man Who Lived in Interesting Times

Deepa Krishnan

I was strolling through the Qutb Complex with my friend, when we came across a little octagonal tomb set prettily in a separate courtyard.

There are many grand monuments inside the Qutb Complex – the tall Qutb Minar, the grand Quwwat-ul-Islam (Might of Islam) mosque, and the ornate Alai Darwaza. Most were built in the early 13th century, by the Slave Dynasty. But this small tomb was added later, in the 16th century.

Who was he, I wondered, this man whose tomb lay next to some of the grandest structures in Delhi? Why was he such a big deal? A Sultan perhaps, or some great nobleman? I looked at the inscription – this was the tomb of a priest, a man named Imam Zamin. It took quite some reading before I found out who he was.

Imam Zamin was a Sayyid, a word that is used to describe male descendants of the Prophet Mohammed. The Sayyids trace their lineage back to Hassan and Hussein, the two grandsons of the Prophet, starting from the 7th century.

In the sixteenth century, Sayyid Imam Zamin came to India from Central Asia (Turkestan), during the Sultanate of Sikandar Lodi. In his book The Delhi that No One Knows, R V Smith says that the Sayyid was appointed Chief Imam of the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque, and that Sikandar Lodi looked to him for spiritual guidance. The Imam, who was a Sufi, preached disregard for worldly achievements, asking Lodi to strive instead for unification for the divine Oneness.

Iftaar at Nizamuddin Dergah

Iftar Time, Now, originally uploaded by Mayank Austen Soofi.

On the Delhi Iron Pillar

From this interesting blog

A couple of articles on Delhi Iron Pillar

Prof. Bala is no stranger to this blog; nor are his pieces on archaeometallurgy; he alerts me about a couple of papers on Delhi Iron Pilalr that he published, recently, in Current Science.

The first one is about the materials science aspects of cannon ball impact on iron pillar (pdf):

The Delhi Iron Pillar was struck by a cannon ball with the specific aim of breaking the pillar into two. The history of the cannon ball strike has been traced briefly. The trajectory of the cannon ball has been established from the surface features of cannon ball indentation area as well as from the direction of shock wave propagation. The materials science aspects related to the pillar’s response to the cannon ball strike have been explained. The nature and origin of cracks surrounding the cannon ball indentation area have been analysed. Visual evidences have been provided to support the sequence of events that followed the cannon ball impact, in a time period of about a microsecond. These included intense plastic deformation leading to creation and propagation of plastic shock wave, initiation of crack at the rear, spallation of material, horizontal propagation of the main crack, and finally branching of the main crack along lump-lump interfaces. The analysis concludes that the fracture of the pillar was avoided by deflection of the propagating horizontal crack that originated from the rear end, diametrically opposite the cannon impact area, along the axial direction of the Pillar through the lump-lump interfaces.

Inside Mirza Ghalib’s Haveli