The Architect's New Clothes

The story goes that a Russian delegation, on being taken on a conducted tourof the architectural splendours of the city of Bangalore, remarked, "Have you noarchitecture of your own? These are all European buildings!" Between thearchitecture of two empires, Independent India has been unable to createanything that would rival the great buildings of the imperial eras.

The history of post-Independence architecture in India is replete with thosegreat blunders of 'modernism' that come from borrowed ideas and forms, from afailure to develop a unique idiom, and a confusion that continues to produce andadd clutter to the enormous and unimaginative mass of concrete, steel and glassblocks that constitute the architecture of our cities. These have done little toinvent an inspiring architecture, to extend, as V.S Naipaul, expressed it, "people'sideas of beauty and grandeur and human possibility - uplifting ideas which thevery poor may need more than rich people - much of the architecture of freeIndia has become part of the ugliness and crowd and increasing physicaloppression of India. Bad architecture in a poor tropical city is more than anaesthetic matter. It spoils people's day to day lives; it wears down theirnerves; it generates rages that flow into many different channels."

It was Nehru's ardent desire to build a new India in a new idiom, but the onethat was eventually hit upon seemed tragically at odds with the Indian ethos.There is no denying the spirit that drove Nehru's wisdom, inspiring architectsto break with tradition and attempt to refashion the way cities would be built 'unfetteredby the past.' Joseph Allen Stein, the famed architect, noted the extraordinarilystimulating and interesting times of the Nehruvian era, likening it to theUnited States under Thomas Jefferson. Nehru, he noted, "had his flaws - manygreat men are flawed… but he was an extraordinarily beautiful and intelligentman, and he cast an aura over India that was very attractive." 

The memory of Gandhi and Tagore was also strong among Indian architecturestudents, and they were immensely "idealistic and dedicated." Why, then, wastheir combined output so pedestrian, so uninspiring? The difference perhaps layin the fact that Jefferson was himself an architect and was able to realise hisvision, while Nehru had to look to a new generation of inexperienced youngarchitects, all trained in architectural schools abroad, or to rely on theservices of a man generally regarded as one of the great architects of the time,Le Corbusier, a man who had reportedly approached both Hitler and then Mussoliniwith plans for creating and building a new city for them, and who was rejectedby both. This was the vision that was, then, to alight on designing democraticIndia's first planned city.

It is strange that in our rejection of our colonial and pre-colonialheritage, and in our assertion of new-found independence, we were so quick toimitate and embrace the dominant western aesthetic. Our architects were eithertrained at or influenced by the principles of the Bauhaus School, which drewupon ideas that were then shaping Europe. Walter Gropius, the founder of thisschool outlined its ideals in his 'Manifesto'. He believed in the creation of anew guild of craftsmen who would be unencumbered by class distinctions that 'raisean arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists'. His ideal was to "desire,conceive, and create the new building of the future together" to "combinearchitecture sculpture and painting in a single form". While these were groundbreaking ideas, they seemed completely at odds within the Indian context.

Was India ready for such ideas? Today, more than five decades later, we arestill to create a new guild of craftsmen 'unencumbered by class distinctions'.And that is just one unrealised facet that undermines the creative applicationof the Western model to the Indian ethos. Traditional builders and craftsmen,the mistris and shilpkaris were not trained to grasp the new idiomand their skills were inappropriate for the underlying scientific principles ofengineering and building that constituted the new architecture. The disjunctbetween the architect and his builders has become even more pronounced now. Theunderlying principles of the 'international style' was the outcome of a 'rationalapproach to design, unhampered by historical and cultural restraints' - butthese restraints are a reality of the Indian milieu, and such an impersonal 'rational'ideal could only serve to further alienate architecture from the secular publicwho remained divorced from these concepts.

This could explain why most of our buildings lack even basic neatness; thebest of them have a rough, clunky finish. It is in post-independence New Delhithat we can see the unfortunate realisation of this misguided spirit andaspiration. Not a single public arcade or institutional building stands out anddistinguishes itself in comparison to the imperial buildings. The NewSecretariat, the NDMC building? The mass of indistinguishable towers that chokeConnaught Place with an air of claustrophobia? Or the unforgivable ShashtriBhawan which has been described as having a 'secular character' that is 'accessibleto the people', a 'democratic building for a democratic people'. Does this meanthat 'the people' are to be excluded from beauty and grace? As for being easilyaccessed by the people - just try walking into Shastri Bhawan.

The nature of the architectural profession today seems a closed one, whereonly a privileged few have access. And it seems like a world where no one hasheard of the concept of critique, where no one dares to tell the emperor that heis not wearing any clothes. Disguising the shoddiness of their work with a greatdeal of pretentious jargon has become the order of the day, and a good examplethat demonstrates the rather sorry state of architecture, and the exaggeratedstate of architectural pretensions, is apparent in a comparison between theoriginal Parliament Complex and the new Parliament Library. The two buildingsstand next to each other, one supremely confident in what it wishes to state andthe fact that it is capable of achieving that statement in stone; but alongsideit - what? What is that confusion of mixed metaphors trying to say? TheParliament library is nothing but an ugly building embodying the weak andtentatively imitative style that we have adopted. It attempts to mimic the basicstructure of the Parliament building, even as it tries pathetically to make somegarbled assertion of its own, but fails miserably. Yet, it has drawn gushingpraise from an uncritical and incestuous architectural community.

Today, we remain far from creating an architecture of our own. Attempts atcloaking buildings in the outer garb of Gujrati havelis and Rajasthanipalaces only ends up as kitsch. Even the vast temple complexes at Chattarpur orthe Akshardam Temple are so revoltingly small in their achievement, so painfullymediocre and hopelessly imitative, a mere parody of temple building, whencompared with the great and ancient temples of the South.

We have lost the connection to the past and in our rejection of the colonialand imperial tradition, we broke the thread of continuity that may have helpedrediscover the principles of beauty and power which once underpinned and stampedour great monuments and public buildings, and which could have opened the doorsto actually creating a new style that we arrived at through our own exertions,through processes of working out an idiom more in harmony with the spirit ofIndia, rather than one we have slavishly imported in its entirety from the West.