Now it is also the name of the surrounding locality in North Delhi, in the Old Delhi area, and an important road junction as the Red Fort, ISBT and Delhi Junction railway station lie in its vicinity.
History
Plaque at Kashmere Gate, commemorating the 14 September 1857 attack on it by British Army during Indian Rebellion of 1857Kashmere Gate, in 2008
It was the area around the North gate of the walled city of the Delhi, leading to the Laal Quila, the Red Fort of Delhi, the gate was facing towards Kashmir, so it was named Kashmere Gate under British Raj. The monument can still be seen. The southern gate to the walled city is called Delhi Gate.
When the British first started settling in Delhi in 1803, they found the walls of Old Delhi city, Shahjahanabad lacking repairs, especially after the siege by Maratha Holkar in 1804, subsequently, they reinforced the city's walls. They gradually set up their residential estates in the Kashmere Gate area, which once housed Mughal palaces and the homes of nobility.[1] The gate next gained national attention during the Mutiny of 1857. Indian soldiers fired volleys of cannonballs from this gate at the British and used the area to assemble for strategizing fighting and resistance.
The British had used the gate to prevent the mutineers from entering the city. Evidence of the struggles is visible today in damage to the existing walls (the damage is presumably cannonball related). Kashmere Gate was the scene of an important assault by the British Army during Indian rebellion of 1857, during which on the morning of 14 September 1857 the bridge and the left leaf of the Gate were destroyed using gunpowder, starting the final assault on the rebels towards the end of Siege of Delhi.[2]
After 1857, the British moved to Civil Lines, and Kashmere Gate became the fashionable and commercial centre of Delhi, a status it lost only after the creation of New Delhi in 1931. In 1965, a section of the Kashmere Gate was demolished to allow faster movement of vehicular traffic. Since then, it has become a protected monument of ASI.[1]
In the early 1910s, employees of the Government of India Press settled around Kashmere Gate, it included a sizable Bengali community, and the community Durga Puja organized by Delhi Durga Puja Samiti that they started in 1910 is the oldest one in Delhi today.[3] The present building of Delhi State Election Commission’s Office on Lothian Road near Kashmiri Gate was built from 1890 to 1891. The two-story building housed St. Stephen's College, Delhi from 1891 until 1941, when it moved to its present campus.[4]
It had been listed as a notorious market between 2016 and 2017 by the USTR for selling counterfeit auto parts.[5][6]
A library established by the Mughal prince Dara Shikoh still exists in Kashmere Gate and is being run as an archaeological museum by the Archaeological Survey of India.
Historic sites
Mutiny Memorial erected in 1863, in memory of officers and soldiers, British and native of the Delhi Field Force killed during 1857,
One of two remaining Magazine Gateways, which mark the site of old magazines blown up during 1857 Mutiny, South of Kashmere Gate Post office, next to Magazine Gateway.
Telegraph Memorial, erected in 1901-02 to honour Post & Telegraph personnel, who died in 1857
Nicholson Cemetery entrance, oppo. ISBT (Kashmeri Gate), named after Brig. General John Nicholson, British hero during 1857 Mutiny.
^ abDelhi city guide, by Eicher Goodearth Limited, Delhi Tourism. Published by Eicher Goodearth Limited, 1998. ISBN81-900601-2-0. Page 216.
^Nivedita Khandekar (30 September 2012). "A gate in the city wall". Hindustan Times. Archived from the original on 29 September 2012. Retrieved 23 September 2013.
^Rizwi, Syed Mehboob. Tarikh Darul Uloom Deoband [History of the Dar al-Ulum Deoband]. Vol. 2. Translated by Murtaz Husain F Quraishi (1981 ed.). Darul Uloom Deoband: Idara Ehtemam. pp. 52–55.
