Colonial Cities Urbanisation, Planning and Architecture

 

12 Colonial Cities Urbanisation, Planning and Architecture

➔ In this chapter we will discuss
the process of urbanisation in colonial India

➔ characteristics of colonial cities and track social changes within them.

➔ We will look closely at developments in three big cities – 1 Madras (Chennai),

2 Calcutta (Kolkata) 3 Bombay (Mumbai).

Madras

➔ Company agents settled in Madras in 1639 Calcutta

➔ Company agents settled in Calcutta in 1690. Bombay

➔ Bombay was given to the Company in 1661 by the English king, who had got it as part of his wife’s dowry from the king of Portugal.

How these three villages became big cities?

• ➔  All three were originally fishing and weaving villages

• ➔  The Company established trading and administrative offices in each of

       these settlements
  

• ➔  By the middle of the 19th century these settlements had become big cities from where the new rulers controlled the country.

• ➔  Institutions were set up to regulate economic activity and demonstrate the authority of the new rulers.

Colonial Cities

Urbanisation, Planning and Architecture

➔ Indians experienced political domination in new ways in these cities.

➔ The layouts of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta were quite different from older Indian towns

Towns and Cities in Pre-colonial Times

1 What gave towns their character?
2 Changes in the eighteenth century

Important Towns of medieval period (old towns)

Agra
Delhi
Lahore
Surat
Masulipatnam
Dhaka
Madurai
Kanchipuram

New Towns in the 19th century (new towns)

Madras
Bombay
Calcutta
Panaji
Masulipatnam
Pondicherry

(British)
(British)
(British)
(Portuguese)
(Dutch)
(French)

1 What gave towns their character?

Characteristic features of town in pre colonial period
Features of medieval Indian Towns

➔ ➔ ➔

In the countryside people subsisted by cultivating land, foraging in the forest, or rearing animals.

Towns by contrast were peopled with artisans, traders, administrators and rulers.

Towns dominated over the rural population, thriving on the surplus and taxes derived from agriculture.

➔ ➔

➔ ➔

➔

Towns and cities were often fortified by walls which symbolised their separation from the countryside.

Peasants travelled long distances on pilgrimage, passing through towns; they also flocked to towns during times of famine.

There was a reverse flow of humans and goods from towns to villages.

When towns were attacked, people often sought shelter in the countryside.

 Traders and pedlars took goods from the towns to sell in the
villages

Towns During Mughal Period

• ➔  Agra, Delhi and Lahore were important centres of imperial administration and control

• ➔  Mughal towns 16th and 17th centuries were famous for their a)concentration of populations
  b)their monumental buildings
  c)their imperial grandeur and wealth.

• ➔  Mansabdars and jagirdars maintained houses in these cities

• ➔  Artisans produced exclusive handicrafts for the households of nobles.

• ➔  The treasury was also located in the imperial capital.

• ➔  The emperor lived in a fortified palace and the town was enclosed by

  a wall, with entry and exit being regulated by different gates.

• ➔  Within these towns were gardens, mosques, temples, tombs, colleges, bazaars and caravanserais.

• ➔  The focus of the town was oriented towards the palace and the principal mosque.

• ➔  Famous poet Mirza Ghalib described what the people of Delhi did when the British forces occupied the city in 1857(see text)

Medieval South Indian Towns

➔ In the towns of South India such as Madurai and Kanchipuram the principal focus was the temple.

➔ These towns were also important commercial centres.
➔ Religious festivals often coincided with fairs, linking pilgrimage

with trade.

kotwal

• ➔  Kotwal was imperial officer of North India in charge of internal affairs and policing in towns

• ➔  Jawaharlal Nehru’s grandfather, Gangadhar Nehru, was the kotwal of Delhi before the Revolt of 1857

  2 Changes in the eighteenth century
  

• ➔  Old towns went into decline and new towns developed.

• ➔  The gradual erosion of Mughal power led to the demise of towns

  associated with their rule.

• ➔  The Mughal capitals, Delhi and Agra, lost their political authority.

• ➔  The growth of new regional powers was reflected in the increasing importance of regional capitals – Lucknow, Hyderabad, Seringapatam, Poona (present-day Pune), Nagpur, Baroda (present- day Vadodara) and Tanjore (present-day Thanjavur).

• ➔  Some local notables and officials associated with Mughal rule create new urban settlements such as the qasbah and ganj

  qasbah=is a small town in the countryside, often the seat of a local notable

ganj =a small fixed market

• ➔  traders, administrators, artisans and others migrated from the old Mughal centres to these new capitals in search of work and patronage.

• ➔  The European commercial Companies had set up base in different places early during the Mughal era:

Portuguese in Panaji in 1510,
Dutch in Masulipatnam in 1605,
British in Madras in 1639
French in Pondicherry(present-day Puducherry) in 1673.

• ➔  By the end of the 18th century the land-based empires in Asia were replaced by the powerful sea-based European empires.

• ➔  Forces of international trade, mercantilism and capitalism now came to define the nature of society.

• ➔  Commercial centres such as Surat, Masulipatnam and Dhaka, which had grown in the 17th century, declined

• ➔  Colonial port cities such as Madras, Calcutta and Bombay rapidly emerged as the new economic capitals.

• ➔  By about 1800, they were the biggest cities in India in terms of population

  Finding Out about Colonial Cities

  1 Colonial records and urban history
  2 Trends of change
  

  1 Colonial records and urban history

  sources for urban history

• ➔  The British kept detailed records of their trading activities in order to regulate their commercial affairs.

• ➔  The municipal corporations generated a whole new set of records maintained in municipal record rooms

• ➔  Records of municipal taxes

• ➔  Censuses reports

• ➔  Town mapping

➔ The Survey of India (established in 1878)

  Importance of Mapping

• ➔  The colonial government was keen on mapping.

• ➔  The town maps give information regarding the location of hills, rivers and vegetation, all important for planning structures for defence purposes

• ➔  They also show the location of ghats, density and quality of houses and alignment of roads, used to gauge commercial possibilities and plan strategies of taxation.

• ➔  The first all-India census was attempted in 1872.Thereafter, from 1881, decennial (conducted every ten years) censuses became a regular feature.

• ➔  The endless pages of tables on disease and death, or the enumeration of people according their age, sex, caste and occupation, provide a vast mass of figures that creates an illusion of concreteness.

• ➔  This classification was often arbitrary and failed to capture the fluid and overlapping identities of people.

• ➔  Upper-caste people were also unwilling to give any information regarding the women of their household

• ➔  There were people in towns who were hawkers often told the census enumerators that they were traders, not labourers, for they regarded trade as a more respectable activity.

• ➔  The figures of mortality and disease were difficult to collect, for all deaths were not registered, and illness was not always reported, nor treated by licensed doctors.

• ➔  Historians have to use sources like the census with great caution, keeping in mind their possible biases

Censuses: can

historians rely on census reports

2 Trends of change in the nature of towns

• ➔  After 1800, urbanisation in India was sluggish.

• ➔  In the forty years between 1900 and 1940 the urban population increased from about 10 per cent of the total population to about 13 per cent.

• ➔  The smaller towns had little opportunity to grow economically.

• ➔  Calcutta, Bombay and Madras on the other hand grew rapidly and

  soon became sprawling cities.

• ➔  The growth of these three cities as the new commercial and administrative centres was at the expense of other existing urban centres.

• ➔  These cities became the entry point for British-manufactured goods and for the export of Indian raw materials.(after Industrial revolution in England)

• ➔  The nature of this economic activity sharply differentiated these colonial cities from India’s traditional towns and urban settlements.

• ➔  The introduction of railways in 1853 changed the fortunes of towns.

• ➔  Traditional towns which were located along old routes and rivers.

• ➔  Now every railway station became a collection depot for raw materials and a distribution point for imported goods.

• ➔  Mirzapur on the Ganges, which specialised in collecting cotton and cotton goods from the Deccan, declined when a railway link was made to Bombay

• ➔  Railway workshops and railway colonies were established.

• ➔  Railway towns like Jamalpur, Waltair and Bareilly developed

What Were the New Towns Like?

1. 1  Ports, forts and centres for services

2. 2  A new urban milieu

3. 3  The first hill stations

4. 4  Social life in the new cities

1 Ports, forts and centres for services

Ports

• ➔  By the eighteenth century Madras, Calcutta and Bombay had become important ports.

• ➔  The English East India Company built its factories (i.e., mercantile offices) fortified these settlements for protection.

  Forts

  ➔ In Madras, Fort St George, ➔ in Calcutta Fort William ➔ in Bombay Fort Bombay

  White Town and Black town
  

• ➔  Indian merchants, artisans and other workers who had economic dealings with European merchants lived outside these forts in settlements of their own.

• ➔  there were separate quarters for Europeans and Indians, which came to be labelled as the “White Town” and “Black Town” respectively.

➔ Railways linked these cities to the rest of the country. Beginning of modern industrial development in India

• ➔  After the 1850s, cotton mills were set up by Indian merchants and entrepreneurs in Bombay, and European-owned jute mills were established on the outskirts of Calcutta.

• ➔  Although Calcutta, Bombay and Madras supplied raw materials for industry in England, and had emerged because of modern economic forces like capitalism, their economies were not primarily based on factory production.

  Centres of services
  

➔ ➔

➔

The majority of the working population in these cities belonged to what economists classify as the tertiary sector.

There were only two proper “industrial cities”:

1 Kanpur, specialising in leather, woollen and cotton textiles, 2 Jamshedpur, specialising in steel.

 India never became a modern industrialised country due to
discriminatory colonial policies

2 A new urban milieu

Features of urbun life in new colonial cities

• ➔  Political power and patronage shifted from Indian rulers to the merchants of the East India Company.

• ➔  Indians who worked as interpreters, middlemen, traders and suppliers of goods

• ➔  Economic activity near the river or the sea led to the development of docks and ghats.

• ➔  Along the shore were godowns, mercantile offices, insurance agencies for shipping, transport depots, banking establishments.

• ➔  The chief administrative offices of the Company in inland like The Writers’ Building in Calcutta

• ➔  Around the periphery of the Fort, European merchants and agents built palatial houses in European styles.

• ➔  Some built garden houses in the suburbs.

• ➔  Racially exclusive clubs, race courses and theatres were also

  built for the ruling elite.

• ➔  The rich Indian agents and middlemen built large traditional courtyard houses in the Black Town

• ➔  They also built temples to establish their status in society.

• ➔  The labouring poor provided a variety of services to their European and Indian masters as cooks, palanquin bearers, coachmen, guards, porters and construction and dock workers.

• ➔  They lived in makeshift huts in different parts of the city.

• ➔  Pasturelands and agricultural fields around the older towns were

  cleared, and new urban spaces called “Civil Lines” were set up.

• ➔  White people began to live in the Civil Lines.

• ➔  Cantonments– places where Indian troops under European command were stationed – were also developed as safe enclaves.

• ➔  These areas were separate from but attached to the Indian towns.

• ➔  Broad streets, bungalows set amidst large gardens,

  barracks,parade ground and church.

• ➔  For the British, the “Black” areas came to symbolise not only chaos and anarchy, but also filth and disease.

• ➔  They feared that disease (epidemics of cholera and plague) would spread from the “Black” to the “White”areas.

• ➔  From the 1860s and 1870s, stringent administrative measures regarding sanitation were implemented

• ➔  Underground piped water supply and sewerage and drainage systems were also put in place around this time.

3 The first hill stations (Simla,Mount Abu, Darjeeling)

• ➔  Simla (present-day Shimla) was founded during the course of the Gurkha War (1815 -16)

• ➔  The Anglo-Maratha War of 1818 led to British interest in Mount Abu

• ➔  Darjeeling was wrested from the rulers of Sikkim in 1835.

• ➔  Hill stations became strategic places for billeting troops,

       guarding frontiers and launching campaigns against enemy rulers
  

• ➔  The temperate and cool climate of the Indian hills was seen as an advantage, particularly since the British associated hot weather with epidemics like Cholera and malaria

• ➔  These hill stations were also developed as sanitariums, i.e., places where soldiers could be sent for rest and recovery from illnesses.

• ➔  In 1864 the Viceroy John Lawrence officially moved his council to Simla

• ➔  Simla also became the official residence of the commander-in- chief of the Indian army.

• ➔  The buildings were deliberately built in the European style.

• ➔  Individual houses followed the pattern of detached villas and

  cottages set amidst gardens.

• ➔  The Anglican Church and educational institutions represented British ideals.

• ➔  The introduction of the railways made hill stations more accessible to a wide range of people including Indians.

The founding and settling of hill stations was initially connected with

the needs of the British army

• ➔  Upper-and middle-class Indians such as maharajas, lawyers and merchants were drawn to these stations because they afforded them a close proximity to the ruling British elite.

• ➔  With the setting up of tea and coffee plantations in the adjoining areas, an influx of immigrant labour from the plains began.

  4 Social life in the new cities
  

• ➔  Poor-rich division: There was a dramatic contrast between extreme wealth and poverty.

• ➔  New transport facilities: such as horse-drawn carriages and, subsequently, trams and buses meant that people could live at a distance from the city centre.(separation of the place of work from the place of residence).

• ➔  Travelling from home to office or the factory was a completely new kind of experience.

• ➔  new forms of entertainment: the creation of public places (public parks, theatres and, from the 20th century, cinema halls – provided exciting new forms of entertainment and social interaction.

• ➔  new social groups: Within the cities new social groups were formed and the old identities of people were no longer important.

• ➔  increase of “middle classes”:There was an increasing demand for clerks, teachers, lawyers, doctors, engineers and accountants in new towns.

• ➔  As educated people, middle-class could put forward their opinions on society and government in newspapers, journals and public meetings.

• ➔  Social customs, norms and practices came to be questioned.

   life of Women changed

• ➔  Middle-class women sought to express themselves through the medium of journals, autobiographies and books.

• ➔  Conservatives feared that the education of women would turn the world upside down, and threaten the basis of the entire social order.

• ➔  Over time, women became more visible in public

• ➔  Women entered new professions in the city as domestic and

  factory workers, teachers, and theatre and film actresses.

    Working class emerged as new class
  

• ➔  Another new class within the cities was the labouring poor or the working class.

• ➔  Paupers from rural areas flocked to the cities in the hope of employment.

• ➔  Some saw cities as places of opportunity; others were attracted by the allure of a different way of life, by the desire to see things they had never seen before.

• ➔  To minimise costs of living in the city, most male migrants left their families behind in their village homes.

• ➔  Life in the city was a struggle: jobs were uncertain, food was expensive, and places to stay were difficult to afford.

• ➔  Yet the poor often created a lively urban culture of their own.

• ➔  They were enthusiastic participants in religious festivals, tamashas (folk theatre) and swangs (satires) which often mocked the pretensions of their masters, Indian and European

Amar Katha (My Story)

• ➔  Binodini Dasi (1863-1941) was a pioneering figure in Bengali theatre in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

• ➔  She worked closely with the dramatist and director Girish Chandra Ghosh (1844-1912).

• ➔  She was one of the prime movers behind the setting up of the Star Theatre (1883) in Calcutta which became a centre for famous productions.

• ➔  Between 1910 and 1913 she serialised her autobiography, Amar Katha (My Story).

• ➔  She was a professional in the city, working in multiple spheres – as an actress, institution builder and author – but the patriarchal society of the time scorned her assertive public presence

  1 Settlement and segregation in Madras
  2 Town planning in Calcutta
  3 Architecture in Bombay
  

  1 Settlement and segregation in Madras
  

  Why Madras?

• ➔  The Company had first set up its trading activities in the port of Surat on the west coast.

• ➔  Subsequently the search for textiles brought British merchants to the east coast.

Segregation, Town Planning and Architecture

Madras, Calcutta and Bombay

Former name of Madras

• ➔  In 1639 they constructed a trading post in Madraspatam.

• ➔  This settlement was locally known as Chenapattanam.

• ➔  The Company had purchased the right of settlement from the local Telugu lords, the Nayaks of Kalahasti

• ➔  Rivalry (1746-63) with the French East India Company led the British to fortify Madras(Fort St George)

• ➔  With the defeat of the French in 1761, Madras became more secure Madras White town

• ➔  Fort St George became the nucleus of the White Town where most of the Europeans lived.

• ➔  Walls and bastions made this a distinct enclave.

• ➔  Colour and religion determined who was allowed to live within

  the Fort.

• ➔  The Company did not permit any marriages with Indians.

• ➔  The Dutch and Portuguese were allowed to stay here because they were European and Christian.

• ➔  The administrative and judicial systems also favoured the white population.

  Madras black Town
  

• ➔  The Black Town developed outside the Fort.

• ➔  It was laid out in straight lines, a characteristic of colonial

  towns.

• ➔  It was, however, demolished in the mid-1700s and the area was cleared for a security zone around the Fort.

• ➔  A new Black Town developed further to the north.

• ➔  This housed weavers, artisans, middlemen and interpreters who played a vital role in the Company trade.

• ➔  The new Black Town resembled traditional Indian towns, with living quarters built around its own temple and bazaar.

• ➔  On the narrow lanes that criss-crossed the township, there were distinct caste-specific neighbourhoods.

  Different Occupation groups and their area in Madras
  

• ➔  Chintadripet was an area meant for weavers.

• ➔  Washermanpet was a colony of dyers and bleachers of cloth

• ➔  Royapuram was a settlement for Christian boatmen who worked for the Company.

• ➔  Several different communities came and settled in Madras, performing a range of economic functions.

  Dubashes in Madras
  

• ➔  The dubashes were Indians who could speak two languages – the local language and English.

• ➔  They worked as agents and merchants, acting as intermediaries between Indian society and the British.

• ➔  They used their privileged position in government to acquire wealth.

• ➔  Their powerful position in society was established by their charitable works and patronage of temples in the Black Town.

  Vellalars,Brahmins,Telugu Komatis,Gujarati bankers,Paraiyars and Vanniyars

• ➔  Initially jobs with the Company were monopolised by the Vellalars, a rural caste

• ➔  With the spread of English education in the nineteenth century, Brahmins started competing for similar positions in the administration.

• ➔  Telugu Komatis were a powerful commercial group that controlled the grain trade in the city.

• ➔  Gujarati bankers had also been present since the eighteenth century.

• ➔  Paraiyars and Vanniyars formed the labouring poor. Hindu ,Muslim,Christian settlements in Madras

• ➔  The Nawab of Arcot settled in nearby Triplicane which became the nucleus of a substantial Muslim settlement.

• ➔  Mylapore and Triplicane were earlier Hindu religious centres that supported a large group of Brahmins.

• ➔  San Thome with its cathedral was the centre for Roman Catholics.

• ➔  Garden houses first started coming up along the two main arteries – Mount Road and Poonamalee Road – leading from the Fort to the cantonment.

• ➔  Wealthy Indians too started to live like the English.

• ➔  As a result many new suburbs were created from existing villages

around the core of Madras.

➔ Pet is a Tamil word meaning settlement, while puram a village

2 Town planning in Calcutta

Buiding of fort William

• ➔  One immediate reason for town planning was defence.

• ➔  In 1756, Sirajudaula, the Nawab of Bengal, attacked

is used for

  sacked the small British fort

• ➔  Sirajudaula wanted to assert his authority.

• ➔  In 1757, when Sirajudaula was defeated in the Battle of Plassey

• ➔  The East India Company decided to build a new fort, one that could not be easily attacked. (Fort William)

Calcutta and

Three villages to make town Calcutta

• ➔  Calcutta had grown from three villages called Sutanati, Kolkata and Govindapur.

• ➔  The Company cleared a site in the southernmost village of Govindapur

• ➔  The traders and weavers living there were asked to move out. Maidan (vast open space)

  ➔ Around the new Fort William they left a vast open space known as the Maidan or garer-math.

  ➔ This was done so that there would be no obstructions to a straight line of fire from the Fort against an advancing enemy army.

  ➔ They built residences along the periphery of the Maidan. Palace,Government House

➔ In 1798, Lord Wellesley became the Governor General and he built a massive palace, Government House, for himself in Calcutta, a building that was expected to convey the authority of the British.

Town planning by Wellesley

• ➔  Lord Wellesley became concerned about the condition of the Indian part of the city – the crowding, the excessive vegetation, the dirty tanks, the smells and poor drainage.

• ➔  Wellesley wrote a Minute (an administrative order) in 1803 on the need for town planning

➔ He set up various committees for the purpose.
➔ Many bazaars, ghats, burial grounds, and tanneries were cleared

or removed.

➔ From then on the notion of “public health” became an idea that was proclaimed in projects of town clearance and town planning.

Lotttery Committee

• ➔  After Wellesley’s departure the work of town planning was carried on by the Lottery Committee (1817) with the help of the government.

• ➔  The Lottery Committee was so named because funds for town improvement were raised through public lotteries.

• ➔  The Lottery Committee commissioned a new map of the city so as to get a comprehensive picture of Calcutta.

• ➔  Among the Committee’s major activities was road building in the Indian part of the city and clearing the river bank of “encroachments”.

  Cleaning and Sanitation
  

• ➔  In its drive to make the Indian areas of Calcutta cleaner, the committee removed many huts and displaced the labouring poor, who were now pushed to the outskirts of Calcutta.

• ➔  The threat of epidemics gave a further impetus to town planning in the next few decades.

• ➔  Cholera started spreading from 1817 and in 1896 plague made its appearance.

• ➔  The cause of these diseases had not yet been established firmly by medical science.

• ➔  The government proceeded on the basis of the accepted theory of the time: that there was a direct correlation between living conditions and the spread of disease.

• ➔  So prominent Indian merchants in the city, such as Dwarkanath Tagore and Rustomjee Cowasjee, who felt that Calcutta needed to be made more healthy.

• ➔  That was why working people’s huts or “bustis” became the target of demolition.

• ➔  The poor in the city – workers, hawkers, artisans, porters and the unemployed – were once again forced to move to distant parts of the city.

• ➔  Frequent fires also led to stricter building regulations – for instance, thatched huts were banned in 1836 and tiled roofs made mandatory.

• ➔  The existing racial divide of the “White Town” and “Black Town” was reinforced by the new divide of “healthy”and “unhealthy”.

• ➔  Public protests against these government policies strengthened the feeling of anti-colonialism and nationalism among Indians.

• ➔  With the growth of their empire, the British became increasingly inclined to make cities like Calcutta, Bombay and Madras into impressive imperial capitals.

• ➔  Town planning had to represent everything that the British claimed to stand for: rational ordering, meticulous execution, and Western aesthetic ideals.

• ➔  Cities had to be cleaned and ordered, planned and beautified 3 Architecture in Bombay

  ➔ Buildings in cities could include forts, government offices, educational institutions, religious structures, commemorative towers, commercial depots, or even docks and bridges.

     Bombay as commercial capital

• ➔  Bombay was initially seven islands.

• ➔  As the population grew, the islands were joined to create more

  space and they gradually fused into one big city.

• ➔  Bombay was the commercial capital of colonial India.

• ➔  As the premier port on the western coast it was the centre of international trade.

• ➔  By the end of the 19th century, half the imports and exports of India passed through Bombay.

• ➔  One important item of this trade was opium that the East India Company exported to China.

  Bombay’s capitalist class

• ➔  Bombay’s capitalists came from diverse communities such as Parsi, Marwari, Konkani Muslim, Gujarati Bania, Bohra, Jew and Armenian.

• ➔  When the American Civil War started in 1861 cotton from the American South stopped coming into the international market.

• ➔  This led to an upsurge of demand for Indian cotton, grown primarily in the Deccan.

• ➔  Once again Indian merchants and middlemen found an opportunity for earning huge profits.

  Urbs Prima in Indis(the most important city of India)
  

• ➔  In 1869 the Suez Canal was opened and this strengthened Bombay’s links with the world economy.

• ➔  The Bombay government and Indian merchants used this opportunity to declare Bombay Urbs Prima in Indis, a Latin phrase meaning the most important city of India.

Later changes

• ➔  By the late 19th century Indian merchants in Bombay were investing their wealth in new ventures such as cotton mills.

• ➔  They also patronised building activity in the city.

• ➔  As Bombay’s economy grew, from the mid-nineteenth century there was a need to expand railways and shipping and develop the administrative structure.

• ➔  Many new buildings were constructed at this time.

• ➔  These buildings reflected the culture and confidence of the

  rulers.

  European style of architecture
  

• ➔  The architectural style was usually European.

• ➔  This importation of European styles reflected the imperial

  vision in several ways.

  How European styles in buildings reflected imperial vision?
  

  ➔ First it expressed the British desire to create a familiar landscape in an alien country, and thus to feel at home in the colony.

  ➔ Second the British felt that European styles would best symbolise their superiority, authority and power.

  ➔ Third they thought that buildings that looked European would mark out the difference and distance between the colonial masters and their Indian subjects.

  European style and Indian style
  

• ➔  Gradually, Indians too got used to European architecture and made it their own.

• ➔  The British in turn adapted some Indian styles to suit their needs.

➔ One example is the bungalow which was used by government officers in Bombay and all over India.

What is a Bungalow?

• ➔  The name bungalow was derived from bangla,a traditional thatched Bengali hut.

• ➔  The colonial bungalow was set on extensive grounds which ensured privacy and marked a distance from the Indian world around.

• ➔  The traditional pitched roof and surrounding veranda kept the bungalow cool in the summer months.

• ➔  The compound had separate quarters for a retinue of domestic servants.

• ➔  The bungalows in the Civil Lines thus became a racially exclusive enclave

  Three architectural styles for public buildings in Bombay
  

  1 Neo-classical or the new classical style 2 Neo-Gothic style
  3 Indo-Saracenic style

  ✔ Two of these were direct imports from fashions prevalent in England.

  1 Neo-classical or the new classical style

  ✔ The first was called neo-classical or the new classical. ✔ Characteristics of neo classical style

  1. 1)  Construction of geometrical structures fronted with lofty pillars

  2. 2)  It was derived from a style that was originally from ancient Rome and popular during the European Renaissance.

✔ Why neo classical style adopted?

1

2

The British imagined that a style that embodied the grandeur of imperial Rome could now be made to express the glory of imperial India.

The Mediterranean origins of this architecture were also thought to be suitable for tropical weather.
The Town Hall in Bombay was built in this style in 1833.

➔ Example for neo classical style

1 The Town Hall in Bombay was built in this style in 1833 (now houses the Asiatic Society of Bombay)
2 Elphinstone Circle:-

✔ Built during the cotton boom of the 1860

• ➔  Subsequently named Horniman Circle after an English editor who

       courageously supported Indian nationalists
  

• ➔  This building was inspired from models in Italy.

• ➔  It made innovative use of covered arcades at ground level to

  shield the shopper and pedestrian from the fierce sun and rain

  of Bombay.

• ➔  the pillars and arches, derived from Graeco-Roman architecture.

  2 Neo-Gothic style Characteristics of Neo gothic style

• ➔  High-pitched roofs (sloping roof), pointed arches and detailed decoration.

• ➔  The Gothic style had its roots in buildings, especially churches, built in northern Europe during the medieval period.

• ➔  The neo-Gothic or new Gothic style was revived in the mid- nineteenth century in England.

• ➔  This was the time when the government in Bombay was building its infrastructure and this style was adapted for Bombay.

• ➔  Example for neo-Gothic style buildings in Bombay
  An impressive group of buildings facing the seafront including

  1)The Secretariat,(designed by H. St Clair Wilkins ) 2)University of Bombay
  3)Bombay High Court
  4)The Victoria Terminus,(designed by F.W. Stevens)(the station and headquarters of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway Company) (Now Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus)

       Role of Indian Merchants in buildings
  

• ➔  Indians gave money for some of these buildings.

• ➔  The University Hall was made with money donated by Sir Cowasjee

  Jehangir Readymoney, a rich Parsi merchant.

• ➔  The University Library clock tower was funded by the banker Premchand Roychand and was named after his mother as Rajabai Tower.

• ➔  Indian merchants were happy to adopt the neo-Gothic style since they believed that building styles, like many ideas brought in by the English, were progressive and would help make Bombay into a modern city.

  3 Indo-Saracenic style

  Characteristics of Indo-Saracenic style

  • ➔  A new hybrid architectural style developed which combined the Indian with the European in the beginning of the 20thcentury.

  • ➔  “Indo” was shorthand for Hindu and “Saracen” was a term Europeans used to designate Muslim.

  • ➔  The inspiration for this style was medieval buildings in India with their domes, chhatris, jalis, arches.

  • ➔  By integrating Indian and European styles in public architecture the British wanted to prove that they were legitimate rulers of India.

Examples of Indo-Saracenic style buildings in Bombay

     1 The Gateway of India

     (built in the traditional Gujarati style to welcome King George
     V and Queen Mary to India in 1911)

     2 Taj Mahal Hotel

     (built by the industrialist Jamsetji Tata )

➔ This building became a challenge to the racially exclusive clubs and hotels maintained by the British

What Buildings and Architectural Styles Tell Us

• ➔  Architecture reflects the aesthetic ideals prevalent at a time, and variations within those ideals.

• ➔  Buildings express the vision of those who build them.

• ➔  looking at the architecture of a particular time, we can understand how power was conceived of and how it was expressed through structures and their attributes

• ➔  Architectural styles mould tastes, popularise styles and shape the contours of culture.

• ➔  M any Indians came to regard European styles of architecture as symbols of modernity and civilisation

• ➔  But many rejected European ideals and tried to retain indigenous styles

• ➔  From the late nineteenth century we see efforts to define regional and national tastes that were different from the colonial ideal.

• ➔  Styles thus changed and developed through wider processes of cultural conflict.

➔ By looking at architecture therefore we can also understand the variety of forms in which cultural conflicts unfolded and political conflicts – between the imperial and the national, the national and the regional/local – were played out.