For generations, the grand havelis of Shekhawati have stood in northern Rajasthan as both monuments to prosperity and reminders of abandonment. Built by wealthy Marwari families who made their fortunes in trade and then moved to larger cities, the elaborately painted mansions once signaled wealth, status and cultural confidence. Over time, many fell into neglect as owners did not return, their frescoed walls fading under dust, weather and disuse.
Now, a new exhibition in Delhi is trying to restore not just the buildings, but the memory of the world that created them.
At the Visual Arts Gallery in the India Habitat Centre, Raj Se Swaraj Tak – From Colonial Rule to Freedom, Through the Eyes of Shekhawati gathers around 1,000 objects to tell the story of the region across two centuries. Curated by Shruti Nada Poddar, founder of MOHAR, the Museum of Heritage and Art at Ramgarh, along with art historian Alka Pande, the exhibition draws on Poddar's 12-year-old personal collection as well as objects recovered from havelis she has acquired and restored.
The show is structured as a journey through Shekhawati itself, moving from architecture and painted walls to saints, trade and global connections, the impact of the British Raj, changing lifestyles, the role of art and the spread of oleography, the freedom movement, post-Independence India, and finally the Shekhawati diaspora and its return to the region. The breadth of the display reflects the curators' argument that Shekhawati is not merely a cluster of old buildings, but a cultural ecosystem shaped by commerce, devotion, migration and reinvention.
"There would be at least 1000 objects," Poddar said, describing a collection assembled over more than a decade. Among them are traditional and colonial-era objects discovered inside old havelis, along with Shekhawati's distinctive reverse-glass paintings, a form of visual culture that helped define the region's artistic identity.
One of the exhibition's most striking sections is a bridal education room, where old bridal boxes are said to have contained tablets used in the preparation of young brides. The material will be displayed separately with restricted access, but its inclusion points to a social world far more layered than the havelis' decorative facades suggest. For Poddar, that complexity is central to the exhibition's purpose.
"It is not just about objects and havelis. It is about the whole ethos of Shekhawati for the last two centuries," she said.
That ethos is now being reconsidered at a moment when the region is once again drawing official and public attention. The painted haveli towns of Shekhawati were added to UNESCO's Tentative List in 2026, a significant step toward possible World Heritage status. The tentative listing has helped push the region back into the spotlight, and Poddar believes it has already changed the tone of engagement.
"It helps people validate it more. It makes the Government wake up," she said.
Shekhawati comprises 14 towns and cities and contains thousands of surviving havelis. Poddar says Ramgarh alone has about 150. Yet many remain unattended, preserved in name only. "There might be a caretaker who never opens the haveli. He might just have the keys," she said, underscoring the gap between ownership and stewardship.
Poddar's own work in the region began with a family inheritance and a rescue mission. Thirteen years ago, she started restoring her ancestral haveli after finding it "dilapidated, breaking apart, and filled with bats." Since then, she has acquired several more properties, converting one into a museum with a Raja Ravi Varma gallery and another into a hospitality unit. She is also restoring buildings using traditional lime technology and training local women and residents in its use, linking conservation with livelihood and craft revival.
Her optimism is grounded in what she sees as a slow but meaningful return. Younger members of Shekhawati families are beginning to reclaim ancestral havelis, restoring them and in some cases turning them into boutique hospitality spaces. Better infrastructure has also made the region more accessible. Poddar's own journey from Gurugram to Ramgarh, she noted, has become much quicker with new expressways.
The exhibition, then, is not simply an act of nostalgia. It is a bid to recast Shekhawati as a place where heritage can still be inhabited, repaired and reimagined. In Delhi, the painted walls and recovered objects are being used to tell a larger story: of migration and memory, of decline and return, and of a region whose past may yet shape its future.