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Brown 2009
To cite this article: Rebecca M. Brown (2009) REVIVING THE PAST, Interventions: International Journal of
Postcolonial Studies, 11:3, 293-315, DOI: 10.1080/13698010903255536
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R E V I V I N G T H E PA S T
Post-Independence Architecture and Politics
in India’s Long 1950s
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Rebecca M. Brown
Johns Hopkins University
................
post-1947 India 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
Jawaharlal over a state-driven revivalist style. Despite this prevailing modernist direction for
Nehru
India’s architecture, revival buildings of the 1950s demonstrate India’s negotia-
Delhi tion 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
architecture earlier revivals; they exist within the context of Nehruvian rewriting of Indian
history to highlight particular moments of unity and religious harmony in the
national subcontinent’s past. These 1955 buildings proclaim an Indianness focused on
identity
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.
................
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interventions Vol. 11(3) 293315 (ISSN 1369-801X print/1469-929X online)
Copyright # 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13698010903255536
i n t e r v e n t i o n s 11 :3 294
.........................
In the mid-1950s, less than a decade after South Asia’s independence and
Partition in 1947, India worked optimistically to build a new nation. Under
the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, this meant a variety of things from
commissioning new cities like Chandigarh in the Punjab, to proposing new
methods of negotiating the bipolar global politics within which India found
itself operating. This decade is often dubbed the ‘optimism era’ for the mood
that in Salman Rushdie’s evocative language spread like a virus, springing
from the 1940s anti-colonial Quit India movement to infect everyone with
smiles and hopefulness (1981: 3847). This period in Indian history was one
of rising to the challenges of building a new nation out of the diverse and
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4 See Chakrabarty’s upon existing scholarly histories that propose innovative approaches to
(2000) project to
modernity approaches that recentre modernity’s discourses outside the
rethink modernity as
emerging from the northern Atlantic.4 Thinking modern architecture through these lenses
so-called periphery, means moving away from presenting India’s struggles with modernity as
and Mitchell’s derivative from some central modern emanating out of Europe. However,
(2000) articulation
of the continual I eschew the temptation to present the Indian case as an alternate modernity
staging of modernity to that European one.5 For, as the discourse surrounding the 1959 seminar
in the face of shows, the centrality of the European modern was clear to those proposing a
challenges to it from
all sides. See also
modernist way forward for India’s architecture. But this way forward was
Gaonkar 2001; contested and fragmentary, and its oppositional pole, revivalism, also
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Gehlot, is spelled in a
variety of ways
take on the burden of representing not just a regional specificity but a national
(Evenson 1989: 225;
Lang et al. 1997: identity.10 Buddhist iconography and a particular mode of Mughal imagery
206, 335). I use the on these buildings represent periods when India was united, and offer
most common
alternatives to the contemporary Hindu-Muslim communal division the
transliteration of the
name, Gehlot. The government wished to alleviate in a new secular state.
Ashok Hotel was Two quintessentially public structures an international conference centre
built by J.K.
(Vigyan Bhavan) and international diplomatic hotel (Ashok Hotel)
Choudhury and
Gulzar Singh. represent India to an international audience (and indeed to a local one as
Evenson 1989: 224 well) through the appropriation of particular architectural decorative
25.
elements on each façade. What follows examines these elements and puts
10 Since scholars
addressed the tension
between regional and
national studies of
India in the late
1960s (see Cohn
1987: 10035), 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 Figure 1 Vigyan Bhavan Conference Center, Ramprakash L. Gehlot, 1955.
architecture. Photograph by the author.
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Figure 2 Ashok Hotel, J.K. Choudhury and Gulzar Singh, 1955. Photograph
by the author.
them in the context not of their distant historical models, but rather of the
mid-1950s politics of nation-building. Rarely studied, these structures are
overshadowed by the more famous and modernist building projects under-
taken by the Nehru government in Chandigarh (with the modernist Le
Corbusier as architect) and elsewhere in India. And the moment for this
‘revival style’ of architecture ends after the 1959 Seminar. Because of the
particularity of their historical context in the mid-1950s, these two buildings
demonstrate one part of the larger struggle to rearticulate India’s history in
the face of centuries of colonial knowledge production. These monuments
reveal for us the fragmentation of India’s past and as a result show us one of
the core problems of postcoloniality: the articulation of history.
particularly Ashoka and the Mauryans, underlies this choice. The positive
reasons for choosing an Ashokan, Mauryan past centre on the historical
uniting of the northern region of the subcontinent. But imperial unity is only
one small part of the attractiveness of the Mauryans. In examining Nehru’s
Discovery of India, one finds that the Mauryans also offered a rich political
and philosophical heritage that resonated with non-violent modes of
13 This is clearly an political action, and served as a model for global diplomacy.
understanding of the Nehru links Mauryan rule directly with modern political theories
date of the
Arthashastra
of government. For example, he repeats the comparison of Kautilya’s
consistent with the Arthashastra to Machiavelli (Nehru 2004 [1946]: 124).13 The link between
date of The Machiavelli and the Mauryans indirectly connects ancient Ashokan politics
Discovery of India,
when consensus with modernity, as Machiavelli is often used as a marker for the transition
placed the text both from a state that depended at least in part on a god-centred cosmology to
at the Mauryan court one dependent on a human-centred cosmology. But this passing comparison
and in the authorship
of Chanakya, the to Machiavelli is only one aspect of Nehru’s valorization of a Mauryan
brahman who political past for the new Indian state he envisioned.
worked with Other concepts associated with Ashoka’s Buddhist state, such as dhamma-
Chandragupta
Maurya. Nehru 2004 vijaya, or victory/rule through dharma, link early nation-building rhetoric
[1946], pp. 12329. with Ashoka (see Jacobsohn 2003). Dhamma-vijaya resonates with the ethos
i n t e r v e n t i o n s 11 :3 300
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anthropomorphic (Anand 1996: 78). The reuse and appropriation of the past is always, as we
image of the Buddha
see here, contestable and contested.
was fraught with
nationalist concerns. Nehru’s construction of the Mauryans and Ashoka includes a short
See Coomaraswamy discussion of architecture and sculpture, challenging the supposition that
1926; 1927. For a India’s greatest works were made by artists recruited from abroad (Greece
summary of the
debate, see Swearer and Persia) and thereby reaffirming the ‘Indianness’ of Pataliputra, the
2004: 25 ff; Abe Mauryan capital. In a subsequent section on ‘Old Indian Art’ (22328),
1995. Nehru raises further examples of the high-points of aesthetic achievement in
15 Walter Spink’s
India’s history, starting with a discussion of the controversy over the origin
research has since of the Buddha image and then discussing Ajanta, Ellora, Elephanta, a Shiva
elucidated the Nataraja, and the head of a Bodhisattva from Borobudur.14 What becomes
imperial political
clear from Nehru’s narrative is an emphasis on a range of Buddhist pasts as
history surrounding
the construction of one of the foundations for India, and a focus on Ashoka as a particular
the Ajanta caves individual hero of this Buddhist past. Where evidence for leadership is
(1991).
lacking (at least for the 1950s reader of history), for example at Ajanta, one
16 Ashoka, like the sees discussion of the art detached from a particular leader or individual.15
new leaders of What I draw from Nehru and from the evidence of appropriation by those in
independent India, charge of the imagery of the new nation is not a precise revival of Ashokan
drew on imagery
from past empires as iconography but rather a mixed appropriation of a variety of Buddhist
well, particularly the imagery from the Mauryan empire as well as from later periods.16
Achaemenids of These appropriations are sometimes, as in the case of the lion capital as
Persia (see Joshi
1994). This looking
emblem for India, adapted to incorporate other kinds of iconographies.
to the past can be Here, the two-dimensional image extracted from the sculptural capital
found in many South includes below it a phrase written in devanagari script and taken from the
Asian contexts (see
Mundaka Upanishad, ‘Satyam eva jayate’ (often translated ‘truth alone
Williams 1973;
Asher and Metcalf prevails’). This phrase was adopted as the motto of the Indian nation after
1994). independence.17 The lack of internal consistency among the historical,
political and religious contexts of the image and text underscores the general
17 Mundaka
Upanishad, III.1.6. reference to an ancient (sometimes Buddhist) past operating within the
Max Müller’s construction of India’s self-image. Slipping an upanishadic textual reference
translation of the line into the national emblem does not undermine the religious neutrality of the
reads: ‘The true
prevails, not the Buddhist icon above. But it does point to an overall approach to the use
untrue’ (1884: 39). of Buddhist elements in visual culture that tends towards the general
i n t e r v e n t i o n s 11 :3 302
.........................
ther than the specific. What one sees in the discourse surrounding the
appropriation of Buddhism into the new nation’s iconography is a tripartite
split: one, a focus on the leader Ashoka and his court as a model for uniting
the subcontinent; two, concepts in political philosophy; and three, diplo-
macy in international relations. In visual imagery this focus on Ashoka’s
reign is diluted somewhat by references to other Buddhist periods (fifth c.
Ajanta) and amalgamations of upanishadic text with imperial Buddhist
imagery. In other words, calling on the glorious Buddhist imperial history of
India could take place on many levels and could interact with other ancient
periods in productive ways. Just as the emblem of India is an Ashokan
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Figure 5 Façade of Cave 26 at Ajanta, c. 460 80 CE. Photograph: Lisa Owen.
is then exaggerated in both its contrast with the white of the structure behind
and its elongated, massive form. It serves, as I have noted elsewhere, as an
exclamation point on the surface of the building, loudly shouting its
reference to a general Buddhist heritage (Brown 2009; see also Prakash
1994: 226; Venturi et al. 1977).
The Vigyan Bhavan’s façade presages the moves architects made in later
19 The architecture I decades, incorporating massive classical columns, arches, and cornices into
refer to here includes
that of Charles their postmodern buildings.19 The Euro-American postmodern reaction to
Willard Moore (eg modernism in the 1970s and 1980s unleashed a flood of textual exegesis.20
Piazza D’Italia 1978), For architecture of this kind to have relevance, it must not be merely
Arthur Erickson (eg
Canadian Chancery pastiche; it must acknowledge its physical surroundings, respond to culture
1989), and others and history, and transmit meaning through ornament. Robert Stern labelled
such as Phillip these three essential tasks as contextualism, allusionism, and ornamentalism
Johnson and the firm
of Venturi Scott (Stern 1977: 275; quoted in Bertens 1995: 59). At postmodern architecture’s
Brown (see Jencks core, Mary McLeod argues, lies a search for meaning in the aftermath of the
2002). Norma universalizing, arid, modern form (1989: 24; citing Forum 1980). She goes
Evenson also briefly
noted the connection on to trace the political salience of this search for meaning. For, while
between revivalist initially considered a political reaction against a homogenizing and some-
architecture and the times totalitarian modern, the postmodern quickly became co-opted by
postmodern (1989:
225). European, Southeast Asian, Japanese, and North American corporate
funding and the building boom of the 1980s, degenerating with this
20 Foremost among
these was Venturi commercial recentring into a pastiche of references designed to legitimate
1966. newly globalizing corporations (McLeod 1989: 29; Ford 2001).
i n t e r v e n t i o n s 11 :3 304
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What might we draw from this discussion in order to understand the
moves that the Vigyan Bhavan makes in the context of 1950s India? Like
the architects of the 1970s and 1980s in the US and Europe, the designers of
the Vigyan Bhavan were faced with a problematic, universalizing and
homogenizing modernist architecture. In many ways, the moves made here
foreshadow those of the postmodern movement two decades later. I do not
wish to argue here that India had the postmodern before ‘the West’.21
21 Kapur and others To do so would be to capitulate to a conception of modern and postmodern
have questioned the
as linearly linked in progression a conception very much rooted in
linear temporality of
the modern- modernism. Instead, I find the example of postmodern architecture
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postmodern instructive in its potential for assisting in the unpacking of these 1950s
‘progression’ in the
buildings. Perhaps then, in turn, we might use this analysis to question the
context of India
(Kapur 2000; Das relation to a relatively uncomplicated, western past that postmodern
Gupta and Panikkar architecture evokes, and ask after postmodernism’s roots within the colonial
1995). Anderson political relationship and the growth of global capitalism.22
reminds us that
postmodernity, at Many of the concerns outlined by the postmodern architects of the 1970s
least as a term, was parallel those felt by Indian architects of the 1950s. While Le Corbusier
produced in what is worked in Chandigarh, the pressure of a universal modern remained
often perceived as the
postmodern’s
extremely problematic. How could architecture perform Indianness? Cor-
periphery (South busier, as Vikramaditya Prakash has argued convincingly, worked within the
America), and fairly idiom of modernism but shaped it to the Indian context (Prakash 2002;
early (1940s) giving lie
see also Brown 2009). Largely because he drew a connection between the
to the understanding
of postmodernity as ‘primitive’ Indian villager and the modernist search for the basic building-
arising from the blocks of humanity, Corbusier saw no contradiction in bringing modernism
northern Atlantic to the Punjab capital. He also incorporated ‘Indian’ symbols such as the bull,
(1998).
and he cites Jai Singh’s eighteenth-century observatories, but even in that
22 For a brief context, the symbolism and citation were incorporated into the form of the
discussion of
postmodernism’s
building. In the case of Corbusier’s signature ‘taureaux’ or bull image, this
roots outside of incorporation is subtle enough to need explanation for most first-time
Euro-America, see viewers of the Assembly.
Anderson 1988;
Vigyan Bhavan undermines modernist architecture in a way that
Craven 1996;
Mitchell 2000. Corbusier’s adaptations to the Indian context did not. The conference
centre’s façade has abandoned the pretence to universality entirely. A white
modernist block serves merely as the blank canvas on which the mass of
chandrashala sits, stretched to accentuate both the horizontality of the
building and the bulk of the form itself. As a result, this ‘revival’ architecture
does more than that. Rather than re-using multiple, discrete elements
from the past in order to articulate a national connection to a generic
Buddhist past, this building proclaims that relationship through a singular,
monumental ornamental form on its surface.
The chandrashala overwhelms the other decoration on the building. These
include two vertical elements that flank that central emblem, both in the
same white as the building itself. They are capped by echoes of that
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Despite the Ashok Hotel’s Buddhist namesake, its architecture revives a so-
called Indo-Islamic, Mughal past. The architects J.K. Choudhury and Gulzar
Singh incorporated a wide range of Mughalized elements into the façade, so
that as at the Vigyan Bhavan, one finds a modernist white block broken by
oversized architectural elements. The structures share a sense that this large
form serves as exclamation point, proclaiming the Indianness of each. At the
Ashok Hotel, an increased level of decoration separates it from its Buddhist-
derived cousin, and the precision of the decor also marks it as a different kind of
political appropriation than the Vigyan Bhavan. Together, the two buildings
demonstrate how this late phase of revival architecture operated politically,
and how politics appropriated the past during Nehru’s first decade in office.
The hotel’s façade presents the viewer with a range of gargantuan,
enlarged architectural detail. The main iwan arch, filled with jali stonework,
rises over six stories; the jarokha balcony that projects out over it is
supported by three-story-tall brackets that flank the main arch, reemphasiz-
ing the strength of the façade and almost overwhelming the high-rise itself.
Elsewhere on the structure these elements appear on a smaller scale: chhatris
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colonial history of Delhi’s own architecture. The red and white contrasting
24 It is difficult to stone gestures to local structures like the Alai Darwaza (1311) and
ascertain at this stage Humayun’s tomb (1560s), both to the south of Delhi. Even Shah Jahan’s
in research done on
the education of
Jami Masjid (165056) uses the stone colouration of these earlier buildings.
architects and But these remain merely generalized moves to situate the structure within
builders precisely Delhi and within a long tradition of using this kind of stone colouration. We
how much exposure
find none of the complicated relief decoration of the Alai Darwaza at the
they had to rigorous
architectural history, Ashok Hotel, and the shape of the arches differs markedly from both it and
and how much of the lobed arches of the Shah Jahani Jami Masjid. The characteristic bangla
that was devoted to roof of Shah Jahan’s patronage is clearly missing here as well. The
the history of South
Asia (see Ashraf and colouration and perhaps an interest in the use of jali stone screens seems
Belluardo 1997: to be all these Delhi buildings share. The Ashok Hotel purposively chooses
204205; Menon which Islamic past to cite in its façade. And that past is primarily drawn
2003; Hosagrahar
2002: 35556;
from an earlier phase of Mughal architecture: the Akbari one.
Dewan 2001). Obviously the Ashok Hotel doesn’t directly quote any of these monu-
I thank Nita Kumar ments, and I do not wish to enter into a matching game in the search for
for her prodding to
sources or influences on the Ashok Hotel.24 My intent is to confirm that
think through issues
of architectural while there is a general reference to Mughal and Sultanate architecture
education. in this structure, one which places it within the context of these other
Delhi monuments, something more specific operates on the façade of this
25 It is likely that diplomatic hotel. My argument is this: the imagery on the façade of the
the Jahangiri Mahal
was considered a Ashok Hotel is drawn largely from Akbari forts and palaces such as Fatehpur
Jahangir-era Sikri and portions of Agra Fort. The abundance and weight of the brackets at
construction during the Ashok Hotel resonate much more with those in the Jahangiri Mahal at
the 1950s, but
certainly Fatehpur
the Agra Fort and of course those at the Diwan-i-Khas (Audience Hall, late
Sikri was linked sixteenth century, Figure 6) of Fatehpur Sikri than they do with other smaller
directly with Akbar. chhajja/bracket combinations.25 The monumentality of the bracketing and
For the Jahangiri
the overhanging eaves at the Ashok Hotel cite not the local imagery of Shah
Mahal as an Akbari
structure, see Asher Jahan and Old Delhi, but instead the gargantuan scale and near dispro-
and Talbot 2006: portionality of Akbar’s fort and palace structures.
134; Asher 1992: Immense scale is not unknown in revival buildings from this and earlier
4950; Tillotson
1990: 7476; Koch periods elsewhere in the subcontinent; the Osmania University College of
1991: 5560. Arts building (1939, Figure 7), for example, incorporates a massive arched
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entry in its façade, not dissimilar in effect to that at the Ashok Hotel. The
façade of the Arts College juts out from the colonnaded body of the building,
presenting the viewer with a high, narrow form with muqarnas (honeycomb-
like decoration) in the corners. The building looks to architectural patterns
within British India that drew on a range of ‘Moorish’ elements, but perhaps
it most clearly echoes the form and impact of the Mamluk portal of the
complex of Hasan of the mid-fourteenth century.26 The college could hardly
26 For more on the have referenced Mughal architecture, as the princely state of Hyderabad
amalgamation of
Mediterranean had its own, independent view of Indian history, one which included
Islamicate elements Hyderabad’s longstanding place in the larger Islamic world outside of the
in the Arts College, subcontinent. The college’s façade thus references a general Islamicate
see Lang et al. 1997:
162; Raza 1953. design, one fitting for an Urdu-medium college in the Deccan, patronized by
a princely state seeking to define itself as distinct from the hegemonic
narrative of Indian history. Hyderabad’s cultural multiplicity is widely
acknowledged, from the mix of languages to the mix of artistic heritage from
all over India and the Islamic world (Hutton 2006; Leonard 2003); the
university stands as a purposive link to a wider Urdu and Islamic culture at a
time when Hyderabad was under threat of dissolution from both the inside
(as evidenced by the communal riots in the late 1930s) and out (see Copland
1988; Leonard 2003).
Both Osmania’s Art College and the Ashok Hotel use revivalism to
demonstrate the politicized deployment of architectural decoration. While
not necessarily quoting specific buildings or elements of buildings (as, for
i n t e r v e n t i o n s 11 :3 310
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Figure 7 Osmania University, College of Arts, Nawab Zain Yar Jung, 1939.
Photograph: Deborah S. Hutton.
example, Swinton Jacob’s designs of the late nineteenth century did), both of
these structures resonate with specific Islamicate architectures, whether a
pan-Islamic amalgam of Indian and Mediterranean forms or a Mughalized
one. The particular way in which the Ashok Hotel situates itself in relation
to architectural history underscores its import as a marker of political
discourse for post-independence India.
To restate this logic: the hotel does not exhibit the lobed arches and
detailed inlay of Shah Jahan’s fort, palace, and mosque that forms the more
recent Mughal past of Delhi. Nor does it look entirely to the Akbar-period
tomb nearby. Nor does it echo other Islamicate revivals found elsewhere in
the subcontinent. Like those revivals, however, it too has a pointed political
message. Its exaggerated forms cite the structures from which Akbar
intended to rule and live.27 As such, the Ashok Hotel and its references
27 Of course, look neither to an imperial architecture of tombs and succession nor to
Fatehpur Sikri was
not in use for long Shahjahanabad. They look to Akbar’s era, and to Akbar’s spaces of
before Akbar moved government.
on to other locations Examining the writings of Nehru and others, the Ashok Hotel solves a
from which to rule.
Its short-lived use crucial problem for the citation of Indo-Islamic architecture in 1950s India.
does not, however, In its primary relation to Akbar’s palaces and forts indeed to the Diwan-
diminish its i-Khas, a space purported to be the one in which Akbar received visitors and
importance in the
context of later debated religious texts the Ashok Hotel celebrates the syncretic, religion-
periods of India. spanning image of Akbar supported by histories of the time. Akbar’s
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T h e P a t h - N o t - Ta k e n
The ‘revival architecture’ of the long 1950s, then, while not in line with the
trajectory of modernist construction of the period and perhaps therefore
not valorized as ‘high art’ within architectural histories deserves attention
for the messages it articulates about the newly independent Indian state.
Both buildings exist within a momentary pause before modernism takes over
completely, and as such they help us to see the underlying debate regarding
India’s self-identification. In particular, these buildings underscore two
elements of India’s attitude towards its own past, both interconnected
with contemporary political concerns: the non-alignment movement and
dhamma-vijaya, and the construction of a secular-yet-tolerant government in
the face of Hindu-Muslim tensions. After the 1959 Seminar on Architecture,
i n t e r v e n t i o n s 11 :3 312
.........................
the questions turn to a struggle to situate the nation as both modern/
universal and Indian (Brown 2009).
Does this citation of the past qualify this moment as a ‘postmodern’ one
within India’s post-independence? One most certainly finds a ‘post’ within
these buildings one that establishes India’s present as reliant on several
crucial pasts, pasts that must be reconstructed because of their dependence
on colonial narratives. The postcoloniality of these structures, then, lies in
their citation of the past through the exclamation points on their façades. It
also depends on several gaps: one produced between the developing national
history of India and the colonial construction of that history, and one
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between the optimism for a new Indian future and the struggle to define the
form that might take. In that sense, this might be seen as a parallel move to
that taken against modernism by the postmodern architects of North
America, Japan, Europe, and Southeast Asia in the 1970s and 1980s. Both
work against the modern, but do so within particular historical contexts.
The canonical postmodern moves to humour and irony in its gargantuan
appropriations of classical architecture; the Indian parallel maneuver cannot
so easily appropriate its colonially constructed history and so deploys these
icons as markers of a glorious, unified past, whether Ashokan or Akbari.
These buildings represent the path-not-chosen by mainstream architects
and patrons in the following decade, but they do not merely recapitulate
earlier modes of citation and pastiche found in colonial era buildings.
Instead, they proclaim Indianness boldly on their façades, and that
Indianness, as this article has shown, focuses on two distinct periods of
Indian history: the generalized, collapsed ancient Buddhist past and the
specific, targeted Akbari Mughal past. Both buildings, in their overwhelming
façades and their unifying, readable iconographies, call for an architecture
that embodies an easily understood Indian cultural identity. After 1959, this
path was abandoned in favour of what was seen at the time as a more
democratic, universal modern, which in turn caused its own problems and
28 These are the
words democratic, struggles.28 The Vigyan Bhavan and the Ashok Hotel provide for us a
universal used by glimpse into the machinations of this development at the nation’s centre in
Achyut Kanvinde at the mid-1950s. In them, we see a fragmented, disjointed Indian identity, one
the Seminar on
Architecture (Lalit striving for the unity that Ashoka and Akbar represent, and one that must, in
Kala, 1959). the context of the difficult project of nation-building, fall short.
Acknowledgments
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
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R e f e ren c e s
Abe, Stanley K. (1995) ‘Inside the Wonder House: Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2000) Provincializing Europe,
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