Tagore Garden: Defending Delhi’s post-Partition concrete fabric

The Tagore Garden metro station in Delhi displays two names: Tagore Garden and Tatarpur.

Tagore Garden was built to house Punjabi refugees after the 1947 Partition, as part of a larger resettlement effort in west Delhi.

The colony's name, borrowed from poet Rabindranath Tagore, was a government attempt at cultural credibility despite no connection to Punjab.

From the 1970s, residents added unsanctioned rooms, extended balconies, and added tiles to façades, recording informal growth in brick and paint.

Rajouri Garden’s City Square Mall, commonly called 'Lifestyle', highlights the contrast between named modern structures and unnamed old rooftops.