rchitects ko gussa kyon aata hai? asks a banner outside the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), which is currently hosting State of Architecture, a behemoth exhibition curated by architects (and lecturers) Rahul Mehrotra and Kaiwan Mehta, along with writer and curator Ranjit Hoskote. Most people probably don’t know architects are angry, despite the banner referencing the acclaimed 1980 film proposing quite the clue. But stop by the NGMA to view the show and you will run into professionals and students of architecture answering the question amongst themselves with self deprecating glee. Clearly, they’re happy to be heard.
Of late, there’s been little public conversation about architecture that doesn’t simply stop at glorifying monuments and contemplating Nehruvian Modernism. Cue a photography exhibit by Madan Mahatta a couple of years ago, responsible for one of the largest repositories of architectural photographs from the 1950s to 1980s, curated by Ram Rahman, son of Padma Bhushan and visionary architect Habib Rahman. Or photographer Sunil Janah’s work last year (also at the NGMA), which drew fantastic response to a visual representation of the construction of modern India.
The State of Architecture (SoA) takes viewers through the Nehruvian era, past the Five Year Plans, into economic liberalisation and present day architecture via the Emergency. Most of the exhibition is a timeline that begins at 1900 but really kick-starts with the adoption of the Constitution of India. The timeline is divided into pre-Emergency and post Emergency. The first is heady with nation-building. Amidst post Independence enthusiasm and idealism, Nehru and Company’s imagination of a new India, which is at once diverse and modern, involved the embracing of a formal democracy, and a secular Constitution was laid out.
A brand new nation needs newly defined spaces — a physical representation of the idea. SoA charts the focus on architecture as a tool to imagine, and build a nation. This is clear in the timeline if you look at not only the invitations to internationally known architects such as Louis Kahn or Le Corbusier, but also the number of national awards conferred on architects such as Habib Rahman, Charles Correa, Satish Gujral, BV Doshi and Achyut Kavinde, among others, and conferences on architecture, the setting up of the Council of Architecture (CoA) under the Architects Act (1972). There is a wealth of intellectual discourse suggested with the setting up of the CoA or even the making of New Bombay (Navi Mumbai) through the publishing of a proposal imagined by Correa, Shirish Patel and Pravina Mehta in MARG magazine. The first three decades of independent India also mark the setting up of many architectural practices, including Doshi’s Vastu Shilpa, and schools such as the National Institute of Design, which signal an increasing enthusiasm for the profession and the recognition of its contributions in creating modern India.
But ‘architects ko gussa kyon aata hai?’, on the ground floor of the NGMA, is a cheat sheet for the show. A condensed timeline, yes, but also clues, hints, and sometimes, straightforward statistics. A blurb asks you to consider where the women in architecture are, while a panel and some graphics suggest reasons as to why there may be fewer women in the profession (as compared to the number of women in other professions). It seems the percentage of women in architecture colleges doesn’t quite match up with the number of women who end up working in architecture. Could it be the inherent patriarchy in all our systems? Or, could it be (as this writer overheard a young female architect say to another at the show) that it’s financially so much more viable “to be married off than to actually practise as an architect in this country”. The offhand remark stayed with me as I walked through this show, noting the lack of female representation in the names named, in the ranks of those awarded the various national Padmas. Other panels compare the density of people to the number of architects across nations, some look at comparative earnings.
So what happened? Where did architecture go wrong? Or did we? In a recent interview with writer Gita Hariharan (available on YouTube), historian Romila Thapar reminds us that the past is present with us. She is, of course, speaking of the state of the nation today as it hurtles through some very contentious times, but it is something we need to consider if we are to look at the state of the tools we use to build nations. Do the people wielding those tools continue to fall in line with the Centre’s partyline? Do they trust the imagination of leaders they are no longer in agreement with? Is greed a symptom or is it the disease? The use of the Emergency to punctuate a 30-year long sentence suggests the breaking point of lack of faith in the Indian National Congress didn’t only affect national politics and the people in its immediate vicinity, but it shook the ideas of what was the Promised Land. The suggestion of a decent nation suddenly did not exist. The cracks that had been forming and often neglected as minority thought, grew wider, and this led to the imagination of other Indias, and each of these Indias imagined their own symbols.
In his editorial in the latest issue of Domus , Kaiwan Mehta (one-third of SoA’s curatorial team) speaks of the multiple upheavals India has seen, especially in the last decade, and the alarming regularity with which they happen. In the duration of this show, India has erupted into what some hope will be the Indian Spring. The conversation has turned into a question of exclusivity, and young people are on the streets, demanding that the government give space to their idea of India, one that has been pushing back, speaking up, claiming new symbols. What began with the economic liberalisation by the Narasimha Rao government in 1990, led to an influx of global ideas and spaces. It led to malls suddenly becoming the mainstay of our landscape even as people couldn’t afford the items they sold. Billboards joined the skyline as did developers promoting skyscrapers, property scams and Maharashtra’s notorious Cement Scam. Somewhere, architecture became less of a nation-building tool and ended up getting caught in the language of development, which we have seen in recent times often overlooks large swathes of minorities or the poor. It created, most of all, a new aesthetic that rocketed architects like Hafeez Contractor into a whole new sphere of celebrity.
Today, one can’t help but wonder if the State of Architecture is reflective of the State of the Nation. There are multiple aesthetics at play, and multiple imaginations creating them. Some don’t see the social as within its purview, while others try to use it to revamp society. The struggle between private and public also comes to a head within the architectural edifices of today. Hidden stairwells, staff entrances, staff washrooms and so on are carried on from another era but hidden seamlessly within design. It’s like visiting Chandigarh and realising there are no poor people living in Chandigarh.
State of Architecture will show at the NGMA till March 20. See www.stateofarchitecture.in for details on the schedule of events and ancillary shows.
Phalguni Desai is a freelance writer and editor
