For anyone familiar with India’s past, this might seem odd given how the 1860s was a particularly grim period in Delhi’s history. The Mughal rule had just ended after the British suppressed the revolt of 1857, often referred to as India’s first war of independence. The city – once an idyll of pleasure gardens, Sufi devotion, arts and Mughal regalia – now laid in ferment, sacked and looted.
