The Illusion Of Eternity

India, the land of contradictory ­existence, displays an ­ingrained philosophy of ­detachment balanced with the quest to gain eternity. The latter impulse seems to have taken hold of the present ­government, goading it to remain steadfast on its decision to create its own Ozymandian ­architectural legacy—the Central Vista project in New Delhi. Coming up at a cost of Rs 20,000 crore ($2.8 billion), the ongoing initiative has been categorised as an essential service even amid mammoth pandemic misgovernance that has resulted in innumerable deaths, economic ­rupture and much more.

The remaking of New Delhi’s Central Vista has appalled the hapless citizenry, because it breaks a kind of democratic compact between citizen and government, where they jointly own the historical commons. Timothy Hyde, architectural historian at MIT, has written of this mutuality: “Every building is ultimately a compromise…between the intentions of architects, the capacities of builders, ­economics, politics, the people who use the building, the people who paid for the building. It’s a compromise of many, many inputs.” That lies like broken rubble here.

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The quest for eternity through architecture we see now goes with other kindred forms of striving that have ­cumulatively reached a hysterical point. For, strikingly, the go-ahead for the Central Vista project coincided with two other public engagements—election rallies (meant to ­sustain temporal power) and the Kumbh Mela. The latter is the most significant living cultural exp­ression of the renewal of the Indian pursuit of eternity. The ­engagement with eternity manifests in the elders’ common blessing: chiranjeevi bhava (may you live forever). The ­background here is drawn from seven ­inspirational mythological characters of eternal life, and the myth around the churning of the ocean where gods and ­demons compete to acquire the elixir of perennial life forms the central myth around the Kumbh.

The ‘Hindu’ design of the Central Vista—some commentators complain that the design isn’t ‘Hindu enough’—­­int­ends to create a sense of eternalism around the present leadership. This it seeks to accomplish by replacing the ­heritage landscape left by the British. But that landscape has accreted many more meanings since the colonial powers left. Thus, any ­erasure of that overrides, at one level, the community’s collective memory of creating and participating in a republic and a democracy. At another, it ruptures the global circuits that derive a shared meaning from architecture—New Delhi’s inherent advantage in int­ernational ­heritage diplomacy being just one component of that.

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The Central Public Works Department, the government construction agency in charge, has not specified which buildings on the 3 km stretch will be retrofitted or which ones pulled down. In 2020, A.G.K. Menon, convener of the Delhi chapter of INTACH, had responded to a statement iss­ued by Union housing and urban affairs minister Hardeep Singh Puri on the need to do away with the “colonial ethos”, pointing out that setting a precedence by dem­olishing colonial heritage would only lead to demarcating any other kind of architecture in the name of ‘foreignness’.

The politics of architectural symbolism is continuously echoed in historical processes. Politicised architecture all­ows a political regime to present a lens with which people can perceive a national or community identity, as seen in the Mayawati parks. Capital cities, specifically, are intersections between power and architecture and feed the vis­ion (or ­political agenda) of ‘a’ nationhood. However, the central ­government’s hurry to ‘replace’ the identity of New Delhi takes spatial politics to another level. After all, Delhi has its history of power territories represented in historic cities. The 1985 Delhi NCR Act states that NO additional ­government buildings should be ­constructed within Delhi. The present proposal being pushed by the government cites lack of office space and ­modern facilities. The upgrading of ­heritage spaces can be done by ­following rules and bringing people into the debate around preserving, not replacing heritagescapes. The strategy must aim to ­conserve the cultural, historical and ­humanistic values that are part of the ­collective narrative of Delhi’s urban spaces and that of the people of India. In addition, there are environmental concerns: the ­ongoing project will result in the cutting of historic trees in an alr­eady gasping, ­polluted, miasmic megalopolis.

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The entire heritage zone of the Central Vista represents the space where India presents itself as a republic and as a democracy. It’s the space of the Republic Day parade, where the democratic ­republic ­reclaimed Kingsway as Rajpath, now intersecting with Janpath (people’s road), formerly Queensway. The people of India have the right to the visual quality of the heritage zone that marks their political identity as the world’s largest dem­ocracy and ­republic—and the right to assert their desire for its preservation.

Relocate, Not Replace

If working space for government is indeed tight, the ­appropriate thing would be to wait for the pandemic to ebb, not disturb everyone’s common historical context, and ­relocate instead of replacing heritage. Yes, colonial ­hangovers are common, and emerging nations in different parts of the world seek to negotiate their own identities. There are several examples of countries relocating and ­incorporating their specific design philosophies for new power centres. Citing security and national identity, even the autocratic Myanmar junta in 2005 chose to move the capital from Yangon to Naypyidaw, but did not pull down the colonial heritage. Nigeria, yet another post-colonial country, shifted its capital in 1991 from Lagos to Abuja, ­citing security, modern requirements, the need to ­accommodate additional government machinery, and to establish a more neutral nat­ional identity. Russia quoted maritime security reasons in 1918 for relocating its capital city from St Petersburg to Moscow. Similar reasons explain why Shahjahan shifted his capital from Agra to Delhi, and the British moved from Calcutta to Delhi.

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India seeks to be a global player, and given the present leadership, international diplomacy remains high on the agenda. The decision to erase heritage undercuts that very agenda. Heritage diplomacy provides a common ground for conserving the best cultural expressions by humanity. These are nodal spaces for nationalism and internationalism. Heritage diplomatic programmes unfold histories of global engagement. Delhi’s Central Vista Heritage Zone is one such space. Herbert Baker, the architect who designed the Secretariat blocks in Delhi, made them in his distinct style similar to the design of the Union Buildings in South Africa. The Mall’s design from Raisina Hill to India Gate is similar to the plan in Washington DC, from Capitol Hill to the Washington Monument. This specific similarity, in fact, becomes a kind of shared metaphor for Indo-US relations. The Smithsonian, the world’s largest museum complex, hosts 11 museums on the National Mall that celebrate the sheer variety of the heritage of knowledge and the diverse representation of Americans. The late Dr Kapila Vatsayayan—who conceived the Indira Gandhi Centre for the Arts  (IGNCA) just off Rajpath along with eminent thinkers like musicologist Premlata Sharma, Gandhian and folklorist B.N. Saraswati, diplomat Abid Hussain and Sanskritist Sampat Narayan—once said to this writer that she aspired to build an Indian Smithsonian, which could function to link Indian citizens and the international ­community with an ongoing discourse on the heritage of sciences, arts, sociology, linguistics and much more. With the Central Vista Project, it’s precisely this kind of ­universalist conception that’s wholly defeated now.

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Global Heritage City Tag

The Central Vista, Parliament and the Secretariat complex are significant components that allow Delhi to apply for World Heritage City status, which locates a city within the international heritage diplomatic discourse. The Central Vista heritage zone, along with the contrasting experience of the Mughal boulevard in Shahjahanabad (Old Delhi), tops the must-see list of most travellers. The spatial display of multiple power-public architectures provides a fascinating insight into the existent living heritage of coexistence and the idea of a diverse India in a democratic frame.

The Dutch concept of ‘Mutual Heritage’, launched in the 1990s, is yet another dimension of heritage diplomacy. It opens lines for cross-cultural dialogue by harnessing shared histories—refashioning contested pasts for a ­constructive present and future. By replacing Delhi’s Central Heritage Zone, we are allowing the argument of cultural nationalism to trivialise history and narrow India’s latitudinal space to assert global leadership in heritage ­diplomacy. The race for becoming chiranjeevi defeats our very capacity to live in the global present.

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There’s another present that we must speak to. Joy Bhattacharjya, quizzer, orator and sports producer, put it simply in a tweet: “30,000 crores required for free vaccinations for the entire country. The Central Vista project is worth 20,000 crores…” If those funds were to be actually put into saving people’s lives, the present government may well have been perceived by its citizens to be purified—bathing in the real Ganges of karma and attaining its goal of chiranjeevi status. Alas.

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The writer is a cultural technocrat, performing artist and heritage interpreter. Views are personal.