Humayun's Tomb - Restoration

Restoration

Before the restoration work was undertaken, vandalism and illegal encroachments were rampant at the site of the tomb presenting a serious danger to the preservation of this invaluable treasure. At the main entry of Humayun’s Tomb, dingy stalls had been put up under a very corrupt system of municipal patronage known as tehbazari, and all sorts of heavy vehicles were allowed to be parked illegally in these open spaces. On the Nila Gumbad side was a huge citadel of India’s vote bank politics — thousands of ‘slum dwellers’ were kept by an influential section of the political leadership to serve as ‘bonded voters’ during elections. The environment of the dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya had also been ruthlessly degraded and the holy tank had become a messy cesspool.

Restoration work by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) in collaboration with Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which began around 1999 after research work which started in 1997, and was completed in March 2003. Around 12 hectares of lawns were replanted, and over 2500 trees and plants, including mango, lemon, neem, hibiscus and jasmine cuttings, were planted in the gardens. Installation of a new water circulation system for the walkway channels. To ensure that water flows naturally through the channels and pools on the 12-hectare (30 acre) site without the aid of hydraulic systems, the water channels were re-laid to an exacting grade of one centimetre every 40 metres (1:4000 scale). This eventually enabled water to flow through the watercourses in the gardens, and dormant fountains to start functioning once again. Other tasks in this mammoth restoration work included setting up a rainwater harvesting system using 128 ground water recharge pits, old wells which were discovered during the work were desilted and revitalized. This was first privately funded collaborative effort under the aegis of the National Cultural Fund (NCF) by the ASI. Funding included a sum of $650,000 from the Aga Khan Trust for Culture of His Highness the Aga Khan, with help from the Oberoi Hotels Group. In addition, AKTC is conducting a more significant restoration at Babur's tomb, the resting place of Humayun's father in Kabul.

After the restoration work, the conditions in and around this complex underwent a sea-change. All the stalls and other intrusions were removed and the monuments and green spaces restored. Elegant gardens now surround the monuments, adding to their dignity and grace. When illuminated at night, the monument looks truly magnificent.

As a part of on-going restoration work, in 2009, ASI and Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) after months of manual work using hand-tools, removed a thick layer of cement concrete from the roof that was putting a pressure of about 1,102 tons on the structure. The cement concrete was originally laid in 1920s to prevent water seepage and led to a blockage in water passages, after its removal, subsequently each time there was leakage, a fresh layer of cement was added, leading to accumulated thickness of about 40 cm, this has now been replaced traditional lime-based roof layer. In the next phase, a similar treatment was given to tomb's first chabutra (plinth), originally paved with large blocks of quartzite stone blocks, some weighing over a 1,000 kg, though in the 1940s, an uneven settlement in the lower plinth was corrected by covering it with a layer of concrete adding to the disfigurement the original Mughal flooring, which matched with that at the West Gate.