Are we ready for an I M Pei or a Corbusier to design other Chandigarhs as icons of a new India?
On a man-made island in the bay of Doha, Qatar, the world’s newest architectural wonder opened last November, in a reassuring assertion of faith in the supremacy of culture in these terribly troubled times of political hatred, frenzy, and brinkmanship. It’s the Museum of Islamic Art, acclaimed as “one of the most distinguished modern buildings in the entire West Asia,” conceived by Qatar’s ruler Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani and designed by I M Pei, the legendary Chinese-American architect considered one of the greatest of all time.
No superlatives seem enough to describe this remarkable creation, with its clean, chiselled, geometric forms that combine the best elements of high modernism and ancient Islamic architecture. It’s simple, it’s stark, yet it’s massive, intricate, and absorbing, with sections that stand out like an abstract painting and sparkle like pure gems.
But I’m not thinking of that alone. What impresses me the most is the fact that this tiny Middle Eastern — or should we say West Asian — nation, rising above nationalism, has chosen to become a cultural bridge between the region and the rest of the world and has selected a great world architect to lay the ground for it. Pei’s Museum of Islamic Art is one of 17 new museums that Qatar plans to build in the next few years, along with new university establishments, to transform itself into a centre of global educational excellence. From now on, the world will look at Qatar in a different light.
And I want to ask: Why can’t we have an I M Pei in India? A Frank Gehry? A Zaha Hadid? Or works by other remarkable architects of our time who are seeking, through their art, to make the world a more beautiful place to live in and leave humanity a new heritage of culture that transcends borders and supersedes nations? Don’t we want to belong in that special world and be part of that heritage?
There was a time when India wasn’t India’s alone but the world’s as well, in mind and spirit. That India had vision. That India had the courage to invite the celebrated Swiss-French architect, Le Corbusier, to design a whole new city as a symbol of hope for a deeply wounded nation. Chandigarh became India’s global face and Le Corbusier went on to do a couple of other projects in Ahmedabad.
But somewhere along the way we lost that vision. It flickered briefly in the early 1970s, when Louis I Kahn, one of the most influential architects of the mid-20th century, was asked to design the Indian Institute of Management campus in Ahmedabad. But, by and large, after Chandigarh, we shut our doors and closed our windows to keep the world out of our affairs. We thought looking up to the world was an admission of inferiority. Nationalism became a matter of pride, do-it-alone became the guiding mantra, and the great Indian landscape came to be littered with all the ugliness that our public works departments could collectively, and with vengeance, produce.
The edifices that still evoke our admiration are the ones that the Moghuls and the British built, and visionary rulers before them. Other than those, we’ve little to show that has class, character, and beauty. We remain prisoners of our own pride and prejudices. Of course, there are some magnificent exceptions, like the creations of Charles Correa, Balkrishna Doshi, and Satish Gujral, but that’s what they are — exceptions. Leave them out, and post-independence India is nothing but a vast architectural wasteland. Even Auroville, that remarkable universal township near Pondicherry, hasn’t had any lasting influence.
Can we get our vision back? It’s not going to be easy, but there are recent indications that, at long last, we may have begun to move in the right direction. Economic liberalisation has set off, among other things, a real estate boom on a scale that was never seen before, and it has become fashionable among many private developers to use foreign designers as a marketing tool. Sniffing opportunity, several foreign architectural firms themselves have set up a local presence.
It’s true that, in most cases, the foreigners are still only selling concepts without being fully involved, leaving it to the locals to flesh out their basic designs. But that’s not bad at all. At least it helps break our mental barriers and raises a hope that we may yet have an architectural future. The new-look commercial complexes, office blocks, and residential enclaves that we see coming up in increasing numbers should be able to train us as a nation to appreciate the value of good architecture and beautiful living. Maybe, who knows, one day even we would be ready to welcome an I M Pei in our midst, or even get other Corbusiers to design other Chandigarhs as icons of our new economic future.
