Mayfair Garden’s houses grew around a Lodi-era shrine. Its history is still largely untold

The Makhdum Sabzwari mosque and dargah has stood in Mayfair Garden since the Lodi period, 1451 to 1526 CE. Around it grew a colony of roughly 100 homes, largely settled by Sindhi families in the wider wave of Partition-era resettlement.

The complex, locally called Makhdumki, has a single-aisle prayer chamber opening into a broad quadrangle. The saint’s tomb stands at its centre. For residents rebuilding or upgrading homes nearby, the monument also means structural work requires Archaeological Survey of India permission; excavation can uncover archaeological material that must be reported.

A modernist colony beside an older Delhi

Mayfair Garden’s built character is not Lodi revivalism. Its homes largely carry a post-Independence modernist vocabulary: curved arches, geometric-floral iron grilles and railings, and staircases associated with Bauhaus-influenced design. That language travelled through architects who fled Nazi Germany and continued working in India, as well as Indian architects trained under them.

The result is an unusual overlap: a protected medieval religious complex, a Partition-era community and residential architecture recognisable from Delhi’s 1970s and 1980s. Some residents see the monument as part of the colony’s connection to Delhi’s past, while its proximity can slow routine construction work.

A possible role for the RWA

One suggestion is for resident welfare associations in monument-adjacent colonies to install signage explaining the history of the land and structures around them.

Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti offers one local precedent. The Nizamuddin Urban Renewal Initiative restored more than 20 monuments there, linked conservation with community development, and received two UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation in 2021. Its director, Ratish Nanda, has described the approach as making heritage an asset rather than a burden.

For Mayfair Garden, the immediate next step could begin with a modest marker at Makhdumki: a record of the shrine, the settlement that formed around it, and the homes that followed.