Gurgaon: “It is my private property. It is off limits to visitors now,” says Krishan Pandit. The claim of ownership is to a cenotaph that a businessman had built in memory of his wife in 1748. Till the middle of May, Sethani ki Chhatri was visible from the bus stand on Farrukhnagar-Jhajjar Road before being fenced off with bamboo screens. The dome is visible and a saffron flag flutters in the wind.Pandit is a property dealer who runs an office out of the ground floor of the cenotaph. Its caretaker told TOI Pandit had “bought it from a seth around 2002”.Chhatri now pvt office, lodgingsAt the entrance hangs signage proclaiming the building to be an office for ‘Bhagvan Parshuram Seva Samiti’, with pictures of Pandit and state minister of industries and commerce Rao Narbir Singh on it. One half of the cenotaph has been converted into paying-guest accommodation for warehouse workers, says Balbir Kumar, who introduces himself as their supervisor.Built of limestone, the Chhatri has a raised platform and is open on eight sides. The ceilings are adorned with beautiful frescoes that depict the life of 18th-century royalty. One painting shows an army laying siege to a fort; another shows women fetching water from a well and offering it to a prince on horseback. A third depicts two princes on a camel engaged in combat. The frescoes have been defaced by a ceiling fan that hangs from the dome.Till the early 2000s, the Chhatri formed part of the heritage circuit that guides would bring itinerant foreign travellers, eager to see beyond Delhi’s grand monuments, to. Farrukhnagar, with the eponymous fort as its centrepiece, would typically be a day trip from Delhi via Sultanpur National Park. Old photographs show the Chhatri standing alone, with none of the shops that now line the cenotaph, assimilating it with the semi-urban surroundings of this pocket of Gurgaon, there.Baoli under shops’ siegeGaus Khan ki Baoli, built after the reign of Nawab Faujdar Khan, has been more fortunate. It was restored by Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in the 1990s. But in recent years, many shops have come up next to the Baoli, reducing breathing space for the heritage structure and occupying areas that should be protected under law.According to the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (AMASR) Act, 1958, new construction is strictly prohibited within 100 metres in all directions of an ASI-protected monument. An additional 200-metre regulated zone surrounds this buffer, where any structural changes or repairs require official clearance.A clerk at the tehsildar office complex said the shops have come up in the last seven to eight years without permission from ASI. “This includes shops that line both the monuments. I have written to everyone, including the chief minister, on this,” he said. He showed this correspondent a document from deputy commissioner Uttam Singh’s office that ordered the demolition of the illegal structures near the two heritage monuments last year. “If you see the place today, none of those shops have been closed, demolished or sealed,” he said.Local accounts such as ‘Tariq-e-Jhajjar’ hold that in the early 18th century, Farrukhnagar was shrouded in wilderness. In 1717 or 1718, an employee of the Dadri Toye revenue officer, Daler Khan Baloch, was travelling to his office from Khurrampur village through here when a band of dacoits attacked Mughal emperor Farrukhsiyar’s treasurer Sitaram and his family. Baloch saved them from getting robbed. This earned him praise from the emperor and he was given ‘jageer’ of the area that came to be known as Farrukhnagar. In 1727, Dalel Khan (named Nawab Faujdar Khan by emperor Mohammad Shah Rangeela) built an octagonal fort with five gates – Delhi Gate, Jhajjar Gate, Basirpur Gate, Khurrampur Gate and Patli Gate. The town came up within the walls of the fort.Havelis torn downJust 21km from Gurgaon city, Farrukhnagar has changed rapidly over the past decade. A storyteller and a historical guide who goes by the name Sikkawala on Instagram, Shah Umair said he visited the town for the first time in 2016. “When I went there as an intern working at a firm in Gurgaon, there were so many havelis that lined the Dilli Darwaza that serves as an entry point. Now, they are no longer there.” These Jain havelis were mostly private properties that residents redeveloped into modern reinforced cement concrete homes. Today, only the ruined Darwaza stands, with a few shops selling “Made in China” kitchenware using the gate as prop.The nawabs ruled Farrukhnagar till 1857 when the last descendant of Faujdar Khan was hanged for supporting emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar against the British.The town rose through salt trade. Jain merchants who arrived here built ornate havelis with Lakhauri bricks. Hanging verandas, French windows and walls decorated with Belgian glass and intricate wood carvings of birds, elephants and peacocks adorning the front doors were trademark features of the havelis.One such house belongs to the family of Vijendra Jain, who now runs a stationery shop. “Only our side of the family still lives in this town,” he said. “That house is now crumbling. We don’t have enough resources to restore it.”Jain is aware of the cultural significance of his property but is afraid that parts of the house might collapse at any point. “The municipality has never asked to repair the house. They have not even put up boards to describe the importance of that house. There are many houses like ours in that mohalla. They are under a committee,” he said.A local musician who rents out musical equipment from a small shop opposite Vijendra Jain’s haveli, Pradeep Bhargav, said, “Today’s generation doesn’t care about the history of this place. Most of the people came here after Partition. They don’t even consider the 300-year-old legacy a part of their own history.”The ‘Haryana Cultural Guide’ published by INTACH in 2012, makes a brief note of the town’s history of land ownership. “The town’s turbulent history wreaked havoc upon most of its historic buildings. Most of them changed ownership quite frequently till about 1967,” it notes.Hope for Sheesh MahalThe state archaeology department has recently started work on the most well-known building in town – Sheesh Mahal (the residence of Faujdar Khan). The department has given Haryana State Industrial & Infrastructure Corporation the job of carrying out the restoration.Vaibhav Jain, a consultant architect associated with the restoration, said, “Govt had leased the monument to local authorities, who ran a school and later a municipal office from it. They had made modifications using cement in terms of plumbing and setting up a kitchen.”The corporation has to now remove all fittings and plaster. “We are doing a material-for-material replacement and using limestone and mortar. It will be opened to visitors after work is completed.”Amit Khatri, director of the archaeology department, said restoration becomes tricky when the question of private properties comes in. “In the past three years, the department has brought nearly 55 more monuments under its ambit,” he said. “I would like to bring all monuments under our control, but we are restrained by budgets and lack of men on the ground.”Former deputy director of the department, Banani Bhattacharjee, said she had tried to bring Sethani ki Chhatri under the department’s control in 2017. “There has been rampant construction near Gaus Khan Baoli in the past three decades and new shops have mushroomed very close to the Chhatri, but we could not track down who the real owner of the land was,” she said.SDM Pataudi Dinesh Luhach said encroachment had not been brought to his notice. “I am unaware of this. There has been no communication from the archaeology department,” he said. “In case of a private property, we can convince the owners and try to take up restoration of a monument. But it is under the sole discretion of the owner and my hands as custodian of local heritage are tied.”While the official system moves ponderously through processes and protocols, Farrukhnagar is gradually losing its heritage treasures beyond the fort. As a guide puts it, “See it before it disappears.”
