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REVIVING THE PAST

a
Rebecca M. Brown
a
Johns Hopkins University ,
Published online: 16 Nov 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) 293
315 (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: 38
47). 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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often fragmentary pieces left after colonialism.

This literal and figurative building of the nation raised the question of
whether or not India should have a ‘national architecture’, shaped from the
centre and transmitting an idea of the new nation’s culture(s) and its position
on the international stage. The debate divided along modernist-versus-
revivalist lines, and came to the fore during the ‘Seminar on Architecture’ in
1 This dialogue took March 1959 at the Lalit Kala Akademi.1 The seminar brought together
place between
Achyut Kanvinde as
architects working in private firms, engineers and architects working for the
the spokesperson for government in the public works departments, politicians and policy makers,
the modernists and and a few architects from outside India, including Albert Mayer. Many of
Nehru, who in the
the presentations given at the seminar were subsequently collected in a
end agreed with the
modernist direction volume published by the Akademi. Some politicians sought to institute a
(Lalit Kala Akademi state architecture along the lines of the USSR or China,2 in which identifiably
1959). Indian elements would be used on façades in order to make the architecture
2 See Paperny 2002 readably and universally Indian.3 Leading architect Achyut Kanvinde and
for more on Soviet others argued vociferously against such a plan, and it was never adopted as
standardization in policy (Ashraf and Belluardo 1997: 205; Lalit Kala Akademi 1959). Today,
architectural
decoration. Sculpture
it appears to be a foregone conclusion that Indian architecture would
was often used on the develop modernist modes of design, drawing on both Louis Kahn and Le
façades, in front of, Corbusier. But the 1959 debate marks a moment in which this trajectory
or indeed on top of
came under question
a moment within the formation of national policy in
Stalinist buildings to
articulate the links which one finds a fissure in the dominant historical narrative of the march
between state toward modernist architecture. This article explores precisely this moment of
ideology and hesitation regarding India’s future architectural direction
toward either a
architecture.
reformulated revival style or what A.G. Krishna Menon calls a ‘utilitarian
3 Sris Chandra modernism’ (2003). In probing India’s architectural debates during the
Chatterjee is 1950s, I expand upon the path-not-taken and find in it the struggle to
considered the
articulate a national identity in the decades after independence.
primary voice for the
revival movement By focusing on this ‘fissure’ I do not suggest that it is an isolated case, or
prior to that the narratives prior and subsequent to it are in any way uniform
independence. See developments interrupted by a moment in 1959. Instead, I argue that we
Gupta 1991 for a
summary of his should model our understanding of India’s modern architecture through
career. this idea of interruption, break, and fragmentation. In doing so, I build
 REVIVIN G THE P AST
Rebecca M. Brown
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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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Hosagrahar 2005; presents to us a negotiation rather than a static, moribund ‘tradition’.

Brown 2009.
I turn in this article to an analysis of revivalism in 1950s architecture to
5 In this I depart explore this understudied ‘other’ of modernism, and I find it negotiating
from projects that directly with debates about what it means to be modern.6 Rather than
articulate a dismissing revival architecture as derivative or not ‘elite’ enough, as
multiplicity of
modernities (see architectural histories tend to do, I instead examine it rather closely in
Gaonkar 2001; Cate order to mine this particular moment in India’s political history. This article
2003; Mitter 2007; probes how history itself
the revival of the past
operates politically for the
2008). Hosagrahar’s
approach to new India. After two centuries of colonialism, during which the writing of
indigenous India’s history was one of the cornerstones of colonial knowledge production
modernities about the subcontinent, historical retelling functions as active reclamation.7
articulates the
tensions and
Historian and utilitarian James Mill wrote a formative history of India in
negotiations I see 1826 that divided the subcontinent’s past based on broad religious periods of
happening in the Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim
a division that made contemporary social
modernity discussed
divisions seem inevitable, and indeed produced antagonisms not evident in
here (2005). See also
Brown 2008, 2009. the historical record.8 Countering this dominant narrative, Nehru had
already, before independence, grasped the import of rethinking India’s
6 In this focus on
past as he wrote his own history of the subcontinent, The Discovery of India,
less-well studied
examples of while in prison (2004 [1946]). Thus, by the 1950s, the centrality of history in
architecture, I echo the construction of nationhood operated as a political concern alongside the
Hosagrahar’s interest interest in becoming modern. I argue that revival architecture reveals a
in monuments not
usually studied by choice of two simultaneous, yet disparate moments in India’s history
a
mainstream Buddhist past and a Mughal past
and demonstrates the politics of
architectural reclaiming a particular set of histories for post-independence India.
historians (2005).
One of the primary battlegrounds for the articulation of national history
7 See Cohn 1996; lies within cultural and artistic heritage (see Smith 2001). The construction of
Thomas 1994; Singh national museums and the building of a canon of great works in art and
1996. architecture form two major elements of the construction of national identity
8 For more on Mill’s (see Guha-Thakurta 2004; Singh 2003; Phillips 2006). Looking to the past for
A History of India the construction of the present is not new in either museum-building or
and its impact, see architecture. Earlier, pre-independence architectural movements included
Trautmann 1997 and
Inden 1990. See also revivals of Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist elements on façades and in the fabric
Cohn 1996. of the architecture (Lang et al. 1997: 128ff; Gupta 1991). These revivals
 i n t e r v e n t i o n s
11 :3 296
.........................
continued after independence in a range of regional contexts, from the
Dravidian elements of the Vidhana Soudha in Bangalore (1956) to the various
designs of Julius L. Vaz for the Public Works Department in Orissa (see Lang
et al. 1997: 200
206; Kalia 1994; Nair 2002). They had their champion in
9 The Vigyan Sris Chandra Chatterjee, an architect and writer who spoke out in favour of a
Bhavan was built
under the auspices of revival architecture for India (Gupta 1991). I focus in this article on two
the Central Public buildings which represent a late phase of revival architecture in the new
Works Department;
context of post-independence India: the Vigyan Bhavan conference centre
the architect’s name,
Ramprakash L. (1955, Figure 1) and the Ashok Hotel (1955, Figure 2).9 Unlike regional
revivals, these two buildings are situated in the centre
Delhi
and thereby
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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: 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 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.

The Buddhist Past: The Ashokan Lion Capital

The Vigyan Bhavan conference centre in New Delhi looks to a Buddhist

iconography, and therefore operates within a larger web of Buddhist
 i n t e r v e n t i o n s
11 :3 298
.........................
references very much alive in the 1950s political landscape. Those references
rest on a construction of India’s history in which the subcontinent reaches an
early apogee under the Buddhist emperor Ashoka, who ruled the Mauryan
empire in the third century BCE. In this narrative, the northern regions,
centred on Ashoka’s capital city at Pataliputra (now Patna) were ruled by a
righteous emperor who spread the tenets of Buddhism after experiencing an
epiphany on the battlefield at Kalinga. This moment in India’s past presented
an excellent opportunity for nationalist leaders seeking to point to historical
precedents for subcontinental unity.
Within this larger claiming of Ashokan history, Buddhist art anchored the
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symbology of the nation and participated centrally in the construction of a

visual canon of Indian art objects. As Tapati Guha-Thakurta’s work on the
1947
48 exhibition, ‘Masterpieces of Indian Art’, shows, this canon-
building leaned heavily towards sculpture, with the most prized pieces those
that were thought to belong to the Mauryan empire (1997; 2004: ch. 6).
11 The Mauryan Sculptures associated with this period at the time included the Didarganj
identification of the chauri-bearer and several column capitals which had been placed atop a
Didarganj chauri- series of Ashokan pillars distributed along trade routes in northern India.11
bearer has since been
questioned, and most Soon after the exhibition, the capital that had been found at the
scholars agree that archaeological site of Sarnath
the site where the Buddha had given his
the work dates to the first sermon
was chosen as the emblem of the nation, to be included on
2nd c. CE. See Guha-
Thakurta 2004; its money, governmental letterhead, and other public documents (Figures 3
Davis 1999; Asher and 4).12 This choice points to a sensitivity in choosing national symbols that
and Spink 1989. are simultaneously Indian and yet neither Hindu nor Muslim. A sculpture
12 The mechanisms
from the reign of Ashoka (268
233 BCE), the ancient Buddhist Mauryan
behind the choice of emperor, fit the bill perfectly.
the Ashokan lion The lion capital did not represent the only option among otherwise
capital as the emblem
sectarian imagery; it emerged as a purposive choice from a range of possible
of the new nation
have not, to my images. One of the more explicitly political images from the Ashokan period,
knowledge, been the capital incorporates four lions who command the four directions and are
studied in depth as rendered in a stylized, hieratic mode often found in imperial iconography.
yet. In the
scholarship one finds The sculpture presents us not with naturalistic lions but with abstracted
only passing mention symbols of the lion as an emblem of empire. The double-entendre with one
of the fact that it was of the Buddha’s princely names
Shakyasimha, or lion of the Shakya clan

the emblem, and
some discussion of
brings together the Buddhist and imperial messages of the capital. The four
the use of the wheels underneath each lion (and the wheel that once stood atop their four
Ashokan wheel as backs) map the Buddhist universe, represent Buddhist dharma or law, and
the symbol on the
for those asserting independent India’s identity, neatly intersect with the
Indian flag. This is
often connected to choice of wheel for the centre of the Indian flag. Iconographically, the capital
B.R. Ambedkar’s works well to bridge religious and political sensibilities.
membership on the Resting on this visual symbol, the Buddhist, Mauryan past was used quite
Flag Committee
(Keer 1971: 394; often to shore up decisions and debates made about the nascent Indian state,
Jaffrelot 2005: 132). and so the mid-twentieth century understanding of the Buddhist past, and
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Figure 3 Ashokan Lion Capital, Indian Museum, Calcutta, c. third c. BCE.

Photograph: Frederick Asher. – Archaeological Survey of India.

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. 123
29. 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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Figure 4 Indian National Emblem.

of Gandhi’s non-violent movement, suggesting a link between Ashoka’s shift

towards pacifism, vegetarianism, and just rule and the more recent politics of
the independence struggle. These connections continue to be used today for
arguments in favour of righteous rule and against war (Aung San 2005: 79).
While Nehru’s government deviated from Gandhian precepts in many ways,
non-violence lingered as a core Indian strength, and a marker of Indian
political identity in the 1950s. Connecting India’s national independence
struggle to an ideal vision of this ancient time of peace reinforced the
continuity of nationhood and the self-imagery of India as peaceful-
yet-strong.
The references to Ashoka also, for Nehru and others, serve as a model for
international relations and diplomacy. While it would be anachronistic to
call this an ‘international system’ in the period well before the concept of
‘nation’ took hold, Ashoka’s role as the leader of an empire among other
global actors was seen as an ancient example of India’s independent political
identity. Ashoka’s far-flung ambassadors and the Mauryan empire’s inter-
actions with other empires and kingdoms constituted a relation to the global
community coveted by Nehru and those agitating for a free India.
Particularly in the context of the writing of Discovery of India
that is,
with India fighting for the British in World War II
Nehru’s evocation of
Ashokan international relations speaks to the place envisioned for India as a
free nation (Nehru 2004 [1946]: 136). In this vision, Ashoka’s tolerant
 REVIVIN G THE P AST
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spread of dhamma-vijaya in international dealings foreshadows Nehru’s

own construction of the non-alignment movement
aligned neither with the
USSR or the US, but pledging not to interfere in other states’ political
autonomy and to work together for peace
for India and other newly-free
nations of the so-called ‘global south’.
This narrative of Ashoka puts aside what many commentators have noted:
without having already conquered and subdued most of India, Ashoka’s turn
to dhamma-vijaya would not have been possible. Indeed, the charge that
14 The debate over
dhamma-vijaya was part of the downfall of the Mauryans after Ashoka often
the origin of the first circulates in both scholarly and more polemical contemporary political texts
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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’ (223
28),
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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imperial capital replete with multivalent symbols of political power, the

Vigyan Bhavan turns to a generalized reference to Ajanta to articulate its
relation to the past.

The Chandrashala and the Vigyan Bhavan

In architecture, the major conference venue in the capital, the Vigyan

Bhavan, is exemplary in its overt use of a single Buddhist element on its
façade. The Vigyan Bhavan was built under the auspices of the Central
Public Works Department (CPWD) with Ramprakash L. Gehlot as the
primary architect (Lang et al. 1997: 206). Its role as international conference
centre meant that its designers knew it would receive a great deal of
international attention, hosting visitors from around the globe. It sits just
around the corner from the National Museum, and was built the same year
that Nehru laid the museum’s foundation stone. Thus, it rubs shoulders with
powerful company
the Archaeological Survey lies between the two
18 Chaitya halls are
structures today.
longitudinal spaces
with curved ends The Centre’s overwhelming entryway uses the form of the chandrashala
(apsidal) and usually window
a horseshoe-shaped opening topped by a curved peak and
contain a stupa, or anchored by two lateral feet at its base
adapting it here as a monumental,
sculpted, three-
dimensional exaggerated form. While realizing that the chandrashala itself has no
representation of a particular Buddhist symbolism
unlike the wheel, or the footprints of the
burial mound, at Buddha, or a stupa form
it does resonate visually with the façades of
their apex. They are
used for worship and
Ajanta’s chaitya halls (Figure 5).18 The archaeological site of Ajanta shares
are distinct from with Ashoka the status of Buddhist icon from India’s past, and decades of
viharas, which, while debate over the pinnacle of Indian art focus on Ajanta’s frescoes and stone-
containing worship
cut architecture. The chandrashala’s visual connection, then, to this Buddhist
spaces, are monastic
living quarters with icon anchors the convention centre to another, historically distant gathering
cells surrounding a place for international visitors: Ajanta. Rather than provide a carved stone
central rectangular mimicry of Ajanta, however, the Vigyan Bhavan’s entryway is a stylized
space. Both types are
found at Ajanta (see representation of this kind of arch: a drawing for a glossary of Indian
Spink 1991). architecture rather than a photograph of one example. This generalized form
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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
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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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chandrashala, echoes that some observers have seen as domical, thereby

reading these elements as potentially ‘Islamic’ or perhaps even representa-
tions of minarets. This is, I believe, pushing the form a bit too far, as the clear
resemblance in shape between the two casts them as echoes of one another
across the surface. However, the ‘minaret’ resonance provides an opportu-
nity for multivalent readings of the façade, revealing a subtlety in the
deployment of symbolism not usually recognized in buildings such as this. In
the context of a generalized, emblematic Buddhist past, the vertical hint of
minaret complicates the cultural reference slightly, undermining a pure
Buddhist and pure ancient reading of the surface. A third decorative element,
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the overhanging eaves supported by brackets, becomes in the following

decades almost a ubiquitous requirement for marking a building as Indian.
It serves here as small, subtle reminder of that wider pattern; the lack of bold
colouration or exaggeration of the eaves and brackets brings forward the
massiveness of the central element on the façade: the chandrashala.
Vigyan Bhavan refers, through a postmodern abstraction of Buddhist
architecture, to an Indian past valorized by Nehru and others as an
exemplary moment for the subcontinent in terms of international relations,
tolerance, and political power. Its references to a Buddhist past are tempered
slightly by the secondary reading of the vertical elements on the façade (as
minarets) and the generic chhajja eaves running around its top edge. Like the
upanishadic phrase below the Ashokan capital, these elements only help to
generalize the gesture to the past and to religion that the façade introduces.
We see a folding over of a third-century BCE Mauryan past with a fifth-
century CE Vakataka past (Ajanta), with elements that connect these strong
visual markers with other South Asian cultures and histories. A sense of
fragmentation already emerges in the façade of this building. This
fragmentation is marked by an attempt to reclaim and reconstruct India’s
history in the aftermath of colonial constructions of that past.
Neither retelling of Indian history
the nationalist Indian one exemplified
by Nehru’s Discovery of India nor the colonial one exemplified by James
Mill’s History of India
can shake itself free of its political context. This
building, then, like the postmodern architecture of the 1970s and 1980s in
North America, attempts to reclaim a relation to a past from which the
culture has been detached. Revivals are common
whether the Renaissance
revival of Classical Greek and Roman aesthetics or the later eighteenth-
century revivals of gothic and classical architecture. The difference between
these older examples and those labelled postmodern is a sense of distance,
on one hand, and a sense of irony and playfulness, on the other. The revival
in the 1950s in India cannot be said to be playful or comic in the same way
that Robert Venturi’s ‘decorated shed’ conceptualization might be (1977).
Irony, satire, and comedy all emanate from a crucial gap between what is
expected, known, and whole and an underlying fragmentation. I would
 i n t e r v e n t i o n s
11 :3 306
.........................
argue that rather than express the irony and playfulness of the northern
Atlantic critique of the modern (as found in postmodern architecture) here
the gap between the colonial construction of India’s past and the desire to
write India’s independent past and future marks the architectural quotations
as something other than merely a repetition of the past. Instead, the revival
one sees here plays on a postcolonial tension rather than a postmodern one.
Therefore, despite the building’s ‘lowly’ CPWD pedigree it speaks to many of
the same issues that postmodern architects of the 1970s and 1980s were
addressing. Both operated to criticize modern conceptions of architecture,
and both restated the past in grandiose ways on the surface of their
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buildings. The northern Atlantic version, because of its own blinders

regarding colonialism, multiculturalism, and the effects of global capitalism,
23 I thank Frances did so through exaggeration, humour, and irony.23 The subcontinental
Pohl and the
audience at Pomona version did so in a hopeful attempt to reclaim a past articulated through the
College for helping lens of colonialism
a past never fully recoverable and so here, through the
me to articulate this form of the chandrashala, emblematically re-traced.
line of thinking.
I take the term
In order to flesh out this move to the postmodern in so-called ‘revival’
northern Atlantic architecture of 1950s India, I turn in the next section of this paper to another
from Michel-Rolph Delhi structure, built at the same time: the Ashok Hotel. Its name, of course,
Trouillot’s rethinking
connects the building with the same kinds of pasts I’ve discussed thus far.
of modernity’s
Euro-American roots However, in form the building looks to quite a different past, and in a
(2004). manner distinct from the Vigyan Bhavan and its Buddhist references.

A Particular Mughal Past: The Ashok Hotel

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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adorn each corner, overhanging chhajja eaves provide a horizontal accent

under the top story of the building, and horizontal bands of red sandstone
accent the windows. But it is the main façade that commands attention,
jutting out into the garden space and marking the building as a massive
tribute to Indian architectural heritage. Alongside other structures from this
period in Delhi this structure looks positively flamboyant, a baroque
celebration of Delhi’s architectural past.
This type of appropriation is not new; indeed, each of the elements
described above has been borrowed and reworked again and again across
India’s architectural history (Metcalf 1998: 12
14; Tillotson 1989). Found
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on palace and fort architecture as well as religious structures, these

architectural ingredients proclaim a certain iconography of Indian historical
power, resting on the practices of Mughal emperors and the rulers of
kingdoms in northwestern India. It is rumored that Nehru encouraged this
so-called revivalism in the Ashok Hotel project (Lang et al. 1997: 185), a
surprising claim in the context of his other more modernist patronage, but
not altogether shocking in this 1955 moment of hesitation before the 1959
seminar and its decision in favour of modernist forms.
In addition to this architectural and political context, the Ashok Hotel also
exists in a physical one, between the governmental area of New Delhi and
the growing landscape of modern embassy structures to its south and west.
The building served as a diplomatic hotel, connecting India with the rest of
the world and reminding foreign visitors and residents of India’s powerful
past. The chhajja roof, jarokha balcony, large pendant brackets, jali screens,
and monumental iwans create, here, a particular quotation India’s historic
architecture. This iconography is inserted into the diplomatic dialogue that
forms after independence and looks to India’s future.
The iconography of the Ashok Hotel engages with earlier reimaginings of
New Delhi in Sir Edwin Lutyens’ and Herbert Baker’s early twentieth
century designs for the capital. The hotel does not merely recapitulate New
Delhi’s colonial vision however, but instead takes the appropriation of an
Indian past in entirely new directions. The colonial Rashtrapati Bhavan
echoes the main Sanchi stupa in its dome and refers to Indian Islamicate
architecture in its decorative chhatri pavilions. Its multiple appropriation of
earlier architectural form differs markedly from earlier colonial eclecticism
and, in turn, from the iconic quotations on the façade of the Ashok Hotel.
Indo-Saracenic structures of the nineteenth century such as Sir Swinton
Jacob’s Albert Hall in Jaipur (1887) presented a pastiche of excerpted
architectural elements in one building. Lutyens and Baker, in the new capital
of British India, smoothed out the differences among various elements,
rejecting (at least in part) the Indo-Saracenic baroque for an imperially-
inspired classicism flavoured lightly with Indian Buddhist references (see
Metcalf 1989: 212, 238). The New Delhi built in Lutyens’ and Baker’s vision
 i n t e r v e n t i o n s
11 :3 308
.........................
between 1912 and 1931 served to support a new vision of empire, focused
more precisely on Britain’s centrality than on a melding of British and
Indian. The Ashok Hotel, rather than subtly seasoning a western-inspired
architecture with Indian elements, proclaims several select iconic forms on
its surface, loudly articulating a new relation to India’s past as an
independent nation. The incorporation of the iwan, jarokha, and jali does
not meld seamlessly into the form of the building but instead juts out of the
structure, demanding the viewer’s attention.
Where do these architectural references take us, then, in the case of the
Ashok Hotel? On the one hand, we must situate the hotel within a pre-
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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 (1650
56) 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
204
205; Menon which Islamic past to cite in its façade. And that past is primarily drawn
2003; Hosagrahar
2002: 355
56;
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
49
50; Tillotson
1990: 74
76; Koch periods elsewhere in the subcontinent; the Osmania University College of
1991: 55
60. Arts building (1939, Figure 7), for example, incorporates a massive arched
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Figure 6 Diwan-i-Khas (audience hall), Fatehpur Sikri, late 16th century.

Photograph – 2005 Jordan Husney.

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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311

presence within the reconstruction of India’s past after colonialism served as

a model for Nehru and others to call on, one that counterbalanced the
iconoclastic image of the later Mughal emperor Aurangzeb and offered an
image of an India united under Akbar. For Nehru, Akbar’s experimentation
with religion and his tolerance of Otherness come to the forefront in this
narration of Indian history: ‘His court became a meeting place for men of all
faiths and all who had some new idea or new invention. His toleration of
views and his encouragement of all kinds of beliefs and opinions went so far
as to anger some of the more orthodox Moslems. [. . .] It was in his reign that
the cultural amalgamation of Hindu and Moslem in north India took a long
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step forward. [. . .] The Moghul dynasty became firmly established as India’s

own’ (Nehru 2004 [1946]: 280). Nehru’s elevation of Akbar in his Discovery
of India went so far as to suggest that ‘Only an Akbar might have
understood the situation’ as the British global power increased and European
powers started to spread mercantile tentacles across the world (292). So in
the optimism era, it is to Akbar that one turns to revive an Indo-Islamic past
in both architecture and text.
For Nehru, the model of Akbar helped to articulate a balance between the
secular and the many competing religious factions within the nation in the
1950s. While the Buddhist references of the Vigyan Bhavan and other
structures claimed an ancient heritage for India and connected non-violent
politics with the strength of dhamma-vijaya and Ashoka, the overwhelming
Indo-Islamic heritage of Delhi could not be ignored in the construction of a
new India. And indeed, in order to pursue a secularism of toleration,
embracing all of India’s diverse faiths, Nehru’s government needed to use the
past for examples of pan-Indian toleration and the overcoming of division.
Akbar serves as the obvious choice.

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
 REVIVIN G THE P AST
Rebecca M. Brown
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.
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