He ordered the construction of a gateway to the fort and later named the fort dehali. According to the Bhavishya Purana, King Prithiviraja of Indraprastha built a new fort in the modern-day Purana Qila area for the convenience of all four castes in his kingdom. Some suggest the coins in circulation in the region under the Tomaras were called dehliwal. The former director of the Archaeological Survey of India, Alexander Cunningham, mentioned that dilli later became dihli/dehli. According to Panjab Notes and Queries, the name of the city at the time of King Prithviraj was dilpat, and that dilpat and dilli are probably derived from the old Hindi word dil meaning "eminence". Another legend holds that the name of the city is based on the Hindi/ Prakrit word dhili ( loose) and that it was used by the Tomaras to refer to the city because the iron pillar of Delhi had a weak foundation and had to be moved. One of them is derived from Dhillu or Dilu, a king who built a city at this location in 50 BCE and named it after himself. There are a number of myths and legends associated with the origin of the name Delhi. The ancient name of the site of modern Delhi is Indraprastha, which literally means "Plain of Indra" or "City of Indra" in Sanskrit. ĭelhi hosted the inaugural 1951 Asian Games, 1982 Asian Games, 1983 NAM Summit, 2010 Men's Hockey World Cup, 2010 Commonwealth Games, 2012 BRICS Summit and was one of the major host cities of the 2011 Cricket World Cup. Delhi is also the centre of the National Capital Region, which is a 'interstate regional planning' area created in 1985. New Delhi is jointly administered by the federal government of India and the local government of Delhi, and serves as the capital of the nation as well as the NCT of Delhi. Although a union territory, the political administration of the NCT of Delhi today more closely resembles that of a state of India, with its own legislature, high court and an executive council of ministers headed by a Chief Minister. Delhi has the second-highest GDP per capita in India (after Goa). Delhi ranks fifth among the Indian states and union territories in human development index. After independence in 1947, New Delhi continued as the capital of the Dominion of India, and after 1950 of the Republic of India.ĭelhi is the second-wealthiest city in India (after Mumbai) and is home to 18 billionaires and 23,000 millionaires. During the Partition of India in 1947, Delhi was transformed from a Mughal city to a Punjabi one, losing two-thirds of its Muslims residents, in part to the pressure brought to bear by arriving Hindu refugees from western Punjab. In 1911, New Delhi, a southern region within Delhi, became the capital of the British Indian Empire. Delhi was a major centre of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Major Urdu poets from Delhi are Mir Taqi Mir, and Mirza Ghalib. The Khariboli dialect of Delhi was part of a linguistic development that gave rise to the literature of the Urdu language and then of Modern Standard Hindi. The names of Nizamuddin Auliya and Amir Khusrau are prominently associated with it. Delhi was the early centre of Sufism and Qawwali music. All three UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the city, the Qutub Minar, Humayun's Tomb, and the Red Fort belong to this period. From the early 13th-century until the mid-19th century, Delhi was the capital of two major empires, the Delhi sultanate and the Mughal Empire, which covered large parts of South Asia. The topography of the medieval fort Purana Qila on the banks of the river Yamuna matches the literary description of the citadel Indraprastha in the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata however, excavations in the area have revealed no signs of an ancient built environment. Delhi's urban agglomeration, which includes the satellite cities of Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Gurgaon and Noida in an area known as the National Capital Region (NCR), has an estimated population of over 28 million, making it the largest metropolitan area in India and the second-largest in the world (after Tokyo). According to the 2011 census, Delhi's city proper population was over 11 million, while the NCT's population was about 16.8 million. The NCT covers an area of 1,484 square kilometres (573 sq mi). Straddling the Yamuna river, but primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders with the state of Uttar Pradesh in the east and with the state of Haryana in the remaining directions. Delhi ( / ˈ d ɛ l i/ Hindi pronunciation: Dillī Punjabi pronunciation: Dillī Urdu pronunciation: Dêhlī), officially the National Capital Territory ( NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India.