Why buildings build men

Al Fresco

He spoke it while surveying the bomb-scarred ruins of London and implicit in the epigram is the hope that the damages of war would spur a new generation of Britons to rebuild a better nation "" hence "buildings build the men".

Of course his countrymen responded to the situation with a perversity only an electorate is capable of "" by promptly voting out the Conservatives, in one of the most humiliating defeats of Churchill's career, and electing a Labour government.

Still, the phrase is worth excavating in the current Indian context, when many of the most central issues and debates turn on buildings "" from the ongoing ideological battle over the Ram Temple at Ayodhya, the appalling face-off between the BJP and BSP on desecrating the environs of the Taj Mahal to the recently proposed urban planning laws for the national capital, matters have reached a point that when well-informed readers come upon the fatal words 'Draft Plan' in a newspaper they understand it to mean 'Graft Plan'. The average politician's notion of nation-building has come to mean selling the nation to the builders.

What Churchill was also alluding to in his phrase was a deeply-imbued respect for the past that he shared with his audience "" "buildings build the men" implies that men and buildings create institutions together.

Difficult to imagine British democracy without Westminster or its sovereign with towers and palaces. Without old buildings there would be no past just as an obliterated past suggests a doomed future.

Yet in modern India precisely such notions are prevalent "" not just neglect of the built heritage but an ignorance of history that borders on contempt.

If the BJP can embark upon one of the most protracted and divisive digs in archaeological history to gain power, why can't Mayawati appropriate the precincts of the Taj to build shopping malls ? Despite the current BJP-BSP spat over the Taj controversy, they both come shod in the same pair of dirty shoes.

In such a context "" and given the shoddy unimaginative history texts they study in schoolrooms "" it is neither a surprise nor a coincidence that so many young Indians believe that Indian history begins in a shopping mall.

And perhaps, as the pop singer Randy Newman once suggested in a lyric, we shall end up looking like just another American town.

But there is always an interesting twist to any tale in history. The odd man out in the ongoing war of ideology and wits over buildings is Minister for Tourism & Culture Jagmohan. Caught between a rock and a hard place, here is a man who has nevertheless stood by his convictions.

He has taken on not just the mighty builders' mafia of the capital but specifically those in league with his BJP colleagues. Jagmohan has suffered for his pains.

Two years ago he was divested of the urban planning portfolio precisely because he objected to an illegally constructed temple in the heart of the capital (causing a furore among local BJP over lords).

As tourism minister he has tirelessly crusaded to protect, preserve and restore "" evicting the defence establishment and clearing the Red Fort of encroachments, putting life back into the Archaeological Survey and, most important, blowing the whistle on Mayawati's plans for the Taj Shopping Plaza. It was his lightning visit to Agra and the media outcry that spurred Supreme Court into action.

Yet even he must seem brow-beaten by the proposals, recently unveiled, of a new master plan for Delhi. As the author of more than one master plan for the national capital since the 1960s many of the new suggestions will undo what administrator-turned-politician Jagmohan planned for the national capital.

They will allow highrises almost anywhere, restrain the removal of thousands of factories in congested parts of the city, legitimise hundreds of slum clusters and cut into green spaces "" in short, a dream come true for the rapacious nexus of slumlord-politician-builders' mafia in election year.

The proposals have met with loud cries of condemnation from town planners, architects, civic engineers and impartial administrators. But key figures in the battle, such as Jagmohan or Chief Minister Sheila Dixit, are silent.

Not so mysteriously, after all. They stand to lose their votebanks. And so it is that even wise men and women are unmade by buildings.