LECTURE 4
DATE: 31-01-2023
CHRONOLOGICAL EXPLANATION ON WHY ARCHITECTURE STARTED AS A PROFESSION,
IN INDIA
It is relevant and important to be aware of the professional evolution and roots. So, let
us say, I was trying to cover the possible ways and means by which heritage, which we
call heritage today, must have been built in those times. And that cannot be ignored
because they are celebrated buildings till date. They are structurally complex,
architecturally appealing and well-built to the extent that they are still around. So,
assuming that architecture is longest lasting evidence of human progress. So, even for
other professions, the architectural evidence remains a symbol of progress at any point
of time. It is up to them how they consider this, but to me, architectural evidences are
the most significant evidences anywhere in the world. Most of the evidences, they die
out and then it is left to the historians to interpret it. And it is not necessary that
historians will interpret it correctly.
History keeps on getting rewritten to suit the rulers of the time. So, the written word
in our context, in context of our profession does not mean much. What means is the
remains which are still with us. And when I see those remains and I see them again and
again, I find them increasingly intriguing and complex and very challenging even today,
when we claim that we are kind of drowned in the sea of information and knowledge.
So, I think that is one context that we need to understand, how architecture was built
prior to East India Company and post East India Company. So, East India Company came
sometime in 1600 and then they went on to kind of operate in a way that the influence
continued and continues to remain till date. So, say it is 1600 is the dividing year. So,
this is like entry of East India Company. So, how we were building before that and how
we are building after that is important. These years are very important say 1500, then
1857, the year of mutiny, when India was fighting for freedom. So, and freedom we got
finally and then we are here today. We are almost like these 90 years of span and this
was like 257 years of span. So, the Britishers were there for good 250-260 years. So, if
you were to study history of architecture then history of architecture before the steel
came and after. So, if I was to study history of architecture, I would like to study prior
to I think 1850 something. Cast iron first came 1850s. So, architecture prior to steel
coming in the market and architecture after steel coming to the market was completely
different. So, the history could be seen and understood in certain ways.
Year 1500 marks the entry of Mughals in India. So, Mughals had already built a lot before
the East India Company came in. And within the Indian subcontinent we were building
from 3rd century AD. We still have evidences which we can see 5th century AD, marble
in the temple. So just imagine that from 3rd or 5th century. These are evidences which
we can photograph today, even today. I am not talking about those which are destroyed
or I am not talking about archaeological remains like Mohenjo-Daro. I am talking about
things which we can actually go and photograph, move around and see till date. So 5th
century AD is like 1500 years ago. We were building without invasive forces. We were
building without invasive forces. So, whatever was being built was built on the basis of
native wisdom. And let's say this was like borrowed and imposed. Anything imposed may
not be wisdom. So, I find the evidences in this period as more authentic expression of
how we were building. I would also like to say that this was the period of peace and
prosperity. And I also see that architecture flourishes in the existence of peace and
prosperity. The later period was definitely not peace. This was invasion. So, this I would
like to say that 1500 onwards and I think even till date I would call it “invasion”. That's
the way I see it. Whether the invasion was by way of battle on the ground. Or the
invasion happens by way of influencing people by what is right and what is not right, by
way of information. So today even today we have battles going on. The world is up in
19fire. Palestine, Ukraine, and there are so many places where war keeps on flaring
up. So, in that sense we are still living in the world which believes in invading forces.
But more than that I think we belong to a world now where we are invading by way of
information. So, it might be a very scholarly topic to look into this as to how we were
invaded.
What were the means of invasion? So, I would like to explore the means of invasion.
Bringing in schools of thought. The extent of Indian civilization was as far away as
Cambodia and then Sri Lanka, Burma, Siam, and then up to Afghanistan. Okay, so that
was the spread during Ashoka's empire. So, it was quite peaceful. And I think the
maximum evolution of Indian civilization was registered in this period. From 1500 to
2000 years. And our scriptures are even older, like Buddhism is 25 million years old. Our
scriptures are even older, 3000 years old. What I'm not able to access here is the other
part of the progress that India was in the history of that time. It was by way of, say,
performing arts, literature, the society's system of administration, system of ruling.
That's the problem. So, these evidences do reflect the richness of the arts, the medium
of arts, and the skills. Now these are just remains. But it does not, I think, express
much by way of any kind of record. But I somehow feel that there is not enough record
by way of how this was achieved. So, that is, it was a system of practicing architecture.
In fact, it is a far more interesting, complicated subject. But the only thing which I can
try to connect here is that there was a rich mechanism. By which the thought process,
whether it was religion or practicing arts, had achieved that clinical way of converting
into architectural forms. So, the struggle of architecture is with respect to spans,
structural spans, and architectural forms. So, if we have just, two aspects to be
considered here. This cannot happen unless the profession has reached to that level
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where people can convert a thought, a discourse which happens between the rulers and
the implementers, rulers briefing to the implementers as to what it should be like. So,
they were capable of converting a thought process into structural evolution, structural
aspects and architectural forms.
The challenge even today remains the same. What may have changed is the kind of
wisdom, kind of materials available, kind of construction practices, kind of skills and
so on. Now all this was happening without any so called educational system then, what
was the training system then, how they were working remains a mystery. But there are
some, evidences as to how it might have been done, some hearsay stories like that. I
don't think if there is any scholarly work available on how this was achieved. There are
a lot of photographic documentation though because ever since the advent of camera
came in, Kodak manufactured its first camera in 1888. So, this was kind of another
revolutionary kind of a change in architecture where architecture started getting
photographed.
Architecture made for the purpose of being photographed and architecture not being
made for the purpose of, photographing. So, you can say that all architecture which
was made before this was never intended to be photographed. But the architecture of
the day is intended to be photographed more than anything else. So, the narratives of
the architecture or the profession changes drastically. Now, why I am discussing this is
that as an architect and as any average person in the society one should be politically
alive. You all must be politically alive to your origin and where are you going. It will
help us to orient ourselves. I believe that this aspect of introduction was not available
to me. And I think in real life I suffered a lot because of not being politically alive. So,
all of us in, present times and when things are getting more and more complex, it is
very important to be politically alive and know the consequences of what we are into.
So, in fact, when I trace these things, I find that these are political events and they are
scientific events. So, you, I mean, there is a need to kind of chronologically record the
key scientific events which transformed things. Because that transformation impact had
a direct impact on architecture. So, what I was, we can discuss that thing later. But
what I was, what I am trying to say is that, till something like 1500, this architecture I
can claim that, this was born on the soil. The sons of soil made it. They were not trained
somewhere else. They did not go abroad for a masters. They did not read any imported
books. They did not have any teachers from somewhere. They were just moving around
in a territory which belonged to them and then they were deciding what is appropriate
to them and what was available to them as a material. So, it was very authentic.
So, if I want to know and understand this civilization, I would rather like to understand
what was happening in that period of time. Everything else is kind of mutated. But
Mughals come and Mughals do lot of destruction but also bring with them some
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phenomenal construction practices which we were not having. So, they brought with
them immense knowledge of geometry, immense knowledge of artistry and immense
knowledge of construction ability and immense knowledge of storing water, because in
India the water was always flowing. We never kind of held it. But Mughals came in and
started building some kind of water holding systems, small catchment, a dam etc. So,
they came from water scarce regions and hence, it was important for them to store
water. So, they brought that culture. We may find these things very mundane but they
are very interesting when you go into the history where did it come from. So, from
those from Rajasthan they are more kind of oriented towards drying up vegetables and
fruits and use them in rest of the months. Because most of the times it is dry weather.
Storing water, storing eatables is more common in Rajasthan.
And the places where Mughals came in, came from. So, Mughals brought with them their
own culture, their own architectural elements, their own construction systems. And
one of the predominant contributions was that because Islam prohibited idol worship,
so their entire energy of making buildings was diverted and sourced from geometrical
richness. So, all their structural systems, they evolved on the strength of richness of
geometry, not necessarily strength of material. So, their understanding of geometry
was phenomenal. I mean both celestial geometries, both 2D geometry, 3D geometry,
and their understanding of planetary movements was amazing. So, they brought in that
history. They demolished many Indian structures, constructed their own, and then went
on to rule India. And established their capital in Agra and built hundreds of structures
along Yamuna. So, that was one intuition. But this particular regime was not so
destructive. They did not disrespect the religion of the place. And they did not
obstructed how people were building. And they did not dictate what is to be made and
things like that. So, they were like invaders, but they did not kind of change the flavor
of architecture. They added more variety to the basket like that. So, that is very
interesting for me.
But when East India Company came, they were professional colonizers. There were
some countries in the West who were professional colonizers. Like I discussed Portugal,
France, Germany, Britain, Spain, they were professional colonizers. Meaning they would
invade, occupy and do this to their own material benefit and so on. So, they were
destructive and their strength was their navy, their arms and it became more aggressive
after renaissance. And till date, the West is powerful because of its arms. So, this was
invasive force in the sense that they not only destroyed India culturally but also
deprived the country and bled the country and took away all that could be taken away
from the country because they had a huge navy. And one of the first departments to be
opened in India by Britishers was Archaeological Survey of India. I think Archaeological
Survey of India first time brought a document in 1861. So, in fact, from 1600 to 1800,
East India Company and the British Empire then comes in, realized that India has so
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much of riches and this company has flourished like nothing, then, it became British
colony. I mean India was declared as British colony. So that means from 1600 to 1861
they were just busy damaging everything. And also the system of these colonizing
countries was that they would bring with them their own cooks, their own carpenters,
masons, builders, architects, engineers and armaments and so on which needed a good
navy basically. So, they would bring with them their entire, kind of an event
management team basically. So, you would see Portuguese coming in Goa and then
building a Portuguese house completely in disregard of, what Goa would require. So,
these colonizers came in and they started building the way they knew about buildings.
So, they had no understanding of, how a building would respond to a climate, how the
climate needs to be respected for making buildings. So, that kind of wisdom was not
there. But they had some awareness, some idea of, how Portuguese would build as they
were building in Portugal. So, Spanish would come and build some other way. Britishers
came in, they started building some other way and so on. And they were also very
meticulous in not fighting with themselves. And they started, colonizing different parts
of the country as it was all right with them within their own, kind of push and pull of
power. So, the French settled in Pondicherry. Portuguese settled in Goa. And then, East
India Company settled in so many places.
And I think there were some other colonizers also. But British Empire was the largest
colonizers in the world. So, at one point of time, they had colonized US, Japan, Burma,
India. For that matter, Arabian countries. France had colonized many parts in Africa.
So, France was, more interested in there. Things like that. So, what happened is that,
they brought with them their own idea of building. And, that's how this started. Now,
when this invasion was, just imagine in terms of generations, how many generations it
must have been. Say, for example, if I consider, say, 1600 and in all these 250 years.
So, if I was to see one generation, being replaced by the other generation. So, how
much time do I give to this? Say, I give, 50 years as, an interval for one generation.
That's it. So, 50 years as one generation. So, this is like 250 years more. So, 50, and at
least, I can easily say that, about 6 to 7 generations, were kind of made to forget
whatever they knew. , this includes wisdom of local medicine. This includes wisdom of
local recipes. This included wisdom of the society distributing work among themselves,
including the method of building. So, in these, about 6 to 7 generations of complete
alienation of, the people who were engaged in building, with the building activity. So,
India forgot completely what is traditional medicine, what is traditional wisdom, what
is traditional culture, and what it takes to build. So, India became a dumb nation after
this much of deprivation. We have a very long rich history, and then, this was a horrible
gap.
For example, I would not remember anything beyond my grandfather, by way of name,
or , having seen his face. So, that means, the fourth generation, I just don't know. And
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none of you would be knowing fourth generation, if you check with yourself. We just
know, all of us know, 3 to 4 generations. Four generations. One person, if everything is
fine, gets to see four generations. Now, in this time, so many generations completely
disconnected with themselves. So, they completely lost any ability to grasp or retain as
to what they were doing. So, the same people who built such, beautiful structures, they
were reduced to, complete ignorance. And in this time, the invaders were actually,
because for them, everything was a business entity. Laying down, say, rails, making
ports, making cantonments, making any such, kind of railway towns, or something like
that, was part of their business. So, they laid down, track from some very, strange
place.
For example, they laid a major track between Nagpur and Itarsi. And I have been to
that place, that club made by Britishers, where they wrote, Indians and dogs not
allowed. And then they constructed a track between Itarsi and Nagpur. Because Itarsi
was rich in, what we know is basically Central Provinces Teak, CPT, that comes from a
region around Itarsi, and they laid a railway track from Itarsi to Nagpur only to transport
timber, because timber was so good in quality and available from there. So, they were
very tactical in their development of infrastructure, so they developed port towns, they
developed railway towns, railway tracks and they developed hill stations and they also
developed some garrison structures like military training schools and things like that,
so it was entirely for their own kind of requirement. And then because these were new
things and India had never witnessed anything like railway track, so the first railway
track between Mumbai and Thane comes in 1850, so these are the eventful years
actually, so 1861 ASI comes, 1888 kodak and his camera, in 1851 first train runs in India
and things like that, so lot of strategic things happening.
So this was actually a very sordid time when these invaders created a situation in which
what we knew was completely kind of decimated, so this country suddenly became
ignorant of how to make a building, so we were kind of good for nothing, so from
wonderful builders we became total non-entities and then the Mughals also started kind
of diluting like the last Mughals were just puppets of the East India Company after
Akbar's demise and then Shah Jahan and so on every Mughal emperor became weaker
and all that is a different story, but they kept on building well, the Mughals kept on
building well and you will be surprised that for good 200 years there was nothing around
Taj Mahal, Taj Mahal was an abandoned building for almost 200 years because the
Mughals who built it had become very weak, and their presence had become very kind
of confined and many of their these monuments had become had gone unattended for
something like 100 to 200 years. So I have some pictures which show huge amount of
wild wilderness around Taj Mahal, huge amount of trees in a very weird way growing
around Taj Mahal and all kind of overlooked and unmaintained and that kind of a thing
that happened and it was during this period that ASI was very active, the Archaeological
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Survey of India was very active, in fact Archaeological Survey of India was the
instrumental organization to discover Puri's temple, Konark temple, had just collapsed
and then the Britishers went there and kind of documented that there is a temple like
somewhere and India didn't have a system of roads or railway tracks where people
could just go like that. So, it was a very different kind of a situation, so the Britishers
came and identified and told Indians that these many things you have, that was one
thing.
The other thing is that the Britishers objective, main objective of establishing ASI was
to actually measure these monuments, document them and they measured almost every
square foot of India, every square foot which was worth measuring and they created all
kinds of measure drawings, and they needed some people to make those drawings, some
assistants, so they needed some equipment and things like that. While in principle the
modus operandi was that they would be always accompanied with police, armed police
and they would go and identify the archaeologists of the British empire, would identify
that this building looks good. They would tell people to vacate the premises, they will
go somewhere else, then the property becomes theirs, they will measure it including
its contents and they would measure everything, say a knife, a carpet or a furniture or
a table or a jewel or anything. They would measure it, draw it, weigh it, test it and
send a report to Delhi and that report will go to London and then they would decide
whether this thing has to go to London or it has to go to Delhi. So, everything that could
be transported was transported excepting the buildings because they were too heavy
to be transported to London. So that's the only reason why buildings have remained in
India, otherwise they wouldn't have spared that much. So, one thing which they did was
for the first time they generated documents of various buildings which were scattered
in the country and they wrote immense amount of books and they did the same practice
in Egypt.
They did the same in Iraq, Iran, Burma, Siam, they did the same thing. Their modus
operandi was very, standardized. So, archaeologists were scientifically trained in UK
and, they did an excellent job and they needed a lot of, local support of draftsmen and
things like that and that's why some polytechnics were started in country because they
needed a lot of, artists and draftsmen, would make scaled drawings. So, some
polytechnics were started and some people started getting trained as draftsmen. So,
there was no concept of architects being trained in India because architects were
coming straight from UK and then, they were designing. And then the other kind of
components of supervision, I think supervision also was largely theirs but some people
became, trained in supervision of buildings over time. And there were lot, the semiskilled and the unskilled people were from here. So, that was how it was. Now, here
what I am trying to say is that this invasion was not only commercial but this was
intellectual invasion also. So, the buildings getting replaced with different kind of
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buildings. The structural system getting replaced with some other kind of structural
system. So, this system was replaced by these invaders system. So, this went on for
quite a long time. I mean till they were here. Around this time, 1857, the mutiny started
to 1947, say about 100 years. Most of these works like laying rail reliance or making
buildings was done by predominantly the engineering oriented, manpower. So, the
architects were few and far. Mostly, it was core of engineers or, some military wing of
engineers. And finally, they were kind of created and evaluated into PWD, Public Works
Department in 1854.
So, 1854, I mean, once again there are lot of things happening. In 1854, the Public
Works Department came, which was basically an amalgamation of, engineering oriented
people from different sources. And it was a new organization created, Public Works
Department, majorly comprising of engineering-oriented people. And the European
handbooks were normally followed. The do's and don'ts of how construction would be
done in England was to be followed. So, in fact there was no orientation of how Indians
were building. There was a completely new protocol that was introduced and this
protocol came from UK. So, the handbooks came from there. So, that means all this
wisdom was just kind of in a very swift operation was just kept aside. And then you
have PWD coming in and then the PWD was inherited by independent India and it still
exists. And then this needs to be understood that what the position of so-called
architectural activity is during this time, when post creation of PWD up to say in 100
years and then post say 76 years, what is the situation in this time. So, we really need
to kind of understand this time span also. So, this is about say 90 years and that is about
76 years. So, I would say that this period of 150, 156 years is just about the same, just
about the same. But we need to kind of see the way we practice today and the status
that we have or the status that the profession has, has a huge kind of background to
this story which I was just narrating. And this would determine, understanding of this
would determine as to what we need to orient ourselves for.
Student: Sir, as we see after independence, like certain cities were settled like
Chandigarh was built, and Delhi was probably planned and built, and we only hear about
foreign architects, we don’t have any evidence of Indian architect particularly. Do any
prominent Indian architect who made a difference at that time?
This need should be understood. As I said, when we began the mutiny, we were deprived
of many things. We were stripped off many things. All our wisdom which we had
acquired over such a long time, was completely gone. Also, as the world ushered into
a new age, it demands new kinds of facilities, new kinds of buildings which were never
attempted before, so if today also you get to do a project which you have never seen
or handled before and it is going to happen, you're asked to do something which you've
never done before, because the variety of building typologies has increased so much
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that it's not possible for an architect to either study within 5 years or, in fact,
throughout the functional life of an architect one may not get some buildings to do, at
all. So that's a reality. You must know that two world wars happened before this, so
there was a new power order in the world and during around this time, the entire world
was busy in rebuilding itself, it was completely destroyed. Germany and UK were
destroyed, Japan was decimated. And then wherever British colonies existed, they were
very impoverished, weak because they have been bleeding because of the British
empire, so they had no establishments of institutions or any mechanism for fighting
against oppressors. India was weak when Britishers left. Weak in materials and wisdom.
That was the starting point. Before whatever needed to be done was done by the
Britishers, which means we were only supposed to receive that without any involvement
in its evolution, development or requirement. We were not stakeholders; we were only
recipients. The Britishers thought that the Viceroy needed to shift from Calcutta to
Delhi to build a capital. Since, Agra was the Mughal capital of India, they wanted to
establish a British capital of India in Delhi.
They also built hugely in Bombay, they also built hugely in Chennai, Madras, they also
built hugely in Calcutta, then they left Calcutta and then they finally come to Delhi and
Lutyens comes into the picture. So Lutyens comes without any competition and he was
in a high profile. Now, he decided a great deal about what happens with Delhi and he
did a great job and as I know, as I understood from various documents. Lutyens spent
at least two to five years in studying Indian heritage so that was one change compared
to how others were building in India so Lutyens spent and he brought in lot of
colleagues, architects, youngsters, interns and also engaged many people in India to go
about studying Indian heritage. So, he was known for integrating the architecture of
the place with the architecture proposed. So in that sense his bringing in onto the Indian
scene was a great kind of a infusion. In my personal opinion bringing in Le Corbusier
was not that important but bringing in Lutyens was far more important because Lutyens
work still leaves behind traces of Indian origin. He respected and he was surprised to
see the wealth of architecture in this country and he sketched, he photographed, he
did lot of measured drawings and he also involved many other royal establishments in
the country to start measuring heritage. So, this Jaipur portfolio once again started in
1895. So, there was an engineer called Jacobs, he was given the task of measuring
heritage buildings in and around Jaipur till Agra, till Agra. From Agra to Jaipur, he
measured most of these significant structures and converted this into a compilation of
12 volumes of Jaipur portfolio.
So that was 1895. Delhi started building around early 1930 and by then this record was
there. And by then the Britishers had also created many documents by way of
archaeological search India. So, a lot of work was available for reference and accessible
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to Lutyens. So that really kind of charged him and fired him and the flavor of Indian
architecture was so by way of forms, elements. So, there was nothing that he imported
from Britain excepting the finesse, the skill, the quality of construction and the care
and attention that needed to be given to construction. That came from Britain. I mean
his, he brought it, his own perception of work and professionalism.
Materials were of course from Jodhpur sandstone and marble once again. So much of
the material had gone from Rajasthan. Now Lutyens was not otherwise of any
significance here, except that in that time some parallel institutes started coming up.
For example, JJ School of Arts came up in 1857. So there were draftsmen there and he
needed a lot of these people who would draw and the culture of making drawings and
then culture of making architecture based on drawings started here. I mean that was
the culmination of course. So, most of these drawings are available in Delhi, CPWD's
office but I am told that they are in horrible shape. So, what I am trying to say is that
Lutyens was an architect of the British Empire. He as a professional architect would do.
He was not son of soil. He also, I do not know what were the circumstances in which he
came and circumstances in which he exited. But he was not instrumental in kind of
igniting any architectural kind of initiative in the country by way of any professionalism
or any kind of institute development. So that I do not see. Now after independence
Nehru was the man to be watching. He was a scientifically tempered person and then
believed in science and education a lot. He was also educated abroad and benefited
from formal education of British institutions.
So, these people, some of them who were part of freedom fight, they had educated
themselves. In that time Britain was the only center of power. US was nowhere. And
then French was very different language. German was different language. So UK being
our invaders, we knew English and we were kind of okay with that. So many of these
leaders educated there in UK institutes. They were impressed with the institutional
mechanism of that country. And Nehru having inherited a bleeding country, completely
impoverished, had a lot in his hands to do. As I said he believed in education and he
believed he was a scientific temperament. And then also later Vikram Sarabhai coming
in who was a great scientific visionary. And then this chain of IIMs coming in and chain
of national physical laboratories, research institutes and then
many such
establishments started coming in soon. And this started sometime in 1955. So 1950s
onwards some architects say for example Kanvinde Rai and Choudhury. Kanvinde was
educated in Harvard and then he was called in. And some people were called in to get
involved in nation building like that.
So, if you see this time of post-World War 1935 and so on and until mid-1950s, it was a
time when the world was building up. It was reconstruction. It was time of nation
building. And a lot of construction was to start. And lot of professionals were to be
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needed. And suddenly there was a need to define the profession, the skills, the building
types and what a building should be, what a school should be, what should be a place
a primary school, a secondary school or what should be a university, what should be a
bank. Things were just thought of for the first time. Nobody knew what should be there,
how it would work, what kind of people are required, spaces. there was just no idea.
No one had any clarity about anything.
So, the Indian presence in this couldn't be expected when I told you and that is the
reason why I told you that we were completely deprived of any talent which was
engaged in such phenomenal architectural works. So, there was just no one available.
But when country got independence, there was a need that people needed to build.
And in fact, this is the beginning of a very strange kind of a phase. I think you would
need to read a lot about it in the sense that when India got freedom and then Nehru
keen on these projects, so some architects came in and they were, in fact I think
Kanvinde was the man behind most of the national physical laboratories all over the
country. More than 30 labs. He built more than, I think maybe more than 100 buildings,
within a span of few years. It was so much urgent. So, there were not many people to
name.
Then Stein came in from US, migrated here and then you had some British architects
choosing to kind of continue to practice in India, Mumbai. So, these people like B. V.
Doshi had started interning under Le Corbusier. So, this New Town experiment was
basically an idea of free India attempted by Nehru. So Chandigarh started, then
Bhubaneswar also started and I believe Chandigarh was a disaster. It was a horrible
disaster. I think the presence of Chandigarh did not ignite anything excepting it created
a school of architecture there and some ugly buildings. Nothing else happened. But
being an architect something invigorated that there is this profession. Interestingly
there is a huge difference between Le Corbusier and likes of Louis khan who worked in
IIM. So, Louis Khan and Kanvinde and Lutyens, they were all trained in an institutional
format. While Le Corbusier was a rebel, he was a dropout from an institute, he was a
person who survived in the profession because of his own gimmicks and marketing skills
and all kinds of pulling the threads and things like that. So, Le Corbusier was more of a
showman. He was less of an architect, more of a showman. In fact, he is one person
whose maximum buildings were rejected by the very people who engaged him to build
them. They never occupied those buildings. So, I think whoever decided and whichever
way he decided, Le Corbusier came in once again I think sometime in 1951. So that was
I think a disaster. Corbusier's entry was a disaster.
And Louis Khan went on to build some exceptional buildings in India, soon after Dhaka
and then he was also building very well in US. So his bringing in to the Indian scene was
very kind of interesting. In fact, Louis Khan's, the people who had interned under Louis
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Khan in Ahmedabad, that prompted Doshi and others to start SET and then that
prompted that some culture of architecture should start. And then some people who
were ignited with the way Louis Khan used to work, his commitment to the profession
and his involvement that inspired them to kind of create a work culture in Ahmedabad.
That did not happen in Mumbai, interestingly. Though Britishers had invested a lot in
Mumbai and nothing in Ahmedabad for that matter. But the induction of Louis Khan by
Vikram Sarabhai, Louis Khan was inducted by Vikram Sarabhai who was a visionary. And
then he created a new kind of a work culture. And that's why Ahmedabad till date has
become a kind of a place where you will find many architects who are kind of oriented
to architecture in a way different than those who are engaged in Mumbai or Delhi or
for that matter Calcutta.
I would have expected more presence of residual architects in Calcutta more than
anywhere else. But when Britishers left Calcutta with baggage, they left no one behind,
trained who kind of pursuing architecture after Britishers have left the scene. So I am
just trying to kind of trace this very thin difference between what happened in
Ahmedabad and what happened in say Calcutta for example. So, Calcutta as I said there
were no residual remains of architectural talent after the Britishers left. But mere
handling of Ahmedabad by Louis Khan though that time was very strategic. it was like
1961. So that was just the time when some institution building was happening in India.
And then was able to kind of voice his concern to all those who were educating abroad
to come and serve the country. So, it was nation building called basically. So that is
interesting. So how one well-meaning person can kind of be the epicenter, be behind
things to come. This is how it matters. So, I do not see too many names to quote as you
were saying. Because the institutional setup for architectural education in India was
very threatening. It was very weak for a number of years. And what I want to discuss is
that it peaked up for some time. But it is fledgling again. It is in a horrible condition
now. I mean if I was to interpret it. So that hump is gone where I would say in short
that I have seen the CBSE toppers taking admission in architecture. So that is not the
case now.
But yes, there are names missing. So that is why I said that one needs to be politically
alive and understand key events that have happened in the history of a nation. And how
it connects with us as a profession. It is very important to understand. Because
otherwise it will leave you all the time groping in dark and kind of not being able to
relate things. And as you grow up in life and profession you need to connect threads.
You need to take call. So that requires a lot of understanding of these. I think one
another disaster which happened in independent India was USSR, we have to make many
friends with USSR because America was aligned with Pakistan and so on. So, India was
very weak. No life is all about what kind of friends you make. It applies to nations also.
So, when we joined hands with the USSR, USSR as a communist country was its belief
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and commitment to architecture was very different than America. So those who were
aligned with America and those kinds of countries they have ended up with a different
kind of architecture. And in those days the communist bloc in the world was very strong.
There were about I think 12 communist countries like Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary.
Then apart from USSR there were I think 10-12 countries which were known as
communist bloc. So, they were completely influenced and functioning under the
guidelines and big brother also national rule of USSR. Now when India became friends
of USSR then of course India switched over to economic planning rather than physical
planning. Because USSR just believed in a very different story. It's a very different
setup. USSR says that a university professor is useless. The worker who does the work
in the smelting plant is great. So, for a great number of years the salary of a worker in
a steel plant was more than that of a professor. So, this is how it worked. They were
making buildings in a very different way. Some buildings they were making in a different
way. They wanted to show to the world that they are a superpower.
So, some buildings they would do well. Most of the buildings they would not do well.
Which nobody would ever get to know. So, for them housing was like making
prefabricated houses. So the So I don't want to go into those details, but the fact that
we made friends with the USSR, completely we lost respect for buildings and you know
what buildings should be all about. That's the beginning. And we switched over to a
paper economy of economics. And then you know, you have economists coming in who
are number crunchers, you know, saying that the country is progressing. And that's
happening to date that we are going to become a 4 trillion economy, then 5 trillion
economy and we see the broken floor, broken furniture, nothing working. So, you know,
that's a typical USSR concept, right? And not a US concept where you know, you would
like an institute to be run like a company, like that. So, point is, what kind of directions
we gave, it matters a lot. And I think one, I would say the justification for being in an
institute to learn any profession like this, I think we should spend some time to
understand our past and how politics and how the world order has always affected us.
That's very important. So this needs to be understood in far more detail. And we will
do that
Student: Sir, after independence, no one tried to learn about how our authentic
buildings were made?
Till date. Till date, no institute is spending any time or resource in going to those
buildings and find out where the hell they are. We did for the first time in the previous
class in Vernacular architecture. We tried to locate, you know, through ASI sources,
where are those buildings. ASI sources and where are those buildings, what are the
existing artifacts of those buildings and the details associated. So, we made no attempts
because, we became friends of somebody who had no heritage. You understand? If they
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have no heritage, why will they talk about it? We just needed their money; we needed
their war machine. We needed to be friends of some superpower like that. So, whatever
was practiced there became an inspiration for us. So that is what I said, you know, the
kind of friends you make will determine, you know, where are you going. You should be
very careful about that. That's why I am saying that one should be politically alive.
Otherwise, you can take for a toss completely.
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