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.
 ➔ 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 (British)
Bombay (British)
Calcutta (British)
Panaji (Portuguese)
Masulipatnam (Dutch)
Pondicherry (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.

Censuses: can historians rely on census reports

➔ 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
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 Ports, forts and centres for services

2 A new urban milieu

3 The first hill stations

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)

The founding and settling of hill stations was initially connected with
the needs of the British army

➔ 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.
 ➔ 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

Segregation, Town Planning and Architecture

Madras, Calcutta and Bombay

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.
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 is used for

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 Calcutta and

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)
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) Construction of geometrical structures fronted with lofty

pillars

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 The British imagined that a style that embodied the grandeur

of imperial Rome could now be made to express the glory of
imperial India.

2 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.