REVIVING THE PAST

Abstract

In 1959, a group of architects and policy makers gathered in Delhi to debate the direction for post-1947 architecture; they firmly chose modernist free expression over a state-driven revivalist style. Despite this prevailing modernist direction for India's architecture, revival buildings of the 1950s demonstrate India's negotiation with and construction of its past at a crucial time in the formation of a national identity. The Ashok Hotel and the Vigyan Bhavan in Delhi differ from earlier revivals; they exist within the context of Nehruvian rewriting of Indian history to highlight particular moments of unity and religious harmony in the subcontinent's past. These 1955 buildings proclaim an Indianness focused on two distinct periods of the region's history: the generalized, collapsed ancient Buddhist past and the specific, targeted Akbari Mughal past. They thereby demonstrate the machinations of the formation of national identity in India as worked out in history-writing, architecture, and public debate.

Keywords:

• post-1947 India
• Jawaharlal Nehru
• Delhi
• architecture
• national identity

Acknowledgements

This article has benefited from the generous comments of colleagues at the American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) Symposium, the Political Studies Association conference, and Pomona College, with particular thanks to Michael Meister and Nita Kumar for their helpful comments and suggestions. My travel to ACSAA in 2007 was funded by the British Academy. I also extend a heartfelt thanks for the thoughtful and insightful feedback of Deborah Hutton, Kristy Philips, Ruth Feingold, and the anonymous reviewers.

Notes

¹This dialogue took place between Achyut Kanvinde as the spokesperson for the modernists and Nehru, who in the end agreed with the modernist direction (Lalit Kala Akademi 1959).

²See Paperny 2002 for more on Soviet standardization in architectural decoration. Sculpture was often used on the façades, in front of, or indeed on top of Stalinist buildings to articulate the links between state ideology and architecture.

³Sris Chandra Chatterjee is considered the primary voice for the revival movement prior to independence. See Gupta 1991 for a summary of his career.

⁴See Chakrabarty's (2000) project to rethink modernity as emerging from the so-called periphery, and Mitchell's (2000) articulation of the continual staging of modernity in the face of challenges to it from all sides. See also Gaonkar 2001; Hosagrahar 2005; Brown 2009.

⁵In this I depart from projects that articulate a multiplicity of modernities (see Gaonkar 2001; Cate 2003; Mitter 2007; 2008). Hosagrahar's approach to indigenous modernities articulates the tensions and negotiations I see happening in the modernity discussed here (2005). See also Brown 2008, 2009.

⁶In this focus on less-well studied examples of architecture, I echo Hosagrahar's interest in monuments not usually studied by mainstream architectural historians (2005).

⁷See Cohn 1996; Thomas 1994; Singh 1996.

⁸For more on Mill's A History of India and its impact, see Trautmann 1997 and Inden 1990. See also Cohn 1996.

⁹The Vigyan Bhavan was built under the auspices of the Central Public Works Department; the architect's name, Ramprakash L. Gehlot, is spelled in a variety of ways (Evenson 1989: 225; Lang et al. 1997: 206, 335). I use the most common transliteration of the name, Gehlot. The Ashok Hotel was built by J.K. Choudhury and Gulzar Singh. Evenson 1989: 224–25.

¹⁰Since scholars addressed the tension between regional and national studies of India in the late 1960s (see Cohn 1987: 100–35), the study of the subcontinent has juggled the centre-based focus with a more dispersed one. This paper investigates the centre rather than the regional. Other local nationalisms were active and growing elsewhere at this time as well (see Ludden 2005). See Singh 1996: 155; Sunder Rajan 1993: 6; Larson 1995: 36; Rudolph and Rudolph 1967. Nair 2002 addresses Bangalore's revival architecture.

¹¹The Mauryan identification of the Didarganj chauri-bearer has since been questioned, and most scholars agree that the work dates to the 2nd c. CE. See Guha-Thakurta 2004; Davis 1999; Asher and Spink 1989.

¹²The mechanisms behind the choice of the Ashokan lion capital as the emblem of the new nation have not, to my knowledge, been studied in depth as yet. In the scholarship one finds only passing mention of the fact that it was the emblem, and some discussion of the use of the Ashokan wheel as the symbol on the Indian flag. This is often connected to B.R. Ambedkar's membership on the Flag Committee (Keer 1971: 394; Jaffrelot 2005: 132).

¹³This is clearly an understanding of the date of the Arthashastra consistent with the date of The Discovery of India, when consensus placed the text both at the Mauryan court and in the authorship of Chanakya, the brahman who worked with Chandragupta Maurya. Nehru 2004 [1946], pp. 123–29.

¹⁴The debate over the origin of the first anthropomorphic image of the Buddha was fraught with nationalist concerns. See Coomaraswamy 1926; 1927. For a summary of the debate, see Swearer 2004: 25 ff; Abe 1995.

¹⁵Walter Spink's research has since elucidated the imperial political history surrounding the construction of the Ajanta caves (1991).

¹⁶Ashoka, like the new leaders of independent India, drew on imagery from past empires as well, particularly the Achaemenids of Persia (see Joshi 1994). This looking to the past can be found in many South Asian contexts (see Williams 1973; Asher and Metcalf 1994).

¹⁷Mundaka Upanishad, III.1.6. Max Müller's translation of the line reads: ‘The true prevails, not the untrue’ (1884: 39).

¹⁸ Chaitya halls are longitudinal spaces with curved ends (apsidal) and usually contain a stupa, or sculpted, three-dimensional representation of a burial mound, at their apex. They are used for worship and are distinct from viharas, which, while containing worship spaces, are monastic living quarters with cells surrounding a central rectangular space. Both types are found at Ajanta (see Spink 1991).

¹⁹The architecture I refer to here includes that of Charles Willard Moore (eg Piazza D'Italia 1978), Arthur Erickson (eg Canadian Chancery 1989), and others such as Phillip Johnson and the firm of Venturi Scott Brown (see Jencks 2002). Norma Evenson also briefly noted the connection between revivalist architecture and the postmodern (1989: 225).

²⁰Foremost among these was Venturi 1966.

²¹Kapur and others have questioned the linear temporality of the modern-postmodern ‘progression’ in the context of India (Kapur 2000; Das Gupta and Panikkar 1995). Anderson reminds us that postmodernity, at least as a term, was produced in what is often perceived as the postmodern's periphery (South America), and fairly early (1940s) giving lie to the understanding of postmodernity as arising from the northern Atlantic (1998).

²²For a brief discussion of postmodernism's roots outside of Euro-America, see Anderson 1988; Craven 1996; Mitchell 2000.

²³I thank Frances Pohl and the audience at Pomona College for helping me to articulate this line of thinking. I take the term northern Atlantic from Michel-Rolph Trouillot's rethinking of modernity's Euro-American roots (2004).

²⁴It is difficult to ascertain at this stage in research done on the education of architects and builders precisely how much exposure they had to rigorous architectural history, and how much of that was devoted to the history of South Asia (see Ashraf and Belluardo 1997: 204–205; Menon 2003; Hosagrahar 2002: 355–56; Dewan 2001). I thank Nita Kumar for her prodding to think through issues of architectural education.

²⁵It is likely that the Jahangiri Mahal was considered a Jahangir-era construction during the 1950s, but certainly Fatehpur Sikri was linked directly with Akbar. For the Jahangiri Mahal as an Akbari structure, see Asher and Talbot 2006: 134; Asher 1992: 49–50; Tillotson 1990: 74–76; Koch 1991: 55–60.

²⁶For more on the amalgamation of Mediterranean Islamicate elements in the Arts College, see Lang et al. 1997: 162; Raza 1953.

²⁷Of course, Fatehpur Sikri was not in use for long before Akbar moved on to other locations from which to rule. Its short-lived use does not, however, diminish its importance in the context of later periods of India.

²⁸These are the words – democratic, universal – used by Achyut Kanvinde at the Seminar on Architecture (Lalit Kala, 1959).