Kashmiri Gate (Delhi) - History

History

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 as Kashmiri Gate, spelled Kashmere Gate under British Raj. The monument can still be seen. The southern gate to the walled city, is called Delhi Gate.

When Britishers first started settling in Delhi in 1803, they found the walls of Old Delhi city, Shahjahanabad lacking repairs, especially after siege by Maratha Holkar in 1804, subsequently they reinforced city's walls. They gradually set up their residential estates in Kashmere Gate area, which once housed Mughal palaces and homes of nobility. The gate next gained national attention during the Mutiny of 1857. Indian soldiers fired volleys of cannon balls 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 are visible today in damages to the existing walls (the damage is presumably cannon ball related). Kashmere Gate was the scene of an important assault by British Army during Indian rebellion of 1857, during which on the morning of September 14, 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.

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 by ASI.

In early 1910s, employees of the Government of India Press settled around Kashmere Gate, it included a sizable Bengali community, and community Durga Puja organized by Delhi Durga Puja Samiti they started in 1910, is today the oldest in Delhi.