India’s historic bazaars are often treated as colourful remnants of the past: crowded lanes, old shopfronts, traditional crafts and familiar smells. They appear in heritage walks and tourist brochures as picturesque reminders of another India. But the bazaar was never merely a place of shopping. It was an economic institution—a place where production, trade, credit, labour and social life intersected.

As Indian cities expand, many historic commercial spaces are changing rapidly. Traditional shops are being replaced by branded outlets, old workshops are disappearing, and residential neighbourhoods are increasingly disconnected from the commercial ecosystems that once sustained them. The question, therefore, is not simply whether India is losing old buildings. It is whether it is losing an entire form of urban economy.Historically, the Indian bazaar was deeply embedded in the structure of the city. In eighteenth-century North India, markets connected urban consumers with rural producers and specialised artisans. C. A. Bayly, in his study of North Indian society, demonstrated the importance of rulers, townsmen and bazaars to the functioning of the regional economy between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Bayly, 1983). The bazaar was consequently not an isolated commercial space but part of a wider network of production, credit and exchange.

Delhi provides an important example. Shahjahanabad, founded by Shah Jahan in the seventeenth century, was organised around a complex relationship between markets, neighbourhoods, religious institutions and the imperial centre. Stephen Blake’s study of the Mughal capital shows that the city’s commercial spaces were integral to its political and social organisation rather than merely places of retail consumption (Blake, 1991).

The same pattern could be seen elsewhere. In Lahore, Amritsar, Multan, Srinagar, Lucknow and Hyderabad, bazaars connected urban consumers with rural producers and specialised artisans. A market could contain textile dealers, metalworkers, carpenters, food sellers, moneylenders and transporters within the same commercial ecosystem. The bazaar therefore brought together capital, labour and consumption.This is particularly visible in the history of Punjab. Under Maharaja Ranjit Singh, commercial centres such as........

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