The rebuilding of Delhi: An imperial syndrome? Bharat Bhushan
Animals mark their
territory with scents - spraying urine, scattering faecal pellets, rubbing
secreting glands. Humans also mark territory by building boundary walls, naming
roads, or even by just leaving a bag or handkerchief on a seat in an auditorium
or a café. Nations mark their space through carefully demarcating and guarding
boundaries - like the Qin dynasty’s Great Wall of China and more recently the
Donald Trump inspired wall on the US-Mexican border.
However psychologists
say that though animals struggle to keep their DNA alive, they do so
instinctively. They do not have enough neurons to really think about the
future. They cannot conceive of the world continuing to exist after they are
gone. Human beings, on the other hand, are acutely conscious of their
mortality. Many of them want to be remembered by future generations through
their legacies -- physical artefacts, splendid buildings and gardens.
The plan to rebuild or
redevelop the Central Vista in New Delhi as well as Parliament House is best
understood in this context as an attempt to leave one man’s physical stamp on
the world on a grand scale. One of his ministers has claimed in an interview
that the idea of rebuilding Delhi is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream
project. Perhaps he wants to place himself in a long imperial tradition of
capital building Prithviraj Chauhan and Qila Rai Pithora, Qutubuddin Aibak and
Mehrauli, Allahuddin Khilji and Siri Fort, Mohammad bin Tuglaq and
Tuglaqabad, Firoze Tuglaq and Firozabad, Sher Shah Suri’s Shergarh or Purana
Qila and Shah Jahan’s Shahjehanabad.
The various
rationalisations given by the government to redevelop or rebuild the Heritage
Zone of Lutyens’ Delhi are unconvincing. Among the justifications given are
congestion, lack of parking facilities, buildings having outlived their
purpose, lack of earthquake proofing and developing the area as a “world class
tourist destination”. It has also been said that the Central Vista running from
Rashtrapati Bhavan to India Gate was a reflection of a “colonial ethos”, a
legacy that needed to be reversed.
The colonial ethos
argument holds little water. The architects of the buildings and roads on the
Central Vista, Lutyens and Baker, consciously modelled the British Indian
capital drawing on Indian prototypes of imperial grandeur. They drew on the
domes and railings of Sanchi, the chattris and roofs of Rajput palaces and
Mughal sandstone monuments. If they are a sign of India’s subjugation, then so
are many Western cities which are monuments to colonialism or built with
capital extracted from the colonies. New York, for example, was superimposed on
an earlier indigenous settlement, and Cape Town was founded to support the
slave trade. They have not been destroyed or rebuilt for that reason.
Prime Minister
Narendra Modi, it seems, wants to ensure that he is remembered through
systematic renaming and “re-monumentalisation” of the national capital. He is
not only rethinking the relationship of India (especially the capital, New
Delhi) with its past but also of shaping its future. Reshaping public spaces to
reflect the ideology of his government, and the Prime Minister’s vision of
himself and of India. Therefore, not only colonial but also Mughal names will
have to give way to “nationalist” nomenclature, and new monuments celebrating
Modi’s India will have to be erected.
It is not sufficient
to rename Mughal Sarai railway station as Deendayal Upadhyaya Junction or
Aurangzeb Road after the Bhagwad Gita-reciting and veena-playing former President
of India A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, an indigenous and “acceptable” nationalist Muslim.
He will also have to erect definitive landmarks that will recall for future
generations the important historical events and achievements of the Modi
period. New historical memories will evolve around new monuments and landmarks.
He will need to therefore redevelop old symbols into new landmarks that will be
personally associated with him. Hence the appropriation of Mahatma Gandhi’s
legacy by developing the Sabarmati riverfront and the legacy of Sardar
Vallabhbhai Patel by memorialising him into the tallest statue in the world.
It is for this reason
too that in the national capital New Delhi, the National War Memorial must be
built opposite the colonial monument at India Gate commemorating the Indian
soldiers who died for the British empire in the First World War. Surely, the
“dream project” of rebuilding or redeveloping Lutyens’ Delhi follows from the
same logic. Through it his rule will be fixed in the historical memory of future
generations.
However, what is the
guarantee that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s historical legacy will be fixed
through the landmarks he has created? People will not forget Mahatma Gandhi if
the Sabarmati Ashram and the area around the Sabaramati river was rebranded or
Birla House was obliterated. Mahatma Gandhi’s lasting legacy is not a physical
monument. It was the principle of non-violence and his stewardship of a
multi-ethnic and multi-religious movement against colonial rule.
Nor will they
forget Jawaharlal Nehru because the museum in his memory at Teen Murti House
will now be made into a museum for all Indian Prime Ministers. Though he built
large hydro-electric dams, public sector companies that produced steel and
developed space technology, public universities and world-class research
institutions, for India’s first Prime Minister they were not “signs” to mark
that he had once lived. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s legacy was a territorially
unified India, not a larger-than-life statue. These leaders will be
remembered for how they lived their life and their public actions which made
the subjects of the Raj citizens of a free nation. Their legacy was the way
they lived for the public good.
What will be the
historical burden of Prime Minister Modi’s life? Inaction and inefficiency
during the communal riots of 2002 in Gujarat; the divisive nature of his
administration, the mob lynching of minorities, the intolerance of dissent, the
shrinking of India’s heart to declare millions of poor immigrants and nationals
with inadequate documentation as non-citizens, and incarcerating more than 80
million people of the Kashmir Valley for months. These may well outweigh in
historical memory the rebuilding of Delhi.
https://www.asianage.com/opinion/columnists/111019/the-rebuilding-of-delhi-an-imperial-syndrome.html
The serial Emergency imposed by the Sangh Parivar government continues. This is an assault on our constitutional freedoms. The RSS never stops complaining about Indira Gandhi's aothoritarianism. Are the actions of their government any different?
