The Lakshanas of Indian Design
(Text of the Talk delivered on 18.07.2017 at the
India Habitat Centre as part of the Architecture and Society Series)
Good
Evening.
My
talk, as its title states, seeks to recognise the lakshanas of Indian design.
But before I try to do that, I need to clarify what I imply when I say ‘Indian’
and ‘design’ – both words are open to diverse interpretation. And why I speak
of ‘lakshanas’.
We’ll
start with some pictures, all drawings of buildings, rather beautiful drawings.
The question I have for all of you, is which of these seem ‘Indian’ to you? All?
Any in particular that doesn’t?
Speaking
for myself, I recognise some of these as Indian, because they are either famous
buildings, or famous types of buildings – such as temples or palaces. Another
reason, which makes them typically Indian, is the people and the landscape
around. But, the question I ask myself is, that if I didn’t know these buildings, would I be able to point out anything else that makes them Indian - apart from
the fact that they are located in the present political boundaries of India?
These
drawings are by a gentleman called David Gentleman. They feature in a book entitled
David Gentleman’s India. They offer
an outsider’s view of what constitutes India, and obviously it’s also a very
personal view. In his introduction, DG writes that the challenge for him was to
‘identify…the many features that are found nowhere else, things that, wherever
you are, give the unmistakable character and flavour of Indian life, the clear
and vivid certainty of being in India’. It is interesting that he chooses
to sketch very few modern buildings in his book to convey this ‘character’.
Also, if you remove the people and the landscape from the scene of these
buildings, there is no ‘vivid and clear certainty’ that you are in India! In
the case of the drawings of historic architecture, they are certainly more
individual, and more beautiful. But, the same question arises – is there
anything they share which makes them recognisably Indian? This is what I’ll try
to examine today - to the extent possible in the time we have.
We
started with an outsider’s view, and it is important in showing us how Indian architecture
and India are perceived by people from non-Indian cultures. However, ultimately
this is an outsider’s view, no matter how empathetic the outsider might be. To
get a more balanced and a better understanding of what India and Indian design
mean, it’s important to reverse the gaze and see these from the inside, from
the Indian perspective.
So,
what is the Indian perspective? Is there
anything different about such a perspective that results in uniquely Indian
design?
In today’s time of course, there
seems to be little perceptible difference between the non-Indian and the conventional
and influential Indian perspective – shaped as they are by an overwhelming preoccupation
with the industrial market and with money, For instance, the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia page
of the Association
of Indian Design Industry contains this sentence: ‘The design profession has formally
existed in India since 1962’. To me,
this statement seems surprising, even outrageous, given that the extraordinary
variety and level of designs that have been generated in India through
centuries, could only have been the outcome of a formal and a highly evolved system of design. Again, if you look
up the meaning of design noted in
dictionaries and explained in most books on design, whether written in India or
elsewhere, they almost exclusively limit
designing to the act of drawing or planning; and make a separation
between planning something, and actually creating it. However, this is not
a universal method of design, either in terms of time or space. It is not
the way in which design was practised historically anywhere in the
world, and certainly not in India. This separation is an outcome of a fairly
recent occurrence in terms of world history, commonly termed the Industrial
Revolution, which took place about 250 years ago - not in India - but in the
western world. Yet, our understanding of the origin of Indian design, as in
many other things, mimics a western cultural
stand-point, especially a stand point of an industrialized society.
Thus, to get a less imitative or a more truly Indian
viewpoint, we need to expand our view to examine
India and Indian-ness as conceived by
Indians, and not limited to merely the present times. Here we come to the word
‘lakshana’,
the noun derived from ‘laksh’. The root word means ‘to perceive, to observe’,
and lakshana/m implies the signs/marks which help to make such perception/ observation
manifest. As
Chaturvedi Badrinath notes in a discussion[4] on the Mahabharata: ‘One
characteristic of Indian thought has been that in the place of definitions
of things, it asks for their attributes or lakshanas. That is because
all definitions are arbitrary, whereas the lakshanas are what show a thing,
through which a thing becomes manifest. Thus, not the ‘definition’ of truth, or
of love, but the attributes of truth and love by which they are known is what
is central.’
I
The Lakshana of being
Indian
So, what are the attributes, the lakshanas of being Indian, and of Indian design – and how do we
arrive at them.[5]
Well, by a rather long route, by
going back to our
most ancient works on philosophy, such as the Upanishads. Philosophy is termed ‘darshan’ in India, and it literally
means ‘to see’. How we see ourselves, forms our first and primary identity, and
affects whatever else we do. In the Indian system, historically, the ideal
individual sees herself or
himself as an extension of the clan, the community, the country and even the
cosmos, all of which are connected, and are part of
the same aatman or ‘spirit’. All the Upanishads essentially
approach the universal spirit and its infinite expression in space and time, while
highlighting its inseparable connection with all human beings. This was not
just an abstract principle that scholars studied. It was explained and handed
down in stories and tales, and enacted in folk-drama and dance. For example, in
the
Mahabharata, one of the reasons for the Great War, is believed to be King Dhritarashtra’s inability to see and
accept this interconnectedness,
despite the advice of his minister, Vidura.[6]
This
basis of Indian culture, which inter-linked the individual to a very wide
context, led to some of its overriding and distinct lakshanas,
which I’ve summarized below.
1.
The first of these lakshanas is collective
responsibility and self-reliance. As the poet Rabindranath Tagore explains,
‘...unlike in Europe, the State has never been in India a central thing in the
life of the nation. While European civilization assigned a central position to
the State, Indian civilization from ancient times put in that place society
guided by dharma as it was conceived by the people.’[7] The
root of the word dharma, means to sustain or to uphold, and historically in
India, individuals as well as the community of which they were a vital part,
worked responsibly together to sustain cultivable land, forests, rivers, wells,
water-tanks, schools, temples, mosques, market-places, etc. This
lakshana of Indian society survived
even till the 18th century, until the British changed this system,
as the research of the Gandhian historian, Dharampal, shows. He examined a host
of documents that the British made for circulation amongst themselves after they
moved into India, and found in them, records of Indians all over the
subcontinent, in accordance with ancient custom, retaining independent control over a certain ratio of the land of a village
and its yield which was used
collectively by the people. This sense of collective responsibility is very
different from the mechanistic and individualist philosophy characteristic of western
society, that became particularly pronounced after the influence of the 17th
century French philosopher, Rene Descartes, who is dubbed as the father of
modern western philosphy.
2.
The second lakshana is ‘Respect for people
with divergent views and sub-identities, and simultaneous existence of
such identities.’ The world-view of the Upanishads developed into the many schools of
philosophy historically seen in India, which stressed an interdependence
between people, objects and their contexts. Unlike many other cultures, especially
western cultures, where one dominant philosophy successively supplants another,
historically in India, even if many of these schools of philosophy were not followed
by the majority, and despite wide differences between some of them, all of them
generally found space to exist simultaneously.
3.
The third Lakshana is: Cyclical Ideas of Space
and Time: In
Indian tradition, space and time are believed to exist in endless cosmic cycles.
Each cycle is actually a process of regression
or falling, according to which we live in Kalyuga, the last and the worst
in a cycle of four yugas. Since ancient times, this cyclical connection has
been bound to the idea of human existence recurring over many life-times, and
to the sacred geography of India,
and its local and larger histories. As Tagore puts it: ‘the geographical entity that
is India appears from the earliest times to have roused in its people the
desire to realise the unity comprised within its natural boundaries…the process
of capturing complete picture within the
net of a common devotion’. Despite the influence of modern western education,
this lakshana of space and time persists to some degree in the Indian
imagination—witnessed as much in the propensity of Indians still journeying to sites across the sub-continent on well-traversed
routes, as in our daily conversation, films, songs, and proverbs such as ‘Yeh
Kalyuga hai’ to explain away present day problems. This is completely
different from dominant Western thought, which sees time as linear, along
which, according to the Darwinian concept of the survival and progress of the
‘fittest’, humans march on, to claim and exploit the resources of the Earth,
and now even of Mars and the Moon![9]
II
So,
how do these lakshana of Indian-ness manifest or reflect in Design?
The word lakshana itself
crops in all sort of contexts and places in the tradition of Indian design,
either specifically stated or implied. In temple architecture for instance, as
enumerated in the Silparatnakosa, a
17th century text on Orissan temple architecture, the lakshanas of individual
parts of the temple are listed. Indeed, the text itself begins with a
description of silpa or architecture as ‘silpam hi param pujyam sarva
darshanlakshanam’ translated as: ‘Silpa
is the most venerated. It is the visual testimony of all the darsanas, or
contains the characteristics of all the darsanas. In
the context of painting, as BN Goswamy, the art historian, explains in his
book, The Spirit of Indian Painting,
‘In early India, the emphasis was on capturing the lakshanas of an individual,
his characteristic or cognitive attributes’…
through which persons and their essence, could be recognised…The intention was
to achieve clarity. Observation was subordinated not to rules…but to situations.
…what prevailed as an idea, was idealised or conceptual portraiture’.
The
unique characteristics of Indian design arise from an idealised or conceptual
image of everything being interlinked, and there
being no barriers in the cosmos. Thus, there is no strict division between the arts
and sciences; craft is held to be a science, vijnana, and the knower of crafts, called vijnanika or scientist, is given an important status. Neither is there any separation between
architecture, craft and art. For
example, the Silparatnakosa,
starts with a prayer to Visvakarma,
the divine architect in Indian tradition,
who is also the God of the arts and crafts, and whose
five sons are held to be the ancestors of the important groups of craftsmen. And finally, there is no separation between theoreticians and practitioners; between
planning a design and making it. The Mayamata,
a Sanskrit text on architecture from
South India, whose written form is dated from the 9th to the 12th centuries,
specifies that the architect must not only know mathematics, sciences, and
how to draw, but also how to build on the ground. The
text discusses design in the widest sense - from the level of a built
settlement (urban and rural) to that of a seat or a chair, using an interlinked
system of aesthetics, proportions, measurements and construction techniques. Practical
applications of such unity are seen in the detailing of space and form in
indigenous design.
For instance, there is no strict boundary between internal
and external elements of architecture. Pavilions and courtyards, colonnades and
walled gardens, seem to flow from one into the other. And in theatre, unlike
the ‘framed’ proscenium stage of western origin, which presents only a front
view to the audience, indigenous performance spaces offer multiple view-points,
in both actual and imaginative terms. The actors perform on a circular or
semicircular platform, around which the audience sits. Instead of elaborate
physical sets, the audience themselves visualise changes in locale or
characters, as explained by a sutradhar, who literally carries forward the
‘thread’ of the narrative.
I have looked at some
examples of Indian design across some of its fields, to see what are the
lakshanas generated from this design philosophy, which can be said to render
them Indian. The first of these,
in my view is:
1. The
Lakshana of Flexibility and Versatility. In Indian architecture, this is most
evident in the way in which built and open space combined together in flexible
ways - for multiple purposes,
users and occasions. This is visible from the time of the oldest urban
architecture in India, such as in the remains of the cities along the banks of
the Saraswati and the Indus. Probably the most evolved instance of such
multi-functional architecture is the magnificent seventeenth century
palace-fortress built in Delhi for the fifth Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan.[16]
Most of the buildings in this Fort were designed as single-storeyed pavilions
linked by colonnades and courtyards, as can be seen in this map; instead of one
fixed purpose, they were formed and located such that they could be used for
different functions at different times. For example, the Emperor’s own
pavilions were not just used for sleeping and living, but also for
administrative meetings and for receiving visiting ambassadors; or for
celebration of festivals such as Holi. In Indian attire, this lakshana can be
best seen in the tendency to use unstitched, woven garments—despite the
technology and the knowledge of stitching from very ancient times.[17]
The most famous of such unstitched garments is the sari. Since it is not
tailored and sewn to fit one individual, it can be handed down to
several generations, to suit multiple users for multiple years. These
are some saris that have come to me from my mother and grandmother-in law,
which like the saris of most women from their generations and before, are
stunning and individual pieces of design. The counterpart to this in men’s
wear, is the multi-purpose dhoti, mundu, or lungi, which
depending on the fabric, the weave and the drape, may be used for celebratory
occasions such as pujas and weddings, or for informal occasions such as
simply lounging around at home. Even traditional stitched garments in India,
such as the ghagra and the lehnga, though with a naturally
diminished scope in comparison to unstitched clothes, also have the flexibility
of multiple use, and are handed down as family heirlooms.
2. The
lakshana of Individuality and improvisation—Improvisation is an intrinsic Indian
design-strength. Consider, for instance, the stonework of the famed Taj Mahal,
or the sculptured bases of many ancient temples all over India. Despite an
impression of symmetry and order, motifs are never repeated in exactly the same
way. Or think of the pavilions and courtyards of traditional palaces. The
sizes, details and proportions of such formal architecture are never replicas
or duplicates. Plan of Rf. Instead of
centralised control, where everything down to the smallest dimension is
‘frozen’, even the canonical Indian approach to design followed a strongly
structured and yet decentralised process of design, that fostered improvisation
at every level. In fact, Bruno Dagens, prefaces his translation of the Mayamata with these words: ‘in spite of the constraints by which the
treatise seems to limit the architecture, it is also true that the architect
has considerable latitude at his disposal, as much in the domain of choice of
architectural parts as that in the appearance that the constructions may
have...this treatise and others of the same group, leave to architects the
right to originality in the exercise of their art; in other words, the
tradition is a guide more than it is a restraint.’[18]This
aspect of Indian tradition ‘being a guide more than a restraint’ can be seen even
today in the classical and folk forms of Indian music, which give great
opportunity for personal individual expression. Each raga is structured for
specific different moods or times of the day, and yet allows the ultimate
freedom to each singer or musician in rendering the raga.
Such an
approach was very different from other cultures, and therefore difficult for
their people to understand. So, for instance, a Professor C H Reilly, who was
sent to India in 1928 by a firm of publishers to write the architectural part
of a book on New Delhi, arrived in company with Edwin Lutyens at Delhi, and
later wrote this in the November 1934 London issue of the Architectural
Design and Construction: ‘Everything of Lutyens is detailed with
extraordinary care, and at Delhi some of his working drawings are dimensioned
to three decimals of an inch. To Indian builders and craftsmen accustomed to
their slipshod “kutcha” methods, such accuracy was a revelation and a very
valuable one.’
Perhaps the most widespread living example of
the lakshana of improvisation is the sari. Though the overall dimensions are
more or less fixed, there are many variations of the sari. Even saris from the
same region are never identical, though they may have characteristic motifs
special to that region. Not just that - even when based on a similar overall
design or created by the same weaver, no two hand-woven saris are ever
exactly the same. Nor does the individual uniqueness of a sari, end
in its making. Though urban Indians generally know of only one way to
drape it, a sari can be reputedly draped in 108 recorded ways, and can be
pleated and tied to individual preference and skill. This is one way of tying
the sari that I learnt from my daughter’s Odissi Guru, Pratibha Jena Singh,
where the sari is transformed into an elegant and comfortable dancing costume
merely by draping and tying it differently. This improvisation is visible in other forms of design practice,
particularly in classical Indian theatre, music and dance. Habib Tanvir, the
famous theatre actor and director, created a distinctive style of modern Indian
drama based on the
“imaginative use of space with regard to make-believe, and the manner in which
they deal with time”. He repeatedly
voiced his strong belief, that “in Indian art it’s
important to …improvise,”[19] and used the method of improvisation in the
construction and the casting of his plays.
3. The Lakshana of ‘Utilitarian as
Decorative’: The latitude to improvise within a context, not only gives a
huge creative opportunity, but also elevates the everyday activity or artefact
to something special. This contributes to another lakshana of Indian design,
where objects of use - from saris to cities to kitchen-ware - are
simultaneously useful and beautiful. This was true for the majority of
designs in the Indian tradition, and points to a lakshana of rigorous design-thinking based on frugality despite an
outward semblance of opulence. Looking at traditional designs, one finds
that each object of use was also a work of art; and each beautiful object also
had a use. The presence of this lakshana
even till about a hundred years ago, is recorded in an observation by George
Birdwood, meant to form part of a popular handbook on the industrial arts of
India, in connection with the reopening of the India Museum in London: ‘In
India everything is hand wrought, and everything, down to the cheapest toy or
earthen vessel, is therefore more or less a work of art’.[20]
These are some images of toys, kitchen ware and other household objects from
across the country, that are such hand-crafted ‘works of art’.
4. The
lakshana of sustainablity: Since nothing was designed as simply utilitarian
or purely decorative, most objects had a continuing use, and were thought of,
in their entirety, to form a way of life that was a celebration of all the
senses. The ultimate idea of luxury even today, is that of 'bespoke
design’, which is sold with a tagline of ‘…not just ownership or consumption of
an expensive object, but an enriching, individualizing, personal
experience…which stays with the user for posterity’[21].
As for instance, these beautiful saris. This is unlike the western
‘modernist’ way of design based on making huge numbers of standardised,
machine-made and repetitive products. To make this method of production work,
products are designed with a shortened life-cycle, in a design-method
especially promoted by Western designers after the World Wars. The name they
coined for it was ‘planned and perceived obsolescence’. Superficial changes are
applied cosmetically to make these products look ‘different’; and aggressively
marketed as new and novel, to instil ‘in the buyer the desire to own something
a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary’.[22]
5. The
Lakshana of Optimum efficiency:
In contrast, indigenous Indian design-education and practice, stressed an optimal use
of resources. Preliminary drawings and models were
used very rarely and only in important or unusual building-projects.
Thus,
the huge urban-design project of the Red Fort of Delhi and its city of Shahjahanabad, took less than 10 years
to build, and did not require voluminous drawings or models. The court-histories of
Shah Jahan record only one instance of an architectural model being made for
the Red Fort, that of the Chatta Chowk, a type of covered market-way made for the first time in
the Mughal empire. Though much reduced because of colonial interventions, some
vestiges of this way of designing continued even till the 20th
century. In a Report on Types of
Modern Indian Buildings prepared in 1915, to survey and record how Indian
designers built in the indigenous way, Gordon Sanderson, an architect with the
ASI, noted that ‘excellent specimens of
modern architecture’
were constructed in the traditional method of Indian design using practically no drawings, all over the sub-continent
-ranging from the huge
Tajul-Masajid in Bhopal, established by the Begum of Bhopal, to individual
houses, dharamsalas, temples, etc.
These designs were also highly efficient in
that they integrated structure, decoration and form; it is difficult to
separate a building element into just structure or just decoration. This spirit of optimum
efficiency, where no element is superfluous, is a well recognized quality of
good design. Similarly,
if
we look at most
traditional saris, we find that the design effort integrates decoration,
form, and structure; it is part of spinning the material, composing the
patterns and directly weaving them on the fabric. And rarely is it made through
elaborate drawings. This is true not just for saris. Sanderson, in his Report, wrote that
even in complex work, such as carved jaalis
or Agra pietra dura, the masons or
inlayers, when they needed to, drew the patterns themselves on the stone,
without any help from a draftsman. Even today, for example, in the highly
complex patterns made in Sanjhi work, the craftsperson skilfully cuts out
patterns in paper, often without making any drawing before-hand. The tool remains subservient to the human being.
6. The Lakshana of Egalitarianism. All this
was possible because, instead of the idea of centralised control,
the Indian approach to design was decentralised. Design
was seen as a collaborative process. The Mayamata states that all the four categories of building
technicians must always be honoured.
The hierarchy and division of responsibilities amongst these four
categories—the sthapati, the architect; the sutragrahin, who
measures length, height and proportions; the taksaka, who cuts/carves
stone, wood and bricks, and the vardaka, who assembles and erects the
building, is clearly stated; as is the fact that, depending on occasion and
ability, the sutragrahin, taksaka etc.
can take on the duties and even the title of the sthapati.
The
celebrated city of Shahjahanabad, established in the 17th century—considered
‘modern’ and termed ‘New Delhi’ by British visitors till the early 20th
century—was built by master-builders and guild-heads collaborating in such a
system, not through a top-down centralised diktat of one ‘star’ architect. Thus, there was no rigid compartmentalisation.
A sculptor could also be an architect; a
painter could also be a mason, and so on. This is the main gateway to the 17th century
Guru Ram Rai Durbar in Dehradun, also called the Jhanda Durbar. Tulsi Ram, one of the
artists who made many of the beautiful murals here, has painted himself on a
side-panel of the main door; he names himself as mistri, tasveerwala (mason, painter). As The ASI Report of 1915, notes, till the beginning of the 20th century, this was the
method of Indian design.
Since knowledge
about aesthetics was shared by the makers, the users and the patrons,
design choices across different economic classes were similar. In the sites
of the Harappan cities, as Neil Macgregor, Director of The British Museum,
notes, ‘there seems to be little difference between the homes of the rich and
the poor’.[24]
And a Persian text from the 1820s,
documenting eleven trade-crafts and their practitioners in Bareilly, describes
their clothes as being ‘just like other inhabitants of the country’ or ‘like
upper-class people’,[25] while a British officer in the Nizam’s court at Hyderabad, writes
that he could not distinguish much difference between the poor and the rich.[26]
Design today
To sum up: two main categories contribute to making
something Indian, whether in society or in design. The first is a political
process which allows individual expression and fosters individual
responsibility – whether at the level of decision-making, control of resources,
ways of production, or at the level of consumption and use. The second category
is the presence of a
linked system of aesthetics guided by ethics - a product of this political
process, whose design expression in India evolved through diverse design-practitioners.
So, how many of these lakshana survive today in a time
when the political system is manifestly different from the Indian tradition; when
we have adopted the western way of the State being paramount and have displaced
individual or societal codes of conduct. In such a political environment, can
we have an Indian way of design? Well, if we agree that the Indian way of design stems from an indigenous system of aesthetics and ethics, that system is largely lost today. Ideas of society and design are modelled on imitations from
the western world, and naturally most Indian designs are stereotypes of
European or North-American cultures. We therefore only find isolated
lakshanas of ‘Indian-ness’ in society, and in the practice of design - for
example in the widespread ability of Indians to still improvise; to be
self-reliant rather than follow centralised decision-making - but without a
unifying vision.
So, can we restore that
sense of aesthetics and ethics? Should
we restore it? And can we get inspired from other cultures and still retain an
Indian quality to our work? I am going to
approach this a little tangentially. First, through coming back to the work of
Habib Tanveer, who created a distinctive brand of modern Indian
drama, recognized and feted throughout the country and abroad. He did this by
using attributes of Indian folk and
classical traditions in scripting and directing
his plays, so that in his own
words, he “came right back to ‘Indianness’…to our Sanskrit tradition and folk
traditions. Blending folk with the classical, realising there are no barriers.”[27] The actors in
the plays Tanvir directed, themselves created memorable actions and dialogues ‘as equal partners’, making them ‘a collective collaborative endeavour’. However,
Tanvir did not just confine himself to Sanskrit classics, traditional themes or
stories; he adapted Shakespeare, Moliere, Brecht. In all these he tackled many
contemporary issues of modern society, but
with local idioms and language – whether it was his native Chattisgarhi in Mitti
ki Gadi based on Sudrakas Mricchakatikam, or the street-dialects of Agra Bazaar
based on the life of the poet Nazir Akbarabadi, and he used the principles of
imaginative space and time found in the classical and folk tradition of India.
My second example is through Indian film music. I would
like you to listen to a short audio clip. Colonel Bogie and yeh dil na hota bechara. The basic tune
is the same, but the second piece is recognisably Indian. Here there is a music
director, SD Burman; there is an arranger, there are singers and musicians performing
according to pre-determined tunes and arrangements in the Western tradition of
music set to specifications. Despite this, and despite a western tune being
used, there is a distinctive Indian quality. Though this exercise is not as
spontaneously collaborative as Habib Tanvir’s way of theatre, to me there seem
to be some commonalities that render them Indian because of.
1. Language singing/acting,
2. Intonation of the words,
3. Imagery/idioms evoked/used.
4. Individual space given to the singer/actor/performer,
5. Rhythmic structure of the music/the play.
One could perhaps make a similar checklist
for architecture, which could render it recognisably Indian. Some aspects that
come to my mind are:
1.
Materials
of construction
2.
Language
of architecture or elements used – chajjas, courtyards, pavilions, colonnades
3.
The
manner in which these elements combine, are rendered;
4.
Method
of construction: how much scope for individuality – not just of the main
architect, but the entire team.
5.
Rhythm
of space and time expressed in architecture – how spaces unfold, how you approach
a building, move through it.
I would like to end with a few instances of
architecture from the 20th and 21st century. These do not
carry the outward trappings commonly associated with being Indian, and are also
quite different from each other. In fact, some of these designers have been
trained in the modernist way and do use modern materials, some of them are not
born in India, and some are not even trained in the formal institutional way.
Nevertheless, they seem to me, to contain some of the lakshanas that I
associate with Indian design: of flexibility and frugality, of dissolving
barriers between internal and external space, and of a humane concern for the
context, of a feel for the craft of building. These, of course, may be
considered desirable qualities of good design universally. But most design
today, in a mimicry of western trends, seeks to replace human beings with
machines and robots; or reduce the role of human beings to repetitive robotic
work in assembly line firms under a big boss or two. Naturally, such
architecture has a shrunken quality and cannot be representative of any human
quality, let alone any recognisably Indian quality. This is clear today even to many
of those brought up on the cult of the master-architect. Meejin Yoon, Head Of
Department of Architecture in MIT, identifies one of the great challenges
facing the architecture profession today, especially in the more industrialised
part of the world, as ‘…the contraction of the architect’s ability to intervene
in that built environment’. She adds: ‘The construction industry is no longer
as integrated with architecture as it was historically when we had a
relationship with craftspeople, because construction is now its own kind of
industry.’
It may be worthwhile to
remember that if as a society, we decide to put ourselves completely in thrall of
the market, we may all end up like Charlie Chaplin in the movie Modern Times. And in the cyclical manner of the Indian
view, I would like to come back to the empathetic outsider, David Gentleman,
that: ‘Market forces had nothing to do with the creation of any of the things
one goes to India to see’.
The Concise Sanskrit Dictionary,
Sanskrit-Hindi-English, Meharchan Lachhmandas Publications, New Delhi,
Complied by Dr Ram Sagar Tripathi, p. 148
Silpa in Indian Tradition, Concept and Instrumentalities,
R.N.Misra, p. 13
Silparatnakosa of Sthapaka Niranjan
Mahapatra, Edited and Translated by Bettina Baumer and Rajendra Prasad Das,
IGNCA and Motilal Banarasidass Publishers Pvt ltd. First published 1994
The Indian Craftsman, ‘Religious
Ideas in Craftsmanship’, A.K. Coomaraswamy, p. 46
Interview on News Digest of the MIT School
of Architecture + Planning, PLAN 88.
