DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE ,VNIT

CONTEMPORARY DESIGN THEORY

AND CRITICISM
ARCHITECTURE AND INDEPENDENCE
The Search for identity – India 1800 to 1980

SUKHADA YASHVANT SATHE SHAIK FIZA GULSHAN

BA20ARC058 BA20ARC065
1. ARCHITECTURE AND IDENTITY :
Nationalism, Regionalism and Indivisualism
Architecture has its political use, public buildings being the ornament of country; it establishes a nation, draws people and commune and makes people love their native country,
which passion is the origin of all great actions in a common-wealth.
-Christopher Wren
PREFACE
This book is a history of architecture in India and makes no pretence of being
the history of architecture. It is neither comprehensive in its focus nor in its
geographic breadth. Like any history it is a product of its times and its con
cerns are, therefore, biased by our present understandings and the issues
considered important now. It has been written at a period when the colonial
history of India, as interpreted by the Cambridge School of historians and by
Indian scholars, is being restudied and when the systematic analysis of the
symbolic nature of architecture is in its infancy.
The question of meaning in architecture has been a central concern in recent
architectural thought.
Modern urban design and architectural ideologies were developed as a
response to the grimness of the industrial cities of Europe and America
and reflect the efforts of social philanthropists and politicians, as well as
architects, to give form to the aspirations of an emerging new industrial
world. The search for the communication of a societal goal or the creation
of a sense of identity or feelings of self-worth become patently clear when
a society goes through a political upheaval or, more generally, strives to
establish an identity which is a break from the past.

This book is about four clashes reflected in the structure and

character of the built environment in India: between the aspirations of
the Indian people and the British colonial culture before 1947;
between those aspirations and the international architectural
community's values after independence; between architects'
aspirations or efforts to express Indianness through design as a
 RESEARCH METHOD
● The topics discussed in this book have already been addressed by others (e.g., Doshi
1981a, Curtis 1987, K. Jain 1991).
● The book's intellectual structure was explored earlier by one of the authors, Miki Desai
(1987) and owes much to an undergraduate thesis by Rustom Hathi (1981) and to the
recent work of Gwendolyn Wright (1991), Lawrence J. Vale (1992a, 1992b), Nezar
AlSayyad (1992) and, to a lesser extent, Michel Foucault (1974; see also Rabinow 1989)
● There are clear debts to those architects and psychologists who have explored issues
in architectural symbolism as our bibliography indicates (see also Lang. 1987, 1994).
The scholarship of Sten Ake Nilsson (1968, 1973) and Anthony King (1974, 1976, 1984,
1992) has been an inspiration to us.
● Their work on colonial attitudes and architecture has been furthered by a number of fine
studies (e.g., Davies 1985, Morris with Winchester 1986, Metcalf 1989), two of which
(Evenson 1989 and Tillotson 1989) our work parallels.
INTRODUCTION
Architecture is an important non-verbal medium for the
communication of values about ways of life, aesthetic
aspirations and, more generally, cultural ideologies. The search
for an architecture or a set of architectural design principles to
characterize the ambitions of a society is one that has engaged
many schools of architectural thought. Architects also have their
own aspirations and seek to express their own identities in their
work. This desire is a particular one of our modern era and even
more particularly, in India, of the period since Independence.
● One continuing search the quest for an
expression through urban and architectural
form, of what it means to be Indian is
described in this book.
● Indeed the Taj Mahal (1632-9) is often used
as a symbol for India.
● This duality of attitudes is partly due to
historical chronology, but it is also due to the
distance between local and foreign ideals
and the various perceptions of the degree of
control that different stakeholders have over
their own autonomy.
Taj Mahal, Agra
THE FUNCTIONS OF ARCHITECTURE
There are two aspects to this dimension. n the first place, to
understand the environment in the course of the everyday
activities of life, a person moves through it, and therefore the
sequential experience of one space after another,or, more
correctly, one behaviour setting after another, becomes important
(Barker 1968).
The second aspect is that the built environment, at any moment, is
a compilation of the changes made in it over time. These changes
may be carried out unselfconsciously by people as part of
everyday life or self-consciously in the purposeful pursuit of
specific design objectives. The buildings around us thus contain
memories of the past.
THE SYMBOLIC NATURE OF ARCHITECTURE
The link between a pattern of built form and its
meanings depends, in turn, on an association
between the form and some referent. The
associations are learnt either through formal
education or informally through a person's day-to-
day experiences (Rapoport 1982). The same pattern
may have different meanings for different people
depending on the associations they have with it.
Thus in India, the same motifs often operated in one
way for Europeans and another for Indians, one way
today for tourists and another for residents.
The Royal Pavilion,
Brighton, England
● The overall configuration of a precinct of a city or a building carries meaning. The
patterns and masses that comprise an architectural style have specific associations.
For e.g.. planning of the city of Simla had a British small town touch to it.

● The materials of which any building is constructed and the construction techniques
used carry meaning. For e.g.. The use of sandstone with Persian Islamic architecture
as indosarcenic.

● The illumination of buildings and their interiors has been a major carrier of symbolic
meaning, buildings such as the Bahai House of worship designed by Fariburz Sahba,
where there is a explicit use of light.

Baha’i temple , New Delhi Dharma Vihara (Adinath

● The use of color-color serves many mundane purposes such as reflecting light or
hiding dirt but it is also a medium of aesthetic expression. For e.g., specific colors
were specific to the buildings of British and certain Indian localities such as jaipur
(pink).

● The activities that have taken place or take place in specific spaces- the behavior
settings that comprise the environment- are associated with particular cultures. For
e.g.. the teen murti house, designed by Robert Russell(1920) for the commander in
chief of British forces, is important because it became the residence of the first
prime minister of India.

Jallianwala
Teen Murti House, New Delhi The Basiic Semilogical Triangle
Bagh, Amritsar
 Attitudes Towards Architectural Meanings
● One of the basic questions in architectural design is whose meaning a
building should convey and to whom.
● Certainly architects wish to create their own architectural identities: after
all, most. them, are small business operators seeking a niche in the market-
place.
● To work, they have to have clients who appreciate their work, but also
whose aspirations have to be met.For eg.If one person has a positive
attitude towards another person, a group of people or set of ideas then
that first person would have a positive attitude towards the symbols (such
as the architectural style) associated with that second person, people or
set of ideas.
(see (a) in the Balance Theory diagram). If that person does not, the
system is out of balance. Similarly, if the first person has negative
associations with the second then, to keep the system in balance, the
first person would have to have negative feelings about the symbols
associated with the second person ((b) in the diagram). The
importance of architectural symbols can only be appreciated within such
a framework.

THE BALANCE THEORY MODEL

Creating Symbolic Expression in Built Form
while a pastiche is a reproduction of a number of elements compositional or
stylistic of some precedent. A pastiche is thus a 'partial and imperfect' copy. It
focuses on the appearance or rather the impression of appearance - of an artifact,
be it a small object or a city. Copying might be seen to be the least productive
design mechanism but it often requires great skill, particularly in craftsmanship.

CRESCENT MOON
TOWER, DUBAI
UNIVERSALISM, NATIONALISM AND REGIONALISM
● Universalism, nationalism and regionalism are not
necessarily independent terms. Universalism
recognizes the common problems of people throughou
the world and the common solutions to these
problems.
● Indian leaders were generally careful to relate
nationalism to universal values (Nandy 1995). The need
for a self-identity is universal but its importance and
manifestations vary from culture to culture over time.
● In this case, the need may be felt at a national or
regional (i.c., subnational) or regional (i.e.,
supranational) level depending on the nature of the Legislative Assembly Building
in Chandigarh designed by Le
political entity called a nation. Corbusier
Examples of Universalism, Nationalism and Regionalism

Gandhi ghat

Jibsa Randolph visitor

Buddhist monastery
control center
 MANIFESTATIONS of NATIONALISM
Striving for Victory
●Victory can be achieved in a number of ways: through
success in battle, by surpassing the achievement of rivals,
or through 'a desire to catch up and overtake.
●Victory in war has been a common way to boost self-
esteem as attested to by monuments around the world such
as the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
●An important surrogate for military success is to win on the
sports field. Indeed, victory first in soccer in the late
nineteenth century on the fields of Calcutta and later in
hockey and cricket against British competitors, both at
home and abroad, was a major boost to Indian self-esteem.
Intellectual and/or Political Isolationism

● Nationalism is the natural form for wounded pride to take, whether

in the case of individuals or nations'.
● Rabindranath Tagore noted: 'The worst form of bondage is the
bondage of dejection. It keeps men helplessly chained to a loss of
faith in themselves.
● The attempts by British colonials and colonial administrations to
impose their ideas on India, whether done for what were perceived
to be positive or negative reasons, led to much wounding of pride.
 Avoiding Change
● In India there has been much looking back to the pre-colonial past as a source
of pride and inspiration, political and architectural.
● Clinging to the past may be simply another type of isolationism (Mitra 1962).
At times of rapid change in society there is often a desire to hang on to
outmoded elements from the past for the psychological security they afford.
● Much of the historical eclecticism in art and architecture during the nineteenth
century may be attributed to the impact of the Industrial Revolution.
● Post-Modern symbolism in architecture with its abstract revival of past forms
is occurring at a time of perceived rapid change in society as the twentieth
century draws to a close.
 British Imperialism and the Indian Nationalist
Movements

● In India, both the political struggle and the exploration of the

presentations of self through architecture were struggles
between nationalisms-between colonial authorities and local
people
● The Indian nationalist movement was a mass movement
galvanizing millions of people across class and caste lines into
political action. It was not a single revolutionary overthrowing of
a government
● British imperialism itself was a nationalism that took many
forms, boosting British pride through a strength of force. India
was the 'jewel in the crown' of the Empire.
● The Indian nationalist fight had two aims: to demonstrate that
British rule, contrary to its claims,
● The struggle in architecture was both over the control of the profession and
architectural ideologies. Before Independence in 1947, the architectural
struggle was for who should carry out what work-who the architects were
and who were architects.
● In terms of design ideology there was a clash between those architects,
British and Indian, who looked back to the past in the search for architectural
elements to use to establish an identity and those who looked to the
present, or future a clash between the Revivalists and the Modernists
● Nationalist struggles in India did not end with Independence. They are
represented in both the thinking of the political right and in the continued
striving of groups such as Muslims, tribals and women
● (P. Chatterjee 1993).
 CONCLUSION
● Buildings, through the utilitarian and aesthetic purposes they serve, are visible
symbols of political aspirations and a display of social concerns
● (Goodsell 1993). They are the material manifestations of ways of life, the
clash of cultures and efforts to shape cultures.
● To understand how architects in India attempted to communicate or reflect
personal and political ideologies during India's struggle for political
independence and afterwards in the search for architectural independence
first requires an understanding of the nature of nationalism.
● No nation can, however, be completely independent for ideas flow across
national borders, and the economic links among countries mean that
decisions made in one country or region inevitably affect another.
● No nation can, however, be completely independent for ideas flow across
national borders, and the economic links among countries mean that
decisions made in one country or region inevitably affect another.
● The attempts by British colonials and colonial administrations to impose their
ideas on India, whether done for what were perceived to be positive or
negative reasons, led to much wounding of pride.
● There has been a fragmentation of India since Independence or, more
correctly, a recognition of the regional aspirations that have always existed.
 REGIONALISM
● Regionalism may subsume nationalism in the sense that nations are sub-areas of an
international system but, in architecture, the term implies something different.
● During the last years, as technological advances are embraced across the world and new media
of communications shrink distances within it, there has been a growing concern about the loss of
a sense of place and thus of local identities.
● These fears may well be groundless but there has been much interest in the nature of
regionalism amongst architects (Abel, Relph, Frampton, Curtis, Colquhoun, Claflen, J. Taylor).
● The Chicago School of Sociology's concept of a region as a 'natural area' in which geographic
boundaries such as mountain chains enclose a homogeneous culture (Hawley), In book,
Architecture without Architects, Bernard Rudofsky does describe such areas but they are
isolated in time and space.
● Most so-called vernacular traditions are constructed of components introduced from outside as
much as from local traditions So it is in India.Areas of the country vary not only
● physiologically, but also ethnically and linguistically. It has 3 major religions-
● Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism as well as others.
❏ Historically, the Indian peninsula consisted of a variety of separate kingdoms and
republics which were subju gated by various empires and ultimately unified in north
India, at least, under Muslim rule and finally by the larger concept of British India. One of
the arguments amongst historians has been over the degree to which the Indian
subcontinent was becoming a nation prior to coming under British control.
❏ Without that component of its history, would it now have beena single country or a set of
countries trying to form a common market (Bhoosan and Misra 1979)
❏ In post-Independence times, reformist legislation such as that furthering the cause of
the 'lower' classes has led to a great concern for caste,class and religion, and foR region
(or state) rathera nation. India often seems to come a poor fourth.however, the
disappearance of unifying forces maylead to a possible disintegration of the whole into
its parts. Architecture will reflect such processes rather than lead them;but it should also
be kept in mind that nationalism is partly developed through architectural discourses
(King 1995). Not many people, however, participate in them.
INDIAN NATIONALISM AND ARCHITECTURE

The nationalist struggle in India went through three major phases: departure, manoeuvre and arrival
characterized respectively by the activities of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838-94), probably the
most influential of the early nationalists and Hindu Revivalists, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru (P.
Chatterjee 1986). There were times of massive struggle in which its participants courted and incurred
imprisonment through the flouting of laws, times of intense work within existing legal and intellectual
frameworks and times of apparent passivity (Lovett 1968, Spear 1978, 1990, Chandra et al. 1989).
People participated in the nationalist movement in different ways, some by voting for nationalist
candidates in local elections, some by going to jail themselves, some went on hartals (strikes) and some
showed a symbolic affiliation with Indian National Congress volunteers by wearing khadi and a Gandhi
cap. In the art world, some people staged nationalist dramas and poetry readings and some sought to
express their sympathies by developing nationalist themes in art and architecture. Often the architecture
reflects coexisting philosophies, particularly the battle between modernism and revivalism in intellectual
thought, as also the struggle for the overall control of the profession.
 Indianization/De-Europeanization
❏ Indianization has different meanings for different people both in the sense of an idea and the possible
manifestations of that idea. One view is that Government and governmental agencies such as Central
and State Public Works Departments and institutions such as professional including architectur al
associations, for instance, should be run by Indians and buildings be designed by Indians. A second
view is that those institutions and their modes of operation should be based on Indian traditions. In both
cases not only were instrumental ends sought but also self-esteem and a sense of identity; there was a
symbolic dimension tO development of both the architecture and the profession.
❏ Some symbols, such as flags and buildings, are material, and some, such as ways of life, are not. In
the post-colonial era, in particular, questions of what constitutes a national architecture to differentiate a
country from both its colonial past and other countries have arisen with some frequency. The goal has
been to develop a symbol system that has, as Nihal Perera (1992) puts it, a 'capacity to accommodate
diverse social and cultural representations with the nation'. Often the practice has been to use historical
precedents as referents in the way architects such as Surendranath Kar (1894-1970) did in the 1920s,
1930s and 1940s, as Sris Chandra Chatterjee (1873-1966) did in the 1930s and 1940s and Post-
Modernists are attempting to do now. History shows that the goal is more difficult to attain than these
architects expected. It implied more than simply copying the past.
❏ While some of the efforts of the nationalist movement focused on the maintenance of traditions,
the movement was generally modern in spirit because it sought change. The questions were:
'Change to what?' and, implicitly, 'Will we still be Indians if we change?' The arguments in
architecture over the course of the
❏ It is not surprising that within the nationalist movement were people who sought a modern
world as well as people who sought a sanctuary in the past, the known, while some
'sought solace in its glorification' (Gangadharan 1970).
❏ Few people operated at the extreme polar positions for an entirely new world or a
complete reversion to the past. While the positions of nationalist leaders fell between both
poles, Jawaharlal Nehru can be held up as the exemplar of a Modernist, even a
Westernist, and Mahatma Gandhi as a traditionalist and even a Revivalist although not in
the sense that architects use the term. Nehru and Gandhi had different visions of a new
India and new possibilities but they alike fought for considerable social change. In Indian
architecture one sees this tussle between modernism, traditionalism and revivalism
reflected in built form.
The use of the term 'tradition' by outsiders is questionable as
Traditionalism
those working within standard approaches to solving a
particular problem consider themselves to be both modern
and creative (Kohane 1995). Nevertheless, in all societies
there are age-old ways of carrying out activities and
procedures for creating and evaluating designs which
represent these ways.maintenance of traditions was one way
in which local aspirations subverted colonial and modernizing
forces in India. Seeing traditions in architecture solely as the
maintenance of past building forms is, however,limited view
because a part of Indian tradition consists of foreign ideas
successfully incorporated into indigenous life and indigenous
architecture. much of the architecture which has sought to
amalgamate foreign and indigenous elements over the past
five hundred years has been in the Indian tradition. Few
people, however, understand traditional architecture in these
terms.most, including architects, tradition involves
maintenance of past social structures and past architectural
patterns rather than use of past processes of change.
 The terms westernization and modernization are often
Modernism used synonymously. Westernization, in the Indian
context, usually means changes introduced by the British
prior to Independence and afterwards through the
application of ideas from European and American
sources (Srinivas 1966). The 'West' is seen as a
monolithic and homogeneous cultural entity which
advances intellectual liberalism as its ideological core.
Often today, all the ills of the United States and the United
Kingdom are attributed to it. Indeed westernization today
is often seen simply as Americanization. In addition,
many so-called western ideas also have deep roots in
Asia, if not in India. During the colonial era, the
acceptance by Indians of new modes of thought and
behaviour was partially voluntary as ways of life were
adopted by Indians as circumstances changed, and partly
coercive, being the result of policies pursued by the East
India Company and later the British colonial authorities.
Attitudes towards change reflect
the mechanism used to create
the change and the change
agents (Festinger 1957).
❏ Modernism is an attitude. It is based on the perception that change away from the past
is required in order to make the future better. It has its basis in the thinking of the
Enlightenment in the belief that the human lot can be improved. One of the outstanding
aspects of the nationalist struggle in India was its focus on modern ideals. The goal was
to achieve a 'democratic, civil libertarian and secular India based on a self-reliant,
egalitarian social order and an independent foreign policy' (Chandra 1989).
❏ The Conservatives such as Warren Hastings (Governor 1772-85) had a knowledge of
Indian life and conditions. The Progressives had little experience of India. Some had
never been there. They consisted of Evangelicals and Utilitarians (Stokes 1959). The
former found many Indian practices antithetical to Christian beliefs while the latter were
Rationalists.
❏ Prior to the introduction of the Westernizing policies of Lord William Bentinck (Governor-
General 1828-35) and Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-59) in the 1830s, there
had been considerable inter est and appreciation of Indian architecture by many
Europeans, but thereafter it tended to be deprecated by most outside observers (Morris
and Winchester 1983, Tillotson 1989).
❏ The nationalist movement was never preponderantly inward-
looking. From the days of Raja Rammohan Roy (1772-1833) in the
1830s it had a broad international outlook. It advocated the view
that Indians, while hating British imperialism, should not hate the
British people. Hence the involvement and acceptability of a number
of Britons, including architects, in establishing a politically, culturally
and institutionally independent India albeit from within their own
cultural perspectives (Nanda 1985, Chandra 1989). The nationalist
movement was integrated with other modern liberation agitations -
the liberation of the lower castes, women and the poor from
circumscribed lives.
❏ Architecturally, the term 'modern' has been applied to whatever
contemporary ideas were regarded as good. The Modern
movement, however, represented a specific set of attitudes towards
design. Modern architecture responded to the need to provide for
the new patterns of behaviour that resulted from political and
technological change in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. It began with the perception that the classical orders and
composition do not present a universal basis for the appreciation of
beauty in architecture.
❏ In India a similar situation arose later. Those clients and architects who
embraced Modernism tended to be entrepreneurs in either the public or
private sectors, attempting to reject the past and create a new future. In
Europe and the Americas,emergence of Modern architecture occurred
over a century in an incremental manner. While modernizing forces in
architecture were at work in India for more than a century, the major
impact of the Modern movement was during a single decade the 1950s.
It was clearly inter - nationalist in spirit.
❏ Regionalism attempts to put back into architecture what Many of social
and philanthropic organizations that developed in India were a defence
against cultural imperialism (S. Chattopadhyay 1994). To them
modernism was seen as an imperialism. Art and architectural
ideologies were wrapped up in this struggle. The concept of 'self'
lagged behind other social changes and thus many modern buildings
were cloaked in symbols of past. Such a dichotomy reflects the
ambiguities in nationalist philosophies.A
Howard van Doren Shaw's
architecture Ryerson
House, Chicago, Illinois
Frank Lloyd Wright's
architecture Hickox
House, Kankakee,
Illinois
❏ The notion that the solution to India's problems lies in the
application of ideas from the past, from a golden age such as the
Gupta civilization or the Maratha Empire, has been a persistent
thought in Indian political history. It is a position that assumes
that the only truly Indian ways of dealing with social and cultural
issues are those that existed in the past.
❏ The assumPtion is that people are suffering in one way or the
other by not being truly Indian, or Tamils, or Bengalis, etc. Societies
have many pasts and each generation chooses past upon which it
wishes to draw .
❏ The problem is that the past, like the present, can be only partially
known. Thus we rely heavily on images of what the past might
have been and recreate the past in that image. The difficulty is to
impose this past on a radically changed world in more than a
fragmented way as a pastiche.
Revivalism
❏ It is thus often the architectural fragment which becomes the
means of recapturing, or symbolizing, the past. Often it is a past
that we want to have had, not the past that actually existed.
Reviving an imagined culture is fraught with difficulties
❏ To implement a revivalist approach to designing social or architectural policy there must be a
movement to support it. In recent times, a number of political parties have emerged to promote
Revivalism. Even a dictator cannot, however, achieve a fully revived past. Returning to the past is
impossible. In India, it is a matter of retaining an Indian or, more frequently, a regional identity. In
architecture there have been a number of movements intending to be explicitly expressive of
Indian culture (such as the Modern Indian Architectural Movement under Sris Chandra Chatterjee)
but they have been largely ineffectual. Yet Revivalism in architecture is widespread. Most of it
comes from the grass roots as a means of retaining a uniqueness of spirit through appearance.
Much is revivalist only on the surface. Such an approach to Revivalism is not, however, the only
one.
❏ Revivalism in Indian architecture has taken three forms: one was concerned with the recreation of
the traditional ways of building with the mistri, the master builder, and the silpin, the craftsman, in a
manner somewhat analogous to the Arts and Crafts movement in nineteenth-century Europe. It is a
revivalism of design production. The second is, perhaps, more recent and is analogous to the
thinking of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814-79) in France. It argues that architects should
borrow the modes of thought that established the great architectures of the past and not use its
manifestations as types to be copied. It is a revivalism of design procedures. The third
acknowledges the utility of new technological advances but believes that stylistic devices can be
borrowed from the great eras of India's past. It involves a revival of an aesthetic.
 Popular Taste and the Avant-garde
❏ the elite and the artistic avant-garde in the nineteenth century and the development of a mass
culture in the twentieth, the distinctions may well have become sharper. A version of Post-
Modernism, the Modern Indian Vernacular (the pastiche architecture of popular taste), is probably
the most widespread in India today amongst the middle and wealthier classes .
❏ The avant-garde remains an important client group for architects but they remain a minority in any
population as do their architects - the academic and intellectual elite of the profession. Some ideas
do trickle down to the mass culture and some percolate up. Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and
Steven Izenour (1977) have argued that architects should be more under standing of the mass
culture, as displayed in places such as Las Vegas, but this has not come easily to the profession.
Mass cultures differ in content from that of the elite.
❏ Their attitudes are diffused by the mass media - popular journals, film and television and through
advertising. They are thus highly affected by marketing processes. A mass culture consists, in turn,
of books, films, television, radio, the whole output of art for public consumption . It also includes
buildings. While such architecture receives strong criticism from the architectural elite, it constitutes
much of built environment.
❏ So, too, does the everyday production of the large commercial architectural firms. It is against
this backdrop of buildings that the architecture of the avant-garde is set. It represents a figure
against a ground, the elite against the masses.
❏ There is also vernacular architecture designed and built by people themselves based on
traditional ways of design that have evolved over time through a process of trial and error. It is
built by habit.overwhelming body of architectural production in India is by this means. Much of
it remains unseen by the elite and, until recently, unheeded by the architectural press. India, in
many ways, remains a resource-poor country and the majority of people lead rural lives.
❏ The vernacular, particularly in cities, is affected by the new materials available for building, but
also by the mass media, and thus by popular culture. Professionals are members of two
cultures: a broad societal culture and a professional culture. They are socialized into the first
by their upbringing and into the second by their formal education. In the design fields such as
architecture, professional education shapes their position on what constitutes good
architecture.
❏ Historically, these positions have differed from those held by the general public, although
shared by a small group of architectural cognoscenti - the intellectual elite. Thus different
groups of people draw on clearly different sets of referents in selecting and evaluating
architecture.
❏ The Modernists, throughout the period covered in this book, sought a new architecture that
was expressive of a new India and the Revivalists strove for an architecture that was
expressive of a new India through the use of types and details from the past, often in a highly
eclectic manner. The types and details were drawn from those aspects of past architecture
which are most admired and which have survived best-the monuments. This approach has
major limitations. An Indian identity will surely emerge from dealing with the problems of India
as they exist. This observation is also being demonstrated in recent Indian architecture.
❏ A difficulty facing architects everywhere is to achieve an ambiguous architecture one that
meets the needs of lay people and the avant-garde. - There is little that is new in this
observation. In the nineteenth century, Raja Rammohan Roy, Dayanand Saraswati (1824-83)
and later Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa (1834-86) and Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902)
sought to inte grate traditions and modern technological developments. In the twentieth
century, people such as Aurobindo Ghosh (1872-1950) led the way (Shah and Rao 1965). It is
up to the future generations to carry it on.
Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, in 1984
OVERALL CONCLUSION

● No nation can, however, be completely independent for ideas flow across

national borders, and the economic links among countries mean that
decisions made in one country or region inevitably affect another.
● The attempts by British colonials and colonial administrations to impose their
ideas on India, whether done for what were perceived to be positive or
negative reasons, led to much wounding of pride.
● There has been a fragmentation of India since Independence or, more
correctly, a recognition of the regional aspirations that have always existed.
THANK YOU !