On Central Vista

 In 2014, I had just moved to Delhi, working at the National Museum, right on Rajpath. Growing up, that stretch between India Gate, and Rashtrapati Bhavan was Delhi to me, because I would watch the live telecast of the ‘chabbiyan da mela’. In retrospect, what a quaint way to refer to a parade with tanks, missles, marching soldiers, and floats showing cultural vignettes from different states. Back home, the mela was the yearly fair that you went to, at the ancestral village, to commemorate clan demigods and figures of veneration. The mela of the 26th was a mela for the day India became a Republic, and we would all participate by sitting in front of the TV. Me and my Mother would wait for the BSF soldiers loading up entire battalions on a single motorcycle. In the evening, there would be the Beating Retreat, and mounted cavalry would ride to “Saare jahan se accha, hindustan hamara”. [trans: 'India is better than the whole wide world': Not Allama Iqbal's most shining moment, if I am honest, but much better than the ideological turn that came later]

At that age, it felt that way too. You know, I used to get a twinge of that feeling when the song comes to mind, until today, when I saw a video of the song being piped out on loudspeakers from the central secretariat; as the entire Rajpath was denuded and dug up to make a monstrous new facade for ‘Indian democracy’; while a pandemic that could have been prevented, literally puts a price on each breath of oxygen. Phrases like moral failure are being thrown around. I don’t think a phrase so convenient can capture the magnitude of the situation. If it wasn’t so real, one would almost imagine that the situation in India was a macabre play, written by the prime exponent of cynicism and misanthropy. 

But, these visceral reactions are partly a result of helplessness. What does one do? Or more specifically, what do I do? I moved here to Amsterdam, to study Conservation of Cultural Heritage. To learn to better preserve those tangible things that inform us, and serve as traces of memory and values. How does one preserve something when it is actively being destroyed by the powers that be? Who does one preserve for, when the people involved are actively dying? Why does one preserve, when it encompasses is the tragedy of not being able to breathe, the malice of a government that tells you that sitting under a tree will provide the oxygen you need, and the horror of having the ashes of your friends and your neighbours rain down upon you? 

What become of the Delhi of my mind? 

My first visit to India Gate came with my friend from Delhi. We went there at 1 am in the morning, to eat ice cream. That used to be my  friend’s ritual with his grandfather, when his parents were out.

I took a girl out on a date to the lawns on Rajpath. We had rum in Appy bottles; and we sat and watched the crowds pass by; kids taking rides in little toy cars, and folks taking in the cool evening breeze. We took turns relieving ourselves in the bushes on the side, the other keeping a lookout. She later told me that it wouldn’t work out between us. 

I used to walk to the National Museum from Central Secretariat Metro Station my first year in Delhi.In the monsoon, the dirt path between the road and the gardens would become an impassable morass, with the combination of the rains, and pipes watering the grass even in the rain. I used to wear slippers, and learned to hike up my pants, and waddle, so that the slippers wouldn’t spray the back of my pants with the sandy mud.

Me and my classmates would bunk class, and take the bus to Khan market, which had the closest liquor store. We would get a couple of cans of beer, and go back to the gardens, and play cricket in the Fall, as government employees from the Ministry of External Affairs and Krishi Bhavan would take naps in the sun on their lunch break. I learned how to bowl off-break, never having really played much cricket before. I used to bowl smoking a beedi, because it would distract the batsman. Once, we had a Conservation vs Museology match. Conservation Won. 

We would go to Andhra Bhavan in the winter, and eat the all-you-can-eat meal, and go to the IGNCA to take long naps in the sun. There would generally be exhibitions there, and we would amble down, and spend an hour or so talking shop with the folks. I used to wear high waisted pants and sandals; and one of the guys once told me I looked like a photo of his father in the 70’s. 

I had a long talk with a friend about politics and praxis in art and life, sitting on the stone benches by the water. We planned to meet again, and next time go on the boats on the opposite side. We never got around to it. We had momos by the Central Secretariat metro, and then I took the bus, and she took the metro home.

I had a BSA cycle that I got for 2000 rupees, and I would bike in early mornings on the weekends. I would start near Ashram, and go on to India Gate, and down to Rashrapati Bhavan, swing past Lodhi Gardens, and onwards down home. One winter morning, before dawn, as I was passing by, I saw a solitary security guard standing on the bus stop after central station. It was foggy, and all you could see were the lights of the buildings behind him, and him lit from the light of the bus stand. I did not see his face.

2 years into my stay in Delhi, in winter, with the same local friend, I went back to India Gate. I had a pheran, shawl, and a chitrali pakol on. One of the soldiers at India Gate looked at me funny, and asked me where I was from. I saw that his uniform had J&K Light Infantry markings. I responded in Dogri. He was taken aback, because he figured I was Kashmiri. Dogras and Kashmiris don’t care much for each other. We started talking, and turned out his house was 10 minutes away from my house.

I worked on a project at Rashtrapati Bhavan for a year. Sometimes in the winter, from the front, you couldn’t see past the Jaipur Column, because the smog was so thick.

We would sometimes leave from the front entrance of Rashtrapati Bhavan, because the side entrances were too far from public transport. We would get out just right of the wrought iron gates. Once, as we got past the security barricade, a family with two kids came up to me to ask if they can go inside. I told them, ‘permission chahiye’ (you’d need permission). 

My friend was into physical fitness to get the ladies, and he always talked about running from India Gate to Rashtrapati Bhavan; and how he would set it up so that as he ran up Raisins Hill, the Rocky music would start playing; and it would hit the crescendo as soon as he reached the top. 

When I first got to the National Museum, I checked out a book on Delhi’s planning by Lutyens and Baker. The only thing I really remember from it was how the grade of the slope up Raisina Hill destroyed their professional relationship. 

They would shut down the parks by Rajpath a couple of months before 26th January every year, and by around the 20th, it was pretty hard to even sit outside the National Museum for my Regular Chai and Samosa. We would sit with the staff of the MEA, and gossip about who got the pass to sit in the Parade. 

...

If wishes were fishes, and COVID had never happened; the demolition would still have happened. It was planned before it. I would have felt the same nostalgia about the passing of the lawns and the India gate, as I do now. Political, and aesthetic difference of opinion aside, I would have bemoaned the thing, and moved on, just like I did when they demolished the Hall of Nations. Isn’t it a sign of slowly becoming a native of a city, if it changes as you remain a spectator? 

Sure, I spent 4 years of my life revolving around the base of Lutyens’ Triangle: National Museum, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Krishi Bhavan. I could tell you the best place to get chai in the entire belt, and where you could get great breakfast for 15 rupees, and what times the monkeys would come out, and where to sit in the parks so you wouldn’t get harassed by the cops and the hawkers. But that’s life, right? Things change. 

I also know that folks are resilient, and make do. Sure, the shops would change, but the same folks would be there. Eventually, the entire vista would gain its own emotion and its own feeling, and eventually, things would creep back to a sense of normalcy. It’s Delhi after all, a city of cities. Many have been built, and many more will be. It is the Dehelvi zaikqa that survives. 

But seeing all of this happen, at the same time is a strange mixture of feelings. There is resignation: it's done. Places I tied 4 years of my life to have disappeared. There is Anger: why do it at this time, and at this cost, when each penny could save lives by buying much needed Oxygen and Vaccines. There is the learned helplessness: The government would do it anyway. They can make an entire nation line up at ATMs at 4 hour notice, and drive a bigger migration then the British did with Partition of 1947. What are a couple of buildings and a few trees? There is nostalgia: as if going back and looking at things with rose tinted glasses would bring it back. There is frustration: I am abroad as all of this  happens.

As I type this out, I still have Saare Jahan Se Accha in my head. It takes on a bitter taste, even while  speaking the truth:

غربت میں ہوں اگر ہم، رہتا ہے دل وطن میں

سمجھو وہیں ہمیں بھی دل ہو جہاں ہمارا

…

اقبال! کوئی محرم اپنا نہيں جہاں میں

معلوم کیا کسی کو دردِ نہاں ہمارا!

If we are in an alien place, the heart remains in the homeland,

consider us too [to be] right there where our heart would be.

…

Iqbal! We have no confidant in this world

What does anyone know of our hidden pain?

This is all Bellyaching. I know it, because, you know, people are dying out there. I am also of that privileged Non Resident Indian class right now, and that is a whole emotional roller coaster. I am also not really an urbanist or an architect. But with each stroke, I see the Delhi I lived in, and loved and hated disappear. COVID. The Exodus. The February 2020 Riots. This. 

There is malice and incompetence in the powers that be. Incompetence was always there, malice is a new addition. How does one reflect the small realities and joys of life and memory, like walking down familiar paths, and having a familiar bench, and a favourite tree in a park; when it is faced with such gargantuan horrors as India has faced in the past year? 

The fundamental indecency of our government  is reflected in the fact that the small moments of humanity, of love, sorrow, joy, that lived in these day to day places are completely overshadowed by the carnage upon us. 

Totems and altars; the Delhi book

With the corona crisis on us, I have decided that I might as well clear old backlog of work. A big part of it has been what I commonly refer to as the Delhi book. Totems and altars is a small selection of photos and text from a 3 year long project photographing Delhi. To be completely open, I didn’t really know what I was getting into when I started working towards this, not that I know much more now; but a certain clarity of what I expected of the work was missing. The work itself was good, don’t take me the wrong way here, but I had no idea what the work would end up being.
It traversed the path between a zine, to a book, to a photo book, to a chapbook, to a gallery exhibition,  and all along the way fell victim to my character defects. Nothing really came of it, and I still have the photos in my hard disk, and I occasionally mention the Delhi book to folks. In the interest of tying up loose ends and keeping my end of the street clean, find appended two links to Totems and Altars, in a proof version for when I tried to get a publisher but didn’t reach out to anyone because I feared rejection, and because I had a massive chip on my shoulder.
The first couple of pages are blank, as they were meant to be filled by a small introduction by a collaborator, but as things were, it never came to be. We ended up not being on talking terms for no fault of theirs.
I imagine this is me closing the chapter on a pretty rough and tumble part of my life. The entire series of Totems and Altars, and Riverlands contains around 60 photos. One of these days, I’ll get my act together and do something about them, but this will suffice for now. Progress, not perfection is by new guiding principle these days; and things, and my general outlook are considerably better. Happy reading.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yr1y3evg81b5in7/Sharma_Rahul_ta.pdf?dl=0
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FDgjD7K_NCSvJ7ovjXvQF-VatN4Ot01H/view?usp=drivesdk

on Delhi.

Back in 2017, I was with Hartman dropping off a friend in Noida when he, well we, decided that a drink would be in order. It was afternoon on a winter day, and I didn’t have anything better to do, so I figured why not, and stopped a rickshaw and we both jumped in. I just told the guy we wanted to go drink at a cheap place. The guy winked and grinned, and we were off. I can still remember that he didn’t have any legs, and a modified rickshaw, and he did look particularly disreputable, so I figured he would know where to get a stiff peg. He dropped us under a flyover and pointed to the liquor store and said that's the place. 

The shop itself faced what was obviously a park in some city planners mind, but was a wide expanse of dirt, separated by a narrow gutter. Young kids ran around in a businesslike manner, around dilapidated hunks of old coolers and washing machines, around whom were small huddles of men in lungis. As we drew closer, a young boy of maybe 12 came up to us, and said, “5 rupees for fifteen minutes, and 10 rupees for snacks”. I brushed him off to get my old monk, and asked the cashier what was what. He suggested talking to the kids. 

Hartman and I had our bottle, and turned around to the kid, who was behind us. We gave him 5 rupees, and asked him to explain. It turned out that the kids would rent out the derelict washing machines and coolers as tables for the local drunks, who could drink in a measure of civility. The liquor store was on the edge of the Delhi-UP border, and hence subject to lower taxes, and the owner had paid off the cops on the UP side to create his version of a low-rent garden bar, sans gardens. The kids would get eggs and chips from the halwai next door, and sell them at a commission. Hartman and I gave the kid 10 rupees, poured ourself a drink in plastic cups he pulled out from his bag, and settled in. 

We must have been a strange sight in that place, surrounded by the sweltering masses, Hartman was 65, had long salt and pepper hair, and spoke in a deep All India Radio voice, and I had pants to my chest, horn rimmed glasses, and got into aggressive arguments about 50’s jazz. I really knew we stood out, because the kid came back with chips and eggs, and a bottle with a dried rose in it, and told us we could have the rose and bottle for an extra 5 rupees, only if we returned both at the end. Hartman, appreciating the entrepreneurial spirit, handed over 5 rupees. 

Somewhere around the middle of the bottle, we managed to get a crowd around us. It was pretty understandable, we were jabbering away discussing some topic du jour in english, surrounded by day labourers and migrant workers, and while they could not understand what was being said, they could understand that it was an argument and someone was winning and someone was not, and an argument is better entertainment while drinking then watching cars whizz by; so we had an audience. Hartman, ever the entertainer, nudged me on the ribs, and said “Slow Boat”. I had been singing with his group for a bit, and cottoned on, so we turned, and started singing Slow Boat to China for the guys, Hartman doing the tenor, while I did the Baritone. We leaped head first from Slow Boat to I want to be Seduced; fuelled by Rum, and Revolution. 

In that dingy dust bowl was probably the highlight of my musical career, as the local drunks watched us two inebriated interlopers do the hits of the ‘40’s. Eventually, our throats gave out, as did the interest of the locals, as did the rum. We walked away giving the kid a 20 rupee tip. As I passed by, I overheard one of the drunks say to another, “aise behenchod angrez bhi dekh liye”. The liquor store was scarcely 15 minutes from the mosque burned in Ashok nagar. 

I used to think I had no illusions about the dark heart of India. I was born in Jammu and kashmir. My best friend when I was 7 lost his father when he was shot down in Thanamandi near Rajouri by militants. Himalayan Mail, the newspaper we got, for the longest time, had on the lower left of the front page, a running casualty count of militants, civilians, and army and police forces. My father’s office in Srinagar was shot at when I was 13. Godhra happened when I was 11. My biotech teacher in 11th grade told us stories of how her uncle was hung from a tree when he tried to return to Sopore. My grandfather told me of how a judge of the high court who was presiding over  his case (grandpa was famously litigious) was shot on the streets in broad daylight. 

I saw my hindu friend call my muslim friend a Katua, and I saw photos of Osama Bin Laden in the visor of the government car my father was issued, because the driver was an ex-millitant given a government job. I listened to stories from the carpenter at my job about how he and his family were forced out from turkman gate, and I lived in houses built to house the partition refugees in Delhi. I was there in Jammu when the Panther Party started protests to evict the rohingya refugees from the Narwal Mandi refugee camps. And I was there every day when countless normal people would just say “nahi magar mussalman to alag hote hain na”

I used to think that that is all there is to it. That we were one people separated by faith, with the idiots and the reactionaries forming the border.I did use to think that hinduan ko Ram Ram, mussalman ko salaam approach was enough to keep the peace. I thought that the Delhi world view would win in the end, of hum to doobe hain sanam, tumko bhi le doob jayenge; sawaal bas yeh hai saaqi ki darya kaunsa ho. After all, we are but one people, temporarily inconvenienced by faith and politics. 

As I saw news coming out from Delhi, in distant Amsterdam, I worried. I sent messages checking in with everyone I knew in delhi. My brother replied something to the effect of: north east is critical, while the south enjoys its luxury. Back in the day, I would have agreed with this economic analysis of the problem. It is always the poor that get ground up in the mix of power and politics. Give the lumpen a quarter of whiskey, and a half kilo of chicken biryani, and the lumpen will do as asked. It's like the election, isn’t it? Of course, there were people trying to round up the Sikhs in Maharani Bagh back in ‘84, but those were the poors and the unwashed after all. But it is too easy to find answers I want in just straight marxist dialectical analysis. 

I refuse to beleive that a normal person will just one day rise up and make a molotov cocktail and decide that it is time to go ‘a mosque burnin’ or dalit lynchin’ or a muslim stabbin’. The fundamental humanity of a person resists that, and so you deny the humanity to the one you want to oppress. They used the black and tans to pacify Ireland because they were not Irish. The overseers in the plantations were white. The Sikhs patrolled Singapore. The soldiers in Kashmir are mostly from outside Kashmir.  The Gurkhas are feared warriors for the English. The Tirailleurs from Senegal fought the Germans in the Second world war, as did the Punjabis in Somme in the First. 

You do not send a man to subjugate his neighbour, for a man is nothing but a man, neither lesser nor higher. But if suddenly you turn someone subhuman, then it's simple, like eradicating vermin. 

I used to think nothing like what is happening right now would happen in my lifetime. How could it, we were a developing nation, education was increasing, toilets were being created, more movies about hindu muslim unity were being made, Nawazzuddin Siddiqui was acting in Ramlilas, I could go to jaafarabad and have kebabs, and then go to Nizzamuddin dargah on thursday with my friends and see the quawwali. I could walk late at night in zakir nagar, hang out with uncles in seelampur, say aadaab to the buzurg Haaji saheb at the shop by the digs and chat all day about how yeh aaj ke launde nasal kharaab kar rahe hain,and it would be alright. 

But there is a cancer in the soul of India which never went away. It isn’t just hindu chauvinism. It is also muslim chauvanism, in kashmir. It is marathi chauvinism against biharis, North Indian chauvinism towards south Indians, mainland Indians towards north eastern Indians, Sikhs against Hindus back in the Bhindrawale era punjab, and the list goes on endlessly. No matter how many inspiring speeches are made, and movies produced, and parades held, and curfews imposed, and pellets fired, and re-education camps set up, and refugees deported, if you can’t bloody see your neighbour as an equal human being worthy of the same treatment as you, then it's all hopeless. This will happen again, and it will be worse. And I don't know if I signed up for this kind of India.

 I am actually considering a PhD, just because I can not handle this right now. If the family wasn't back home, I would consider not coming back. but who am I lying to. Its home. I hate it, and i love it too. walking around Delhi at late night, with only the dogs for company; sitting at a chai shop in the evening watching the cars go by as the boy comes back with more samosas, having a cigarette on a barsati looking at the horizon in the colours that only the polluted delhi air can manufacture, the acacia trees and the scrub by saket, the narrow gallis of jangpura where the galli becomes the living room, having conspiratorial drinks at IIC, the dehelvi saliqa, the dehelvi lack of tehzeeb. Delhi gave me so much. it is just that the Delhi I knew and loved and hated metastasized into what I see in the news today. And I am torn.

Komkommertijd Announcement

Hi y’all!

I spent my summer developing a series of 24 photos of Amsterdam, called komkommertijd (I am taking my Dutch integration seriously with all the vernacular). The general plan is to create, over a year, a set of 24 photos that capture the sense of quietitute, restraint, and melancholy that I see hidden in the small pockets of dense urbanism that is Amsterdam. This is all done with my old, large format camera, shooting film, and contact printing; much in the manner of Ed Weston and the older folks I adore.

The first 6 is now done and I’m excited to share them with you! This set is 6 photos taken in the neighborhood of Indische Buurt, and for those of you familiar with my earlier work, is similar to my series about the nights in New Delhi.

I’m now making a limited run of 12 sets of these 6 photographs, all archivally processed and selenium toned by ya boi, the only conservator with the specialized training in conserving photographic materials, in the Indian subcontinent. I’m selling these to bankroll the next sets, as film and paper and chemicals are expensive when you are trying to photograph like it's 1929 in the 21st century – and despite being a graduate student in Northern Europe, I’m still on the brink of being a starving artist because of my penchant for high quality prints and old techniques.

I am proposing to sell 12 of you a set of 6 photographs, for €130, plus shipping. Here are some scans of the set to give you an idea - as I’m sure you can imagine, they are scant copies of the actual prints, which have a luminous quality and are printed on Pearl paper. The size of the paper is 5x7 inches, with the image just over 4x5 inches. I will only do reprints of this set one year later when the whole series is done. 

The photos are all, and will be all, of trees and grass and plants and the little things that we pass by and look and nod at from a distance,and hopefully I will be able to capture the moment of solace they provide to the what seems to be ever increasingly grim reality of the world we live in and the society we have generated around us. An attempt if you may, to have serenity to accept the things we cannot change, and the courage to change the things we can. 

As an addendum to this shill, I also want to reach out to thank y’all for your support and encouragement. Gawd knows, if I would have listened to my parents I would be an engineer or a lawyer right now. It’s a hard time trying to do what you feel a calling for, and it would be damn near impossible to do it if I didn’t have so many of you rooting for me. And for that, I am already rich beyond the dreams of avarice

Rahul
My email is rahulsharmajammu at Gmail dot com

On The Ruination of Ruins: How We Destroy our Future by Proxy.

Originally published in Kafila in May 2016.

Why do we, if at all we do, really care about our material cultural heritage? Is it because it reminds us of what was, and is, good and great in humanity? Or is it the case that we look at a cultural objet and recognise that it is the Ozymandias complex materialized, that even the great and the mighty fail? Or is it that we may never attain the great heights in purity, simplicity, or other qualities we idolize and project on the remnants of the times past?

Or maybe we just want the tourism dollars and euros. Be that as it may, only someone obtuse, or with exaggerated tendency towards the behavior philistine, would say that our cultural heritage, our miniature paintings, our ruins, our tombs, forts, wall paintings, temples, mosques , books, manuscripts, and other things this essay is too short to quantify, are not worth preserving. Also note here that I said we, because we might be a bunch of separate kingdoms and separate principalities earlier, but deep down, we were one people, separated by religion and language, but united (willingly or unwillingly), by the plain and simple fact that you can’t chose your neighbor.

In that situation, the monuments and paintings and what have you are powerful reminders of our many histories and the identities that spring from them.(here I might interject what might seem like a contentious statement in the current political climate, and say that we have evolved sufficient to realise that a larger “national” historical narrative still leaves space for local, personal, and regional histories that diverge from the grand narrative we learn in our schools). And we are hell bent on destroying all traces of them and imposing on ourselves a new, creative history.

In some cases, we may plain and simple demolish all traces of them and build other symbols of an imagined and politicized history on the remains, as happened in the case of Babri Masjid. In other cases, we may keep them “pure” but make them look as if they were made yesterday. And often, we might just indulge in willful anachronism, as seen in the case of the Somnath Temple, and the Akshardham Temple. As a citizen of this country, I get aggravated at this, and this piece is an argument for why everyone should get aggravated anytime the powers that be decide to molest our history to suit their own agendas. Or to put it plain and simply, you should get really pissed off that someone high up decides that ruin a piece of history up in Delhi, even if you were born, and never left the Andamans, and should harbor the same sentiments if something goes wrong with a trace of history in The Andamans, while you are in Delhi.

…

Let’s start from the beginning. The prescribed party chatter in the academic history and art world is that we were not a culture of a material history. The past was a narrative from which we could weave a million stories, but the buildings never mattered. That may or may not be true. Indology is not my cup of tea. I do know however from a cursory browse of the Archeological Survey of India’s website, that it was founded in 1871, and it has over 3600 monuments, 100,000 rare books, plates, manuscripts and original drawings. Simply put, the ASI is huge and all encompassing. It’s activities are also benignly negligent, and outdated. I don’t have to say anything, because the Comptroller and Auditor General of India says it all.

            “No mandatory requirements for inspection by Superintending Archaeologist were prescribed, Non preparation of inspection notes after site inspection, Absence of complete documentation of the works estimates, Faulty budgeting of the conservation works resulting in inclusion of extra items, Delays in completion of works and Non preparation of completion reports along with photographs after conservation.”

What would also be entertaining, if it was not so serious, was that that in the same audit report of 2013, the CAG also mentioned that in the 1538 monuments out of over the 3600 monuments under the ASI that the CAG surveyed, 81 were missing. That factoid made headlines, mostly because monuments are hard to lose unless you are have P.C. Sorcar nearby. It is not as if the ASI is doing a bang up job on the monuments it has not managed to lose. The Taj Mahal’s white marble looks more like smoker’s teeth, than the alabaster skin on Mumtaz Mahal, and the Ajanta murals are yellowed, flaking off, and in such a state of disrepair that they might be in their last decades. This is the ASI, an organization that still follows rules of Conservation set down in a manual in the 1920’s. Perhaps it is fitting that the organisation dabbling in ruins and relics is itself one.

In ASI’s defense (which is a rarely heard statement in cultural heritage circles), one can of course say that they have good intentions. Nobody would get into the field of cultural heritage if there wasn’t a deep abiding respect for culture, or at-least a modicum of it present. The question that really needs to be asked is that what are we doing wrong with our heritage? In some cases, as in the Babri Masjid, it is blatantly obvious. In other cases, the problem is a lot more subtle. To illustrate this, the textbook case is the Humayun’s tomb and the surrounding complex in Delhi. In the last decade the complex has undergone a massive restoration, alongside a community renewal project. Now the tomb of Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khana is undergoing a similar restoration.

This restoration project, done under the Aga Khan trust for Culture, with funding from Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and in partnership with the ASI started in 2007, and finished in 2013. The aim of this project was ambitious: to prove that heritage sites can become not only self sustaining, but also act as catalysts of revitalization of surrounding areas and historic districts. In keeping with the grandiose ambitions of the project, a conservation plan was also formulated that was “a major departure from a “preserve as found approach””. This project was to be “a model conservation process for the Indian context”, wherein a mixture of hi-tech methodology was to be used in addition to the traditional crafts based approach to restoration.

A semantic analysis to see how problematic the statements made in the literature published by the Aga Khan Trust about the restoration would be a tiresome process. However, one can look at the ethical questions behind the entire act of restoration, in an attempt to see where the restoration falls on the ethical continuum. In the case of Humayun’s Tomb, the question is also muddled because of the aim to use architectural restoration as a tool for social change, and urban revitalization. For the time being, in the interest of brevity, let us concentrate solely on the ethics of restoration of the tomb.

To restore, is to return to an earlier state of functionality and purpose. The important part here is the question of function, and how to bring an object to a state of optimal functionality. Thus, when you go out to get your shoe mended, you are getting it restored, because it helps you walk better. Similarly, when classic cars are restored, they are brought back to the state they were when they rolled out of the factory; i.e. when they were as fresh and efficient as they were going to be. A similar aim comes in when we look at the restoration of art and built heritage. The aim is to regain optimal functionality.

The optimal functionality of cultural objects, however, is not as easily gauged as the optimal functionality of a mass produced good, such as a car. For one, the object is usually not mass produced. In addition, there is a cultural and historical meaning that the object has gained over time. Thus to restore functionality, the aim would not only to make the object visually and aesthetically functional again, but to also become culturally and historically functional. Herein lies the problem for the restorer; how to restore in a manner that the object regains original function, while also keeping in aspects that help the object retain the cultural and historical meanings it has gained over time.

We can divide the various functions that the object, in this case, Humayun’s Tomb into three large categories -Structural, Aesthetic, and Cultural. Going through them one by one, I can hopefully expose the nuance that is necessary in the world of art restoration. The structural function of the tomb is the easiest to deal with. It is a built structure, and to retain its structural function, it has to keep on standing up. Any damage to its structural integrity has to be repaired in such a manner that it does not decrease the other functionalities. This is in many ways, the easiest task, which any competent civil engineer can undertake. That does not mean that the restoration cannot be botched here. Consider the case of the restoration of Matrera Castle in Spain, where an architecture firm decided to restore the Castle in Cadiz by what appears like a solid poured block of concrete. The castle, over a thousand years old will certainly stand for a thousand more now, but will look like a Brutalist masterpiece, rather than an example of 9^thcentury Spanish castle architecture. And herein lies the first hazard that strikes the restorer; doing something that fulfills a condition, but causes harm in another manner. The Castle is structurally stable, but the remaining two functionalities are neglected.

The next functionality we have to come to terms with is aesthetic. All objects have a certain aesthetic function that is associated with them, whether de facto or post facto. Humayun’s tomb, aesthetically is important not only because of its own appearance, already a product of a syncretic style of architecture, but also as a precursor to the Taj Mahal. Thus a restoration has to take into the consideration the aesthetic values that were in vogue when the structure was constructed. The aesthetic sensibility to be restored is not the one that is preferred today, but was of the time. In this manner, repairs done should be unobtrusive, so as to not draw attention to them, but to the aesthetic whole. This aspect of a restoration needs the input of a person who is not only proficient in civil engineering, as needed with the structural restoration, but also in art history and aesthetics. The restorer now becomes a person inhabiting the world of both art and science.

The final aspect of the functionality of the object is the hardest to put the finger down on, because it flits between many meanings, but in the interest of brevity, we can reduce it down to a simple statement “the object is a document”. In the case of Humayun’s Tomb, the document contains information that everyone interprets differently. A historian might look at the historical role of Humayun’s tomb in the various goings on in Delhi. A sociologist might look at roles it plays in the areas surrounding it and how life is affected there because of it. A folklorist might study the stories involving the tomb to gauge a greater understanding of it in time and place, and so on and so forth. The onus then falls on the restorer to maintain the maximum “legibility” of the various aspects of this document, which not only is a moment crystallised in time, but is constantly evolving.

This aspect of restoration is the most challenging, for it requires the most nuance and sensitivity to the object, and here the wheat is separated from the chaff. Your average restorer will do a competent job in the structural and aesthetic restoration, but a cultural restoration requires a astute mind with not only sensitivity but also empathy. And this aspect of restoration truly brings about the social role of an art restorer, for the restorer becomes not only a guardian of materiel culture, but also of the intangible culture that constantly evolves and gains greater meanings. Sadly, we have been let down in this very aspect by the team at Aga Khan.

When you come to Humayun’s tomb these days, the walls are white, and the paint is fresh, and the plasterwork crisp. It feels like the building was made yesterday, and the gap of centuries, and the history that filled them, just disappeared. What happened to the time when the entire complex was a refugee camp for the migrants from the partition? What about the time the British caught the last of the Mughals, Bahadur Shah Zafar, hiding in the tomb of his ancestor after the failed mutiny of 1857? What about the English style landscaped garden that surrounded the Tomb? What about the feeling of entering the tomb of the Grand Mughal, a man who ruled over large parts of the subcontinent? It is all erased under the whitewash and plaster and paint of contemporary restoration. How can we as a nation have a sense of history when we just whitewash and plaster over it?

People might rise to the defense of the restoration, by saying that it served as a valuable “catalyst for urban revival”, and was “a departure from the preserve as found approach”. This is true. When I walk down Nizzamudin Basti, I do see the difference the restoration has done to the fortunes of the area. Tourist dollars and influx of visitors has done the place well. The question I want to raise is, at what cost? In keeping the structure stable, and aesthetically pleasing, and divorcing it of all context and history, has the restoration not left us with a caricature of what was? As someone involved with cultural heritage, I often ask myself that is the collective blame not on us who are tasked with being the stewards of our heritage? Or is it on us as a people who only care about our history when it fulfills political aspirations?

It isn’t just about Humayun’s tomb. All over the country, traces of our heritage are decaying and disappearing. Sometimes, they are under the stewardship of the ASI, sometimes under private trusts. Often, they just lay forgotten by the roadside. In the case of Fatehpuri mosque in Old Delhi’s famous Chandni Chowk, and the Bada Imambara in Lucknow, both are in multiple states of decay and well-intentioned but mangled upkeep. They are not under the ASI, but are wakf property, which allows the trust carte blanche to do what they see fit. Which they do. Both are still used by the congregation for prayers. The same with many temples in my home town of Jammu, which are decaying, but still under trusts, which allows them to decay. We can say that the mosques and the temples and the churches are in use, so they can fulfill their role, and are not infested by bats and pigeons, which is the general fate of ASI properties. But that is akin to taking the typical Indian stance of “chalta hai”. What is interesting, however is that the chalta hai is only in the structural and aesthetic function. We are still ready, willing, and able to rise to arms when the temporal aspect of the structure is called into question. Babri Masjid is a chilling reminder to that. The question invariably comes back to our attitude towards history, where we it seems we are more willing to transact in symbols then tangibles. Of course, leads to gradual and imperceptible decay until we suddenly find out that we lost our materiel history somewhere down the line, and all we have left is stories. Stories proliferate in this country. Maybe there is something to the Indologist chatter of us Indians not being a materiel culture.

This problem in its own raises questions for people working in the field of heritage preservation, and the arts in general. Everything decays in the end, and the heritage preservationists are in the business of slowing, not stopping the decay. So what does the preservationist do with monuments and objects like the Humayun’s tomb, which on the exterior now appears as if it was made less than a decade ago? An argument, first promulgated by Ruskin, could be made that it should have been kept in the state it was in, and just stabilized. That would be the standard museum conservator response. On the other hand, it could also be argued that (to quote Aga Khan publications) “The Splendor” of the tomb deserved to be restored to the heights of its greatness.

Of course, this debate has been going on for a long time in the trade of heritage management, whereby the aims of preservers, conservators, and restorers are not in sync. The question is, where do these internal debates end and come out to be discussed in the open public forums?

These, and many others, are questions for the people in the heritage management business to answer. As an art lover, I can say that drastic interventions such as in the case of Humayun’s tomb, made it more palatable to tourists and the uninformed. Clean manicured parks, and running fountains and streams make the place an ideal picnic spot, and the clean monument makes it appear grand; but to people who appreciate history as a living thing, and as monuments not only as tangible traces of the past, but also reminders that even the great and good fall, the restoration was not a restoration, but the death of the monument.

No longer can one go inside the monument and feel frail and human under the main dome, because the white paint job inside makes it so well lit that it feels like an auditorium rather than an overwhelming expanse of dim light that envelops you and draws you to the cenotaph of The Grand Mughal. The tiles that abound everywhere in their mosaic perfection are garish, and look like they were purchased from a sanitary-ware supplier, not made by master craftsmen who practiced their trade from here to Samarkand and Bokhara. The restored plaster on the walls keeps on falling off in large gouts, unlike the original plaster, which remained on the walls for much over 500 years, only to fall to the chisels of the supposedly well meaning craftsmen of the restoration project. These little things add up to create a feeling of cognitive dissonance, where you see traces of the original architects work, surrounded by, and competing with an overly garish and eye-catching restoration. Hardly the experience one looks for when searching for the sublime in our past.

…

The Humayun’s tomb complex today, is like a classical marble sculpture, painted over in gaudy colours “because that is how they were when they were made”, disregarding all the time and cultural associations made in the middle. This, and other acts of historical recreation are worse than the plain and simple destruction of monuments, and theft; because the monument remains, only mangled and fooling the unknowing and leaving a caricature of what was, for the generations to come . By taking a chalta haistance at all these acts, we as a people are doing gross disservice not only to our past, but also to our present, and our future. By lack of knowledge, or willful disregard, if we let our cultural heritage be destroyed, then we are dooming our selves and the coming generations to a rootless existence, full of no culture except television, movies, and pulp novels.

It is all fine and dandy to get aggravated at ISIS destroying Palmyra, the artefacts in Mosul Museum, and other sites of history in the Middle East. But it is a higher responsibility to get even more aggravated when we let our heritage slide into a downward spiral for tourist dollars and foreign grants; and if we don’t, then that smacks of the highest grade of doublethink. Not knowing is not an excuse, for the only defense of democracy and vibrant culture is a well informed citizenry. So I urge you to visit the nearest museum, the nearest monument, and see for yourself the state of things to come. For how we treat our past is how we are going to be treated ourselves. Get angry. Write letters. Sit down in front of offices of ASI and trusts and gherao them. For only if we act, can we make a difference. And hurry, because as the fire at the National Museum of Natural History showed, the past isn’t as safe as we like to think it is.

Me these days, I rarely go Humayun’s Tomb, and then only to enjoy the char bagh with its running channels of water and fountains. I don’t go inside the tomb, even though I would like nothing better than to feel small in front of the massive double dome, and be near the cenotaph of Humayun. Being in such places puts one’s life in perspective, and I think feeling small in front of something is an important feeling. But then, I would rather commune with the creation of a medieval architect, even though it was vandalised by the British and the refugees of the Partition, and amorous couples willing to etch their initials on the walls as a sign of eternal love; than with a gussied-up building that reflects a committee’s view of what Mughal architecture felt like. I just take a metro to Munirka these days, and amble in the ruins still unmolested by overeager restorers.

Remaking the Ajayab Ghar

If you walk into the National Museum in fall and winter, you will a sight that is less reminiscent of a place that houses over 3000 years of cultural heritage, and more like a prisoner of war camp. School children squatting down in hundreds in front of the entry, in lines, arranged in class and uniform, waiting to enter the museum. In the museum, they are chivvied along by a guide; in a single line, on an abrupt tour of the museum. The disinterest of the students is evident, as they chatter among themselves in front of sculptures of Buddha and paintings from the Mughal era. A reprimand from the chaperone silences them for scarcely a minute, and they are back at it again. We can scarcely blame them, for the blame lies on the museum professionals and the educators, who can not engage them enough. Parents in India often complain about the spoon feeding of students. A visit to the museum is ample demonstration that they are not being spoon fed, they are being force fed.

Educators frequently talk about a need for holistic education for the newer generation of Indian students, to free them from the tyranny of rote learning and regurgitation of facts. An important aspect of creating well rounded students is an appreciation of culture and the arts. Sadly, we as a nation have dropped the ball completely on the matter. Departments of museum studies in universities all over the country talk about the “new museology” and investigate the role of museums in the modern society. However, the practitioners, and by extension, the institutions of cultural heritage that they run, are still trapped in the hoary days when the museum was an Ajayab Ghar, a house of curiosities.

A museum is more then that. It is a space not only for curation, but also for creation of culture. We should not forget that the British Museum was host to the leading minds of the 19th century. Marx wrote Capital almost entirely in the library of the museum. The Smithsonian is not only the haunt of the cultural elite but a publishing house of valuable texts ,music and photographs. The Louvre and the Vatican Museum are must see affairs on any tourists itinerary. This is so because the museum serves an important role for all sections of society. For the powers that be, it is a means of creating and presenting a national identity, for the academics, it is an invaluable resource of objects and information; for the children and visitors, it is their first exposure to culture, art and beauty; and for the jobless, it it a wonderful opportunity to spend time in air conditioning. Purveyors of cheap air conditioning is the most charitable thing that can be said for most museums in India.

A museum should grapple with the creation of the cultural identity. An ideal museum and its staff should not only curate, but also aim to engage and educate. And of course, because all these things are done with the implicit support of the museum and all its backers, the museum serves as not only as a repository of culture, but also as a mascot and promoter of the culture and the people it represents. If applied to the museums in India, Indian culture to an unbiased visitor of our museums will appear half baked and poorly thought out.


I have spent a good chunk of last year at the National Museum in New Delhi, and have seen a fair amount of how the museum functions. The place is a wonderful showcase of all the bad things that can happen to a cultural institution.  There are galleries at the museum that are state of the art, with lighting that accentuates the objects, and audio-video resources to provide context to the objects. Recent short term exhibitions even feature resources in Braille for the visually handicapped. And right next to them are galleries that smell of mold, with fluorescent lighting, old paint, poor seating, and decaying objects. I still remember when I brought a friend from Nepal to the museum, and showed her the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro, a touchstone of Indian cultural history. In the next vitrine was a toppled terra-cotta sculpture with what appeared to be blue-tack on the base.

This institutionalized neglect is partially due to bloated bureaucracy. The National Museum is full of government servants with guaranteed term, and no motivation to apply themselves more than mandated in their job description, if they do even that. The National Museum Institute, a part of the museum, has 4 professors for 3 departments, and administrators in the double digits. The same can be said for the many wings and departments it has. The need of the hour is energy and drive, but the red tape hampers the forward movement of the National Museum. The government that proudly puts up billboards announcing “Make In India”, doesn't really expend similar energy preserving and displaying things that have been made in India.

It would be uncharitable to say that the National Museum hasn't been taking strides into the right direction in the past two years. Recent exhibitions on art from the Deccan, and musical instruments of the Indian east, have been spectacular. A summer program for children has also been started. These were put into being under the administration of Venu Vasudevan, whose unceremonious removal, (over a year before term,) was in the news recently. 

Venu, and his dismissal is symptomatic of the malaise that strikes deep in the bureaucratic cultural complex. Generally, the directors of the museum were drawn from the Archeological Survey of India, or were art historians. The ASI is the poster child for a moribund governmental organisation that has shown no energy or inspiration since it was formed, well over a century ago. A good metric of the culture of a place is the guidelines on how work is done. The ASI is still using preservation protocols proposed by Sir John Marshall in 1923. An audit report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India says it all:

“No mandatory requirements for inspection by Superintending Archaeologist were prescribed, Non preparation of inspection notes after site inspection, Absence of complete documentation of the works estimates, Faulty budgeting of the conservation works resulting in inclusion of extra items, Delays in completion of works and Non preparation of completion reports along with photographs after conservation.”

With such an entrenched culture of institutional lassitude and incompetence, it is fitting that the ASI offices are right next to the National Museum.

Venu was different, because he was not of the ASI, and nor was he an art historian, enmeshed in and co-opted by the system. He was a Secretary in the Ministry of Culture, an IAS officer from the Kerala cadre. He instated institutional oversight on all departments, and suddenly everybody had to hand in weekly reports on work done, which were not only read, but often sent back, with corrections

I remember hearing scuttlebutt that in one case, a department head was called up to the office and told that not only were there factual errors in the report, there were multiple spelling mistakes. This approach of due diligence and energy turned the museum around in the space of a year, and made Venu the darling of the press and the culturally inclined. It also made for a lot of internal resentment against an outsider who was coming in and making waves.

At the same time as Venu was being feted by the press because of the successful shows at the museum, he was also being invited to foreign symposiums, talking about public engagement processes like Yuva Sathi, a volunteer guide program, and the National Museum Institute, an institute of cultural and museum studies inside the museum. Yuva Sathi has been a widely celebrated program, drawing in volunteers ranging from college students, to retirees, and training them to be guides for the general public. Engaging the general public rejuvenated the museum and the increased visitor numbers were proof of the success of the program.

The National Museum Institute was, on the other hand, not such a glowing success. In principle, getting students of museum studies to engage with the museum during their studies and serve as sources of critique from within is a step in the right direction. Founded in the late 80's, it produced most of the practicing conservators in India, and a large amount of museologists and art historians. However in 2010, the NMI was in the list of 44 universities that were recommended for de-recognition by the HRD ministry. The Ministry in its report said that the universities were offering courses “fragmented with concocted nomenclatures” and taking on more students then their actual intake capacity. They "neither on past performance nor on their promise for the future have the attributes to retain their status as deemed to be universities". Even now, the three departments have only 4 professors teaching over 60 students and supervising additional PhD scholars.

Venu, of course, was the vice chancellor of the NMI, so it can be assumed that most of his energies were occupied in the matters of reigning in the rampant inactivity of the museum, otherwise in his characteristic fashion he would have turned the NMI around too. I am in no position to state whether his transfer to the sports ministry was politically motivated. I have talked to many people with opinions on both sides, but what I can say is this. The amount of control the present government is exerting on institutions is telling. The situation at FTII are enough proof that there is a deliberate agenda to mold cultural institutions to the party line. It is likely that Venu also fell victim to this Modification of Indian culture.

Much can be said for the propagation of a monolithic cultural ideology, and how it affects the real culture of a country. I still remember getting copies of Wendy Doniger's book on my email after it was banned in India, and reading about the protests against it. In taking to a hardline and foisting a saffronised version of our past on us, the government is doing our country a gross disservice. So how
does Venu fall in this scenario?

I have a pet theory. I firmly believe that institutions of culture, like museums, archives, theaters, concert halls and art galleries serve not only as places to transmit culture, but also to show people a different reality then what they are exposed to. Going to a museum or a gallery, you are faced with an object that forces you to engage and think critically about what the object entails and what created it. This also on occasion makes the viewer question the dominant narrative.

How do you stop that from happening? You could conduct Fahrenheit 451 style book burnings, or you could just make it so that that reading books is not an enjoyable experience. I feel that what Venu's work was doing was making the National Museum an engaging place where culture, and possibly dissent, could be had in the company of like minded people. Removing Venu made it so that the museum would drop back to the doldrums and stop being a place that could question the monolithic history and culture that is being foisted upon us. A wise man once said that an age is called dark not because the light stops falling, but because people refuse to see it. Maybe the powers that be are taking this to the heart.

Regardless of why Venu was transferred, the question here is can we learn from the things that he did in his tenure that did good for the National Museum. Having defunct galleries and being a glorified warehouse of antiquities was what the National Museum was known for, and in a short while this troubled institution was taking steps towards recovery. This was abruptly curtailed, and the future looks bleak.


I might have written a lot about the National Museum and Venu Vasudevan here, but this piece is not about them as much as it is about the museum movement in general in India. You can easily replace National Museum with the Salar Jung, the Indian Museum, the NGMA, or of your own city museum, and see the same problems, and come to similar conclusions. Mediocrity and bureaucratic inactivity are destroying the very concept of a museum as a place of cultural and civic engagement, and rendering them into mausoleums of cultural heritage.

I still remember to this day my trip to the Guwahati Museum. The building looked vaguely colonial and showed its age, and there was a ill maintained garden in the front. As I was passing through the musty galleries, an old Harappan pot caught my eye. When I was right next to the mirror looking down on the pot, I saw spirals on the inside. These spirals, called throwing marks, are the impressions of the potter's fingers formed on the insides of the pot as it is made on the wheel. I was suddenly struck with the thought that around 3000 years ago, there was a person, holding and manipulating a hunk of clay to make a pot. The pot probably shattered somewhere along the line, and by the time a conservator joined the pot to put it on display, all traces of this person; home, family,possessions, memories; all were lost. All that was left were imprints on a clay pot.

People often think of museums as places that serve as memento mori, full of remains of the past and of things of greatness that passed. I remember talking to a fellow of an advanced age who refused to enter the National Museum on the grounds that the place reminded him of his own mortality. A large part of going to the museum for me is not only going into an envelop of beauty and greatness that our collective humanity can achieve, but also coming to terms with the fact that even the great and the good can fall, and be remembered by nothing but scraps and remnants.Shelly's Ozymandias comes to mind.

“And on the pedestal these words appear:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Of course, museums all over India are not only full of things dead and decaying, but they are in a state of advanced decay themselves, and if we and the powers that be don't take action, with swiftness, energy and zeal, we might come to days when we ourselves may see our museums and places of cultural activity, and despair.

It is fitting that the National Museum is on a crossroads, between the Janpath, and the Rajpath in New Delhi. A place where the paths of the people and the government meet. Its blame for its state lies not only on the government, but also on the people. We all have let our cultural institutions down by being complacent about them and how they are run. And by letting them down, we have let But again, the crossroad metaphor comes in. We as a people are on this crossroads. It is on us to engage with our cultural history and the institutions that curate and mediate it. We can make a conscious choice to go the museum, to the archive, to the art gallery, and truly engage with it. And if we see something that is not up to the standards that the place deserves, we do something about it.

Complain to the curator, and the director of the place. Even the red tape ridden babus can not ignore irate museum goers picketing their offices, writing letters to the editors and sending in complaints to their bosses by the dozen.