Link to the Recording of the entire Session 11:
Text of the Talk
The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad in Mir ki Dilli - and After
Pictured Realities and Transformation/ Evolution of The Red Fort in Colonial Times
Showing posts with label Red Fort. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Red Fort. Show all posts
Thursday, February 29, 2024
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
Representations and Realities: Tracing Missing Bits and Misconceptions -- The Case of the Red Fort
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Keynote Address to Conference on 'Remembering Architecture, Excavating Memory’
Department of English, Ramjas College, Delhi University
24 February 2023
Thank you for inviting me to an exploration of the connections between architecture, memory and literature. And the opportunity to re-visit my own thoughts on this. The very idea of re-visitation is central to what I have to say — the keynote of my address on ‘Remembering Architecture’.
We approach the past through memories.
Memories are recorded in our minds. And in myriad ways in words, or by hands: as texts, as drawings, as pictures, as sculpture and as architecture. But these events, however immediate they seem, are mediated by external and internal senses of perception. We know this not just from abstract texts on philosophy, or even from crime fiction where the unravelling of the mystery depends on the detective ploughing through testimonies of different ‘witnesses’ to the crime, but also from daily experience. Memory alters both perception and recollection. No two independent versions in newspaper reports of a current event, presented by two different people even if observed at the same time, will be identical. They can, in fact, be very dissimilar. What we may call the ‘Rashoman Effect’ that Akira Kurosawa demonstrates for us so brilliantly and disturbingly.
So, which version do we believe? In other words, how much can we rely upon representations of memory to convey the realities of what they aim to record? This is the question that especially confronts us in the case of past events that we cannot approach physically or observe ourselves — though it is a moot point how much reliance we can place upon our own senses. Can we pronounce with certainty that what we may have retained is the essence, and what has perhaps been thrown away — like coffee grounds — is insignificant? Physicists and philosophers remind us that all our attempts to register anything, are quite literally re-presentations, since by the time it travels to our senses: however infinitesimally small that time may be, the moment or sight or sound is already past. Taken in this literal sense, no event and its recording can ever be simultaneous or present in the same moment — and each is a memory.
Even if we disregard the implication of such minute allocations of time, our knowledge of events — whether through records made by someone present at a particular time in the past, or later — are re-presentations in another way. They are impressions filtered by not just the organs of perception, but also by the conceptions, abilities or intentions of those who make them. It would seem then that all records of the past are secondary sources. The only ones that may be termed primary sources are those we can still come close to perceiving in a primary way: those of architecture and archaeology. Archaeological records are however, more fragmented than historic architecture, and are often simply not open-to-view. They may be underground, or far from their original settings. In contrast, it is more difficult to dislocate architecture, though not impossible.
The record of historical architecture — where it exists — also differs from all others, in that we can experience it through not just one, but practically all our physical senses. We can view and touch it, be enclosed and encompassed in it, hear the sound of our voices and footsteps as we walk within and around it — in similar even if not in exactly the same ways as did those who created and inhabited it. In other words, we can interact in various ways with architecture — which is not just the setting or record of events of life, but also the event itself. There are multiple levels at which we can engage with it and multiple layers of information contained in it. The act of creating architecture, even when done with the objective of commemorating a stated purpose, contains more than that. Conversely, even when there are no stated objectives of memorialising, we can trace in the way architecture is built, lived in, and transformed, a record of what people held important, what they remembered or wish to remember, what were their craft, technology or management skills. In The Order of Time, Carlo Rovelli, ‘the poet of physics’ as he has been called, explains how ‘the second principle of thermodynamics…is the only equation of fundamental physics that knows any difference between past and future. The only one that speaks of the flowing of time.’ This equation, he tells us, provides the mathematical definition of the variation of entropy of a body: the sum of the quantity of heat leaving the body at a temperature. He goes on to say:
’the growth of entropy distinguishes the past from the future for us and leads to the unfolding of the cosmos. It determines the existence of traces, residues and memories of the past. We human beings are an effect of this great history of the increase of entropy, held together by the memory that is enabled by these traces.’
Though we can see architecture as the most direct manifestation of such ‘traces, residues and memories of the past’ and of their effect on us as ‘human beings, held together by the memory enabled by these traces’ — especially since certain kinds of architecture can last through several human lifetimes — yet it is also precisely because it contains so many memories of so many interactions that it is easy to be led astray in interpreting what we perceive of such architecture, even through our own senses. Especially when we have missing bits to contend with.
So, how do we read this primary resource, so that we may extract the memories encoded in it? I would like to explore this general question through the specific example of what has been variously known through different times as: the Qila-e-Mualla, Qila-e-Mubarak, Lal Haveli, Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, Dilli ka Lal Qila etc. From the epithet of ‘The Most Magnificent Palace in the East’ by James Fergusson, to the brusque and noncommittal title of ‘The Fort’ that it was called in British official records after they took over in 1857, these different names, and how and which we remember or use, reflect the different associations of this complex piece of historic architecture. I will also, through a couple of examples, hope to partially touch upon how far its representations match its reality — within the constraints of the time we have today. Please bear in mind, that my reading of the Red Fort, is inescapably coloured through my own filter.
Reading the Red Fort: What is — and What may have been
The Red Fort is a particularly good example for our purpose, because of its iconic reputation and role in the political and cultural sphere of the subcontinent — in fact of the world; as well as its sheer size, complexity and the great degree of transformation it has been subject to. Though its towering red walls loom large on the cityscape and the imagination of Delhi, very few structures from its original conception remain with us today — only about 10 percent. Inevitably then, its walls and gateways are practically all that leave an impress upon our memory, even after we have wandered or walked within it. When I first visited the Red Fort, incoherent as its interior seemed to be, I could — just like anyone else who visits it — experience the proportions, volumes, and forms of its buildings; their elegance, delicacy and craftsmanship; the light and space within them. At the same time, I could read the absence, albeit in a confused way, of what was not there: from my memory of what ought to be attributes of Shahjahani or Mughal architecture, and equally from my professional training about what a place that accommodated the functions of life, ought to be. I could also tell that the British barracks were evidently later intrusions, even though there was no information on site to help realise how much of the Fort was destroyed in 1857 and after.
To give an analogy from literature, the Fort may be likened to a large book, whose seemingly intact hard-bound cover is moth-eaten around the edges. When you turn the cover, you discover that most pages inside are missing. In the few that remain, the text has been so erased that only some scattered words of the original story are visible: in a half-familiar script that is not completely legible, crossed-out and overlaid by insertions in a different language and a different hand. How do we then read such an incomplete manuscript? This is the challenge posed by the erasure and reordering of so much of the primary record of the iconic Red Fort.
To continue the analogy: it is evident that first, we must glean what we can from what remains of the book itself — by becoming as proficient as we can in the original script that it uses, to gauge the quality of language used, and understand what it describes. My being a Dilliwallah and my training as an architect helped to an extent, but finally it was only my repeated revisits to the Fort that allowed me to glimpse its many stories, plots and sub-plots. To put it simply, I knew that Shah Jahan had got the Red Fort built, and had lived here. But it was difficult to reconcile its disconnected isolated structures, with the regal splendour associated with Shah Jahan and his other magnificent acts of patronage. It was also impossible to understand how he or anyone else could have lived in it — which as an architect, was my main question. Thus, the primary record of the Fort yielded clues to what it was, as well as what it may have been. Even the absence of certain architectural features on site furthered my understanding. The realisation that they were missing-bits, directed my search to other sources: but only because I had some of the primary record of the few extant structures of the Red Fort, and I kept these in sight as reference. These kept me on track, and steered me away from incorrect conclusions.
Whose Perspective
If you’ll forgive the pun, I’d like to illustrate this through some drawings of the Red Fort by British artists in the mid-19th century. These drawings figure in different collections. They appear realistic; and are from all accounts, based on actual observation on site. They show the Fort from the vantage point of the ridge across and beyond the river, drawn during or just before the momentous events of 1857, which saw scenes of intense battle in and around Shahjahanabad. As we know, the Red Fort’s outer walls and inner structures suffered extensive damage by shelling in 1857, and unabashed looting and destruction after the British forces moved in to the Fort, as the symbolic seat of the Mughal empire. We also know that as a consequence of the palace demolition order carried out in 1863, most of the structures within it, and stretching around its boundary walls upto a distance of 500 yards, were ordered to be reduced to rubble. On the face of it, these drawings, showing as they do, an unbroken Fort and its inner buildings and outer adjacencies drawn realistically according to the rules of perspective, seem invaluable in re-constructing its reality just before its large-scale and violent destruction and re-modelling by the British authorities in power.
However, a comparison with existing Mughal buildings in the Fort, as well as with maps, drawings and other descriptions, reveals that these views of ‘Delhi and its surrounding countryside’ re-order the configuration of the Red Fort’s built-form. Firstly, they greatly transform its outer profile, its neighbourhood and other parts of Shahjahanabad. Secondly, they completely eliminate the numerous pavilions, forecourts, gateways, enclosed gardens and arcades within the Red Fort. Thirdly, they reduce the interior of the Fort to a couple of towering buildings, depicted within an open area entered through a wide driveway flanked by trees and shrubbery. It is not a record of what really existed, but an Orientalised image of a stately European or English home.
Despite this rather glaring mis-representation, the preface to an official publication of the Kolkata Victoria Memorial Hall containing this and similar artworks by European artists, claims that ‘these paintings reflected images as in a mirror’ whose ‘credibility and fidelity remain above board’. We are urged to see these as ‘study-based endeavours in which no room is left for the imagination’. Such acceptance of ‘eye-witness’ records, without comparing them with what they purport to depict, leads us twice astray. First, it makes us see them as the ‘true’ reality of what existed. Secondly, it effects our perception, by making us see in these the standard image for monumental architecture. And therefore, the desirable template for making architecture, even in our times. As I mentioned in the beginning, memory alters both perception and recollection.
The rendering of the Red Fort into re-presentations by British artists, may have been an unconscious act affected by memories of grand edifices in their own culture. But we must also remember that regulated access within the Red Fort to visitors and to residents of Shahjahanabad, was possible in many but not all areas. Entry to its inner, private areas was especially restricted. It is unlikely that these artists would have had the opportunity to therefore actually enter many parts of the Fort. Unfamiliar as they were with the very different forms, scale and layout of the indigenous tradition of architecture that the Red Fort was a development of, and the culture and world-view it emanated from, it is not surprising then that they depict it not as it was, but as best they could make sense of what they could see of it.
Apart from drawing on their individual skills as well as the store-house of memories of what they were used to and their expectations of an imperial residence, these artists were also recording for viewers back home, a simplistic image of unfamiliar architecture, seen as exotic if effete and inferior. Many Europeans stereotyped Indian rulers as decadent despots, and imagined the Red Fort as a den of vice. For instance, John Dryden, considered the greatest English poet of the later 17th century, themed one of his most successful plays on Shah Jahan’s Court, filling it with intrigue, improper amour and imaginary characters. That, Dryden, poet laureate in 1668 CE was also appointed royal historiographer of England in 1670 — and that his play Aurangzebe, first staged in November 1675 for the King of England, continues to be described as ‘the last and most intelligent example of the genre’ of a heroic play — shows us that literary merit and historical authenticity may be two different things, but can still be confused for each other.
To come back to the visiting artists, they were responding both to the prejudices and principles of where they came from, and reacting to the very different principles of architecture in the Red Fort. One important difference was in the way open space was articulated, and its relationship with built structures. For instance, the many forecourts, enclosed gardens, colonnades, pavilions and verandahs that the artists omitted from their drawings, were not part of their way of life. These were, however, integral to the form and functioning of the Fort where space, as it were, flowed effortlessly between inside and outside along with views, smells and sounds.
The Distortion of Singular Memories
Along with such inherent limitations of secondary records, there are also instances where these deliberately reinforce a particular memory — as in the way in which physical remnants of the Fort were presented to a European audience to memorialise the British version of what occurred in 1857, and to justify their violence towards the city of Shahjahanabad and its people and ruler. One such is Felice Beato’s much reproduced photograph of the Forecourt of the Naubat Khana or Naqqar Khana, captioned: ‘Inner Gateway of Palace, with the tree under which the Christians were massacred’. As Narayani Gupta notes: ‘The account of this cowardly deed was to be so highly exaggerated that, when the British forces captured Delhi in September 1857, many of them slaughtered children and women in what they thought was retribution’.
The photograph deliberately highlights this much recounted tragic episode. The visual composition and the wording of the title, makes the Naqqar Khana — reduced to the ambiguity of the ‘Inner Gateway of Palace’ — recede so much in the background, that the fact that the photograph is an invaluable record of the presence and proportions of an important part of the Fort demolished by the British, escapes attention. This is the effect not just on those whose interest is in memorialising the incident, or on a casual observer, but also on many researchers. That I registered the presence of these vital architectural components and could use these in tracing and visualising the original conception of the Red Fort, is again only because of sustained engagement with the primary resource of its extant Mughal structures.
I would like to give you another example of how familiarity with the primary record of architecture, through close scrutiny of not just explicit forms, but of the entire canvas of implicit systems characteristic of architecture from specific times and places, may furnish clues to ways of excavating its memories. Through undertaking a variety of geometrical, spatial and proportional studies of the Red Fort, I was able to literally fill in the gaps in the sequence of the extant Mughal structures, and thereby recover the location of its missing bits. This spatial reconstruction was corroborated by a fortuitous discovery of a plan made by the British, documenting what they intended to demolish. Again, it was through a realisation of something significant being absent, and of uncovering a relationship between the architectural traces that remained, that I could in the first place, position these missing parts. And consequently, recognise the value of the document that recorded evidence of this vital relationship, when I accidentally came across it in the ASI archives.
Literary records
We have so far looked at instances of visual records, dating from two hundred years after the Fort’s establishment. What of literary records? Those contemporary with its founding such as official court-histories, are often called primary sources. They cannot however, really be termed so because they refract the three-dimensional experience of architecture into words, through the gaze of the one who is recording or writing. Given this caveat, let us look at a portion of the Badshahnama commissioned by Shah Jahan. This, the combined work of Abdul Ahmed Lahori and Muhammad Waris in Persian, available in partially published form, covers the time that the Red Fort was established (i.e. between 1639 and 1648 CE). The translated description of the Fort’s founding, undoubtedly helps to picture the detail and decoration of its original buildings, as well as their dimensions and materials. However, it does not, by itself, help to understand the basic fabric of the Fort.
This is because the Badshahnama— illustrated with formal miniature paintings of portraits or framed views of selected areas — does not cover all of the Fort, even the private imperial domain and the formal entrance sequences leading to it, with which it is principally concerned. The authors of the Badshahnama rhapsodising about the ‘grandness and beauty of this mighty Fort’, write that ’Its structures are beyond imagination. Its every corner is dazzling and every direction full of heavenly gardens…The qualities of these buildings are so high that none can elaborate on them’. The writing — whether poetic, eulogistic, or recording specific dimensions of the plan or structures — does not describe or convey the spatial quality of the Fort, which, as I mentioned, was an elegant permutation of inter-linked built and open space. It is, in any case, for literary ability in coining phrases or sentences in a manner that appealed to the Emperor rather than architectural knowledge, that Lahori — coming after a succession of writers given access to exhaustive data pooled from different parts of the empire — was chosen as the author of the Badshahnama!
Neither the text nor the miniatures cover the parts of the Fort where the attendants and soldiers lived or worked — even though these are integral to its original conception as a city-within-a-city and its subsequent functioning. In other words, the official record of the founding and original form of the Fort also has ‘missing bits’. We deduce the existence of these missing bits and understand their diverse complexity from other sources: maps, drawings, travelogues, earlier Mughal Forts etc. What this also tells us, is that rarely is a record complete in itself. It is by looking at multiple frames of reference and memories, that we come close to a more complete picture of the reality we are trying to understand. And, as I hope I have shown, it is only by revisiting the primary record of what remains on ground — and consciously recognising the absence of what does not — that we can trace the essential attributes of these records from earlier times. And realise the many misconceptions in which we see, conserve, or write about them today.
On revisiting and examining the primary record of the Red Fort, we realise that its refined resolution of space, was in many ways, the grand finale of a tradition where buildings were not used as sealed objects sitting in space, but interlinked with open areas and each other: permeable, efficient and adaptive to different seasons and multiple use by a wide number and variety of people across the social spectrum. Such an expression of architecture was the embodiment of the underpinnings of life in the sub-continent with coexisting plural and spatial identities, and multiple affiliations. Yet, despite this fact of an inclusive philosophy central to its creation and functioning, we paradoxically reinforce the appearance and use of the Fort set forth during its colonial occupation. It is now an exclusive, aloof and barred space, occasionally used as a stage-set and backdrop for celebrations that ironically dwell on its memory as a symbol of resistance to colonial British rule — while continuing colonial concepts of rigidly keeping people out.
The Red Fort like all architecture, is an act of community. It is particularly important for us to dwell on this in a conference themed on ‘Remembering Architecture, Excavating Memory’. Architecture cannot be built single-handedly. Nor conceived as the outcome of one mind, however unique it may appear. We bring forth architecture through a coalescing of recollections and practices internalised through training or temperament; through the play of cherished memories of light and space, constituted equally of places we have inhabited or visited, as of real or imaginary places we have read about and visualised. The more diverse and varied these spaces and thoughts, the richer are our memories, our minds and our lives. The Red Fort, like other architecture from times before us, bears the imprint of many lives, spaces, embodied knowledge-systems and skills. It is in our own individual and collective interest, to comprehend these memories and knowledge-systems, and discover through these the ‘unfolding of the cosmos’ as it were.
Thus, the Naqqar Khana, is the scene of tragic events, and happy ones. The setting for court-musicians marking with drums and cymbals the presence of the emperor on the throne in the Diwan-i-am, it is also the place where some emperors lost their lives. It is the final element in a dramatic spatial sequence, the point where noblemen, visiting ambassadors and everyone not of imperial Mughal blood, dismounted before passing in — and where the British official Francis Hawkins had the temerity not to: and consequently had the palace affairs removed from under his jurisdiction. It is a way of seeing how buildings were constructed three-hundred years ago, and a lesson in how something may be simultaneously a marker of space, a gateway, and a music-chamber. It is an exercise in proportions, a configuration of arches that are both structure and decoration; it is the panels of carved red sandstone flowers, the delicate underside of the dome under which you pass. And so much more. What it, or the Red Fort that it is a part of, evokes in us and how we remember it, ultimately reflects what we are. What I have analysed so far is how I see it through my filter, even as I base it on direct experience of its physical form.
I end with a different filter: a poet’s evocation of the realities and remembrances that the Red Fort constitutes for him. A testimony to the ability of history and architecture to fire imagination and empathy — this is the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, originally in Bengali and here, through my imperfect translation in English.
You have gone away
Emperor, today;
Your empire like a dream has flown.
In pieces lies your throne;
Your soldiers, whose marching feet
Made the earth ring and beat,
Their memory carried on the wind today
Flies after the dust of Delhi’s streets.
Within your walls are songs no more;
With the Yamuna no longer does the naubat roar;
The sound of the anklets your perfect women once wore
Dies away with the crickets’ drones,
In the corners of your broken palaces
As the night-sky mourns.
Even so, your messenger ever high,
Unsoiled, untiring,
Above the ruins of empires rising,
Above the turn of life and death,
Through time and after in a breath
Of bereavement infinite
Avers without respite
“Beloved, I have not forgotten, nor will I.”
Friday, September 25, 2020
Revisiting the Red Fort: Looking again at the Lal Qila
Online Talk Recorded for the India International Centre, New Delhi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoyFZf7j21Q&feature=youtu.be
Sunday, June 24, 2018
Answers to: 'Whose Fort is it Anyway'
In my essay published in The Indian Express on the 3rd of June 2018 (http://indianexpress.com/article/express-sunday-eye/whose-fort-is-it-anyway-red-fort-controversy-5200389/), I had underlined
‘the need to remind ourselves about the pertinence of the question: “Whose Fort
is it, anyway”?’ And the necessity to take the ‘opportunity to own our right
and our responsibility for the custody of our heritage.’
I had also written that:
‘So far, we have interpreted
‘custody’—whose dictionary meanings are both ‘protective care’ and
‘imprisonment’—within meanings that see people as interlopers. We need to now
see custodianship as protective care, both for the monuments we profess to
conserve, and the people whom we ostensibly conserve them for.’
Almost exactly a week after the piece
was published, I received a letter by post, from a resident of Pune. She
introduced herself as someone who had been born and brought up in Agra, and
wrote about the affinity she and other locals felt for the Mughal monuments
there. She wrote of memories of picnics spent in their grounds. And owned unequivocally
the familial bond they all felt for these buildings and their makers, as strong
as if these buildings were their parents. She went on to write:
‘You can consider this letter an answer to your
question “Whose Fort is it Anyway”. Not only this fort, but all monuments are
mine. They now belong to me as a citizen of India’.
This was the prelude to her telling me
in great detail about Burhanpur. About its history and architecture; its
palaces and serais, its qila and its hammams, its mosques and its gateways. She
told me about how local residents, hotel owners and historians, had taken her
around the city to reveal these to her, on her visit to Burhanpur. Of their concern
for the well-being of these buildings, and their efforts to catalyse government
officials. Of the threat to them from new construction, neglect and vandalism. She
requested me to use my ‘authority to help restore Burhanpur to its original
glory’.
This letter from a lady in Pune, who had
grown up in Agra, impelled by her great concern for the heritage of the city of
Burhanpur, is a powerful validation of the belief articulated in my essay that:
‘This is true not just for the Fort. Other, less complex sites, which have seen
less transformation, will also have many stories, individual and unique to them…They
will also need to be interpreted and integrated with people around them.’
In the letter that I wrote back to
her, I had to inform her that I do not have any authority as an individual to
do what she asked. What I did suggest as a way forward, was that local
residents take ownership of their heritage, of which monuments are an important
part.
How?
One
possible answer lies in an experiment done as part of a working group called the Friends of ASI (FrASI). The idea of the group
was a brainchild of Professor Narayani Gupta, and was
set up as a 150th
anniversary present to the Archaeological
Survey of India. The main reason for such a designated group, was the gap between
the ASI as official custodians of much of our tangible history, and the rest of
us; as well as a need to re-evaluate what should
be the role of the ASI as official custodians. As one member of the group put it, ‘as
friends we needed to bring out the strengths of the ASI anchored to their core
objectives for the benefit of the public at large and for the future
generations of this country’, and ‘move away from a ‘UNESCO-centric’ view of
heritage’ to preserve our diverse cultural wealth in the light of our own
distinct cultural values.[1]
We felt that the trust-building had to be a
two-way process, and just as it was important to highlight what the ASI did
‘well’, it was equally important to have a channel where people’s opinions of what
they did not manage to do so well, could be communicated directly to the ASI.
Also, rather than just have reactionary responses—such as providing feedback on
what the ASI has done, well or otherwise—the FrASI hoped to ensure more participation so
that communities and members of society could know beforehand what was planned for their city’s monuments and they
could have a say in the direction and intent of such planning. We thus, envisaged
the FrASI to be an initiative of civil society supporting and supported by the ASI.[2]
We planned to do
this in the historic area of Begumpur
and Bijay Mandal[3] primarily through dissemination of information: researched and culled from ASI
sources and from the inhabitants at site, two different sorts of histories. And involvement
at site: through planned activities where the local residents, the ASI, and visitors get
to know and understand each other as well as the site better; and consequently
work at improving the site and their relation with it.
The FrASI
managed to do some of this, over the span of one year, entirely through voluntary
efforts by different members, both within and outside the ASI. (https://friendsofasi.wordpress.com/2017/06/25/whose-site-is-it-anyway-the-question-of-custodianship/)
This shows that it is possible to work
towards integrating the needs of the inhabitants and the monuments. The main
reason why the experiment lapsed was that
we could not catalyse
lasting communication between the villagers, other local residents and
stakeholders and the ASI staff deputed at the site, and increase the band of Friends
at the local level. Some of us, key members of the initiative, lived 40 kms
away from the site.
For the
same reason, an initiative for the conservation of Burhanpur can only
be successful if its local residents and the local ASI jointly work as its
custodians. If the people who are closest to a
monument, are kept away from it by expending great effort in creating a lakshman rekha, and are deemed untrustworthy,
unfit, and unaware of the correct etiquette about how to behave in a monument, no
lasting conservation is possible. We should also remember that the very fact of
the existence of our unparalleled built heritage even before the formation of a
formal agency such as the ASI, shows that local people had responsibilities
that they lived up to—in their care for such heritage. All this implies that responsible local responses are the
only valid answer to the question of appropriate custodianship. And that the official
custodians of our monuments recognise this aspect, and give credence to it.
[2] A core team of the following members: B.M.Pande, Narayani Gupta, Janwhij
Sharma, B.R.Mani, Sohail Hashmi, Vivek Jindgar, Robinson, and Anisha Shekhar
Mukherji, was allocated the task of taking these suggestions forward, with help
from Shilpi Rajpal and Jennifer Chowdhary. Anisha was asked to serve as the
node for coordinating activities, and to summarize the way forward reached at
the end of the discussions of the First meeting to be shared with the rest of
the core team. Dr. B.M.Pande, ex DG ASI, Dr Narayani Gupta, Dr. Gautam
Sengupta, the then DG ASI, were seen as senior advisors to this group.
[3] Following from
the 21 May 2012 Site Visit
to Begumpur and Bijay Mandal, and the follow-up meetings/ email correspondence between various members)
Monday, June 11, 2018
Whose Fort is it Anyway
Whose fort is it anyway?
Written by Anisha Shekhar Mukherji | New Delhi |
https://indianexpress.com/article/express-sunday-eye/whose-fort-is-it-anyway-red-fort-controversy-5200389/
Thursday, September 3, 2015
Ways of Saying
Text of the Lecture
delivered at the British Council, New Delhi, 26 November 2009 to mark the
Exhibition at the Delhi NGMA of Paintings/Photographs from the Victoria and
Albert Museum, London
What does a
painting—made 150 years ago or more—say about the places or the people or the
buildings it depicts? Does it say merely one thing? Or more? Is such a painting
to be seen primarily as an expression of artistic talent and individual
perception? Is it the equivalent of high art? Is it a
picture postcard? Or is it a historical document? Especially when it records
ways of living or places that have disappeared? And if they have completely or partially disappeared,
how does one decide how accurately they are recorded in such paintings? In
other words, what do we make of such paintings? How do we understand them,
appreciate them, utilise them?
As
a professional architect working in the field of conservation and history, early depictions of monuments, cities, gardens and
landscapes of India
 |
| Delhi and surrounding
countryside 1857 A. Maclure |
 |
| Delhi before the Seige, 1857, John Luard |
The Red Fort, as we all perhaps know, is one of
the most unique urban palace complexes in the world—and one which has only 10
percent of its original structures remaining today. Hence my elation, at
finding (or so I thought) vital information that could help me to piece
together how the inside of the 17th century Fort looked before so
much of it was destroyed in the War of 1857 and its aftermath.
My
elation soon gave way to surprise. The drawings
portrayed a different scenario altogether. Where was the complex
configuration of the Red Fort’s many courtyards? And its palaces, pavilions,
gateways, streets, and orchards within and around these courtyards? On
comparing the drawings with archival records as well as the existing Mughal buildings in the Fort, I realized
that the drawings employed a great deal of
artistic license. So much so that the inner features of the Fort and even its
outer profile were almost completely transformed in these drawings! In place of
the successive airy arcades of the many single-storey
palace-pavilions punctuated by marble screens and cooled by fountain-courts
and gardens, there was one towering building sitting isolated within an open area. It was in
fact, the image of a stately English home entered
through a wide driveway flanked by trees and shrubbery, made Oriental
with a generous topping of bulbous onion domes!
Since
then, I have been cautious about deriving any direct clues about historical
places from such paintings. That does not nonetheless imply that they are useless
as records. On the contrary, these paintings do give important information especially
when they depict places which are not as complex or as large as the Red Fort. And
they say as much about the places they represent as about the people who drew
them and the times in which they were painted. They are not just ‘ways of
seeing’ but also ‘ways of saying’ whatever individual artists thought was
important to represent. Even the act of choosing to draw a particular monument
out of hundreds of others, is an expression of an artist’s way of saying
something. But how does a viewer in the 21st century understand and interpret these
ways?
Let
me try to explain this through the example of two architectural monuments
featured in the present traveling exhibition. Even if one did not know anything
about when and how these paintings were made, it is quite easy for a viewer in
the Indian context to understand what they are saying. Most of us would easily recognize
the sites that these two paintings depict. The structures are drawn quite
recognizably for what they are. It is unlikely that any viewer, especially a
Dilliwala, would confuse them with any other historical building.the first is quite evidently the Jantar Mantar at Delhi, and the second is the Jama Masjid in Shahjahanabad or old Delhi as most of us refer to it today - both important ‘monuments’ in
the built landscape of Delhi. The way in which the people and the surrounding topography
and landscape are shown in these drawings, quite clearly places the images in a
time that is past. So what they are saying and their way of saying it seems
quite realistic and straightforward.
 |
| ‘Eastern Gate of the Jummah Masjid at |
 |
| ‘Ancient Observatory, |
But is it? When we
come to know when they were painted and in what circumstances, we realize that there
is much more to them than meets the eye at first glance. To begin with, how we
see them now is not the way in which the artists expected them to be seen. Ironically,
these paintings were never meant to be seen primarily by Indians or even by Europeans
living within India Britain India India Delhi
So,
for instance, the Jama Masjid, whose construction was finished in about 1658 ad, is described just five years later by
the Frenchman Francois Bernier, one of the earliest Europeans to have lived in
and written about Shahjahanabad, the ‘new Delhi’ of that time. Bernier
describes ‘two edifices worthy of notice’ in this city apart from the Red Fort
(p. 278), and one of them is the Jama Masjid, ‘the principal mosque which is
conspicuous at a great distance’. He writes (p. 279) about ‘the ascent to the
three gates by means of five-and-twenty or thirty steps of beautiful and large
stones’, ‘the three magnificent entrances’ and that ‘Above the principal gate,
which greatly exceeds the others in grandeur of appearance, there are several
small turrets of marble that produce a fine effect’. In short, he gives a
complete verbal picture of the scene that we see in the painting above!
Not
just this, Bernier goes further and declares ‘I am satisfied that even in Paris,
a church erected after the model of this temple would be admired, were it only
for its singular style of architecture, and its extraordinary appearance’. Bernier’s
writings dedicated to King Louis XIV of France Paris London
The
Jantar Mantar, too, though not as old as the Jama Masjid, was a site frequently
visited and written about. Barely twenty years after it was made, the Austrian
Jesuit missionary Josef Tieffenthaler visited and wrote about the Delhi Jantar
Mantar. In another 50 years, by the end of the 18th century, the Delhi
Jantar Mantar’s value was recognized as an Observatory and it was written about
in the Asiatic Researches published
from Calcutta, first in an account of Delhi by W. Franklin who went to Delhi
with a party of surveyors dispatched by the East India Company Government of
Bengal, and later by William Hunter in a specific account of the astronomical
work of Sawai Jai Singh, the King who established the Observatory. By this time
the Observatory was ‘celebrated’ enough to warrant a visit not just by
travelers ‘in search of the Picturesque’ (such as Fanny Parks) but also
professional soldiers such as Major William Thorn who stopped here ‘on way back
to camp’ as a member of Lord Lake’s campaign in Delhi sometime in September
1803. It was also valued on account of its association with Sawai Jai Singh, who was
portrayed as a just and model king, different from the conventional western
image of Oriental despots. So the
Jantar Mantar was well known in both scholarly circles as well as in popular
travel accounts.
Paintings
of the Jama Masjid and the Jantar Mantar featured in many 18th and
19th century artists’ works. The pencil and watercolour drawing of the Delhi Jantar
Mantar in the present exhibition, was drawn by William Simpson, (on Paper, 1864,
V&A Museum
I
would like to explore the ways in which these well-known artists of their time have
looked at these two famous architectural buildings, and what their drawings as
first-time visitors to India
We all know that even if there has been no deliberate attempt at
dramatizing a space, any account or representation is inevitably an individual
perception which can never be completely objective. Thus, first and
foremost, these paintings represent the artists’ personality in what they seek
to highlight or focus on, through the paintings while portraying
the sights they have seen. Taken alone, they are impressionistic views
(even when they seem to be completely realistic) of India as seen from the eyes
of visitors from a very different culture and context; with the express purpose
of making their fortune by employing their artistic talent to draw pictures of
the ‘mysterious east’ for audiences back home in Europe. For instance, William
Simpson (1823-1899) was commissioned to go to India London India England
Though
only about 50 years separated the visits of the Daniells and Simpson, the
political circumstances were quite different during their visits. After 1857,
the British connection with India India India Britain India Delhi
The Daniell
paintings as pre-1857 do not have the additional reportage of the post-1857
paintings. However, though they may be said to be without an obvious political
agenda, they obviously had a commercial angle to fulfill. They needed to be
dramatic enough, exotic enough and enticing enough to appeal to a large section
of the British public, in order to sell well. So the Jama Masjid painting, the
first painting of the Daniell’s Set of Views, does not show the entire Mosque
itself, but focuses on one part of it - its Eastern Gateway, the grandest
gateway of the Mosque as told earlier by Bernier. This is in keeping with the
style employed by the Daniells in their other paintings as well. Thus, while they
are known to have used the camera obscura to ensure faithful documentation of
details of landscape or building, they often deliberately played up elements of
the natural and built landscape—sometimes substantially—to achieve greater
compositional effect. This is clearly demonstrated in
the book India India
William
Simpson’s objective of coming to India India Delhi Delhi
This is the reason
perhaps that the Daniell painting is quite simply titled ‘Eastern Gate of the Jummah
Masjid at Delhi Delhi
On the face of it, it appears unlikely that
two buildings in the same general area, subject to the same climatic
conditions, would have weathered so differently during a similar time-span. The
Daniell painting was drawn a hundred and fifty years after the construction of
the Jama Masjid; similarly Simpson’s painting of the Jantar Mantar was also
made about a hundred and fifty years after its
construction. So, is it reasonable to believe that one building could have
degraded so much over a hundred and fifty years ago, while the other was in
such good condition?
The Jama Masjid was within the walls of the
imperial Mughal Capital, the most important congregational mosque which the
Mughal Emperors also visited for prayer. Though Delhi Delhi
About fifty years after the Daniells painted
and published their view of the Jama Masjid, Emily Metcalfe, newly arrived from
England Calcutta Delhi Delhi
‘I could not sleep
because I was so excited at the thought of seeing Daddy before dawn. At about
one o’clock in the morning I looked out of my palanquin, and saw in the
glorious moonlight the minarets of the Juma Masjid, the great Mohammedan mosque
that is one of the chief beauties of Delhi and of Northern India.’ (p.122, Golden Calm)
Perhaps Emily had seen
one of the paintings of the Daniells in the houses of her aunts and uncles in England
The Jantar Mantar on the other hand was well
outside the then city walls, a mile and a quarter south-west. Its patron’s kingdom was many
miles away, in Jaipur, and it had ceased to be a working Observatory shortly
after Nadir Shah’s attack. The circle of the full moon, the glow of the fire in
Simpson’s painting lend both romance and mystery to the strange shapes of the instruments
of this observatory. Indeed, the very reasons that make us believe that the
Observatory may indeed actually have been in a ruinous and deserted state, make
it improbable that Simpson would have actually sketched the Observatory by the
light of the full moon. The area of Delhi
So what direct
information can we derive from the paintings about the buildings? We are told
that Simpson arrived in Calcutta in 1859 and traveled over India, making his
‘rapid pencil drawings’ which were finished as water-colours after his return
to London in 1862. So about two to three years elapsed between
drawing his subjects, and preparing them for publication. There was thus, a
substantial time gap between seeing, recording and finishing his paintings.
Nonetheless, if we consider the Jantar Mantar and how it has been rendered, we
find that its instruments are more or less recognizable. We can see the Samrat
Yantra, the Misra Yantra in the distance with the guard house of the
Observatory next to it, and the pair of very broken down JaiPrakash Yantras in
the foreground next to the skeleton. There is another platform with a roud
disc on it shown before the West JaiPrakash Yantra which has since then
disappeared. We know that Jai Singh built metal instruments at the Delhi
The
proportions of the Samrat are impeccable, and much like the extant Yantra
today. It is in far better shape than the other Yantras depicted here. This is
in sync with historical records. Thus, while Syed Ahmad Khan, in his book about the historic buildings of Delhi, Atharal
Sanadid, first published in 1846-7, states quite clearly that the Jantar
Mantar’s ‘instruments have fallen into disuse and are almost in ruins’, it is
recorded that the newly formed Archaeological
Society of Delhi requested Raja Rama Singh II of Jaipur to conserve the
Observatory. As a result, in 1852 the conservation of the most imposing Yantra,
the Samrat, was undertaken with funds and expertise from Jaipur. This
conservation would have taken place less than a decade before Simpson’s visit,
and perhaps explains the reason why the Samrat looks in so much better shape
than the other visible Yantras.
However, when we compare Simpson’s drawing with a view of the Observatory at around the same time by a local artist commissioned by
the British Resident of Delhi, Sir Thomas Metcalfe, it shows something quite
different. It is the Samrat which appears more ruinous than the other Yantras,
especially the JaiPrakash Yantras which are shown to be fairly intact. The
drawing depicts scattered mounds of earth and occasional crumbling edges of the
masonry instruments, set amidst fairly pleasant grassy stretches with trees in
the distance - a far cry from the desolation of Simpson’s scene. The
perspective is faulty and the proportions of the Yantras too are not as assured
as Simpson’s drawing. But should we automatically assume that a less skilled
artist will also be a less accurate observer and recorder? Not necessarily. In
fact, a more confident and skilled artist may actually find it simpler to
depart from reality, to fill in details from imagination. In the absence of
absolute corroborative information, these thoughts cannot be more than
speculations. Be that as it may, they demonstrate the selective nature of
perception and memory and explain why even an overwhelmingly recognisable
subject, when represented many times by different artists, does not appear exactly
the same in its different versions. The fact is that
it gets invested with different meanings despite being rendered in a natural or
figurative way.
 |
| Jantar Mantar, Delhi mid
19th century from The Golden Calm |
The
Daniells too had chosen to draw the Delhi Jantar Mantar in their collection of
views. Like Simpson, they focus on the Samrat Yantra; however the only other
recognizable Yantra in their drawing is the Misra in the distance. The
Observatory is not as obviously ruined as it is depicted in Simpson’s version.
In fact, though part of the Samrat’s lime-plaster has come off revealing its
underlying masonry, the Yantra itself is more or less complete. Again, if we
look at the larger historical view of the area, we realize that the Daniells
saw the Jantar Mantar before its conservation was undertaken in 1852, and after the attacks and vandalism on it by
the Jats. So, was it actually in worse shape than the Daniells painting? Or was
it in better shape than Simpson’s painting?
 |
| Jantar Mantar, Delhi
late 18th century, Aquatint by Thomas and William Daniell, 1808 after a drawing by Thomas Daniell 1789 |
We can look for at
least partial corroboration in another contemporary pictorial source – Beato’s
photograph of the Jantar Mantar. Both Beato's photograph and Simpson’s drawing date from
practically the same time. Beato’s photograph of the Jantar Mantar concentrates
on the steps of the Samrat, and underplays the exotic element that Simpson
seeks to highlight. Though Beato’s photograph does not cover as much of the
Yantras as does Simpson’s painting, it is difficult to say exactly how much of
the surroundings have been played up by Simpson. Nevertheless, the close up of
the Samrat reveals that while the steps of the gnomon and its surrounding parapet
are relatively intact, the dials of the Samrat
as well as the Misra Yantra in the background are indeed, at least
partially ruined.
 |
| Jantar Mantar, Delhi mid
19th century, Photograph: Felice Beato |
Beato,
like Simpson, also imposes props on his photograph though his props are quite different.
The thin Indians and the lean dog in Simpson’s painting are replaced by the
European in the sola topee. The European positioned on the steps of the Yantra,
perhaps for scale, perhaps to reflect the ascendancy of the British in the
Indian political and physical landscape is not a chance bystander or passerby
but is a deliberately added element to the photograph. The same European
appears in several of his other photographs too. However,
though they use different props, and appear to evoke very different images –
Beato’s still, stark and grainy planes and angles contrasted with Simpson’s
soft colours and movement, as much a constraint of their different mediums as
perhaps their individual artistic expressions - the underlying message in both
works appears to be the same, namely the desolation of the native landscape in
the aftermath of 1857.
 |
Jama Masjid, Delhi mid
19th century,
Photograph; Felice Beato
|
If we look at Beato's photograph of the Jama Masjid and its
surroundings, there is a more perceptible difference between it and the
Daniells painting. The Daniell painting is of course, almost
60 years before the Beato photograph. In this relatively short span of
time, the perception of the Jama Masjid underwent a dramatic change. Immediately
after the capture of Delhi
It is also
revealing to contrast the manner in which the Jantar Mantar and the Jama Masjid
are presented in these older drawings and the manner in which they are
photographed today. Thus, practically all the older drawings of the Jantar
Mantar either only show the Samrat Yantra, the largest Yantra of the Delhi
Observatory, or give it prominence in the composition. Yet, today, almost all
images of the Delhi Jantar Mantar show not the Samrat, but the far smaller
Misra Yantra – ranging from the photograph printed on the ASI’s entrance
tickets to the coffee-table as well as the scholarly publications on the Jantar
Mantar. The reason for this is probably because the Observatory’s original
entrance has shifted ninety degrees, and the way in which it is now entered
means that the Misra Yantra, the last and smallest Yantra of the Observatory,
is encountered first of all. Similarly, most images of the Jama Masjid today either
focus on close-ups of the steps of the entrance gates or feature its internal
courtyard with the domes of the mosque looming up behind. Views such as those
that the Daniell painting depicts are physically difficult to draw or
photograph because of the crowding in of the mosque’s surroundings. This shows
the extent to which physical space and how we spatially approach a building or
a monument affects how we picture, redefine and represent our past.
 |
| Jantar Mantar, 19 November 2009 Hindustan Times |
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