Tag Archives: Ibrahim Adil Shah II

The medieval splendour of Bijapur

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Vijayapura (formerly) Bijapur, KARNATAKA :

The myriad monuments of Bijapur, such as the Gol Gumbaz, the Jami Masjid, the Malik-e-Maidan and the Ibrahim Rauza, continue to evoke the grandeur of its past as the capital city of a sultanate that held sway for two centuries.

The Ibrahim Rauza contains the tomb of Ibrahim Adil Shah II (r. 1580-1627). The tomb and the mosque in the complex were built by Malik Sandal, the celebrated Abyssinian architect in the Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur.

DURING the reigns of Ibrahim Adil Shah II (r. 1580-1627) and Mohammed Adil Shah (r. 1627-1656) over the Deccan Sultanate of Bijapur, there lived an architect of Abyssinian origin called Malik Sandal who, some historians aver, learnt his trade in Turkey before being lured to the lands of the Deccan. Among the many splendorous monuments that this architect designed is the Ibrahim Rauza, the tomb of Ibrahim Adil Shah II, which the architectural historian Helen Philon describes “as the most beautiful and splendid of all Adil Shahi funerary monuments”. Malik Sandal used the services of a guild of builders whom he trained, called the imaratwale (builders).

Almost four centuries after Malik Sandal’s time, a descendant of this guild of builders continues to live in the city of Bijapur (now Vijayapura). While he has abandoned the profession of his ancestors, Abdul Gani Imaratwale often wanders into monuments that his forebears must have built, laying one basaltic block over another. His wanderings are not nostalgic strolls but serious forays of a historian of the medieval Sultanate of Bijapur who teaches at the Anjuman Degree College in Vijayapura. Seeking a deeper understanding of the history of Bijapur, Imaratwale often finds himself staring for hours at something as obscure as the fish motifs that adorn many of the monuments in this grand city. Bijapur in its heyday, rivalled and, at times, surpassed its Mughal contemporaries such as Delhi, Agra and Lahore in magnificence.

Imaratwale, who has published several books on various aspects of medieval Bijapur, has now brought out his latest edited volume, Studies in Bijapur Sultanate . His co-editor in this work is Maqsood Afzal Jagirdar, who is the direct descendant of Afzal Khan (d. 1659), a powerful generalissimo of the Adil Shahis. Thus, the two editors of the volume, apart from being scholars, have primordial familial links with the history of the Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur.

Studies in Bijapur Sultanate consists of 43 academic papers, of which 17 are from an academic seminar that took place in 1983 in Bijapur when Imaratwale was a young historian, while the remainder are the outputs of modern research. In the latter section, the majority of the papers are authored by Imaratwale, followed by Jagirdar. The work of a few more scholars complete the volume.

The inclusion of unpublished papers from the seminar of 1983 is an academic scoop of sorts as they add tremendously to our understanding of the history of this epoch. Scholars from New Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolhapur, Bangalore (now Bengaluru) and Mysore (now Mysuru) had made the journey to Bijapur to participate in this pathbreaking seminar. On the second day of the seminar, they were taken around Bijapur in horse-drawn tongas to see the Gol Gumbaz, Jama Masjid, the massive cannon called the Malik-e-Maidan and the Ibrahim Rauza. Many of these historians, who had spent most of their academic lives researching the Deccan and south India, have since passed away, making this exercise of publishing their papers even more precious.

The Bijapur Sultanate was founded in 1489 by the Persian migrant Yusuf Adil Khan (known as Shah in later histories) (r. 1489-1510), who was a protege of the Bahmani Prime Minister Mahmud Gawan. At the time, the almost 150-year-old Bahmani Sultanate that stretched across the northern Deccan was in its death throes because of internecine differences among the native and foreign components in its nobility. The execution of Mahmud Gawan in 1481 at the behest of Mohammed Shah III (r. 1463-1482), the last notable king of the Bahmani throne who ruled from Bidar, catalysed the breakneck speed at which this empire unravelled as governors of different provinces gradually assumed independent power.

Over the next two decades, the boundaries of the northern Deccan would have to be redrawn to account for the birth of five new principalities, or Sultanates, of the Deccan that emerged from the implosion of the Bahmani Empire. The Deccan Sultanates that emerged were Bijapur (the Adil Shahi Sultanate), Golconda (the Qutb Shahi Sultanate), Ahmednagar (the Nizam Shahi Sultanate), Bidar (the Barid Shahi Sultanate) and Berar (the Imad Shahi Sultanate). Of these five, the three Sultanates of Bijapur, Golconda and Ahmednagar survived as robust and strong states into the 17th century when the imperial ambitions of the Mughals snuffed them out forever. The last great Mughal, Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707), personally led campaigns to the Deccan, vanquishing Bijapur and Golconda in 1686 and 1687 respectively, ending the era of the Deccan Sultanates. Thus, historians like S.K. Aruni argue that the Deccan Sultanates formidably “resisted the north Indian imperialism” of the Mughals. Nine Sultans ruled the Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur over the two centuries of its independent existence between 1489 and 1686. They ruled over a linguistically diverse land from their headquarters of Bijapur that lay at the nebulous meeting point of the Kannada- and Marathi-speaking lands. Their reign would later extend into the Tamil-speaking areas of the deep south as well. Like the other Deccan Sultanates of Ahmednagar and Golconda, which were ruled by ardent Shiites (as opposed to the Sunni Mughals), Bijapur, too, had a Shiite orientation that manifested in its close relationship with the Shiite Safavid dynasty of Persia.

Here, it is important to mention that even though Yusuf Adil Shah was the first Muslim king in India to declare himself as Shiite, his descendants often vacillated between Shiism and the Sunni creed. These rulers also never imposed their Shiite creed on their fellow Muslims, which is vindicated by the fact that Shiites continue to remain a negligible minority among modern Muslims even in the city of Vijayapura. Sufi saints such as Sayyed Hashim Husaini Alvi (the full name of Hazrat Hashimpeer) were also patronised by the ruling clique.

Like the Bahmanis before them, the Sultans of Bijapur ruled over a variety of people. Among the nobility itself, the factional schism between the Afaqis (or the foreign component which Imaratwale prefers to call Gharibuddiyar ) and the Dakhnis (or the native component) that had been the bane of the Bahmani court continued to fester in the Bijapur court as well. There were also Habshis or the Abyssinians who were an important faction in the court as well. Among its non-Muslim population, the Bijapur rulers formed a tight patron-client relationship with the Maratha nobility, with at least one prominent historian of the medieval Deccan, P.M. Joshi, comparing this relationship to the one that existed between the Mughals and the Rajputs in Hindustan or north India.

Imaratwale lists some of the prominent Maratha families that served the Adil Shahis militarily. These include the “Nimbalkars of Phaltan, Ghatges of Maun, Manes of Muswar, Ghorpades of Mudhol, Dafles of Jath, Sawants of Wari, etc.”. Marathi-speaking brahmins also served Bijapur in its civil administrative work. This relationship dates back to the founder of the dynasty, Yusuf Adil Shah, who married a Maratha noblewoman, and before him to the Bahmanis who had built a close relationship with the Marathas.

Bijapur was often involved in wars with the empire of Vijayanagara, its powerful neighbour in the south. In direct confrontations such as the battles that took place in 1510 and 1520, Vijayanagara (that was ruled by Krishnadevaraya [r. 1510-1529] at the time) was able to trump Bijapur. In the chequerboard of the medieval Deccan, victories or losses were never permanent, which meant that Bijapur would often ally with Vijayanagara over the next few decades in conflicts with its sibling Sultanates, until a final breach in this fluctuating relationship led to the Battle of Talikota in 1565. Four (of the five) Deccan Sultanates, including Bijapur, set aside their squabbles to briefly ally in this ultimate battle, which sounded the death knell for Vijayanagara. Historians have argued that the confederation of Sultanates, while having the smaller army, gained an immense advantage because of their advances in artillery pioneered by engineers such as Fatehullah Shirazi who lived in Bijapur during the reign of Ali Adil Shah I (r. 1558-1579). Bijapur benefited tremendously from this battle as it paved the path for the southern expansion of its territory across the Tungabhadra river as they were able to defeat a number of vassals of Vijayanagara over the next century.

Moment of glory

The victory at Talikota also led to the commencement of a golden period for Bijapur which saw a flurry of construction as Hindu artisans from the defeated capital of Vijayanagara sought new patrons. Bijapur entered its moment of glory with the ascension of Ibrahim Adil Shah II in 1580, who ruled for almost 50 years and is considered the greatest Adil Shahi Sultan. Part of his reign coincided with the reign of the greatest Mughal king, Akbar (r. 1556-1605), and aspects of Ibrahim Adil Shah II’s personality were similar to those of Akbar as the Bijapur ruler also had an eclectic outlook and, some argue, tried to establish a syncretic religious creed on the lines of Din-i-Ilahi .

In fact, Ibrahim Adil Shah II was addressed as “Jagat Guru”, for, as an aesthete steeped in musical and literary pursuits, he was a devotee of Goddess Saraswati. In some of the farmans (royal edicts) issued during his rule, he is referred to as Az Puja Shri Saraswati . Ibrahim Adil Shah II’s own composition, the Kitab-e-Nauras , contains lavish praise of Saraswati. Ibrahim Adil Shah II was also more comfortable in Marathi, a consequence of the ruling dynasty’s close links with Maratha nobility and the status that the language had as the lingua franca, than with Persian, which he spoke with some difficulty. He also patronised poets in his court, including Mulla Zuhuri, who wrote: “If they make the elixir of mirth and pleasure/They make it from the holy dust of Bijapur”.

A Mughal envoy, Asad Baig, who visited Bijapur during the reign of Ibrahim Adil Shah II, describes it thus: “In one street [of the bazaar in Bijapur] were thousands of people drinking; and dancers, lovers and pleasure seekers assembled. None quarrelled or disputed with one another and this state of things was perpetual. Perhaps no other place in the world could present a more wonderful spectacle to the eye of the traveller.” On his return to the court of Akbar, he took along with him fabulous gifts, including tobacco and Chanchal, the favourite elephant of the Sultan, who was “accustomed to drinking two mans [one man is equal to 37.324 kilograms] of wine daily”.

Mohammed Adil Shah (r. 1627-1656) also displayed some of his father’s penchant for art, music and literature, apart from being a wise ruler. It is his remains that are interred in the Gol Gumbaz, the awe-inspiring mausoleum that has one of the largest free-standing domes in the world.

At its peak in the first half of the 17th century, the boundaries of the Bijapur Sultanate touched both the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. In the West, Bijapur traded with Persia, Arabia, East Africa and Europe through its entrepots of Chaul, Dabhol, Bhatkal and Goa (which it lost to the Portuguese in 1510). Leaving the eastern Deccan in the hands of its neighbour, the Sultanate of Golconda, Bijapur’s tentacle of power extended south and south-east across Bangalore, Mysore, Tanjore and Madurai. This vast swathe meant that it was the second largest kingdom in India at the time after the Mughal Empire. The territory of the Sultanate encompassed regions in the modern Indian States of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Goa, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

Evan as Bijapur reached the apogee of its power, its clashes with the Mughals who had become its northern neighbour after gobbling up the Sultanate of Ahmednagar, and increasingly fractious wrangling with the Marathas who had coalesced under Shivaji’s leadership, restricted its power. The early rise of Shivaji, who became the first Chhatrapati of the Maratha Empire reigning between 1674 and 1680, can be indirectly attributed to the Adil Shahis. His father Shahji was one of the chief generals of the Bijapur army during the reign of Mohammed Adil Shah and Ali Adil Shah II (r. 1656-1672) and was even granted a string of titles and the jagir (landholding) of Bangalore for his services.

The decline of the Bijapur Sultanate set in after the ascension of Ali Adil Shah II, who was unable to complete the building of his own tomb (the incomplete structure is erroneously called Barakaman and was possibly conceived to be larger than the Gol Gumbaz), and continued under Sikandar Adil Shah (r. 1672-1686) who, after a year-long siege of Bijapur, was captured by Mughal forces in 1686 ending the saga of the Adil Shahis.

The Adil Shahis’ liberal religious policies, their broad outlook towards their subjects of various ethnicities, their patronage of art and literature also ensured that their reign engendered a unique Deccani culture in their territories, vestiges of which continue to linger on in modern Karnataka and Maharashtra. Their legacy in language can be seen in Dakhni Urdu, which continues to be spoken by Deccani and south Indian Muslims even to this day. In the implementation of justice, the “Adil Shahi kings preferred Hindu law for Hindu subjects and the Muslims were governed by Shariah .” The farmans of the Adil Shahis were in Persian but often appended by a translation in Marathi or Kannada. The historian and archaeologist Dr A. Sundara has demonstrated that the Deccani architectural style of the Adil Shahis even had an impact on temple architecture.

Imaratwale makes the important point that “Hindus enjoyed socio-religious freedom” during the Adil Shahi period. Many of the Persian histories written during the Adil Shahi period mention how the Hindu population celebrated festivals such as Ugadi, Holi, Deepavali and Dasara, and the rulers financially supported “annual fairs and the maintenance of religious places such as temples and mathas ”. The contemporary Persian histories that Imaratwale relies upon are valuable sources of Bijapur history. Chief among these is Tarikh-e-Farishtah of Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astrabadi, who wrote this history under the patronage of Ibrahim Adil Shah II.

While modern Vijayapura, also the district headquarters, is a nondescript city, its myriad monuments continue to evoke the grandeur of its past. Both religious structures, be they tombs or mosques, and secular structures, such as forts, tanks, palaces, markets and gardens, still vie for the attention of the modern-day tourist. The detritus of majestic structures that survives in its suburbs and neighbouring towns and villages such as Afzalpur, Tikota, Kumatagi, Ainapur, Aliabad and Nauraspur, also beckon discerning visitors.

Abdul Gani Imaratwale can be contacted at dr.imaratwale@gmail.com

source: http://www.frontline.thehindu.com / Frontline / Home> Arts & Culture> Heritage / by Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed / July 09th, 2021

Rebel Sultans: Tracing the origins of Malik Ambar, the hero of the Deccan who started out as an African slave

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KARNATAKA / THE DECCAN :

In Rebel Sultans, Manu S Pillai traces the history of the Deccan from the end of the 13th century to the dawn of the 18th, punctuated by tales of drama, betrayal and murder.

Editor’s note: The Deccan, miles away from the empire of the Mughals, was eyed with envy by rulers such as Aurangzeb, so much so that it is said to have contributed to his downfall. Its kingdoms had much to offer; in their courts were Persians and Marathas, in their ranks were African nobles, and in their treasuries were gold and fortunes.

In Rebel Sultans, Manu S Pillai traces the history of the Deccan from the end of the 13th century to the dawn of the 18th. He tells the story of the Vijayanagar empire, the court of the Bahmani kings, and the Rebel sultans — punctuated by drama, betrayal and murder. The book features characters such as Malik Ambar, Chand Bibi and Krishnadeva Raya, and is published by Juggernaut Books.

The hero of the Deccan had skin the colour of coal. Emperors snarled at him from afar, while enemies at home rattled in fear when he marched into their neighbourhoods. Many were those who despised him, but many more still were the masses who discerned in him a champion. His story was certainly unusual, though he was neither the first of his people to serve in the Deccan, nor extraordinary in his antecedents. And yet he emerged as the strongest of them all, reigning indeed as king in all but name. ‘He has a stern Roman face,’ wrote one traveller, ‘and is tall and strong of stature’ though his ‘white glassy eyes’, it was added, ‘do not become him.’ His charities were legendary, as was the valour of the men who pledged themselves to his service. When at last he died, not on the battlefield but secure in a formidable fortress, the Mughals admitted that this enemy was ‘an able man. In warfare, in command, in sound judgment, and in administration he had no rival or equal… He kept down the turbulent spirits of [the Deccan], and maintained his exalted position to the end of his life, and closed his career in honour. History,’ the obituary concludes, ‘records no other instance of an Abyssinian slave arriving at such eminence.’ It was high praise, coming as it did from the imperial court, where two generations of emperors revealed nothing but spite for the man called Malik Ambar.

The Deccan, as we know, had long attracted foreigners to its shores, offering them wealth and a future in these eastern lands. Persians arrived, as did Arabs and Central Asians. Some graduated to princely ranks, while others soared to gratifying aristocratic heights. But among the legions of men absorbed by the Bahmanis and their heirs were also Africans who came primarily from the land we now call Ethiopia. And they too would thrive in the Deccan far above the stations where they began their lives. Some were associated with tales of treachery – Mahmud Gawan’s confidant, who struck his seal on the forgery that delivered him his death warrant, was a habshi (an African) as was his executioner. When Yusuf Adil Shah died, one of the regents who ruled in the name of his son was a black man from Ethiopia – the latter was stabbed to death for displacing Westerners and favouring the Sunni faith. When years later Chand Bibi was imprisoned, her liberator who briefly stood at the forefront in Bijapur was a habshi, as was the man Ibrahim Adil Shah II rejected after eight years of living under his guard. In Ahmadnagar, during the wars of succession in the 1590s, one ruler, whose reign lasted less than a year, found himself without support from his nobles because his mother was ‘a negress’, though when Chand Bibi was besieged by the Mughals, the man who led Bijapur’s and Golconda’s troops to her rescue was also a habshi called Suhail Khan. And many years later, on the eve of the final Mughal conquest of the Deccan, in Bijapur once again would rise a habshi exercising as a short-lived vizier the full and tragic authority of power.

The habshis had almost all of them begun their careers as slaves. And there certainly was a thriving market for men from Ethiopia in the courts and demesnes of the east. Writing as early as the 14th century, Ibn Batuta reports how habshis were ‘guarantors of safety’ for ships sailing in the Indian Ocean, with such fearsome reputations that ‘let there be but one of them on a ship and it will be avoided by… pirates’. Centuries later a Portuguese missionary noted how ‘all the country of Arabia, Persia, Egypt, and Greece are full of slaves’ who made for ‘great warriors’. In India too, this was true. The favour and affection shown by Raziya Sultan in the 1230s to Jamal al-Din Yakut, an Abyssinian warrior, provoked a rebellion and contributed to her brutal murder in Delhi at the close of that decade. At the end of the 14th century, a habshi servant of the Delhi Sultans had established a near-sovereign state in Jaunpur, in present-day Uttar Pradesh, which sustained itself till 1479. Firoz Shah Bahmani in the early 15th century had habshis in his harem, while in that same century a 1487 coup by Africans in the court of the ruler of Bengal led to the rise of a short-lived ‘Habshi Dynasty’ hundreds of miles away, on the other side of the Indian subcontinent. The exquisite Siddi Saiyyed Mosque in Ahmedabad was built by a habshi in 1572, and generations later the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb would appoint the African lord of the fortress of Janjira his naval commander, allocating to him an annual grant of 400,000 rupees to maintain the imperial fleet. In the old quarter of Delhi there is even an area by the name of Phatak Habash Khan, named, evidently, after a habshi courtier who bid farewell to the Deccan, embracing the cause of the Mughal emperor.

While these are episodes that stand out, where Africans from humble origins arrived at positions of honour and power (and sometimes infamy), the beginning of their journeys on this path were never happy. The habshis were often taken as children and sold at a price to be transported abroad. Ethiopia, at the time, was called Abyssinia in the trading world, and the very word ‘habshi’ is a derivation denoting the origins of these slaves. Malik Ambar, too, emerged from this commercial exchange of human goods. Born around 1548 into the Oromo tribe, he was captured as a boy and sold to an Arab for 20 gold ducats. In Baghdad he passed, temporarily, into the hands of another owner, who then sold him to the man who would bring him to India – and to his destiny. It was this master who educated him, though by now he had renounced his name, Chapu, and converted to Islam. ‘Whether he assumed a Muslim identity at the time as an act of genuine faith or simply as a practical matter of assimilation is not known.’ But it certainly helped him in his life ahead, to share faith with the powerful kings and noblemen of the east, in whose service lay his ascent.

Around 1571, now in his early 20s, Ambar, as he was known, arrived in the Deccan where his long-time master sold him to the peshwa (chief minister) of Ahmadnagar. The sale itself was not unusual – though his master had brought him up, the ‘bottom-line was never in dispute: Ambar was property’ and not ‘an heir or son’. However, the man who had just purchased the slave must have opened Ambar’s eyes to a world of possibilities, for the peshwa was himself black and had arrived in the Deccan under similar circumstances. He would, in due course, be assassinated, but to Ambar it must have been clear that in India it was possible to rise beyond slavery and to come into great power and wealth – he himself was merely one of a thousand habshis the peshwa possessed.

Rebel Sultans by Manu S Pillai is published by Juggernaut Books

source: http://www.firstpost.com / FirstPost / Home>Living News / by Manu S Pillai / June 21st, 2018

Palmyra of the Deccan

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Vijayapura (formerly BIJAPUR ) , KARNATAKA :

A view of Gagan Mahal in Vijayapura.
A view of Gagan Mahal in Vijayapura.

The Adil Shahis made Bijapur (now Vijayapura) a city ahead of its time in terms of infrastructure development and security. This well-planned city had two fortifications, one around the principal Adil Shahi administrative and residential buildings, and a larger one around the rest of the city. Both were roughly circular and had moats and several gateways. To further strengthen the defence of the city walls, the Adil Shahis built many bastions and about 96 gigantic cannons were placed on them. Only a dozen of these canons exist today. Most of them are placed in the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) museum housed in the Nagaad Khana in front of Gol Gumbaz and some of them still sit atop the surviving bastions.

First line of defence

The fortifications have crumbled due to neglect and the moats are overgrown with thorny shrubs and in some places, they are filled with sewage and garbage. The only gateway that the citadel still has is on the south. This was the principal gateway into the citadel but now wears an abandoned look. Just inside this once splendid gateway are the remains of guardrooms constructed entirely of pillars from Hindu temples mostly belonging to the Vijayanagara period.

One of the surviving bastions is the Sharza Burj or Lion Bastion which is also the largest bastion in the city. It is famous for housing the cannon Malik-i-Maidan or Lord of the Plains, which was a war trophy won after the defeat of the Vijayanagara Empire at the Battle of Talikota. The cannon is made from a special alloy and can fire not only cannon balls but also metal slugs and copper coins.

Nearby is Haidar Burj which is the highest gun platform in Vijayapura and is a very conspicuous solitary structure.

It is also called the Upri or Upli Burj by the locals. It was built in 1583 by Haidar Khan, a general during the reigns of Ali Adil Shah I and Ibrahim Adil Shah II. A spiral stairway leads to the top which houses two long cannons. The tower was most probably customised for the guns which needed to be fired from a height so that they can have a long range.

The Adil Shahis wanted to transform their capital city to match the Mughal cities in the North by building imposing courtly structures, gardens, wells, waterways and granaries. While most of the structures have fallen to ruin, some have been converted to government offices and only a handful are open to tourists. The Gagan Mahal was built by Ali Adil Shah I as a palace and an audience hall. Only its structural skeleton remains today. A short walk from the Gagan Mahal is the Sath Manzil (Seven Pavillions) or Haft Manzil built by Ibrahim II as a pleasure pavilion. Only a few storeys survive now and there is no way to go inside. Just opposite this is Jal Mahal or Water Pavilion that has been decorated exquisitely and is crowned by a dome. It is set in the middle of a square pool which is now dry and filled with garbage. Again, there is no way to go inside.

Reservoirs & stepwells

Water was and is a precious resource for Vijayapura and the Adil Shahis built a complex hydraulic system to bring water from distant sources into the city and supplemented this with reservoirs and stepwells. Only a few stepwells and reservoirs survive today and the system of aqueducts and horizontal wells are lost. The Taj Baoli is the biggest stepwell in Vijayapura and was built by Malik Sandal, a Persian architect, in honour of Taj Sultana, the wife of Ibrahim Adil Shah II. Sadly the well, its gateway and the gallery around it are in a very bad state. It won’t survive for long if no action is taken immediately.

Another well-known stepwell present here is the Chand Baoli. The stepwell was built by Ali Adil Shah I in honour of his wife Chand Bibi and it served as the model for Taj Baoli. Chand Bibi is best known for courageously defending Ahmednagar and Bijapur against the attacks of the Mughal Emperor Akbar. She was the regent of both Ahmednagar and Bijapur and was known to be a good warrior, musician, linguist and artist. The structure is now completely cordoned off from the public. One can only see it through the grill gate.

Present-day Vijayapura would have benefited if the administration had preserved the hydraulic system of the Adil Shahis and used the many stepwells and reservoirs instead of letting them turn into garbage dumps. Waking up to this, the Minister for Water Resources, M B Patil announced in April that starting with Taj Baoli, around 20 wells in Vijayapura will be rejuvenated at the cost of Rs 4.25 crore. As a part of the rejuvenation process, the dirty water present in the wells is being pumped out, the garbage is being removed, and the well is being desilted. Additionally, there are plans to repair the structures around them. When fresh water accumulates, it will be pumped and stored in tanks, from which people can collect water for domestic purposes apart from drinking. This will ease the water scarcity the city is facing to a certain extent.

Unless people surrounding these monuments understand their historical importance and realise that a clean baoli can help face water scarcity, all efforts to revive the heritage structures will be futile.

source: http://www.deccanherald.com / Deccan Herald / Home> Supplements> Spectrum / by Rijutha Jagannathan / July 04th, 2017