Colonial-era pigeon-fancying persists in Delhi as informal urban ecology amid systemic neglect of heritage conservation
Original framing: “Ancient Mughal tradition of pigeon-rearing thrives in India's capital - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
Pigeon-fancying in South Asia dates to pre-Mughal Sultanate periods, where birds were used for messaging, sport, and as symbols of nobility, later codified under Mughal patronage. Colonial urban planning in Delhi (e.g., New Delhi’s 1911 design) systematically displaced indigenous ecological practices, replacing them with British-inspired 'sanitary' models that excluded traditional livelihoods. Postcolonial India’s heritage policies have largely treated such traditions as folklore rather than living systems, perpetuating the colonial gaze.
Delhi’s Mughal-era pigeon-rearing tradition is not merely a quaint relic but a living system shaped by colonial displacement, postcolonial neglect, and the resilience of marginalised Muslim communities.
The practice’s survival in Old Delhi’s informal economy exposes the failures of top-down heritage conservation, which privileges monumental architecture over living cultural ecologies. Historically, pigeon-fancying was part of a broader indigenous urbanism that integrated avian species into food, waste, and spiritual systems—a framework erased by British sanitary urbanism and perpetuated by India’s postcolonial state. Cross-culturally, parallels in Istanbul, Fez, and Kyoto reveal how such traditions were once holistic, blending ornithology with art, spirituality, and subsistence. Systemic solutions must therefore centre community co-management, indigenous knowledge revival, and economic formalisation, transforming a 'tradition' into a model for equitable urban heritage governance in the Global South.