Patrons and philistines : arts and the state in British India, 1773-1947 9780195636932, 0195636937

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Patrons and Philistines Arts and the State in British India, 1773-1947

PU SH PA SU N D A R

DELHI

O X FO RD BOMBAY

U N IV E R S IT Y PR E SS CALCUTTA

MADRAS

1995

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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford 0x2 6DP Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bombay Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associates in Berlin Ibadan

© Oxford University Press 1995

ISBN 0 19 563693 7

Typeset try Guru Typograph Technology, New Delhi 110045 printed at Pauls Press, New Delhi 110020 and published by N eil O ’Brien, Oxford University Press YMCA Library Building Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110001

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, srt

it For my daughters A parna and N a n d i n i

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Preface

It was as an observer of the contemporary cultural scene that I was drawn to embark on this work. As Programme Officer for Culture in the New Delhi Office of the Ford Foundation I had the opportunity and the privilege of watching the ongoing efforts in different cultural arenas— philosophy, theatre, literature, dance, folk lore— to preserve and recover classical learning and diverse artistic traditions. The objective was not preservation for its own sake, though that too had a place, but to use the distilled essence to recreate something new and vibrant, at once uniquely Indian and in keeping with modern global trends. Simultaneously I noticed the strange lack o f cultural confidence evident in the need for Western recognition to validate the worth of any work. I saw too the enormous need for funds and the scramble for patronage, with the many seeking the too few sources of funds. This led, inevitably, to an interest in policy issues and to finding out why we were the way we were and how we got there. At this juncture came a longish sojourn in London, without formal job prospects, and without access to documents and information on contempo­ rary cultural policy, but with all the archival wealth of the India Office Library and Records within my reach. Once I had overcome my awe of the latter I decided to abandon my inquiry into the contemporary present in favour of a journey back in time. Though the road since then has been long and hard and a tougher challenge than I had dreamed, there has also been the excitement of discovery on finding the missing pieces of the jigsaw one had set out to reconstruct, and the satisfaction derived from overcoming fear of new (for me) technology like computers and microfiches. I have been helped on this journey by many, but for whom I would have^stumbled or lost my way. My thanks go first of all to D r Kapila Vatsyayan who inspired me to under­ take this voyage of discovery. Thanks are also due to Prof. Ravindra Kumar, D r Sudhir Chandra, Dr Pat Bahree, Ashok Vajpayee and Dr Gita Kapur, all o f whom spared time from a busy schedule to read through and offer com­ ments on the manuscript at various stages.

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Preface

I am grateful too to the many, too numerous to name, who helped me tame a recalcitrant computer at times when my only wish was to smash it for its wilful disobedience; to the staff of the India Office Library and Records, London, for their assistance in procuring documents; and to the others, including my husband, who helped me in different ways to make this book a reality. Above all, my thanks go to my daughters, Aparna and Nandini, for their faith in me and their never failing support and encouragement. P. S.

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Contents

1 Introduction

1

2 Setting the Stage

15

3

Renaissance and Regulation

37

4

Priests in the Tem ple o f D uty

69

5

Repositories o f Knowledge

101

6 N ot So Fine A rt Policy 7

111

Art and Swadeshi

144

8 ‘O u r W ork is Righteous and It Shall Endure’

174

O f Sedition and Stratagem

201

10

New Patrons for O ld

219

11

‘W here is Your Dance?’

236

9

12 In Retrospect

237

Select Bibliography

271

Index

285

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There is a special heritage for the people of India— not an exclusive one, for none is exclusive and all are common to the race of man— one more especially applicable to us, something that is in our flesh and blood and bones, that has gone to make us what we are and what we are likely to be. . . . It is the thought of this particular heritage and its application to the present that has long filled my mind and it is about this that I should like to write. . .. Jawaharlal Nehru, Introduction to The Discovery o f India

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The arts shape and determine the eventual form of the culture of a nation or society and constitute a prime arena for the creation, expression and trans­ mission of a society's values, symbols and myths. Therefore most rulers since historical times have accepted some responsibility for nurturing the arts of their society. In pre-modern times the concern of rulers was generally limited to patron­ izing individual artists, who were provided at the least with a living, and rewarded lavishly for excellence. To the extent the rulers were collectors of art and antiquities, they contributed to preservation of cultural heritage. But in any case the concern was non-formal and ad hoc. W ith industrialization and the beginning of modern governments in the West, it came to be believed that along with providing education and other welfare services the state should equally be responsible for supporting artistic creation and making it widely accessible. W hat constituted the state’s responsibility and how it should be discharged became a matter for debate over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a result of the evolution of ideas over time modern state intervention has come to cover a wide range of functions: conserving the artistic heritage of the country; promotion and patronage of the contemporary arts; provid­ ing training for the transmission of artistic skills and of facilities for the crea­ tion and enjoyment of the arts by all regions and classes; and regulation of the arts to protect the rights of both the artist and society. Moreover, though not all governments have articulated national arts policies, several have set up special organizations such as a ministry or government department to minister to cultural development.1 The range and mode of intervention varies from country to country depending on the country’s history, state of development, and political ideology. There are three broad approaches. The socialist approach stresses that culture is a basic element of social cohesion and therefore must be orga­ nized like any other activity. Therefore, typically, there exists a tight network

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of state-directed cultural institutions to sponsor, inspire and preserve the arts. Private enterprise has no role.2 In liberal Western societies, on the other hand, only a partial intervention by the state is considered necessary and the market exercises considerable influence, especially in the contemporary arts.3 The approach of developing and newly-cmcrgent nations like India lies somewhere in between: a greater need for state intervention is felt than in Western societies because of the need to forge a national cultural identity and to ensure modernization and development without loss of cultural unique­ ness; at the same time the extent of; control exercised in socialist countries is considered undesirable and unnecessary.4 India's rulers have always accepted some patronage of the arts as part of their duty, but at no time has the commitment been so extensive as at present. This is perhaps surprising, given the competing claims on limited state resources for the urgent task of development. The foundations of this state commitment were laid during British colonial rule since when the concept of state responsibility has evolved slowly. No coherent arts policy, nor even a consistent policy for any individual art form, emerged during British times. Yet by the time the British flag was lowered in 1947, the state had accepted some responsibility for some of the arts and had allocated resources and creat­ ed structures for the discharge of that responsibility. The purpose of this book is to present a panoramic view of the evolution of this commitment from its origin in British times up to the attainment of Independence, exploring in the process the origins of contemporary cultural attitudes, practices, and institutions. It aims to show how government and public attitudes towards the arts changed over the years and analyses the factors responsible for this change. Some aspects of this development have been extensively examined in other monographs; others not at all. This study seeks to fit existing and new material into a broad historical framework to show the major landmarks in, and influences on, the intervention of the state in the arts. The story begins in 1773, when the modern Indian state may be said to have come into existence with the passing of the Regulating Act; it ends in 1947, when power was handed over by the colonial state to a democratically elected government. British rule provides a sharp dividing line in Indian history. It marks a break which revolutionized all aspects of India's life, her arts no less than others. By the end of British rule the very idea o f ‘art' and ‘artist’ had under­ gone a radical redefinition; some traditional arts or art forms had disappeared and new ones made their appearance; yet others were transformed by new

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techniques, and a fusion o f the old and new. The economic basis of artistic activity also changed as did the systems of patronage, the transmission of the arts, their regulation, the technology employed, the performance context, the artist-client relationship, and the criteria for evaluating the arts. W hat role did the state play in bringing about this cultural transforma­ tion? Did it attempt to preserve the traditional culture and arrest its decay? W hat did it do to promote a new cultural tradition? W hat and who in­ fluenced and shaped state attitudes and actions? W hat were the choices made between preserving past artistic achievements or promoting the living arts, between the classical and the folk, or indeed between one art form and another? How were such choices implemented? W hat was the effect on the Indian arts, and what legacy did the British Government in India leave for its successor? This book is an attempt to answer these questions. W hat is being attempted is not ‘art history’ as understood today, but a history of policy. The emphasis therefore is on the socio-economic organi­ zation of artistic activity and the action of the state, rather than on issues of dating, style, ‘influences’, or interpretations, except where these have policy implications. In policy studies, the field of arts policy has been sadly neglected, with D r Kapila Vatsyayan providing a rare exception.5 The present work looks back in time from her starting point at Independence, because surprisingly little has been written on why a conquering government felt compelled to involve itself in the arts of a subject nation, how its thinking developed, and how that was expressed in action. While the literature on various aspects of the British Raj is large and growing, cultural history has generally lagged behind political and economic history. W ithin cultural history itself there is much unevenness. While the historiography of the visual arts is burgeoning, much less has been attempted for the other arts, especially the performing arts, and certainly there has been no connected wiew of the impact of state action on the arts as defining a cul­ tural arena. It is to these gaps in literature that this monograph is addressed. There are two broad emphases: at the first and most primary level, the evolution of the concept of state responsibility, and second, as a sub-text, the role of the state in the context of cultural interaction between two politically unequal societies, an imperial power and its colony. Three main reasons have prompted me to trace the development of an arts policy through British rule. First, it enables us to understand independent India’s arts policies which are either a continuation of, or a reaction and res­ ponse to, what went before and which cannot be fully comprehended with­ out an understanding of earlier developments. As Joseph Schumpeter has

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argued, the ideas of any one generation spring less from the circumstances of its present than from its assessment of the past. The past holds a greater empire over men’s minds than many men ever know, discover or admit.6 Second, greatly enhanced state activity has brought to our attention a number of issues in connection with public patronage of the arts such as how to retain the creativity and freedom of the artist while giving him the social status and economic security he needs; and how to achieve a balance between supporting the tried and established, and the new, innovative and experi­ mental work of unknown persons. The state may, through official patronage, encourage an efflorescence of the arts or else it may actually foster mediocrity and a decline of brilliance. It is also possible that the encouragement of mediocrity in officially supported art provokes avant garde creativity outside the official pale, as a reaction to official culture.7There is also a danger that majority decision-making in a democracy may lead to populist or revivalist decisions, and to denial of patronage to both traditional classical work or to avant garde and experimental work. O n the other hand, with either £lite or sectarian control of government, only a monolithic, classical, scholastic, or sectarian culture may be nurtured to the neglect of popular or minority aspirations and needs. Because artistic selection is highly subjective and can lead to charges of favouritism and nepotism, it has been argued that the market, not the state, should be the arbiter and that the state should limit its role to creating favourable conditions in which painters, sculptors, and writers can make themselves known and in which the work of art may be enhanced. Others point out that if patronage is entirely in private hands it may lead to a surfeit of support in some directions, and underdevelopment in others, for example too many museums or cinemas in a city and no theatres or dance companies. Also if the market is left as the only arbiter of taste and support, then new experimental work may never get the opportunity to create new perceptions or values, though ultimately the art must be such as to be understood and appreciated by the public if it is to receive its long-term support. Public patronage can also hold a potential for censorship— by the back door— of the unorthodox, heterodox, and nonconformist, though whether it is detrimen­ tal to artistic freedom depends on whether artists feel obliged to do as the state says. Thus the selection of what and whom to fund, how to fund, and where (in geographical terms), becomes very important in state patronage and the critical variable is who does the selection.8 It raises the further questions of whether the state can be the arbiter of taste or lead and direct cultural change; whether it is competent to do so; and how it can be ensured that artistic deci­ sions are made by artistically competent people.

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A historical perspective allows us to see how such issues have been perceived and tackled at other times and in other circumstances, as well as the nature of the confrontation between state and society in resolving some of the tensions inherent in state intervention. The debates on language and education, censorship of film and theatre, architectural styles, patronage, export of antiquities, funding arts institutions versus cultural extravaganzas abroad, which took place during the Raj are as relevant today as when they first occurred. And in this age of religious fundamentalism it is worth remembering again Lord Curzon’s famous words, ‘Art and beauty, and the reverence that is owing to all that has evoked human genius or has inspired human faith, are independent of creeds*. Finally, because India was a colonial state during the period, the study serves to highlight the close nexus between politics and cultural action, espe­ cially the fact that the state uses the arts for its own ends. The very definition of what constitutes art is a political decision, different centuries, different countries, and different levels of society defining it differently. By defining art in a particular way, and by supporting or withholding support to art and artists according to accepted definitions, society shapes the nature, quantum and direction of artistic activity. W hat decision is taken, and whether and how it receives general approbation, depends on the ordering of the power relationships or the power structure in a society at a particular point of time. W hat elements of a culture are selected for value and emphasis at any point of time also depends greatly on the nature of the authority, whether political, ecclesiastical or societal, to which society has delegated the power to make decisions on its behalf. The very nature of this authority will determine the kind of decisions made. For instance the decisions in a theocratic state will differ from those in a secular state, and those of a democratic government from those of a communist state. Furthermore, whether to support or control cultural action is a political decision as is the relative emphasis to be placed on past as against contemporary creativity, classical as against popular or folk culture, and on different art categories, such as visual or performing arts. Satisfying chosen wants or needs with in­ evitably limited resources involves the ordering of priorities, an even more political act. In short, the political dimension is very important even in a supposedly non-political arena such as culture, and boils down basically to who makes the decisions in a society at any given time about what is art, what the cultural priorities will be, what to fund, how, when and where.9 Discussion of state intervention in the arts is often couched in terms of support to the arts, as if government policies were entirely for the benefit of the arts—their needs and their development. In fact the state’s interest in the

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arts is primarily political, connected as it is with its visions of the kind of polity and society it envisages as the ideal, and with enabling it to perpetuate itself and its values, though this often remains concealed in a hidden agenda.10 The state supports the arts for several reasons: for the display of pomp and power on public occasions; to emphasize national greatness vis-h-vis other nations for purposes of cultural diplomacy; for commercial advantage through increased trade and tourism; or for reasons of propaganda. O f course the arts are also supported more purely in the interest of the arts, as in the case of traditional art forms for which there is little public demand and which could become defunct. But here again there is a political judgement that the survival of the art is essential to uphold the values or image that a government wishes to project.11 There are two principal ways in which the state directs the arts to its own purposes and stated goals. One is through patronage and the other is through direct control, i.e. through the use of both the carrot and the stick. Thus arts policies can be both positive and negative. By selectively rewarding achieve­ ments in accordance with its interests, tastes and political goals, through distribution of preferences, status and subsidies, and through the activities it promotes, the state shapes cultural development to its vision of society. Sometimes a goal is achieved through negative policies: licensing laws for theatres, cinemas, fairs and so on, taxation, state education and training systems which emphasize the favoured to the neglect of those in disfavour, censorship direct and indirect, and state subsidies which can equally be used to control what is produced and by whom.12 Government subsidies rarely support for long those activities which are seen as too avant garde, or which threaten the establishment, in any way.13 State control is exercised to protect the artist (via patents and copyright laws) from malpractices by other individuals, and also to protect society from the artist who can disturb the peace, or subvert morals, or offend social sensibilities. A third reason for controlling the arts lies in their potential for destabilizing the established order and the ruling authority, but that is seldom spelled out. If cultural activity and cultural change are influenced by politics in an autonomous society, the influence is even greater when two cultures come into contact in the colonial context of unequal power relationships. The crucial variable in any arts policy is who makes the decision about what is art, and how it is to be treated. In the case of contact between equal and politically free societies, decisions about what cultural elements are exchanged and diffused depends on individual members and their needs and interests. But when the cultural interaction operates in a colonial context it creates

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a dichotomy between those for whom the artistic activity is a primary concern and those for whom it is o f interest only in the context of govern­ ance, i.e., between the indigenous creators and consumers of art and the rulers who make decisions about it. W hat elements of the indigenous culture are encouraged, preserved, or destroyed, and what elements of the alien cul­ ture are adopted and how, depend not on the decisions of the subject people, but on an authority outside the culture who decides what is best for the people of that culture. In the case of India, it was not mere contact with the West through trade or evangelization but the political fact of British conquest which profoundly affected the arts. Cultural interaction was occasioned and shaped by the imposition of the power of one state over another, even though that power was initially exercised by a trading company. The British came to India to trade and stayed to rule. O f British rule it has been well said that There was scarcely any principle act or measure o f importance, enunciated, or designed with reference to the Indian people, which was not liable to scrutiny from the political point o f view.14

This was as true of arts policies as any other. While the motivation for private and individual British interest in the arts was often intellectual curiosity, state intervention was guided less by ‘interest’ or ‘concern’ than political and administrative need. Arts policies were the handmaiden of an imperial policy whose two main goals were maintenance of power and com­ mercial profit. Patronage and promotion were often the incidental by-pro­ duct of the pursuit of other objectives while control and regulation were directly due to political need. The newly emergent state was faced by the challenge of governing very different and relatively unknown people. How to govern India was a difficult question, all the more so because political power was being exercised by a commercial company which had, as yet, no experience in governance. Only one thing was clear to the end: all actions must subserve the stability of British rule. For the rest India policy evolved to meet contingencies on the ground, modified by ideas, opinions and vested interests in England. India policy, in every field, was shaped and influenced at two levels, in England and India, and was the result of a complex process of interaction between several levels of decision making in two sets of governments— the Government of India and the British Government which oversaw it. Thus there were always extra-territorial considerations shaping policy and its implementation. It has been aptly said that ‘the British rulers of India,

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subordinate to a supreme but remote authority in London, resembled men bound to make their watches keep time in two longitudes at once.*15 State intervention in the arts has therefore to be studied in this dual context of England and India. It was shaped by manifold factors: adminis­ trative need, political and social events in England and India, prevailing theories of governance, arts policies in Britain, intellectual and cultural movements, scholarly activity and advocacy, especially of learned societies like the Asiatic Society, British attitudes towards India, and Indian attitudes towards the British, and not least, the personalities of the decision makers who were invariably British. The part played by each will become amply evi­ dent in the narrative. • When the British first came to India they perceived Indian culture as different, bui not necessarily inferior, to their own. Therefore they followed an ‘Orientalist’ or conservative cultural policy, building on the existing culture, though this too was not without its political logic. The stability of political power was judged to lie in causing least offence to the people by not interfering in honoured customs and beliefs, and in promoting what they valued in their culture. But by the early nineteenth century, the very act of political dominance and the maintenance of that domination required the assertion not only of political and military hegemony but also of cultural superiority. For dominance was sought not over a primitive culture but an ancient yet living civilization which had once reached great heights, albeit perceived to be in a state of decay at the time of the conquest. The result was a policy o f cultural imperialism, defined as the process of ‘permeation and pervasion of one culture, by the thought, habit, and purpose of another.’16 Consequently, the Orientalist policy was discarded in favour of a policy of anglicization, whose coping stone was the introduction of Western education in the English language, the goal being to assimilate the subject people into the culture of the rulers so that they ceased to regard the latter as aliens. Cultural imperialism was justified by what has come to be known as the doctrine of civilization. Its essence was to assert the superiority o f the ruler’s culture over that of the subject peoples. The civilization of the conquerors was superior or else they would not have succeeded. By the same token the inhabitants of India were backward and inferior, otherwise they would not have lost their freedom.17 Superiority implied the assumption of responsibility along with power. It was the hallmark of a civilized nation to raise less fortunate beings to its

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own level. The imperial mission, it was implied, was to introduce a superior civilization to a subject society and thereby supplant the inferior native culture. And in order to protect, educate, and equip an inferior people and inculcate in them the principles of a higher civilization, authoritarian imperial rule was necessary. Such rule, it was asserted, benefited not only the natives but the world, for it enlarged the area of civilized life.18 Cultural imperialism involved two steps: one, convincing the people of the superiority of the culture of the rulers and the inferiority of their own, and two, making the ‘natives* as like their masters as possible sc as to lower their resistance to alien rule. The arts were used and manipulated for both purposes, and arts policies became an instrument of cultural conquest to reinforce political domination. T he arts were used not only to project an imperial image through the obvious use of pageantry and the ceremonial of durbars and Government Houses, but also to make statements of power. Official architecture in particular, in its style, scale, materials and ornamentation conveyed the might and also the moral stature of empire embodied in Lord Curzon*s dictum , ‘O ur work is righteous and it shall endure.* Subsidies and patronage were offered to acquire power through knowl­ edge of the land and people, while censorship and other measures were instruments to control dissent expressed through the arts. The assimilation programme included imposition of Western aesthetic standards and associ­ ated styles and techniques, manipulation of the educational curriculum to exclude Indian classical learning and to promote English and vernacular literature; the selective promotion of certain aspects of culture which were non-threatening so as to please the people and endear the British to them; and a conscious building of the image of the British as just, fair, and tolerant. In the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the strategy of cultural conquest changed. As nationalist consciousness increased, and dangers of denationalization became apparent, the policy of assimilation was reversed in favour of indigenization, prescribed by many leading Britishers as a panacea for Indian unrest.'9 The assertion of superiority was now made in more subtle ways: through a paternalistic concern for the preservation and promotion of indigenous artistic traditions. Later, when bitterness and conflict characterized relations between England and India, the arts were used to bind the two nations together through promotion of cultural relations. Throughout, cultural imperialism was aided by scholarly and represen­ tational activity. When creators of art belong to a culture different from that

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of decision makers, the process of interpretation and advocacy assumes a particular importance in the political process than would normally be the case. As Raymond Williams,20Antonio Gramsci,21A.P. Thornton,22Edward Said23 and others have argued, the acquisition, dissemination and represen­ tation of knowledge is not politically innocent, even in non-political arenas such as literature or the other arts. The scholar is a product of his time and society and the organized political structures obtaining when the knowledge is produced. Consequently, neither interpretation nor decision-making is informed by solely artistic considerations, and political concerns acquire great weight. When the bulk of the scholarship is by a people who perceive themselves as superior to those being observed, it is their view of themselves and ofxhe observed that is propagated and reinforced. As Thornton has aptly com­ mented, the history of the splendid Greek civilization is not the view seen by a woman, by a Spartan, or by a slave. Annotated and commented upon by generations o f scholars whose pupils have been drawn from the governing class, it is the photograph taken by a similar £lite; by men who, whenever they debated the principles and practices o f government, were convinced that this style o f analysis must always remain the intellectual monopoly o f their own kind. It is they who make the judgements in whose light the world moves forward. They determine the path that those to come will take; they landscape the vistas that those to come will admire.24

When the creators of art and its interpreters belong to different cultures they share neither assumptions, nor symbolic language, nor conventions, so that the arts of one culture are evaluated by yardsticks evolved in a different milieu. There appears therefore a shadow between intention and represen­ tation, between intended effect and actual effect. In India, a great discourse, scholarly and lay, both shaped policy and in turn became an object of policy, with the state supporting all sorts of scholarly activity from archaeological studies to linguistic and anthropological work undertaken by British individuals. Indians had little part in this discourse except in a subordinate capacity and were seldom heard in policy making. Over the larger part of the period, both the critics and the advocates of government policy were British. The Indian voice was passive, and those Indians who spoke critically were not just critics but ‘disloyal’ or ‘seditious*. Policy was not based on mutual self-respect but on a paternalistic British interpretation of what the people wanted or needed. Moreover, British interpretations, repeated authoritatively for a long period of time, led to Indians looking at themselves and their culture through

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Western eyes, which was of course the desired end of the policy o f cultural imperialism, so that until a minority £lite rebelled against British cultural hegemony as well as political dependence, and began a process of reappraisal, the majority willingly acquiesced in the bondage.25 A historical study of policy through the British period reveals the process o f political manipulation of the arts for the purpose of deculturizing India and its subsequent cultural domination. This understanding is necessary to comprehend not only the contemporary Indian arts scene, but also the wave o f religious fundamentalism and ethnic unrest sweeping India and the world today. The latter is as much a reaction to deculturization or suppression of distinct cultural identities by a dom inant culture as were many national liberation struggles of the colonial era. Invariably, cultural domination is one aspect of political domination. The term ‘arts’ as used throughout the book refers to literature, painting, sculpture, decorative art, architecture, dance, music and drama, collectively termed the literary, visual and performing arts. Decorative art as applied to craft products (industrial or applied art, or handicrafts) has been included in ‘visual art* because almost until the twentieth century, government concern was with this category rather than painting or sculpture. I have used the terms applied art, decorative art, and industrial arts interchangeably. Architecture has been included and grouped with the visual arts, because great stress was laid on it during the British period as being the mother of all the other visual arts. Film and broadcasting became important cultural entities in the twenti­ eth century and commanded much state attention. Though both can be considered art forms in themselves, at least composite art forms, it has not been possible to cover the evolution of policy for both these for practical reasons. Broadcasting policy is touched upon to the extent it had an impact on music; film policy is not, though it attracted a great deal of state attention, and a study of the Legislative Assembly debates on it is interesting in itself. Practical considerations would have dictated a narrower focus on one art form or on one grouping such as visual arts, to illustrate the evolution of policy. But all the arts h^ve been included here because in the Indian artistic tradition life was viewed holistically, and all art was conceived as one and linked in interdependence. The following anecdote related in the Vishnudharmottara, the ancient text on the arts, illustrates the point well: A king once approached a sage and asked to be taught the methods of image making. The following dialogue ensued.

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King: Sage: King: Sage: King: Sage: King: Sage: King:

O Sinless One! Be good enough to teach me the methods of image making. One who does not know the laws of painting can never understand the laws of image making. Be then good enough, O Sage, to teach me the laws of painting. But it is difficult to understand the laws of painting without any knowledge of the technique of dancing. Kindly instruct me then in the art of dancing. T his is difficult to understand without a thorough knowledge of the laws of instrumental music. Pray teach me the laws o f instrumental music. But the laws of instrumental music cannot be learnt without a deep knowledge of the art of vocal music. If vocal music can be the source and end of all the arts, reveal then to me, O Sage, the laws of vocal music.26

Moreover, the arts together mark off a creative field, different from other forms of social endeavour, and only by taking a connected view of the arts is it possible to see the choices made by the state. Though Indian culture is a composite of three sub-cultures— the classi­ cal, the popular and folk, and tribal— the focus of this study is the main­ stream classical or high culture, the main concern of the British Indian government (folk and tribal culture having been only of ethnographical interest). The term ‘state’ refers to the central or imperial government o f the East India Company to 1858. From 1784 to 1853 it was the government of Fort William in Bengal Presidency which was in effect the imperial government; by the Charter Act of 1853 the Bengal government and the imperial govern­ ment were separated, though the latter continued to function from Calcutta. After 1858 the term refers to the Government of India headed by the British Crown, and working through the British Parliament. Although their patronage of the traditional arts was often far greater than that of the colonial state, the princely Indian states have been left out of the purview o f this study, because the present government is a successor to the imperial government to which the princely states owed allegiance and also because developments in the princely states often paralleled those in British India, either out of compulsion or choice. The term ‘local government’ as used in the study refers not to municipal governments as in current usage but to provincial governments during the Raj. Although the British did not have an articulated or comprehensive arts

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policy at any time, nor even a coherent policy for any art category, the term 'arts policy* is used throughout the book as shorthandfor state intervention, i.e. policy and action. The policy was implicit in the choices made, the resources committed and the structures created. Chapters 4 and 5 on conservation policy for the most part refer to action to protect the country’s visual art, especially the archaeological and monu­ mental heritage. In the term ‘conservation’ are subsumed archaeological explorations, epigraphical work, preservation of monuments and preserva­ tion of art in museums. Conservation of the textual heritage of traditional learning is dealt with in the sections on literary policy. Though there was, and is, a great deal of regional variation in the arts, and though the actions of the different provincial governments as well as the imperial government impinged on the arts of different regions in different ways, this book is concerned only with the more or less uniform policy and actions of the imperial government, and their broad effects on the arts throughout India. The provinces were given more latitude only after the political devolution of the twentieth century. The evolution of imperial policy is illustrated by developments in the provinces of Bengal and Bombay, mainly because it was not possible to cover all the regions of the country. I have relied extensively on the compilation of weekly official reports on Indian-owned newspapers, both English language and vernacular, compiled in the office o f the Inspector-General of Police from 1868 to 1942, as proxy for Indian public comment on government policies. It is my hope that though full justice may not have been done to the subject in view of its wide sweep, what the work has lost in depth will be compensated by the gain in perspective.

Notes and References 1. For a history of evolution of state responsibility and cultural policies see Studies and Documents on Cultural Policies (Unesco, 1962); Report o f the Intergovernmental Conference on Institutional Administrative and FinancialAspects ofCultural Policies (Unesco, 1970); Augustine Girard, Cultural Development: Experience and Policies (Unesco, 1972). 2. Jaccjues Rigaud, ‘The Need for a Comprehensive Cultural Policy’, in The Great Ideas Today, Encyclopaedia Britannica (London, 1977). 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Kapila Vatsyayan, Some Aspects ofCultural Policies in India (Studies and Documents on Cultural Policies) (Unesco, Paris, 1972).

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6. Schumpeter as paraphrased in A. P. Thornton, Doctrines o f Imperialism (New York, 1965), pp. 158-61. 7. As happened in France till the early twentieth century. Sec Waldemar Nielson, T h e Growth o f Public Patronage, in The Great Ideas Today, Encyclopaedia Britannicay London, 1977). 8. See Arnold Goodman, ‘State Subsidy and Artistic Freedom’ jn The Great Ideas Today, Encyclopaedia Britannica (London, 1977); John Pick, The State and the Arts (London, 1980), and The Arts in a State (Bristol, 1988). 9. See John Pick, Managing the Arts: The British Experience (London, 1986), pp. 11, 151; and The Arts in a State, p. xiv. 10. Raymond Williams, ‘State Culture and Beyond’, in Lisa Appignanesi (ed.), Culture and the State (London, 1984), pp. 3-5. 11. Raymond Williams, Reflections, Pick, Managing The Arts, pp. 154-61. Pick calls these seven types of subvention the placebo, the glory, the educational, the reward, the service, the compensatory, and the commercial models of government subvention. 12. Pick, Managing the Arts, p. 73. 13. Ibid., p. 75. 14. Boman Behram, Educational Controversies in India (Bombay, 1943), p. 235. 15. Quoted in L.S.S. O ’Malley, Modem India and the West (London, 1941/1968), p. 587. 16. A. P. Thornton, Doctrines o f Imperialism (New York, 1965), p. 187. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Most notably by Lord Zetland, the Earl o f Ronaldshay, Governor of Bengal (191622) and later Secretary of State (1935-40), in his A Study o f the Psychology o f Indian Unrest, Private papers of Lord Zetland (IOR Mss EUR D 609/59). 20. Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (London, 1961). 21. Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks: Selections, Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Smith (eds) (London, 1971). 22. Thornton, Doctrines. 23. Edward Said, Orientalism (London, 1978/1985). 24. Thornton, Doctrines, p. 15. 25. These are typical characteristics of the phenomena labelled ‘Orientalism’ by Edward Said (1985). 26. Quoted in Mulk Raj Anand, The Hindu View o f Art (London, 1933), p. 154.

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CHAPTER 2

Setting the Stage

The artistic tradition in India was already several thousand years old when the British arrived, and had continued almost unbroken through the ages, even if neither the Indians of the time, nor the conquering British were immediately aware of its exact antiquity. It was not monolithic but multi­ layered, with several influences, both indigenous and extraneous to the country, and three distinct substructures— dite, folk and tribal. Two main strands could be distinguished: the dominant tradition, a composite of the H indu, Jain and Buddhist traditions (for the sake of convenience referred to hereafter as the H indu tradition) and the Islamic tradition which came with the Muslim conquerors in the twelfth century ad. The difference in the two was more in style and philosophical underpin­ ning, than in the organization of artistic activity and the way art was re­ ceived. The H indu tradition was more hieratic, the Islamic more secular. But Muslim art was also created by H indu artists, just as H indu music was created, sung and patronized by the Muslims. Though distinct, the two streams had also co-mingled and enriched each other to produce an ‘Indian’ tradition which had at once a pan-Indian unity as well as rich regional diversity. At the time of conquest the condition of the arts was nowhere as bleak as has been painted by traditional historical accounts. As modern historians have pointed out, it only appeared so because of a lack of differentiation between different arts and different regions, and because it was wrongly assumed that times of political instability are not conducive to good art.1 There were both peaks of excellence and troughs of mediocrity in each art category and some arts in some regions were more dynamic than others. In general, there was a greater continuity of tradition in the South which faced less political upheaval, than in the North. Overall, the culture of India was still ‘the lively expression of a society that appears to be the master of its destiny’.2

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But to the conquerors Indian culture was strange and exotic, because in world-view and organization of artistic activity the Indian and the Western aesthetic traditions were very different, and because British knowledge of Indian culture was very limited. Primarily, art was a way of life and not a separate activity as in the West where it had become a product of leisure, created and enjoyed for individual self-fulfilment by the leisured class. A second major difference was that the Western tradition had, after the Renais­ sance, become secular in spirit whereas in India artistic creation was expected to serve a higher spiritual purpose, viz., to enable others to experience a higher truth. It also meant that while the Western aesthetic ideal was Greek and Roman art with its realistic representation of Nature and its stress on earthly and physical beauty, the Indian ideal was to strive after spiritual beauty. Because life was viewed holistically in India there was a stress on the inter­ relationship of the arts so that an artist could be simultaneously proficient in painting, carving or architecture, even while a particular art was practised by members of a particular caste. The literary arts were generally the preserve of the higher castes, and poets and writers had a higher social status than those who practised the visual and performing arts as a profession; they belonged largely to the middle level castes. Transmission was hereditary, caste based and non institutional and depended on an intimate, one-to-one relationship between teacher and taught. Great importance was placed on oral communication, in spite o f the availability and knowledge of writing because of a greater faith in the spoken word and the conviction that the process of writing tends to reduce the quality of learning.3 Each major art had its canonical texts, such as the Manasara and the Vishnudharmottara, for the graphic and plastic arts, which prescribed the technique and process, conventions and canons of art criticism, though within these limits each artist had a freedom of interpretation. Artistic works were not individually assigned, the artist remaining anonymous. These factors obliterated the distinction between the ‘artist’ who had an intellectual and individualistic approach to art and the ‘craftsman’ who had only manual skills and created according to directions; and between ‘fine’ and ‘decorative’ art, all art being considered one. In Britain by contrast, some arts grouped together as ‘fine arts’ were coming to be placed above others. Thus literature, dance, music, painting and sculpture, practised by ‘artists’ who needed ‘imaginative’ or ‘creative’ skills, were accorded a status higher than the ‘decorative arts’, the domain of the craftsman. In Britain the arts operated in a money economy and the

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market was beginning to replace the individual patron, so that middle class rather than aristocratic patronage was slowly becoming more important.4 The Indian artistic tradition was largely the product o f an agrarian non-cash economy, in which an tiitc culture was patronized by kings, nobles, and temples, and the popular was sustained through the voluntary efforts of the community. The patron-artist relationship was more than a simple com­ mercial relationship, the artists performing duties far beyond the artistic for their patrons, often providing companionship and counsel, and through their eulogic works enhancing the image and standing o f their patron. The patrons in turn provided not only resources and a living but also conferred honours on the artists and took pride in having artists o f stature attached to them .' Extant British knowledge of Indian culture was limited to the accounts o f travellers such as Marco Polo, Tavernier, Francois Bernier, Edward Terry, Thevenot and Careri6 and the work of a few scholars like Abraham Rogers ( Open Door to Heathendom^ 1651), Calmette (who gave the West the first manuscript of the Rigveda in 1731), and Hansleden (who compiled the first Sanskrit grammar in 1732). But often the accounts were limited, inaccurate or fanciful. And certainly, the British public had no visual idea of India, the earlier rare depictions having been in the realm of fantasy. British interest in India intensified after conquest. There was an increase in the number of Englishmen working in India as missionaries, military and civil officers, traders and planters. Safer conditions of travel also brought numbers o f travellers, artists and leisured intellectuals to the country. The eighteenth century was a period of intense intellectual enquiry and interest in Europe in the arts, antiquities and cultures of different civiliza­ tions. It was also a romantic age in which the ‘exotic’ and the ‘picturesque’ were much sought after. Consequently, from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, there were two distinct traditions at work: one undertook to record systematically all the relevant facts about Indian arts and the other was concerned with the interpretation of its nature and importance.7 Three groups of people in particular contributed to this British discovery o f India. The first comprised travellers like Lord Valentia, the Abbe Dubois, Bishop Hebcr, and Emma Roberts, and painters like Thomas Daniell and his nephew William Daniell, Zoffany, Tilly Kettle and William Hodges. They had travelled to India in search of the picturesque and the romantic and wrote about or painted what they saw. Their depictions became a powerful force in shaping contemporary British perceptions of Indian culture. The second group consisted of Company officials whose work gave them unparalleled opportunity and facilities to explore and study. The distance

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from England and the isolated nature of their living, either by choice or by circumstance, only served to strengthen their initial intellectual motivation. Collectively known as the Orientalists, some of these early scholars like Sir William Jones, and H. H. Wilson turned to a study of Indian religion, iconography, literature and languages, while others like Sir William H unter and Sir Charles Malet undertook to explore the architectural heritage because of the antiquarian interest of the times. Interestingly, many of the Orientalists were doctors or judicial men. The great philologist Sir William Jones was a judge; Wilson, William Hunter, John Gilchrist, all of whom dis­ covered and interpreted India’s literary heritage, were surgeons, as were Major Hendley and George Birdwood who did much work on Indian decorative arts at a later date. In the third group were missionaries for whom a thorough knowledge of the people, their customs, and their languages was essential for their work of proselytization. Unlike Company scholars concerned with the classical past, missionaries concentrated on contemporary languages and literatures and produced grammars, lexicons, and text books in the vernacular lan­ guages. These three groups initiated a process of interpreting and representing India which has been labelled ‘Orientalism’ by Edward Said. The East or the ‘O rient’ became the subject of one-sided observation by the people of the West within the framework of an unequal political relationship. The goal was to possess the East through knowledge. Literature was the first subject of scholarly scrutiny, followed by architec­ ture and the industrial or decorative arts. Painting did not receive scholarly attention up to the second half of the nineteenth century, and the performing arts were left out of the scholarly purview until almost the twentieth century. Yet interest did not always mean appreciation. While classical literature, secular art represented by Islamic architecture, Mughal miniature paintings, and fine craftsmanship were appreciated almost from the beginning, some difficulty was experienced in assimilating and appreciating Indian music, dance, sculpture and painting. As will become clear in the course of the narrative, British attitudes to Indian arts varied from period to period, depending on the state of knowledge of the arts, the cultural and intellectual environment, and above all social and political attitudes. In the early years the inability to assimilate Indian art was partly due to inadequate understanding of religion, philosophy, and mythology, so that the inconography which formed the base of H indu art was incomprehen­ sible. Partly also the British were interpreting the Indian arts from the viewpoint of their own culture.

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Up to 1818 however, the British, though not appreciative of ail the Indian arts, were (in keeping with the cosmopolitan ideas of the time) at least tolerant of them and interested in learning about Indian culture. Attitudes were more sympathetic than they were to be later on and lack o f appreciation stemmed more from ignorance than prejudice. Indian art was thought different but not necessarily inferior. The British therefore did not hesitate to offer patronage to the nautch as it was called, and to Indian artists and craftsmen. But for the new state patronage and promotion of the Indian arts was not very high on the agenda. The first phase of rule (1773-1813) saw political expansion and consolidation of gains and the first concern of the state was to evolve an appropriate framework for governance which would ensure political stability as well as commercial profit. Even in England state intervention was mainly indirect, providing buildings and meeting places in which the arts could be practised and enjoyed, such as plazas, town halls and assembly rooms. The state offered no patronage to the arts, except for a few ad /wr measures of support such as the partial purchase of Hans Sloan’s collection of paintings and manuscripts in 1753, the later purchase of the Elgin marbles for the British Museum, and the setting up of the National Gallery of Art. It was believed that the arts should be fostered by the people who enjoyed them.8 The colonial state in India did take some measures to patronize and promote the arts, though these were sporadic, ad hoc and experimental. But this was incidental to the need to amass knowledge as part of the agency of rule and not the result of a concern with the arts per se. Further conquest or control of trade and profit depended on more accurate information about the country. Knowledge of the people’s laws, languages, and customs was necessary because it was decided to rule by carrying forward the natural cul­ tural development of the country and its traditional culture. This was for several reasons. One, it was believed that political stability would be ensured if least offence was caused to the people by maintaining a status quo; two, Mughal practice offered a ready model for administration; three, prevailing theories of governance advocated limiting state responsibility to a minimum and only cautiously introducing changes based on Western models; and four, leading intellectuals of the day, like Edmund Burke, William Robertson and Sir William Jones, and the early Company directors and Governors-General appreciated the many achievements of Indian culture and desired that they should be preserved. They also believed it politically inexpedient to make Westernizing changes.9 Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of Bengal, a cultured man, proficient in Bengali and Urdu, was a lover of Indian culture and opted to

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work through existing Indian institutions rather than introduce alien ones. Though his successors Cornwallis and Wellesley did not care for Indian culture, they too opted for a conservative policy, the first because he believed in minimal government, and the latter because of a paternalist vision of an empire ruled by an efficient and trained civil service. Effective governance according to the conservative mode required a bureaucracy attuned to the indigenous culture. Simultaneously, intellectuals such as Samuel Johnson were urging the state to support investigations into Indian culture. In a letter of 30 March 1774 to Warren Hastings, Johnson wrote: I hope you will examine nicely the traditions and histories o f the East, that you will survey the corridors o f its ancient edifices, and trace the vestiges o f its ruined cities, and rhat, on our return, we shall know the arts and opinions o f a race o f men from whom very little has hitherto been derived.

He added, You, Sir, have no need to be told by me how much may be added by your attention and patronage to experimental knowledge and natural history. There arc arts and manufactures practised in the countries in which you preside which are yet very imperfectly known here either to artificers or philosophers.10

Scholars investigating Indian society and culture made requests to the government to support further work and to preserve the evidence of an ancient culture they had uncovered. Similarly, British artists sought state commissions to record important political events, portray prominent personali­ ties, or document Indian life and arts. The outcome was state support for an intellectual and visual discovery of India through a programme of surveys and documentation of all kinds, linguistic research, translations, and publications, in the course of which learned societies, and scholars and artists (Indian and British) received patronage direedy or indirectly. A minimal programme of education was also undertaken because it was cheaper to have educated Indians work for the Company. Though state intervention was necessarily experimental, limited and incidental to other objectives or activity, it nevertheless laid the foundation for the later emergence of a more consistent policy in three areas— literature, conservation of heritage and architecture. While literature and heritage conservation policies favoured the Indian traditions, the official architecture policy from the outset patronized the Western over the traditional, for reasons discussed in chapter 8. By the first decade of the nineteenth century several changes had taken place in both England and India. In India, increased trade and commerce, changes in the revenue and judicial systems, introduction of new crops like

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indigo, and decay of indigenous industries, had changed the economic basis o f society, leading to the breakup of village self-sufficiency, increased migra­ tion to the cities, and the emergence o f a new landed and commercial aristo­ cracy. This new 6\itc eagerly took to the new educational opportunities offered by the government and the missionaries, and the intelligentsia drawn from this class embarked on a process of absorption of Western culture, critical self-appraisal and syncretic development, which was reflected in and aided by the growth of the vernacular press. In this context though aristocratic patronage remained important, there was a change in aesthetic preference. While in music and dance the tradi­ tional was preferred, in painting it was Western style portraiture and land­ scapes and in architecture Western styles and decor. This deprived some traditional craftsmen and artists of patronage, forcing them to change or modify their ways. The increase in the number of Europeans in India and in exposure to the West also led to changes in drama, literature and painting. Only in music and dance was there little change. In short, Indians had become more receptive to Western ideas and pre-eminent thinkers like Raja Ram M ohan Roy in Bengal favoured a more active state intervention to bring the two cultures closer. For the British, on the other hand, the initial excitement had waned. The romance with India was over by the early nineteenth century. Instead there emerged disdain for, and in some cases disillusionment with, Indian culture. The growth of the European population in India made for social and cultural self-containment so that contact between the races diminished and with it the former patronage to Indian artists, craftsmen and the nautch. Instead, there was contempt for Indians and Indian culture, and a desire to radically change Indian society in conformity with Western ideals. Partly as a consequence o f the transformation of the British from supplicant merchants to supreme rulers, there grew an imperial sense of racial and cultural superiority. But the changed outlook was also due to changes in Engiand where several political, religious, and intellectual move­ ments had emerged due to the industrial revolution: the Free Trade, the Evangelical, the Liberal/Humanitarian, and the Utilitarian movements amongst others. The Evangelical movement, in particular, affected peopled attitudes towards different cultures. There was greater religious fervour and earnestness; an emphasis on duty, industriousness and moral behaviour; an intolerance of non-Christian cultures; and a sense of mission to propagate the Christian faith. Together, the movements created the climate for a series of reforms,

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political antisocial, that were introduced in England in the 1830s, along with state-supported mass education. Thanks to the Utilitarian movement the concept of ‘the useful* as well as a laissezfaire economic policy gained cur­ rency and informed state policy. These changes also influenced the ideas o f the British about their own arts, their role in society, and consequently the role o f the state. There were two contradictory views in vogue. The religious sects, such as the Bible Society, the Clapham Sect and others, believed that the social function of art was to exert a moral influence in society and lead to a more virtuous life. (It is interesting that to the same people, the Indian arts were immoral and exerted a harmful influence.) The arts were also believed to influence taste, or in broader terms, the quality of life. The crowding, the squalor, the poverty and ugliness and the growing tendency towards materialism consequent on industrialization had engendered anxieties among intellectuals, as had labour agitations, political repression and economic dislocation. Art ap­ peared as an agent of refinement through which the lower classes could be taught to share the higher values and aspirations of the ^lite. Therefore, greater state support for the arts was advocated by this group on social grounds as well as aesthetic.11 But the more puritanical saw in art and cultural pursuits immorality, frivolity, and a waste of the time that should be spent on hard work and the creation of wealth. Therefore they believed that the arts should be discour­ aged. This view coupled with prevailing theories which recommended that the state’s role be limited to administering justice, collecdng taxes, and defence, and offering limited official subsidies to preserving artistic heritage to impress and influence the living artist, held that the state had no responsibility to living art.12 The outcome was that some progress was made between 1820 and 1860 in the development of an official policy towards art. A government depart­ ment and a complex of institutions in London devoted to fine and applied art were established to spread the knowledge of elementary art and design throughout the country, and increased amounts were spent to expand and improve the facilities and collections at the National Gallery and the British Museum. Yet the W hig ministry of the day was generally niggardly with state funds for the arts. Support to art schools and museums was justified on the grounds that they improved the quality of British art and national taste and furnished models for industrial design which would improve Britain’s competitiveness in world markets, but for any other purpose private patronage was deemed more appropriate.13

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Coleridge, commenting in 1831 on this philistine attitude to the arts wrote: In this country, there is no general reverence for the fine arts; and the sordid spirit o f a money amassing philosophy would meet any proposition for the fostering o f art, in a genial and extended senses, with the commercial maxim— laissez fa ire d

Indian arts were to feel the effect of these commercial and Evangelical attitudes, particularly because many of the leading thinkers took a dim view of Indian polity, religion and arts, as the products of a static and unprogressive society. Their opinions had a great influence on the governance of India because they were also intimately connected with India in some way. For instance, Charles Grant, founder member of the Clapham Sect (Evangelicals) after having served the Company in India, was a Director and fot many years Chairman of the East India Company, and had influence in Parliament; Macaulay, an Evangelical and a Liberal, became the Law Member of the Governor-General's Council in 1834; and both James Mill and his son John Stuart Mill, leading Utilitarians, were Company officials in crucial posts. Thanks to them the warm spirit of inquiry and enthusiasm for the Indian arts gave way to a self-righteous contempt. Nowhere were the new British attitudes more noticeable than amongst the new civil servants. Unlike their predecessors they were not interested in Indian languages or culture, nor in serious scholarship. Hostile or indifferent to the arts, they were dedicated instead to uplift and reform. Consequently there were few powerful advocates for the arts. Inquiry into contemporary Indian society was left to the missionaries who were interested in it only for the sake o f conversion (though there were a few exceptions like Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta, who travelled exten­ sively over India in 1824-25, and was sympathetic to Indian society and culture).15 This emphasis on high moral purpose and duty coupled with an unshakable faith in the superiority of Christianity and Western civilization was to epitomize the era so that ‘moral and material progress' were often touted as the twin goals of India policy. It was assumed that Western civil­ ization was on the march while Indian culture was static and that the latter therefore required dynamic state intervention. The Charter Act of 1813 signalled the new interventionist policy, opening a new chapter in state responsibility. The Act enjoined the revival and encouragement of Oriental learning as well as introduction of European knowledge in order to bring progress to India.

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The ensuing Anglo-Orientalist controversy, over the best means o f carrying out the directive of the Act, culminated in the introduction o f English education in India. It was the coping stone of a new policy o f anglicization and assimilation underlying which was the political judgement that a break with the old civilization and a remoulding in the image o f England would bind Indians closer to the rulers and ensure Britain’s conti­ nued political domination. N ot surprisingly, the policy bore the impress of Lord Bentinck’s person­ ality. Though an aristocrat, Bentinck exemplified the middle-class virtues and radicalism in the politics of his time. He was openly anti-Oriental, and unmoved by Indian art. For him the Taj Mahal was of no more value than its marble. W ithout much ado, he undid the dynamism built up by the Orientalists towards syncretic growth. The introduction of English education in 1835 was a policy measure of immeasurable consequence as much for the arts as for other aspects of Indian life. By exposing them to new influences from the West and bringing about changes in patronage patterns, it affected both artistic practice and the health of the arts. It created a new English-educated middle class so alienated from its cultural roots that it offered little patronage to its own traditional arts. Though the introduction of English education was the single most important cultural act of the second phase, vernacular literature and archaeological conservation also received a measure of ad hoc support. Architectural policy continued to be strongly anglicist, and no effort was made at all to promote the contemporary visual or performing arts. If amidst the strong assimilationist current there was a force working for conserving traditional arts and culture during the pre-Revolt period, it was the learned societies which had come up in India, such as the Asiatic Societies of Bengal and Bombay, the Madras Literary Society, and the Delhi Archaeological Society, formed in 1847. These bodies, which consisted of mostly English scholars, acted as a corrective to the policy of wholesale Westernization, at a time when Indian opinion was weak and ineffective. Because their voice was influential in government circles they were able to make an impact on government policy. The second conservative force, at least in the early years of the period, was the Court of Directors of the East India Company. The Directors appear to have been well-informed, interested in and concerned about conserving the Indian cultural heritage, even though they advocated English education as a panacea for India’s current ills. The Court’s main anxiety was not a supersession of all Indian cultural traditions so much as economy in expenditure. All governmental actions in India were closely scrutinized and

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evaluated from the commercial point of view, and because of a strong Utilitarian influence, for their ‘usefulness*, concern not unnatural for a trading company but unproductive for a government concerned with long­ term goals. The Court’s interest was also largely in past artistic activity, little concern being showrrfer promoting contemporary artistic development. It is equally clear that the Directors were advocating conservation essentially for its benefits to Western scholarship and knowledge. They were interested in supporting an interpretation o f Indian culture for their own understanding, rather than out o f any desire to promote a continuity of cultural traditions. Whatever their reasons, and however parsimonious their outlay for achiev­ ing their object, their interest was greater than that of the Governors-General in India during the period. T he Revolt of 1857, which marked a cataclysmic end to the rule of the East India Company and the beginning of aggressive imperialism, proved equally a watershed in artistic policy. In this third phase, 1858-1905, the glory of the British Empire was at its zenith. It was an era of internal peace and progress when many of the development policies were consolidated and new fronts opened for progress in many directions. British rule up to 1880 was confident, masterly and unchallenged in its superiority, political and moral. O n the one hand there was increased paternalism and a heightened sense of mission; on the other hand, a marked racial arrogance and disdain for Indians was bred by the success of the British in crushing the Revolt. The British became increasingly isolated from Indian society and thus disinterested in Indian culture generally. There was also a general decline in the aesthetic sensibility of the average British civil servant in India. The keen interest in their surroundings and joy in the picturesque, evinced by earlier civil servants, was replaced by a cold aloofness, which considered pursuit of art and artistic activities as frivolous.16 As a backlash of the Revolt, there was an immediate feeling of revulsion on the part o f the British for the Indian arts, including a temporary reversal of the earlier feeling for India’s monumental heritage.17 But even when passions had cooled, the British of the nineteenth century never became major patrons of indigenous arts. The civilians lived as British a lifestyle as possible, though the distance from England, and the time and expense involved in getting goods from abroad, forced them to patronize Indian craftsmen for some of their needs. Even so they invariably-imposed Western tastes and standards on the work.18 Their belief in the superiority of their own art meant that not only was European influence on Indian art strongest in the nineteenth century, but also entirely one-sided, in contrast to the earlier years when interaction had

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led to beneficial cross-fertilization. This worked to undermine and debase indigenous values and standards, rather than to enrich them.19 Inevitably, output for Europeans influenced work for indigenous pa­ trons. O f even greater consequence was the fact that Indian patrons them­ selves now preferred Western artefacts and designs and paintings and portraits. Many of the Indian aristocracy moulded their artistic taste in the belief that emulation of the rulers was a sign of a progressive outlook and con­ ferred a higher social status. However, even amongst anglicized groups such as the Parsees of Bombay, and sections of the ^litc in other communities, Westernized lifestyles were adopted only partially, and mostly in the public domain of domestic life. While a taste for Western visual arts had percolated even to the middle class, a large section of the ^lite retained a taste for vernacular literature, theatre and traditional music, the women of these families in particular adhering to traditional cultural practices. And outside the three big cities, the European arts had much less impact.20 Meanwhile, British scholarly attitudes to Indian arts were also undergo­ ing a change, and there was a second wave of British scholarly interest in the Indian arts, with more intense preoccupation on the part of a growing band of scholars. For them Imperialism itself provided the raison d'etre for engaging in an intensive and scholarly representation of India to the West: an accurate and extensive knowledge of the subject nation was necessary for a mastery over it. Consequently it was also a time of the most intense debates on issues related to Indian art. W ith the growth of scholarly interest, several societies were established such as the Bombay Literature Society (1864), the Simla Fine Arts Society (1868), the Bombay Art Society (1888) and the Indian Society of Oriental Art, Calcutta (1907). They had mostly British members, but also included some prominent Indians. Meanwhile in England the industrial revolution had brought prosperity but also spawned ugliness and deterioration in the quality of British art. Moreover, materialism and the pursuit of wealth had led to a loss of spirit. There was also the Evangelical belief that the quality of art depended on the moral state of society, and thus a desire to go back to the simplicity of life in the pre-industrial era, which alone, it was felt, was conducive to the creation of beauty and goodness. Against this background the superb design and craftsmanship of the Indian goods displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851 contrasted sharply with the British exhibits. The attention of British art critics and designers was caught and there was admiration for the beauty of the Indian applied art, not least for the simplicity of life it embodied.

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Members of the Arts and Crafts movement that emerged after the Exhibi­ tion to protest the materialism and poverty of spirit in the art of industrial Britain became great champions o f the Indian decorative arts. They pleaded for their preservation. The result of this new wave of interest was that by the 1880s some biases against Indian applied art and architecture had been dispelled though the bias against painting and sculpture, termed the ‘fine’ or higher arts by the Victorians, remained.21 This was partly because this second wavo of interpretation and represen­ tation proceeded within a very strong framework of imperialist attitudes. As M iner has shown in his study of British attitudes towards Indian art, long after extensive collections of the best of Indian art had been built up in European museums, and scholarly research on Indian literature and religion had familiarized the Western cognoscenti with Indian art in detail, much of the disdain prevailed.22 Assertion of superiority necessitated that an inferior status be assigned to the arts and culture o f India; the arts of a subject race could not be allowed the same status as those of the conquerors. Thus even the most ardent admirers of Indian arts like Fergusson and Birdwood always made qualifying statements to accord Indian arts a second place. The enhanced scholarly activity and advocacy, however, played an important part in moving the state to assume greater responsibility, though of the eleven Viceroys between 1858 and 1905, only Lords Curzon and Ripon were really interested in the Indian arts. State interest was, however, more in conserving the heritage than in supporting the living artist. More than scholarly advocacy, however, it was political and social developments in India itself which moved the state to more active interven­ tion in the post-Revolt period. In response to British racialism and assertion of superiority there was a growth of cultural nationalism and a section of the Indian intelligentsia began to reassess both British rule and Indian society and culture. Up to the 1880s this was manifested in increased historical research by Indian scholars, cultivation of the mother tongue for literary expression, revival of traditional festivals, championing of Indian music and an interest in going back to the roots in art, and nothing overtly political. The revival of pride in national culture initiated a great nationalist discourse on art, which ran parallel to, and sometimes interacted with, the British discourse on Indian art. Issues such as the meaning of tradition in art, the role of art in nationalism and the shaping of Indian society, and the future of Indian art were hotly debated. The nationalist discourse contri­ buted to and accompanied the emergence of a new ‘Indian’ school of

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painting— the Bengal School of Painting— towards the end of the nine­ teenth century.23 W ith this resurgence of cultural pride, patronage for the traditional arts broadened from the aristocratic to the middle class. There was a great cultural efflorescence, literature and drama being the first to experience a renaissance; music and the visual arts experienced a revival only in the third quarter of the century. After 1880, as growing nationalist sentiment found political expression, the arts became a vehicle of protest and there was a burgeoning of cultural activity with a patriotic content. The Swadeshi movement of the early twentieth century, an expression of the new determination to emancipate India from the British through patronage of everything indigenous, contrib­ uted generously to this renaissance. Folk arts, traditional handicrafts, and visual art in particular received a fillip. A greater interest in state policy was generated and Indians began to demand more support for the arts from the state. But as the arts, especially literature and drama, became politicized, they called forth negative state policies of control: the Obscene Books and Pictures Act (1856), the infamous Dramatic Performances Act (1876), and the Vernacular Press Act (1878) being examples of such response. A more subtle approach to contain dis­ content was to change the aggressive, outrighdy Westernizing arts policy pursued till the 1870s to one of Indianization of institutions, curricula and personnel. The sense of mission characteristic of the doctrine of civilization was now extended to the arts with much talk o f duty and commitment to preserve and promote them. Various authorities on art in England— designers, educa­ tionists, museum keepers, art critics and art scholars— felt it a part of their larger duty to empire, both to interpret Indian art to the rest of the world and to assert an intellectual and practical responsibility towards the arts of a subject nation. And these attitudes were reflected in what the state at­ tempted. The period 1858-1905 saw the beginning of a more systematic and com­ prehensive thinking on artistic issues by the government, and more institu­ tionalization for the discharge of its responsibilities. By and large the government replicated what had been done in England. Throughout the nineteenth century and up until the Second World War, the lion’s share of public funds for the arts in Britain went to the maintenance, exhibition and expansion of museums and national art collections. This was due to the Victorian faith in the power of art to improve public morals and aesthetic taste. Museum expenditure was considered a

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legitimate means of increasing national wealth, and a country's art collec­ tions were something to be proud of. But state aid to music and drama was considered a waste of public money, as well as undesirable interference with artistic freedom.24 Conservation received sustained attention. For the first time legislative action was used to protect the artistic heritage through enactments such as the Treasure Trove Act (1878), and the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act (1904). It was equally used to control artistic activity considered un­ desirable by the state. Government continued its support to vernacular literature, though that received less and less priority and funds as it became more nationalist. The architecture policy continued to be West-oriented and indifferent to indigenous architecture as before, though some efforts were made towards the end of the century to use a hybrid style, known popularly (but not very correctly) as the Indo-Saraccnic, for official buildings. Yet again, the performing arts, other than drama, were left out of the government’s purview. Unlike the visual and literary arts they had no advocates, Indian or British, to plead their cause. The adoption of the Western administrative system, the extension of government responsibilities into new fields, and the emphasis on efficiency, meant a number of new departments and services were established, all under English control, so that more coherent policies emerged instead of ad hoc measures. Lord Curzon’s Viceroyalty was, in many ways, the epitome of the Raj. O f all the Viceroys, perhaps none is remembered as Curzon for his deep love of Indian art and architecture, just as none is so reviled for his political actions. His Partition of Bengal in the face of high Indian resentment marks the end of unchallenged imperialism in India. It ushered in a period of escalating nationalist aspirations and unrest in the last phase of British rule (1905-47). Events more than men shaped the arts policies of the last phase. The personalities of the Secretaries of State, the Viceroys and other decision makers counted for less than formerly in the face of the intensification of the national struggle. Besides, few of the Viceroys of the period, with the excep­ tion of Lord Hardinge, took any noticeable interest in the arts. Further, the progressive devolution of power to elected Indian representatives and the transfer of most art-related subjects into Indian ministerial hands left less scope for any personal imprint on cultural policy. This period saw momentous changes. In India there was a quickening of nationalist aspirations as well as communal tensions. The British response was severe repression alternating with a cautious devolution of power, which

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culminated in the Partition of India and Independence in 1947. W ithout, there were two World Wars, the Russian Revolution and the rise of Com ­ munism, the Modernist movement in intellectual and artistic fields, and the arrival of new technology in the shape of radio and film. All left an indelible mark on Indian arts and influenced government action. The progressive transfer and devolution of power to Indian hands and to the provinces through successive Government of India Acts (1919, 1935) made education and the arts provincial responsibilities under Indian min­ isterial control. This inaugurated a new era for state support to music, though not to dance and drama. Music was brought into the educational system which had hitherto excluded any study of the Indian arts. W ith the intensification of the freedom struggle in the early decades of the twentieth century, the arts witnessed a second renaissance, particularly the visual and the performing arts. One manifestation of this renewed burst of cultural activity was the establishment of several nationalist bodies such as the Benaras Hindu University, and the Vishwa Bharati University at Shantiniketan. Until the 1930s, however, urban appreciation of the tradi­ tional arts was limited. A large part of the Western-educated Indian 6l\tc was indifferent to Indian arts, particularly the visual and performing arts, partly due to their training and education, and partly due to a slavish imitation of their masters, while India’s political and intellectual leaders were busy with politics. The arts were kept alive in traditional middle-class homes, rather than through aristocratic or ^lite patronage. Thinking Indians of the time admitted that Indian philistinism, no less than that of the British, was to blame for the decline in Indian arts.25 The situation improved considerably in the Thirties due to the efforts of a small dedicated £lite, and the interest taken by journals and papers such as Rupam, the Modem Review (Calcutta), and the Bombay Chronicle\n cultural issues. Modern movements breathed new life into literature, drama and art; and music and dance came into their own for the first time thanks to the pioneering efforts of Tagore, Bhatkhande, Vallathol, Uday Shankar and others. Yet other cultural institutions were established: the Kerala Kala Mandalam, Kalakshetra (Madras), the Indian Cultural Centre (Almora) and the Bharat Kala Bhawan (Benaras). Meanwhile Gandhian thought, the emergence of the Communist Party of India in the Twenties, and the antiBrahmin movements of Ambedkar and the Dravida Munnetra Kalazam contributed to a social awakening of women, and other underprivileged sections of society, and fertilized the arts. The fact that respectable women were now able to participate in and witness dance, music and drama particularly helped improve the quality of the performing arts.

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The new social consciousness gave to the arts greater realism and social content and ‘progressive' movements appeared in literature, drama, dance and art, which changed their outlook, content or technique. The Progressive Writers Association (PWA, established in June 1936), and the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA, established in 1943), made the arts the expression of the people’s struggle for freedom, economic justice and a democratic culture. The communist movement also undoubtedly played a valuable role in injecting a new vitality and purpose into the arts, and in widening the markets for the artists themselves. But it also attracted repres­ sive action from a state which felt threatened by subversive forces.26 The introduction into India of cinema in 1912 and broadcasting in 1925 added another dimension to the cultural scene of the pre-Independence decades. Quickly gaining mass popularity, far exceeding that claimed by any of the other art forms, they introduced a new element into arts policies, and came to claim a proportionately large amount of government attention. These new media were to provide an important new source of patronage and change many of the accepted parameters for performance and audience behaviour. Meanwhile a new aesthetic movement had appeared in England by the end of the nineteenth century which represented a radically new approach to art and art appreciation. It emphasized the independence of art from morality, and individualism over man social responsibility. Led by Baudelaire and Flaubert in France, and Oscar Wilde, Roger Fry, and Whistler in England, the new view was that art had to be valued for its own sake, for the aesthetic experience it offered, rather than for any moral role it played, so that Oscar Wilde, Pinero, George Bernard Shaw and others campaigned for the abolition of censorship of drama. Simultaneously, efforts, all private, were being made to raise the calibre of the performing arts, and Matthew Arnold threw his weight behind a campaign to establish a National Theatre. There was also a greater socialization of art through the works of Hardy, Kipling, Shaw, William Morris and others who rejected an 6\itc minority culture and strove to move it closer to the common man. The spread of socialist doctrines, the emergence of the Labour Party, and the impact of new unionism had made the people look to the state to take a more active role. The first Labour government which took office in 1924 made a larger commitment to support the arts, giving promotion of performing arts a respectable place on its agenda, though really significant state support of the arts began only in the aftermath of the Second World War, with the Labour Party including culture as an important part of its agenda in the 1940s. The Arts Council was established in 1945 to promote

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and fund the arts, and in 1949, the Royal Opera House and the National Theatre were set up. This new outlook helped modify the way Indian art was viewed in th e . West, a process helped greatly by E. B. Havell and An an da Coomaraswamy who campaigned for Indian art to be evaluated according to its own aesthetic criteria. The Modernist movement further helped change imperialistic attitudes to the Indian arts, in that they were no longer considered unworthy or inferior, merely because they were different. Consequent to the apprecia­ tion of Indian art by Rodin, by some of the Impressionists, and Picasso, there was an ‘aesthetic’ as opposed to an ‘archaeological’ interest in Indian art. For the first time music and dance received scholarly attention, and the sympathetic interest in Indian dance shown by Anna Pavlova, and in litera­ ture by Yeats and others, also went to make the Indian arts better known and better appreciated than hitherto. A number of new institutions, associations and societies in England such as the School of Oriental and African Studies (1917), and the India Society (1910), helped to disseminate information about, and promote, the Indian arts. Gradually India was being accepted as a country with an ancient civilization, and an art tradition worthy of respect. In the field o f visual arts in particular, much pressure was brought on the government by the Western cognoscenti to provide greater patronage, the building of New Delhi between 1912 and 1931 providing the occasion for this demand. These developments had some repercussions on Indian policy. State intervention was the most extensive in this final phase of British rule. There was a maturing of the promotion measures for the arts and for archaeological conservation; a tightening of control over drama, literature, film and broadcasting; and a strengthening of the trend towards Indianization of culture and cultural administration. For the first time music came within the purview of government policy though dance still received no support. Because of the greater acceptance of planning in all fields after the Second World War, the ground was prepared for greater institutionalization of culture, even though Partition intervened before many of the proposed official agencies could be established. In this institutionalization an important catalytic role was played by the Asiatic Society of Bengal which submitted a series of proposals to the Secretary of the Department of Education between September 1944 and January 1945. They were to be the genesis of many of the cultural institutions o f modern India such as the three Akademis for art, literature and the performing arts set up between 1953 and 1954 and the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) set up much later .(1984).27

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The establishment of a National Art Gallery was mooted by Sir Mohammed Yamin Khan in a resolution introduced in the Legislative Assembly in February 1940, but again action on it was deferred by the government, on the grounds that the expenditure could not be justified during wartime.28 It was only in 1954 that the National Gallery of Modern Art could be established in New Delhi. Finally, a separate Education Department was created in 1945, with John Sargent as its Secretary, and given the responsibility for archaeology, museums, cultural co-operation, and technical education, including art edu­ cation. As the political struggle for independence intensified, and the parting of the ways began to seem inevitable, many leading Englishmen began to see in the arts a bond between the nations which would either delay the severance of connections or minimize its bitterness. The title of an article, ‘Culture as the Bond of Empire’, by Sir Francis Younghusband, traveller, explorer and President of India Society for twenty years (1922-42) tells its own story. According to him, ‘Culture will give coherence and aim and direction, first to the Empire, and then through the Empire to the world.’29 M any initiatives in the post-war years, official and non-official, in England and India, were therefore directed to exploring how to strengthen cultural links, among them being the institution of an Indian Academy as the counterpart of the British Academy;30 the setting up o f a Centre of Oriental Culture in London;31 and the utilization in India of the Asiatic Society of Bengal as an agent of the British Council for purposes of cultural exchange.32 Nothing came of any of these proposals. Meanwhile, the Indian government had set up a committee under the chairmanship of Maurice Gwyer, Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University, which favoured the founding of an All India Academy for cultural relations. India’s national leaders too were keen to foster international cultural relations, though not specifically with Britain alone. Gandhi, Nehru, and Tagore had often emphasized the need for India to be open to outside influences, and India was ready to receive from, and to contribute to, deve­ lopments all over the world. The proposed official institution did not get off the ground before Independence, but it was the first of the major cultural institutions of independent India. Called the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR), it was established in April 1950. Promotion of international cultural relations was to remain an important plank of India’s post-Independence cultural policy. The relative importance of the arts comes out very clearly from an analysis of the Legislative Assembly proceedings for the period. Significantly, matters

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relating to the arts occupied a very minor portion of the Assembly s deliberations. The bulk of the questions, resolutions, and government replies related to archaeological matters— policy, budget allocations, training of Indians, conservation of monuments, establishment o f a central museum, export of antiquities and so on. O ther major topics of interest were broad­ casting and film policies, especially censorship policies, the building of New Delhi and the opportunities for Indian artists in connection therewith. The performing arts and literature figured hardly at all. All this seems to justify the charge of philistinism that was levelled by some Indians and non-Indians against India’s leaders. Even while Nehru and Tagore were deeply interested in cultural development and had given thought to the shape o f modern Indian culture, their influence on policy was to be felt only after Indepen­ dence. To sum up, from small beginnings in the eighteenth century the state had come a long way in accepting responsibility for the arts. There had been an evolution of departmental responsibility, so that starting with one depart­ ment, the Public and Judicial, with responsibility for all kinds of miscella­ neous subjects, the arts, after travelling through several departments had mostly come to be located in the Department of Education and Culture created in 1945. Several official organizations had also been created so that on the eve of Independence, the official organizational pattern was as follows: — a few cultural insti unions of national significance, viz. the Archaeological Survey, the National Library, the National Archives, a few institutions of Oriental learning, the Imperial Museum and some institutions of visual art administered and financed by the Central Government; — similar departments sustained by the provincial governments; — All India Radio, set up primarily for mass communication and the propagation of classical music.33 Outside the governmental set-up, cultural activity continued to be supported by the princely states or their cultural organizations patterned on those of British India; a few Universities like Calcutta University which had set up departments of Indian history and culture (though hardly any supported the practice of the arts); and a few notable cultural institutions, set up by private voluntary efforts, such as the University at Shantiniketan, and Kalakshetra. For the rest, cultural activity was the concern of the people and was supported by them in a variety of ways, formal and non-formal.34

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Notes and References 1. For a contemporary assessment o f the an scene in the eighteenth century, see H . Goetz, T h e Great Crisis’, Laiit Kola Contemporary, 1-2, special issue, From Traditional to Modem Art, 1962-4,8—14; Pramod Chandra, On the Study o f Indian A rt (Harvard, 1983), pp. 107-8; A. Yusuf Ali, A Cultural History o f India During the British Period (Bombay, 1940), pp. 1-26; Abid Hussain, National Culture o f India (Delhi, 1978), p. 116.

2. G. D. Bearce, ‘Intellectual and Cultural Characteristics oflndia in a Changing Era, 1740-1800*, TheJournal o f Asian Studies, vol. xxv, no. 1, November 1965, 16. 3. Ashok Ranade, On Music and Musicians ofHindoostan (Delhi, 1984), pp. 30-1. 4. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society (London, 1987), pp. xv-xvi. 5. C. M. Naim, ‘Mughal and English Patronage of Urdu Poetry: A Comparison’, in Barbara Stoler Miller (ed.) The Powers o f A rt (Delhi, 1992), p. 269; Ashok Ranade, Maharashtra A rt Music (Bombay, 1989), pp. 53-5. 6. Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire (ed. V. A. Smith and A. Constable) (Oxford, 1934); J. B. Tavernier, trans. by V. Ball, 2nd ed. W. Crooke (London, 1925); Surendranath Sen (ed.), The Indian Travels o f Thevenot and Careri (New Delhi, 1949). 7. Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters (Oxford, 1977), pp. 105-6. 8. Janet Minihan, Nationalization o f Culture (London, 1977), pp. 10-23. 9. G.D. Bearce, British Attitudes Towards India: 1784-1858 (London, 1961), pp. 14-26; David Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: The Dynamics o f Indian Modernization: 1773-1835 (Berkeley, 1969), pp. 140-1. 10. Boswell quoted by A. Aronson, Europe Looks at India (Bombay, 1936), pp. 14-15. 11. Minihan, The Nationalization o f Culture, pp. 26-7. 12. Ibid., p. 28. 13. Ibid., pp. 51-2, 160-1. 14. Ibid., p. 60. 15. Reginald Heber, Narrative o f a Journey through India, 1824-25 (London, 1928). 16. Mildred and W. G. Archer, Indian Paintingfor the British (Oxford, 1955), pp. 9 9 107. 17. G. H. R.Tillotson, Tradition o f Indian Architecture (Yale, London, Delhi, 1989), pp. 36-7. 18. Deborah Swallow,‘The Raj: India 1850-1900’, in Arts oflndia (London, 1990), pp. 210-15. 19. John Irwin, ‘Art and East India T rade*, Journal o f the RoyalSociety o f Art, vol. 120, June 1972,447-63, for a discussion o f the cross-fertilization of textile design due to the textile trade in the eighteenth century. 20. Swallow,‘The Raj*, 217-18. 21. Percy Brown, Indian Painting (London, 1918), p. 5. 22. Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters (Oxford, 1977). 23. Tapati Guha Thakurta, The M aking o f a New Indian A rt (Cambridge, 1993). 24. Minihan, Nationalization o f Culture, p. 60.

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25. Hemendra Prasad Ghosc, ‘British Philistinism and Indian Art’, Calcutta Review, vol. 124, no. 248, 1907, 253-73. 26. Sudhi Pradhan (ed.), Marxist CulturalMovement in India (Calcutta, 1979/1982). 27. Proposals Made by the Royal Asiatic Society o f Bengal in Connection with Cultural Reconstruction in India, Pans I and II, 1944-45 (Published by the Royal Asiatic Society o f Bengal, Calcutta, 1945). Amongst the recommendations were: (1) Establishment o f a T raveller’s department to develop tourist traffic and to cater for historical and cultural tourism; (2) The setting up o f a Central Record Office in Bengal to make historical records accessible to research scholars, and to initiate appropriate steps to ascertain what historically important records were in the possession of private owners; (3) Establishment of a School of Architecture in India; (4) The setting up o f National Parks on the lines of the U.S. National Parks System; and finally (5) The establishment of an autonomous and non-governmental National Cul­ tural Trust which, amongst other things, would — encourage cultural education and research with particular reference to the preservation and development of traditional Indian culture including the arts — acquire for the nation, sites, monuments, manuscripts, pictures and other important objects of importance from the point of view of national culture — advise the Government of India and the Provincial Governments with regard to cultural matters and — assist Indian universities and learned societies of India in their cultural work. 28. Legislative Proceedings, vol. 1, 1940, pp. 840-6 (IOR V/9/159). 29. Francis Younghusband, ‘Culture as the Bond of Empire, in Transactions o f the Royal Society o f Literature, New Series, vol. 1, 1927. 30. Private Papers of Lord Zetland, Earl of Ronaldshay (IOR MSS EUR E/609/23). 31. Minutes and draft Report of the Zetland Committee to consider the establishment of a Centre of Oriental Culture in London, 1944, in File of India Society Papers (IOR MSS EUR F/147/83). 32. Private Papers of Lord Zetland, Earl of Ronaldshay (IOR MSS EUR E/609/23). 33. Kapila Vatsyayan, Some Aspects ofCultural Policies in India (Unesco, 1972), p. 16. * 34. Ibid.

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CHAPTER 3

Renaissance and Regulation

Before the colonial period the most important literature was that written in the classical languages— Sanskrit and Persian. Sanskrit had a large body of religious texts in which were woven mythology, history, and legend, though it also had a secular romantic and erotic literature. It was both a written and an oral tradition. Persian was the language of administration, justice and diplomacy, and was valued by Hindus and Muslims alike for its large corpus of devotional, especially Sufi, mystic literature, its prose and its romantic poetry. As regards the vernacular literatures, some, such as Bengali and Marathi, were more developed than others. Tamil literature had a venerable past dating back to the pre-Christian era. The most recent and notable develop­ ment of the time was the development of Urdu from a fusion of Persian and local Hindi dialects in the course of the eighteenth century. The centres of high Urdu culture were Delhi and Lucknow, where new forms of verse and new techniques were being developed by poets like Mir and Sauda.1 In all the literatures, the favoured mode of expression was poetry, and orality over chirography, the poetry being more often sung or recited than written. Such prose as was written was, with some exceptions, not of as high a standard as poetry. Literary themes were largely devotional, though historical and legendary subjects were also found. Secular work on contem­ porary issues was not very common. There was also a vibrant folk literature, invariably oral, in most regions. O f the arts, literature alone was not a hereditary preserve, though classical and vernacular literatures were mostly practised by the higher castes. Patronage to writers came from princely courts (many of whom took pride in having poets of note attached to them), the intelligentsia and even ordinary people. From princely patrons writers received salaries and land for mainte­ nance, as well as honours, rewards and titles. While aristocratic patrons sometimes asked writers to write on certain subjects or occasions, they also left them alone to pursue their muse. Invariably, a writer’s repertoire

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included panegyrics of praise of his patron and his lineage. They would desist from writing anything which would displease a powerful patron but there is no record of formal literary censorship in pre-British days. Several factors contributed to a change in this scenario: the early literary activity of Christian missionaries, which included the production of news­ papers, grammars, lexicons and English texts in the vernacular languages as part of the effort to spread Christianity; the introduction of the printing press; improved communications which breached barriers between different linguistic regions; and finally, state education policies. All contributed to a widening and changing of the base from which writers were drawn, their opportunities for patronage, and their intellectual horizons, so that there was a change in the nature of the literature produced. Literature was the first art to receive state attention. It is in the realm o f literature that the history of state intervention reveals how the arts can be manipulated, through positive and negative policies, to assert and further political objectives. The state promoted education, commissioned literary work, purchased books, published some works itself or granted publication subsidies. It took on preservation of classical texts, and also control o f literary activity. The last was to develop only after 1857. Early state patronage was initiated by Warren Hastings, GovernorGeneral from 1774 to 1785, and owed its origin to his belief that it was best to govern India according to her own laws and through her own languages. He supported several Orientalists like William Jones, Henry T. Colebrook, Nathaniel Halhed, and others, in their intellectual voyage of discovery and encouraged them to produce translations and compilations, sometimes pub­ lishing their work at Company expense. Charles Wilkins* translation of the Bhagwat Gita, for instance, was pub­ lished by the Company. In the preface Hastings expounded the political wisdom of learning India’s languages: Every instance which brings real character (of Indians) home to observation will impress us with a more generous sense o f feeling for their natural rights, and teach us to estimate them by the measure o f our own. But such instances can only be obtained in their writings: and these will survive when the British dominion in India shall have long ceased to exist.2

Wilkins in turn paid tribute to Hastings by acknowledging that he would not have had the co-operation of Indian pundits, had it not been for the liberal treatment they had received from Hastings.3 He had encouraged

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bodies of learned pundits to settle in Calcutta and supported them while they compiled a code of H indu laws in Sanskrit which was later translated into Persian and then into English, the task being completed by Jones and Colebrook. For Mohammedan law too, Hastings commissioned translations of the Fatawa-i-Alamgiri and the Hedaya, from the Arabic into Persian and then into English.4 Sanskrit pundits were also retained to translate Sanskrit texts into the vernaculars for the benefit of the people. Hastings helped Nathaniel Halhed to p ublish^ Grammar o f the Bengali Language, in 1788, apart from instituting financial and administrative inducements to prompt the British to learn and translate from the Indian languages. Further, by reproducing official documents in Indian languages, he encouraged the rise of printing and publishing in Calcutta, the first Bengali press in India, established by Charles Wilkins in 1778, being patron­ ized by him for official documents.5 The Company under Hastings also took a few tentative and ad hoc steps to promote literature through education. A madrasa was established in Calcutta in 1781, and the H indu College at Benarasin 1791 by the Resident, Jonathan Duncan. But no clear objective informed the educational policy other than that it had to gain the affection of the people and so ensure political stability.6It was the missionaries, especially William Carey, Joshua Marshman and William W ard of the Baptist Mission at Scrampur, who did the most significant work in this field. Hastings’s successor Lord Cornwallis neither offered any patronage nor did anything to promote literature. His successor, Lord Wellesley, initiated a programme for the development of both classical and contemporary litera­ tures, though he did not do much for the education of Indians. In pursuit of his vision of an empire resting on a strong, trained and efficient civil service, Wellesley made a case shortly after he took over, for the creation of a*British Centre for Oriental Studies, because T h e civil servants of the English East India Company . . . are in fact the ministers and officers of a powerful sovereign*, and apart from a good sound basic education should also have ‘an intimate acquaintance with the history, languages, customs and manners of the people of India. . . .7 This dream was not realized until the School of Oriental and African Studies was founded 125 years later in London. Wellesley set up the Fort William College at Calcutta, in 1800, to train and acculturate British civil servants for the Company. They were to be taught Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, and six Indian vernaculars including Bengali, apart from indigenous and English law and the other subjects taught

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at universities in England. Distinguished scholars like Colebrook, William Carey and John Gilchrist, and Bengali and Marathi pundits like Mritunjay Vidyalankar, and Vaijnath Sharma, were recruited to teach, and to prepare dictionaries and other texts. Non-faculty writers in Urdu and other lan­ guages were also commissioned to produce suitable text books. English teachers received Rs 2600 per month, but the Indian pundit was paid only Rs 40-200, when even the English students received Rs 300 a month in addition to food and lodging.8 The college was subsidized by the government through a small contribu­ tion from all the civil servants in India to be deducted from their salaries and from the profits of the government printing press.9 Through the college the government supported a well-organized programme of literary patronage and linguistic research which contributed in generous measure not only to the Bengal Renaissance of the nineteenth century, but also to the develop­ ment of other vernaculars. David K opf s study details the contribution of the College to literary development: — more than a hundred original works in Oriental languages published by presses largely financed by the College; — expeditions to Mysore, Travancore, etc. organized and sponsored for the purpose o f discovering and cataloguing manuscripts for the use of the College library which was finally opened to the public in 1818; — projects initiated in collaboration with institutions such as the Asiatic Society to publish European translations o f Indian daisies and with the Serampore Mission to further the study o f popular culture.10

Indians associated with the college went on to become creators and innovators in their own society. Tarinicharan Mitra, for instance, who was assistant to John Gilchrist in the Urdu department, became one of the first Indian philologists that the college produced and one of India’s first Western-trained linguists. The association of Indian scholars with the British had two other effects: their work shifted attention from the Sanskrit to the vernacular, and they helped break the intellectual monopoly of the Brahmins by imparting Brahmin knowledge to European scholars, who through their published works made that same knowledge available to a wider public, Indian as well as European. The ancient texts became more widely available for reassess­ ment by Indians of other castes." In the course of translation and interpretation the Indian assistants also became the first prose stylists in their languages. Amongst the first authors •of Bengali prose, apart from Raja Ram M ohun Roy, were Ramram Basu,

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Mritunjay Vidayalankar, and Rajiblochan Mukhopadhyay, all of whom had had connections with the college. Their prose was mostly translations from Sanskrit, English and Persian, with some original compositions. Marathi too, like many of the other languages, benefited from the linguistic and translation programmes of the missionaries and of the college. It acquired a new prose style in a language very different from the earlier, albeit halting and awkward, and the style crude and bare, so that it was deprecatingly referred to as the ingrazi awatar (English incarnation) of M arathi.12 So long as the college existed it was caught in a conflict between Company notions of utility and the scholars’ thirst for knowledge, the former com­ plaining about the costs of maintaining a faculty more interested in scholarship than in producing useful textbooks or teaching the civilians, while the latter wished for a less utilitarian approach.13 Wellesley’s motivations were quite different from those of Warren Hastings. Contemptuous of Indians whom he treated with hauteur and reserve, and indifferent to Persian poetry or H indu metaphysics, Wellesley sponsored an Orientalist programme because of his vision of imperial responsibility and greatness. Whatever his reasons, he was generous with funds for the programme and his dynamic personality and organizational ability enabled the establishment of a close network between the Fort William College, the Asiatic Society, and the Serampore Mission so that through their combined efforts Bengali society was revitalized. This patronage notwithstanding, classical Indian learning continued to decline because forces had been set in motion that favoured the adoption of Western ways and education. In 1811, in a M inute dated 6 March, Lord Min to (1807-13), Wellesley’s successor, noted with concern that the num ber o f the learned is not only diminished but the circle of learning even among those who still devote themselves to it appears to be considerably contracted. The abstract sciences are abandoned, polite literature neglected and no branch of learning cultivated but what is connected with the peculiar religious doctrines of the people. The immediate consequence o f this state o f things is the disuse and even actual loss o f many valuable books; and it is to be apprehended that unless Government interpose with a fostering hand the revival o f letters may shordy become hopeless from a want o f books or o f persons capable o f explaining them .14

M into recommended resumption of financial aid to all indigenous institutions, reform of the H indu College at Benaras, and the establishment of two new colleges at Nuddea and Tirhut. Nothing was done about this last, and the idea was finally abandoned in 1821. But his concern was reflected in the Charter Act of 1813, which directed that Rs 1 lakh be provided for

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the ‘revival and encouragement of Oriental learning’ as well as for introduc­ tion of European knowledge. In interpreting the directive, the Court of Directors, in their Public Despatch to the Governor-General of Bengal dated 3 June 1814, took a dis­ tinctly conservative approach. They suggested encouragement of the indig­ enous practice of instruction at home, instead of the British system of colleges and universities which they did not believe would be useful in India. They also commended the study of Indian learning to the Company’s servants, proposing incentives for individual study of Sanskrit, as well as liberal re­ compense to the native teachers, because We are informed that there are in the Sanskrit language many excellent systems o f ethics, with codes o f laws and compendiums of the duties relating to every class o f the people, the study o f which might be useful to those natives who may be destined for the Judicial department o f Government. There are also many tracts of merit we are told on the virtues o f plants and drugs, and on the application of them in medicine, the knowledge o f which might prove desirable to the European practitio­ ner, and there are treatises on Astronomy and Mathematics, including Geometry and Algebra, which, though they may not add new lights to European science, might be made to form links o f communication between the natives and the gendemen in our service, who are attached to the Observatory and to the department o f engineers, and by such intercourse the natives might gradually be led to adopt the modern improvements in those and other sciences.15

Liberal views indeed! The new Governor-General, Lord Moira, the Marquess of Hastings (1812-23), encouraged intellectuals like Raja Ram M ohun Roy, who were in favour of introducing European knowledge, which they saw had led to the political superiority of the British, to establish new institutions such as the Hindu College (1816), the Calcutta School Book Society (1817), and the Calcutta School Society (1818). Hastings saw them as agents of change and channels of communication between the learned English and the Bengali leadership. He also created a public library at Fort William College, a store­ house of knowledge, Indian and European, open to the Calcutta intelligen­ tsia, and continued the patronage to the Asiatic Society first given by Warren Hastings.16 But his attention was frequently diverted by the wars he was waging on the Marathas and others, and not much was done for education in spite of the 1813 directive. Patronage to classical scholarship and the vernacular languages conti­ nued on a small scale till 1828. The Proceedings of the Government and the Home correspondence between the Directors and the Government of India are replete with references to approvals for publishing grammars and

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dictionaries, in the 'M ahratta', 'Malabar' and 'Gentoo' languages; to govern­ ment subscriptions for books such as William Coates Blaquiere's Sanskrit and English dictionary and grammar; to the appointment of translators to translate various codes from Persian into English or from English into Persian, Bengali and Hindustani; and to munshis being appointed, two of them even being sent to England to teach Persian and Hindustani to civil servants in the East India College at Hertford.17 Meanwhile patronage to individual authors, European and Indian, was generally given through private institutions like the Calcutta Society and the Bombay Education Society (established in 1822). These societies, apart from giving grants and subsidies to authors, also offered prizes and rewards for books on educational and scientific subjects, for the common people.™ This last was indicative o f the change that was coming over patronage practice. Whereas the Mughals, even up to the time of Bahadur Shah, commissioned leading Urdu writers to write sophisticated and ornate prose and poetry for an 6\ite audience, British patronage went largely to middling writers to translate or write books in the simplest language, for the common man.19 The conflict between the desire to encourage cultural work and the desire for economy surfaced again in the correspondence between the Directors and the Bengal Government between 1805 and 1816 regarding publication of books. By their letter date 5 J une 1805, the Court had requested the Bengal Government to send for the India House Library, and for use of the Seminary at Hertford, one copy of every book that had been published in Calcutta under the auspices of the Fort William College, on subjects relevant to the Company's affairs, plus other books on history not available in England. On receipt of the books and a subsequent list of all the works subscribed to and printed at the expense of the Company since the inception of Fort William College, the Court's reaction expressed in their letter of 18 July 1811 was typical. They were unprepared, they said, for the very heavy expense involved. Several of the publications were of no use as class books, ‘nor in any way objects which called for the patronage of the Government.'20 The books they classed as unworthy included the Shah Namah, and the Dubistan. They directed that only those books be acquired which satisfied the Company's criteria of merit and utility and that the Court should be informed of the details of books and reasons for subscription.21 O n being furnished with these details by the Bengal Government in 1813, the Court found only one, The Institutes o f Menu [sic] (.Manusmriti) to be o f 'utility' and moderate expense. They therefore again warned the Government of India that in future it should adhere strictly to the two stated

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criteria.22 Works considered not appropriate for patronage included the Geeta Govinda in the original Sanskrit edited by Baboo Ram, the Bhagwnt Geetam the original Sanskrit, the Raj Neetixn Braj Bhasha, a translation into Bengali of the original Sanskrit Mahahharat, and the Ramayan of Toolsee Das [sic] in the Poorbee [sic] Bhasha. One can only be grateful that the Utilitarian ideals of the Court had not been shared by the authorities in Bengal! In all, eighty-five books were either printed or ordered at government expense between 1800 and 1813, at a total cost of Rs 2,64,106 or £33,013. Subscriptions ranged between 100 and 300 copies costing £75 (Rs 600) to £2,925 (Rs 23,400),23 the last being the amount paid for a hundred copies of the Shah Nama in the original Persian. A higher amount of £3,538 (Rs 28,311) was spent on five hundred copies of a Persian translation of the Hidayah, a celebrated work on Muhammadan jurisprudence, not an ungenerous amount for the times.24 Equally, it is clear from the Proceedings that there were differences in the amounts that were paid to compilers or translators of works according to whether they were Indian or British. There were more British scholars receiv­ ing patronage and the amounts they received were also higher. But soon promotion through education was to outstrip direct patronage in signifi­ cance. By 1818, the famous Anglo-Orientalist debate about the best means of bringing about the ‘moral and material improvement’ of India was in full swing. The Committee of Public Instruction, set up in 1823 by GovernorGeneral Lord Amherst, brought it to a head.25 The Committee, with the Orientalist H. H. Wilson as Secretary, was entrusted with the Rs 1 lakh sanctioned by the Charter Act, which it proceeded to use to promote Oriental learning, though no definite aim was stated about the medium of instruction. In the debate which centred round the use of this money, or more specifically, the interpretation of Section 43 of the Charter Act of 1813, there were two distinct issues involved: (1) whether money allocated for ‘revival and improvement of literature and the encouragement o f the learned natives of India’ was to be used for promotion of indigenous learning or Western and (2) the language in which this learning was to be imparted. For the Anglicists useful learning was Western learning, and by and large the Orientalists were in agreement that progress in India would have to come through an acquisition of the modern learning of the West. The difference was in the method proposed.

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The Orientalists, led by H. H. Wilson, wanted a fusion of the valuable in Oriental learning and literature with the modern knowledge of the West, and not only a revival but the creation of a new literature in India, the form and style of which would be Oriental, but the substance mostly European. India needed a vernacular literature of her own, and while the vernaculars were undeveloped, the resources of the Indian classical languages were considered essential to their improvement. Hence the Orientalists wanted to foster higher education in the classical languages of Sanskrit and Persian.26 By contrast, the Anglicists— Charles Grant, William Wilberforce, Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, Macaulay and Charles Trevelyan amongst others— had great contempt for Indian civilization and wanted it completely supplanted by the superior Western culture. James Mill, who wrote his History o f British India (1817) without ever having been here, found little good to say of the land: Indian institutions were archaic, Indian rulers were despots, reason lay dormant, Indian thought was puerile, religion superstitious and idolatrous, customs harmful, and the Indian character deceitful, depraved and immoral. The Indian arts, includ­ ing literature, too were for Mill decidedly inferior to the Western. His chief objection to Indian literature was its supposed blurring of the historical and the mythical and its consequent falsehoods and inaccuracies. Mill refused to accept the RamayanaznA the Mahabharatazs history or even as allegories.27 He did not appreciate that in Indian thinking change was located within a framework of continuity, that time or its dimensions did not add to the significance of a phenomenon, the aesthetic order being preferred to the chronological.28 Instead, a myth was built up of a supposed lack of a historical conscious­ ness among Indians. The imaginative was endowed with less value than the useful in both art and literature. Besides, Indian literature was seen as instancing political cunning and sanctioning despotic rule. Vedic and epic literature claiming divine origin was held to dilute the individual’s capacity to resist the manipulations of the tyrannical Brahmin caste because it pre­ vented analysis and verification in the real world.29 Mill dismissed Jones’s admiration for Indian literature as naive admira­ tion for form alone. He viewed the lyricism and sentiment in Indian drama as the mark of a self-indulgent society, that was in its turn the product of a despotic state. Indian literature was moreover lacking in decency and morality.30 Mill therefore wanted English education to introduce ‘progres­ sive’ political and moral ideas but was riot insistent on English as the medium of instruction.

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Thomas Babingcon Macaulay, Law Member of the Governor-General's Council, had an equally low opinion of Indian achievements. According to him a single shelfo f a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and A rabia.. . . The department o f literature in which the Eastern writers stand highest is poetry. And I certainly never met with any Orientalist who ventured to maintain that the Arabic and Sanscrit poetry could be compared to that of the great European nations----- It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say, that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgements used at preparatory schools in England. In every branch of physical or moral philosophy, the relative position is nearly the same.31

Unlike Mill, Macaulay wanted English education in the English lan­ guage, as it made possible a durable bond between the rulers and the ruled. He foresaw that it would create ‘a class of persons Indian in bloo and The Ideals o f IndianA rt (1911), argued against the use of Western classical standards to judge Indian art. He urged that standards of art criticism must evolve within the latter. He countered the Western criticism of absence of naturalism in Indian art by emphasizing its spiritual element, claiming that Indian artists were engaged in representing the spirit, rather than in imitating nature.38 These two books bedame the pioneering texts of a new Orientalist dis­ course which now attributed to Indian art the special ‘Indian’ attributes of a hoary past, a deep spirituality, and a new spirit of nationalism, and Havell became the self-appointed messiah of Indian ‘fine’ art, the other major proponent of which was Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy. Like Havell, Coomaraswamy started out as an apologist for a crafts revival. Born of Ceylonese and German parentage, he had studied and worked mostly in Britain where he came under the spell of the Arts and Crafts movement and the ideas of William Morris and C. R. Ashbee. O n a brief spell o f work as geologist in Ceylon, he became acutely aware of the colonial destruction, not only of the traditional crafts, but also o f the indigenous society’s individuality and unique cultural values. The deep impact the sojourn made resulted in his M edieval Sinhalese A rt ( 1908). Through art history he be­ came a scholar of traditional cultures and religions and finally a theologian and metaphysicist. Coomaraswamy approached art history not solely for pleasure or entirely for scholarly reasons, but rather as a ‘question of setting right what had gone amiss partly through ignorance of the past’.v>Much of his early work was devoted to pointing out the often unintentional destruc­ tion of national culture that the English brought about by Anglicization. In Essays in National Idealism (1909) and A rt and Swadeshi (1912) Coomaraswamy said that Swadeshi had to be more than a political weapon; it had to be a religious and artistic ideal as well. Unfortunately, Indians had

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interpreted it only in terms of the material ideals o f prosperity. But of what use was an economically and politically free India, he asked, when her innermost soul was still in bondage to Europe, for Indians loved not India and her traditions but suburban England and a comfortable bourgeois exis­ tence. Swadeshi literature, he pointed out, did not contain express concern for preservation o f crafts and of the highly skilled craftsmen. Regeneration would come only when Indians ceased being snobs and parasites and cared for their own arts.40 Though he blamed the government for lack of patronage to art, Coomaraswamy also pointed out that ultimately the work of revitalization could only be done by Indians, and no am ount o f Government or foreign patronage could substitutefo r patronage ofthe people. Like Havell, he blamed Indian indifference on the education received in English curriculum schools, which ignored the study of Indian culture. He therefore called for a national education, controlled by Indians to educate Indians in their heritage. This alone, he felt, could lead to a revival of the arts.41And he saw reflected in the Bengal School of Art his ideas about nationalism and idealism in art and therefore became its spirited proponent.42 Though the work of Fergusson, Griffiths, Havell and Coomaraswamy, and the emergence of a new high art had supplied sufficient evidence of Indian capability in fine art, imperialist attitudes towards Indian art per­ sisted. As late as 1904 Sir George W att, writing of the paintings of Ajanta, still considered them more decorative than fine art, the earliest example of Indian fine art, according to him, being Mughal painting,43 though even there scholars like Vincent Smith saw European influence. Smith even believed the architect of the Taj Mahal to be a Venetian named Gcrenimo Veroneo.44 The whole question of what constituted Indian art, whether the Art Schools had succeeded or failed in promoting it, and government art policy in general, was thrust into the forefront of attention by a paper, ‘The Functions of Art Schools in India’, read by Cecil Burns, Principal of the Bombay School of Art (1899-1918) before the Royal Society of Art on 18 June 1909. In his paper Burns, though an admirer of India’s ancient art, stated that the ancient craftswork of India was dead and that it was pointless to expect the Art Schools to flog a dead horse. He argued that the Schools had not attracted artisans but only those interested in clerical jobs and therefore no craft revival was possible. N o purpose would be served, he said, by teaching students traditional designs and methods as it would only turn out inferior, repetitive work. W ith European literature dominating the Indian education

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system, and European ideas and science permeating the economic and political life of the country, it was not possible for modern Indians now to recapture the spirit which alone gave vitality to the great works of the past. W ithout this spirit the old conventions were mere husks, he added. W ith European pictures widely available it was essential, Burns felt, for art students to have before them masterpieces of European art. And with the wide adoption of European styles o f architecture in India it was necessary for a School of Art to possess the best examples of ornament for study and reference. A School of Art must equip its students with the power of expres­ sion untrammeled by convention so that they were free to follow their own talen t/5 There must also be close collaboration between the Public W orks Department (PWD) and the Art Schools, with the PW D establishing a studio with attached workshops where students could design and execute decorative work on public buildings. He also felt that the balance between fine arts and design and craftsmanship should be tilted in favour of applied arts.46 Burn’s paper provoked a bitter debate which called into question yet again government policy and the existence of a fine art tradition. From Coomaraswamy it brought forth the question as to why there were only four Art Schools for the whole of India when there were thirty such schools in a hundred mile radius of London, all supported by public funds. Could it be, he wondered, that the government did not really wish to revive the arts and industries so as to enable them to compete successfully with England? The real trouble, he averred, was the assumption that India was a savage country which it was England’s mission to civilize. The Schools o f Art must *gather up and revitalise the broken threads o f Indian tradition, to build up the idea of Indian art as an integral part of the national culture, and to relate the work of Indian craftsmen to the life and thought of the Indian people.’47 Hitherto the Schools had worked essentially for a foreign public, making things that neither the craftsmen nor Indian people wished to use, but only to sell.48 Havell was equally trenchant. In a paper read before the Royal Society of Arts in February 1910, he deplored the fact that the government had ignored the most important fact that art in India was a part o f the great traditional culture and was intimately bound up with the religion, education, and the daily life of the great mass of the people. Instead, the British Indian adminis­ tration had treated it as Europeans did— as a luxury and means of intellectual recreation or amusement. It had also made artificial distinctions between fine art and decorative art where none had existed in India. While decorative arts

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had been appreciated and encouraged at least since 1880, fine art had yet to receive recognition from the British public and the Indian government.49 Though Birdwood and Robert Chisholm, former Principal of the Madras School, concurred with Havell about the need to amend the administration of art education in India, basing it on traditional lines and principles, and under the administrative and technical direction o f the Indians themselves, they felt he had overstated his case, and in the debate that followed50 there was an almost clear division between the old official guard and the new ideologues like Havell. Coomaraswamy supported Havell, cataloguing instances of government apathy in the arts: the Indian section of the South Kensington Museum was more an emporium of industrial art rather than a record of India’s creat­ ive imagination; in Schools of Art, there were hardly any good specimens of medieval Indian painting or sculpture, and the government had allowed Col. H anna’s valuable collection of Indian art to go to the USA due to igno­ rance and lack of appreciation. He too deplored an educational policy which ignored art and music, as well as the false distinction between fine art and decorative art, and warned that the British government would be harshly judged for its Philistinism in future, and unfavourably compared with earlier H indu and Mughal rulers.51 Defending government policy was A. Chatterton, Director of Industries, Madras, who contended that all educational work in India had been in the nature o f an experiment or else had been evolved to meet exigencies of the moment, and the Art Schools were no exception to this. Continuity of policy could hardly be the aim when there was little experience on which to frame a policy, and if Art Schools were in a worse plight than other educational institutions at the time, that was due to the indeterminate character of their work.52 Another apologist was Col. Hendley. While refusing to grant that earlier rulers had done more for the arts, he made the perceptive point that while the association of Indians in Art School committees was welcome, it was by no means certain that they would vote for indigenous art styles.53And indeed the future was to prove him true. The modern art movement in India after 1940 rejected the notion that to be Indian the art had to be traditional, opting instead for artistic freedom to react to the environment on an individual basis, unfettered by preconceived notions of style. Architects too had the same message. It was a vindication of Burns’ position over HavelPs.54 T he key issue however was whether India had a tradition o f fine art or not. Burns had stated that painting and sculpture were only part of the decorative

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scheme o f a building or some other composite work, whereas Havell and Coo maraswamy had asserted the fundamental unity o f fine and decorative arts. But it was Birdwood’s statement on the issue which both outraged and setded the issue finally. In a statement, now as famous in art circles as M acaulays M inute is in educational ones, Birdwood said o f the Javanese Dhyani-Buddha, The senseless similitude, by its immemorial fixed pose, is nothing more than an uninspired brazen image, vacuously squinting down its nose to its thumbs, knees and toes. A boiled suet pudding would serve equally well as a symbol o f passionate purity and serenity o f soul!55

There were protests from several prominent English artists and intellec­ tuals. A letter to The Times of 28 February 1910 signed by Walter Crane, Laurence Housman, W. Rothenstein and others, artists, critics, and art stu­ dents, said, We recognise in the Buddha figure one o f the greatest inspirations o f the world. W e hold that the existence o f a distinct, a potent, and a living tradition o f a n is a possession o f priceless value to the Indian people, and one which they, and all who admire and respect their achievements in this field, ought to regard with the utm ost reverence and love.56

An immediate fallout was the formation of the India Society by William Rothenstein and other lovers of Indian art in 1910. Through lectures and exhibitions this group gave wide publicity to the Indian art renaissance, and was to play an important advocacy role in policy formulation. This debate marked a turning point in Western attitudes towards Indian art, the ground for which had been prepared by the modern art movement. The result was aesthetic appreciation based on the creative vision and fellow craft apprecia­ tion of living artists rather than scholarly interest in archaeological discovery. Indian painting and sculpture had at last been reinstated as Tine’ arts! Coomaraswamy’s subsequent work, most notably Rajput Painting^ 1916), The Dance o f Siva (1920), and History o f Indian and Indonesian A rt ( 1927), further helped to complete the transformation in attitudes. He offered inter­ pretations of the sources— the myths, the music, the legends, and the epic literature— revealing the inner meanings of the art, and from the standpoint of the creators of the art, thereby overcoming many of the shortcomings of earlier interpretations. He established that Indian art is not primarily an art of representation but of statement, and he explained the significance of iconography more succinctly than Havell, who had only grasped part of the truth.

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Thus what had been thought of as the bizarre fantasy of the ancient artist was now understood as a logical and significant system of forms.57 The argument that art should not be isolated from religion, and that artistic creation was the product of an inner, ideal image in the m ind o f the artist which took shape after intense yogic concentration or meditation, convinced Europeans of the true spiritual character of Indian art.58 This emphasis by Havell and Coomaraswamy on the spiritual coalesced with the nationalism of the Tagores and Sister Nivedita, to give birth to a new ideology which emphasized the polarity between the ‘spiritual' East and the ‘materialist' West. It claimed religious feeling, asceticism, stoicism, and self-sacrifice to be uniquely Indian values informing the indigenous art tradition; it redefined notions o f‘beauty' and ‘imagination’ in terms of these moral categories. The expression of womanly beauty in particular was expected to conform to high ideals since women were considered the supreme embodiment of the Indian tradition.59 It was largely due to Havell and Coomaraswamy that an idealistic and spiritual view of art came to supplant the archaeological, and apart fromgaining the support of scholars like Laurence Binyon, Lionel Heath, and Percy Brown led to the persuasion of many doubting critics like William Rothensteiri and Roger Fry. Indian art was now the more readily received because late-nineteenth century artists and art critics had turned away from the Western classical tradition as being synonymous with Victorian mate­ rialism, industrialism and the capitalist society and were seeking alternative ideal societies whose art forms would reflect more spiritual values. T he result of this emphasis on spirituality allied with nationalism was to cause Ravi Verma's genre o f neo-classical painting with its Western Aca­ demic Realism to be ridiculed for its lack o f imagination, poor technique and vulgar' sensuality, in contrast to the ‘grace and moral dignity’ of the Bengal School. Along with Ravi Verma the Bombay School of Art was also singled out for attack for its championship of European Academism.60 T he British espousal of nationalist art was not without its imperialist logic. It bolstered the traditional position of the Englishman as the wise, benevolent and superior being in charge of native subjects. Indian art, it was implied, was safe because it was in British hands. It was incidental that a noninnovative, traditional India was safer for the continuation of British power. Those who wanted a return to the ancient artistic tradition, partly out of romanticism, and partly out of self-interest, tended to view the land as a museum culture, where the native played the part of native, and aspired to no new horizons.61

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And it was partly on these Counts that the Swadeshi ideology was chal­ lenged by those who particularly questioned the heavy Western emphasis on Indian spirituality. Vincent Smith felt compelled to argue that The opposition o f Eastern spirituality to Western materialism is a generalization without support, while the postulation o f a metaphysical basis for any a n is equally as sterile, and in fact as inconsequential, as the postulation o f the existence o f eternal, immutable classical standards.62

Gladstone Solomon, Principal o f the Bombay School of Art (1919-31), equally scoffed at HaveU’s interpretation of the yogic approach to painting as a weird exposition o f the working of art in India. Solomon believed that here as elsewhere, the student must be fully trained in technique and ground rules and not just expect inspiration to do the work.63 Solomon also derided the notion that to be Indian, Indian art m ust eschew all foreign influences. He believed that students should avail them ­ selves o f European technique and greater skill in order to express their artistic vision. The British supporters of the Bengal School were accused of looking at India as a museum and an emporium to be preserved as such for an adm ir­ ing but unhelpful world. Indians, it was held, must paint naturally, in and for India, but since India was no longer living in the seventeenth century, and her fashions in art had changed in the interim, the artist must not be expected to abjure Western influence entirely but be helped to assimilate it intelligently.64 This new scholarly discourse on the revival of Indian tradition for the purposes of creating a modern In d ia n ’ art, was Orientalism in a new garb, characterized by a heavy paternalism which saw it as the duty o f the Western art establishment to take an intellectual and practical responsibility for the arts of subject nation. It was still Western scholars who decided and asserted as to what constituted ‘Indian* art and ‘Indian* tradition, and whether a revival of the latter was necessary to establish an Indian identity. From the 1920s however, Indian art opinion began to assert itself, the renaissance being accompanied by an increased interest on the part of the £lite in their own art. Jatindramohan Tagore and the Maharaja o f Burdwan had begun Indian art collections as early as the late nineteenth century. They were now joined by Sir Cowasji Jchangir, B. N. Treasuryvala, Rai Krishna Das, and N. C. Mehta, and many others. Some of these collections were later to be donated to museums. Several art societies and institutions for pro­ moting art came up, such as Kala Bhawan at Shan ti Niketan, set up by Tagore under the leadership of Nandalal Bose, the Punjab Fine Arts Society at Lahore (1922), the Delhi Fine Arts Society (1928), and the Society o f Indian

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Art in Benaras with Rai Krishna Das as secretary. Das went on to found the first museum of Indian fine art— the Bharat Kala Bhawan— in 1930. Art journalism also emerged as an im portant genre for disseminating new ideas, popularizing Indian art, and shaping Indian opinion, as several new periodicals such as the Indian Arts and Letters, published by the India Society London (1925), Roop Lekhahom Delhi edited by Barada Ukil (1928), and Triveni from Madras, joined the earlier established M odem Review, Prabasi and Rupam, the journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art in Calcutta. Though the main discourse in the Twenties and Thirties centred round the creation o f an indigenous art that would be consonant with Indian cultural aspirations, a subtext in the form o f Modernism made its appearance with the exhibition o f works of Klee, Kandinsky and other Bauhaus artists in Calcutta in 1922.65 T he intense interest in art matters generated by the Orientalist and the nationalist discourse, as well as the Modernist movement, converged on the differing aims and expressions of the art movements o f Bengal and Bombay. Both were, in their own manner, preoccupied with the question o f identity, but arrived at the answer through very different routes. Music and dance, through an almost unbroken tradition, and literature and drama because they were written or performed in Indian languages and had Indian subject matter, escaped the accusation of being non-Indian. But the visual arts, which faced an almost complete break with tradition, were often so accused and had to strive to defend themselves. In promoting the art movements o f their respective regions the Calcutta and the Bombay Schools of Art had played a prominent part and conse­ quently during much of the Twenties and the Thirties there was intense rivalry between the two. The Nationalist School of Abanindranath (backed by Havell, Coomaraswamy, leading members of the India Society in London, and the official art establishment in India) enjoyed wide popularity in Bengal, particularly among the intelligentsia, though even here there was a pro-Western art camp represented by journals like Sahitya, As for the rest of India, though many endorsed the nationalism of the School, there was also indifference or open hostility. A Press comment in Bombay said, ‘W hat is good in that School should of course be adopted; but blind imitation of old Rajput and Moghul artists is to be discouraged.’66 Once the initial euphoria over a nationalist art had passed, the Bengal art was more critically evaluated and found wanting. Its technical standards were deemed inferior to those of Mughal and Rajput art, and the paintings to lack vitality and the vigour of personal experience. It was felt that by harking back

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to a distant past instead of reacting to the immediate surroundings and concerns, the painters were imitating an older aesthetic which had founda­ tions in a different cultural milieu which no longer obtained. The Bombay Art Movement which began around 1919 around a nucleus of artists from the Bombay School o f Aft, did not, however, hark back to the past. Instead, it began to use Western techniques to forge an individual style which, because of its synthesis of Indian sensibility with a Western outlook and techniques, was in many ways more vigorous. In its early years, because of the slant of the training in the Art School and greater employment opportunities, it concentrated on mural paintings. Supporters included the Principals of the J.J. School and leading citizens o f Bombay.67 Underlying the rivalry between the two Schools was the lack of employ­ ment opportunities for Indian artists, and their need for patronage, especially because interest in their work was limited to the £lite in metropolitan cities. As Rupam in its issue of October 1920 noted, most of the pioneering work on Indian art had been done by Western scholars and study by Indians themselves had yet to begin; interest in the aesthetic quality of Indian antiquities was minimal. Art history had yet to become a valid field ofstudy.68 It also regretted that while lectures on Indian art were being delivered at London, Harvard and Chicago, none of the Indian universities considered it worthwhile to offer courses on Indian art. It was only in 1921 that the Calcutta University appointed Abanindranath Tagore Bagcshwari Professor of Indian Fine Art for a period of five years. N one of the other universities followed suit. Similarly, the most representative collection of Indian art was in Boston, and not in any Indian city. That collection, made by Ananda Coomaraswamy, had been offered by him to the Indian public on condition that a suitable building be erected for it in some central place, by subscrip­ tion. Through Indian apathy the collection was lost to America.69 The indifference of the vast majority of the educated middle class to art and appalling ignorance of its principles was revealed time and again when matters of art were discussed, say in the legislative bodies. Thus an Indian member o f the Bengal Legislative Council seriously contended in the course of a debate in 1922 that knowledge of culture or Indian art was a useless encumbrance!70 Many Indian and non-Indian enthusiasts were to lament the dispropor­ tion between Indian interest in political matters and that in matters cultural. The Englishman wrote, ‘when Indian Nationalists brag of Indian culture they are still thinking in terms of politics. And Indian students at Home [in England] are more interested in political discussions than in discussing literature and a rt/71 Rupam on its part also felt that ‘the amount of energy

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and attention that has been given lately to the needs of political liberty has been entirely denied to the needs of our cultural em ancipation/72 It was the lack o f Indian interest and patronage which made state patronage to.artists— or the lack o f it— so important. T he Educational Policy Resolution o f 1913 approvingly noted the emergence of the 'Indian School o f Painting in Calcutta’ and the establish­ m ent of an architectural wing in the Bombay School of Art. But the rest of the Resolution was devoted, as usual, to the importance and urgency of pre­ serving for and in India scientifically arranged collections of old and modern arts and crafts, especially now that a better understanding and appreciation had had the undesired effect o f drawing good specimens into public collec­ tions abroad.73 Action to promote the new art was minimal. Lord Ronaldshay, when Governor of West Bengal (1917-22) had provided small ad hoc funds to the Indian Society of Oriental Art and started art salons at the Government House; some occasional commissions for murals on government buildings had resulted from the interest taken by Governors o f Bombay like Sir George Clark (1908) and Sir George Lloyd (1918-23); and in the curriculum of the Lucknow Art School set up in 1911, Indian art had been included as an im portant subject. This official reception (as distinct from concrete support) for nationalistic art may seem surprising when compared to the reaction to the renaissance in the other arts. But it is not difficult to understand when one considers how lacking in political content the new art was. Divorced from contemporary reality, and relying heavily on Indian myths and meta­ physical beliefs, it was a subjective, heavily sentimental and romantic art. It lacked the vigour o f personal experience, and posed no threat to British rule, unlike literature and drama which also used history and mythology but as allegories to carry political messages. The government had no hesitation therefore in offering patronage. Indeed it was believed by people like Lord Ronaldshay, later the Secretary of State (1935-40), to be a harmless oudet for emotions which would otherwise be expressed in terrorism and violence. Referring to the new art movement in the Asiatic Review of July 1924, he wrote: Running like a thread through the varying forms o f unrest with which India is tormented is a spirit o f revolt, sometimes conscious, sometimes subconscious, against the deculturization o f a proud and sensitive people. Many Indians have proclaimed this identity o f motive behind varying manifestations o f Indian nationalism.74

Incidentally, Ronaldshay denounced Gandhi several times for arrogance and was a consistent apologist for British rule.75

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W ith the introduction of Dyarchy in 1919 the responsibility for a rt administration was placed in the hands of Indians in the provinces. It led to the introduction of Indian history, art and music into the school a n d university curriculum, but increased patronage o f Indian artists by th e government did not always follow. T hat depended on the inclinations o f th e governors of the provinces, and the interests of the Indian ministers in charge of the transferred subjects. Bombay was fortunate in having a succession o f Governors like George Lloyd, an art loving public, and public leaders a n d philanthropists interested in art (Sir Phiroze Sethna, M r M. R. Jayakar, Kanayilal Vakil, Sir Ratan Tata, Sir Dorab Tata, Kasturbhai Lalbhai a n d others), so that art received considerable patronage and progressed well. O ther provinces were not always so lucky, and there was still Some substance in Havell’s complaint that ‘the recent political reforms have placed the responsibility for art administration in India in the hands of English educated Indians, few of whom have yet shown a firmer grasp of India’s a rt­ istic problems than their predecessors in office. . . .*76 W hen in 1924 the curriculum of each Art School and methods o f ins­ truction were left to the local governments, the Mayo School at Lahore became essentially a School of Arts and Crafts and did not add painting to its curriculum; the School of Arts and Crafts at Lucknow continued to con­ centrate on crafts and applied arts, though there was a move to encourage painting; and the Madras School, which on the recommendation of a com ­ mittee appointed in 1921 had become the Madras Arts and Crafts School, provided training mostly in art and design as applied to industrial crafts. The Calcutta School o f Art concentrated almost solely on painting and sculpture and followed traditional Indian styles and themes even as the influence of Swadeshi weighed less heavily on art values, and Abanindranath, Nandalal, Gaganendranath, Jamini Roy and others responded to the world round them on their own terms, rather than in a framework o f nationalism. W ith a return o f self esteem ‘Indianness’ came instinctively, and needed no self-conscious effort. T he Bombay School had courses on drawing and painting, a modelling class, a pottery department, and a school for applied arts and crafts known as the Reay workshops; it also had a department for Drawing Masters, as well as courses in mural painting in which ancient India had excelled and Life classes in which Western art education was stressed. Additionally, it had the only school of architecture in India. But for students of all the Schools the problem of employment remained as acute as before so that the demand for training of Indians in architectural and artistic skills, and for state patronage of artists began to surface in­

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creasingly. It became one o f the central issues in connection with the building o f New Delhi. Whereas to the First W orld W ar the major artistic preoccupation had been the architectural style of New Delhi and the related question of patronage of the traditional artisan (see the following chapter), after the War the attention shifted to patronage o f Indian artists in decorating the public buildings o f the new capital. The massive expenditure on the imperial city project (by the end of 1913-14, Rs 85 lakhs had been spent), had not benefited Indian artists at all, and it was rightly felt that henceforth at least a portion of the budget should go to encourage Indian art.77 Because o f intense advocacy, Indian and British, to associate Indian artists with the decoration o f the new capital, a clause had been inserted in the agree­ ments with Lutyens and Baker, the architects o f New Delhi, to devise a scheme for the purpose. Accordingly, on 30 March 1922, they submitted a proposal for a studio to discover talent and to meet the decorative needs of the Viceroy’s House. Lutyens felt that without the benefit of such a studio which would ensure meticulous tutoring and supervision by an English artist, no Indian painter would be sufficiently imaginative or adaptable to create a coherent design for the Durbar Hall.78 T o March 1925 nothing had been done about this. In response to a question in the Assembly the government reply was that the scheme had not yet been considered nor any decision taken regarding mural paintings for the Council Halls; H. T. Keeling, the Chief Engineer of Delhi informed Lutyens in a confidential letter dated 26 March 1925 that since the revised budgetary es timates o f the new capital contained no substantial provision for decorative work, the government had decided to postpone it until a comprehensive scheme o f decoration was approved.79 O n hearing this the Secretary o f State wrote to Viceroy Lytton that though he knew nothing of the merits of the scheme, he strongly felt that some means must be found of associating Indian artists with the work of painting and decorating the new city.80 In reply Lord Lytton informed him that although the scheme had been turned down for reasons o f economy he himself did not think it suit­ able for the purpose it professed to serve. If the public buildings were to be decorated by Indian artists it was not raw students which were required but the most accomplished artists of the day and it would be useless to start training students for it at this stage. O n the other hand, if students were trained by an English artist, the result would be Western and not Indian art. He added that he had been told by Sir John Marshall* Director-General of the Archaeological Survey, that Indian public opinion was more concerned

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with the trainingof Indian artists than the decoration of the new capital, and he himself doubted whether Indian art would be suitable for buildings in th e new capital. The better course might be to invite designs through a competition.81As for training Indian art students, he said he was sympathetic to the Indian demand for a central institution and had taken some steps in the matter which would be communicated as appropriate.82 It was not quite true that the Indian demand was only for training; b o th training and employment of artists on decorative work was demanded. Bombay was in the vanguard o f the campaign to employ Indian artists on the murals in the new capital because, by then, the Bombay School of Art had established a reputation for mural painting, encouraged by the patronage that had been extended to its students by Sir George Lloyd. Several public appeals were followed by a Resolution in the Council of State introduced by M r Pheroze Scthna in 1924 on the same issue. The reply was that such appeals were premature, and that the government was exploring the ‘requisite type’ o f artists to be engaged. Public meetings in Bombay, Surat and Ahmedabad expressed indignation and resentment at government tactics, but to no avail.83 Meanwhile pressure was also being brought on the government by Indian art lovers in England. At the India Society Conference on Indian Art at Wembley in 1924 (organized as part of the British Empire Exhibition events) many had expressed the opinion that New Delhi offered the greatest opportunity for Indian art and artists in modern times and that such an opportunity should not be allowed to slip by. Sir George Lloyd, who had recently relinquished the Bombay Governor­ ship, suggested that the Government of India establish a Prize of Delhi and that students qualifying for the prize in sculpture and painting (and perhaps architecture, and crafts) should be admitted to a central institution, a kind of Villa Medici, where they would work for a period o f three to four years, painting and modelling. This would, according to him, be more productive for the development of Indian art than the formation o f an Academy of Fine Arts.84 The concluding resolution o f the Conference urged ‘the importance of promoting throughout the Empire the study and appreciation of the aes­ thetic culture of India in the provinces o f painting, sculpture, music, architecture and the applied arts. . . ,’85 The Indian reaction to the Prize of Delhi scheme was mixed. ‘Agastya’, writing on the Wembley Conference in Rupam, perceptively commented that the proposal was a typical instance of the official approach of offering a drop in an ocean to meet a vast need. A single institution of the type envisaged in the Prize of Delhi idea was a cheap and easy substitute for a

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comprehensive scheme of state aid or patronage that was needed including frequent exhibitions, art salons, museums, galleries and art lectures. In the absence of patronage by a cultured Indian public it was incumbent on the government to assume the role of appreciation and patronage, but the Wembley proposal had carefully avoided any reference to immediate patronage in connection with New Delhi.86 T he response in Bombay was more enthusiastic. The Art Society of India passed a Resolution supporting the Prize of Delhi scheme, and H. Jaffer moved a Resolution in the Council of State requesting the government to consider a scheme o f scholarships and prizes for Indian art students and establishing a central institution where the scholarship holders and prizemen may continue their work for a period of three or four years.87The government claimed it had no funds for the scheme formulated by the architects of New Delhi, but assured the House that it would now reconsider how best to encourage Indian art in Delhi.88 Public opinion in Bombay had not in any case been in favour o f the Lutyens scheme, and in the Bombay Chronicle of 20 March 1925 it was denounced as the formulation of those who had neither sympathy nor understanding of Indian art. At a public meeting on 2 April 1925 of the Parsi Rajakeya Sabha, M. R. Jayakar denounced the Lutyens proposal on the same ground, and also because in the scheme Indian talent would only play a secondary part. At the sam e.meeting, a Prize of Delhi Committee was constituted comprising Pheroze Sethna, Lalubhai Samaldas, M. R. Jayakar, O. C. Gangoli, and others, to draw up a scheme to ensure stability in art instruction, secure the best training for students, and employment and status for the artists.89 It was made clear that what was envisaged was not a centralized uniformity in training and technique but a system o f scholarships to enable selected students from different provinces to be trained in an institution in Delhi and to have opportunities for exhibiting their work. But the Committee did not want the institution to have anything to do with construction or the mural decorations of New Delhi, which it saw as a separate issue. The new institution, it was hoped, would be fully guided and controlled by Indians or by those familiar and sympathetic to the country.90 As a result of this intense interest in several quarters, the Viceroy consti­ tuted a three-m an committee with Percy Brown and Gladstone Solomon, Directors of the Art Schools at Calcutta and Bombay respectively, and Sir John Marshall, Director-General of Archaeology, to discuss (a) how Indian talent could be employed on the decoration of New Delhi, and (b) the provision of facilities for advanced training of Indian artists. No Indian was involved in a matter of such interest for the country.

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Regarding the first, the committee was of the opinion that competitions would be doomed to failure for the reason that suitably qualified Indian artists were yet not available. The only possible way of enlisting Indian talent would be by establishing at Delhi an institute to which the most brilliant students from all parts of India could be attracted for advanced training in sculpture and painting. It was thus agreed that there should be a School in Delhi for Fine Arts on the lines of the Villa Medici, candidates for which would be selected from the winners o f the Delhi Prize, which would be on the lines of the Prix de Rome.91 The Committee went on to discount fears of introducing undue officialdom in the encouragement of Indian art. In its view, it was the government that had to take the lead in extending patronage. Such patronage 'necessarily connotes a certain measure o f control, but there is no reason why such con­ trol, if properly exercised, should not be highly beneficial.*92 Because the proposed institute was to be the joint responsibility of the provincial and central governments the matter was referred to the provincial governments for review.93 N ot surprisingly, Indians took exception to the allegation that Indian artists were not qualified to tackle the important work of decorating the New Delhi buildings. It was pointed out that not only had the newly emerged Bengal School o f painting received recognition abroad but Bombay also had several artists of calibre who had received commissions for murals in the Government House there. As it happened, the government itself concluded that it was cheaper and easier to give some commissions to Indian artists than to start a new institute for long-term development. In response to a question by Khan Bahadur Hussain Khan on 30 August 1927 regarding the proposed institute, the government revealed that the scheme did not find favour with the local governments, and had been dropped.94 Instead, two schemes were formulated for the employment of artists on public buildings. O ne was to grant scholarships to a few Indians for further training in Europe, with a view to employing them subsequently on the deco­ ration of India House in London. The architect of India House, Sir Herbert Baker, and the Indian High Commissioner, Sir Atul Chatterjee, had both wanted murals by Indian artists and had approached the government to select them. They were first to be trained in mural techniques at the Royal College of Art under Rothenstein for a year, after which they were to tour Italy and then work on the murals. Applications were invited from artists all over India. O f seventy-eight applicants, four were selected, all of them being, by coincidence, Bengali (the influence o f the Bengal School is clearly visible in the murals adorning the

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India House in London). Given the intense rivalry between the two Schools, this led to much heart burning in Bombay.95 A competition for Indian artists to decorate New Delhi was ultimately announced in 1927.96Twenty-four artists submitted work, out of which the works of seven were selected. As it happened, most of the selected artists had been trained at the Bombay School of Art except one from Lahore.97All were employed, however, on buildings of less importance than the Viceroy’s House. There the Dome and pendentives of the Durbar Hall remained un­ adorned, as originally proposed by Lutyens. Lutyens and Lord Irwin finally approved mural decoration for only one of the palace’s 340 rooms— and to a design approved by Percy Brown, who conceived pictorial maps for the Viceroy’s Council room. These were executed under his direction by Munshi Ghulam Hussain and a staff of Indians.9*At Baker’s instance, seven Secretariat rooms were also decorated by Indian artists, among them S. Fyzee Rahmin and G. H. Nagarkar. Indian art was felt to have been given its due! It was only after Independence that murals were painted on the walls o f the outer circular corridor on the ground floor of Parliament House by eminent Indian artists, depicting great moments in history." Modern Indian art had established itself by the Thirties. Three of the Art Schools had Indian Principals— Debi Prosad Roy Chowdhri at Madras, Asit Haidar at Lucknow, and Mukul Dey at Calcutta; a decade later, the curri­ culum of most Schools included courses in commercial art, fine art and in a variety of crafts. Lucknow and Bombay also gave architectural training.100 Opening the Delhi Fine Arts Exhibition on 20 February 1930, Lord Irwin, the Viceroy remarked: The last thirty years have seen a wonderful renaissance o f Indian art, due not so much to the impact o f Western art on Eastern thought, as to the general ferment o f ideas caused by the spread o f education, the reaction against the domination o f the West in the field o f thought and feeling, and the set o f the tide in the direction o f a separate national consciousness. Indian art, standing firmly on its own feet, is now in a position to make a deliberate choice o f such elements as the West has to offer it, and to decide which it will adopt and which it will reject.101

Abroad too, modern Indian painting had gained recognition. At an exhibition of modern Indian art organized by the India Society in December 1934 at the Burlington Galleries in London, the works of Sarada and Barada Ukil, Rehman Chugtai, theTagores, RoyChowdhuri, A. K. Haidar, Mukul Dey, and others found pride of place. Though rather heavily weighted in favour o f the Bengal School, the exhibition was the first complete survey of modern Indian art presented anywhere.

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By the Forties, as Lord Irwin had foreseen, Indian art had become eclectic. While Jamini Roy turned to the Indian folk tradition for inspiration, Rabindranath and Gaganendranath Tagore, influenced by Western avant garde movements, branched out into modern art. The visual arts, like other Indian arts, had also come uhder the influence of the Marxist cultural movement. The resulting Young T urk Movement at the Bombay School o f Art, with P. T. Reddy as its leader, shook off the influence o f both Academ­ ism and Orientalism and experimented instead with Impressionism and other styles. In early 1947 the Young Turks were replaced by the Progressive Artists Group, led by M. F. Hussain and Francis Newton Souza. W ith its distinctly modernist stance, this group, along with others like Tyeb M ehta and Akbar Padamsee helped take Indian art confidently forward into the post-Independence era. By the end of British rule, the world view o f Indian art and its purpose had changed beyond recognition. The traditional artist-artisan had been replaced by a continuum, at one end of which was the artist, usually o f the middle or upper middle class, and educated in the Art Schools, who worked in a ‘studio', and created self-dependent works in the Tine’ arts of painting and sculpture, embodying his personal experience and vision. Artistic creation was therefore individually attributed. The availability of new mate­ rial, and mastery o f new techniques of drawing and colouring, introduced new dimensions in the artistic process, changing the modes of treating space, mass, volume, structure, perspective and colour. By now there was a marked preference for joining the international mainstream, rather than continuing a quest for a special Indianness. At the other end of the spectrum was the traditional artisan, mostly from the lower class or castes, almost entirely outside the orbit o f Art Schools and working in his workshop and largely following established indigenous traditions. Though designs, techniques, and materials had been consider­ ably modified by the British impact, the greater modification had been due to industrial development, which had damaged but not completely destroyed the underlying heritage of skills. W hat had decayed, and what would re­ quire considerable effort on the part of independent India to restore, was widespread patronage of these art goods. Between artist and artisan had emerged a new class of commercial and industrial artists, very much the creation of the new technology, the Art Schools and state education and employment policy in general, and whose patronage was entirely of a different nature. To conclude, the British Indian art policy with its almost exclusive focus on industrial or decorative arts and its unsure aims and goals can be said to

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have been less than successful in its stated objectives o f preservation and promotion of the traditional arts and increasing employment opportunities for artisans because it did not tackle the basic problem o f lack of demand. The cause of the crisis in England— deterioration in artistic taste due to industrialization—was different from the cause in India, namely, lack of industrialization and alternative employment opportunities. Yet the solu­ tion adopted was the same in both cases: reform of design. The problem in India had been created by the contradiction between trade, education and architectural policies on the one hand and the aims o f the art policies on the other. A non-political art policy would have dictated tariffs on imports; adoption of traditional Indian architecture as official policy, encouragement of indi­ genous products, and a school curriculum which taught Indians to appre­ ciate their own history and culture, so as to increase domestic demand, rather than international exhibitions to promote exports of art goods, museums and a few token art schools. Moreover for all its grand rhetoric, in fifty years only five Schools of Art were started by the government to meet the problems o f the entire country, in contrast to a hundred schools in England in twenty-three years from 1839 to 1862. And as for direct patronage of artists or artisans in the form of commissions or direct employment, it was so insignificant that the conclu­ sion seems inescapable that the Raj as a patron o f art was not in the same league as the Mughals. T he Art Schools themselves were beset with contradictory goals and practices. The aim of technical education promoting employment opportu­ nities was at variance with that o f promoting artistic development, so that crafts instruction lost out to commercial art, and the artisans to the more literate and upper-class students. Again, though the overt aim was to encourage traditional decorative art and the artisan, and not ‘fine’ art and the 6lite artist, in practice the orientation of the curriculum and the inclinations of the teachers worked to reverse the priorities.102These contradictions were the result of arbitrary distinctions between ‘decorative* and ‘fine* art; confusion about the Indian capacity for the one but not the other; and the imperialist view that the European tradition in Tine’ art was superior to the Indian. * If they had failed in their stated objective of reviving Indian industrial art, the Art Schools certainly succeeded in ‘improving* (that is Europeanizing) the artistic taste of Indians, and alienating them from their own tradition, as befitting the grand scheme of cultural imperialism. Even the later policy of Indianization and support to nationalist art had its own imperial logic.

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For the British, Indian art was safe, posing no threat to British rule comparable to that posed by literature or drama. For the Indians on the other hand, almost till the end, employment, economic survival, and political selfdetermination were o f more consequence than survival of art skills, w hich had catered largely to the aristocratic classes. Until the twentieth century therefore Indians talked of technical schools and promotion of industries producing goods for the masses, whereas the British talked of Art Schools and decorative art ware. Yet there is no gainsaying the fact that by default or otherwise, the bread-and-butter concern of government art policies helped revive national pride in indigenous art, even if their fruition in the birth o f a new art was a happy coincidence.

N o te s and References 1. See Partha Mitter, ‘Artistic Responses to Colonialism in India: An Overview', in C. A. Bayly (ed.), The Raj (London, 1990), pp. 361-4. 2. SeeTapati GuhaThakurta, The M aking o f New 'Indian'Art (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 27-63. 3. Mitter, ‘Artistic Responses', pp. 364-3. 4. Ibid. 5. Guha Thakurta, New 'Indian Art, pp. 117-45. 6. Ibid., pp. 118-24. 7. Ibid., pp. 128-32. 8. Ibid., p. 127. 9. Ibid., pp. 127-33. 10. Mitter, ‘Artistic Responses’, p. 364. 11. Guha Thakurta, New 'Indian*Art, pp. 140-5. 12. Ibid., p. 137. 13. Ibid. See pp. 185-99 for the development of the School, and its aesthetic ideology. 14. See W. E. Gladstone Solomon, ‘Modem Art in Western India’, Indian A rt and Letters, vol. 8, no. 2, 1934, 100-15. 15. Progress o f Education in India, 1897-1902, Fourth Quinquennial Review, vol. 1 (Delhi), p. 281. 16. Progress o f Education in India, 1902-1907, Fifth Quinquennial Review, vol. 1 (Delhi), p. 210. 17. T. Raleigh (ed.), Lord Curzon in India (London, 1906), p. 207. 18. Indian Newspaper Reports, Bengal (IOR L/R/5/31/1905). 19. Progress o f Education in India, 1902-1907, Fifth Quinquennial Review, vol. 1. 20. Guha Thakurta, New 'Indian'Art, pp. 149-53.

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21. Ibid., p. 149. 22. Havell, quoted in Ratan Parimoo, The Paintings o f the Three Tagores (Baroda, 1973), p. 39. 23. Guha Thakurta, New 'Indian Art, pp. 131-2. 24. Ibid., pp. 152-4. 25. Parimoo, Paintings o f the Three Tagores, p. 36. 26. Ibid., p. 40. 27. See Havell’s Revival o f Indian Handicrafts (Madras, 1901). 28. See G uha T hakurta, pp. 155-6 for Havell’s ambivalent thinking on Abanindranath’s appointment. 29. E. B. Havell, ‘British Philistinism and Indian A n’, The Nineteenth Century, no. 5, February 1903. 30. E. B. Havell, The BasisforArtistic and Industrial Revival in /ni&z(Madras, 1912), p. 60. 31. E. B. Havell, The A rt Heritage o f India (Bombay, 1908/1964), p. 179. 32. Ibid., pp. 99-121. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. E. B. Havell, Essays on Indian Art, Industry, and Education (Madras, 1910), pp. 98-9; The A rt Heritage o f India (Bombay, 1908/1964), p. 101. 36. Ibid. 37. Havell, A rt Heritage, p. 100. 38. See Partha Mitter, Monsters, pp. 270-7 for a more detailed discussion of Havell’s interpretation. 39. Roger Lipsey, Coomaraswamy: His Life and Work (Princeton, 1977), vol. 3, p. 20. 40. A. K. Coomaraswamy, A rt and Swadeshi (Madras, 1911), pp. 7-16. 41. Ibid. 42. Guha Thakurta, New 'Indian Art, pp. 162-3. 43. Pramod Chandra, On the Study o f Indian A rt (Harvard, 1983), p. 84. 44. Ibid., pp. 84-7. 45. Cecil Burns, ‘The Functions o f An Schools in India’; Journal o f the Royal Society o f Arts, vol. lvu, 1908-9, 631-41. 46. Ibid. 47. Coomaraswamy’s views were later reprinted: ‘Function of Schools of A n in India: A Reply to M r Cecil Burns’; Modem Review, vol. 7, January-June 1910, 128-9. 48. Ibid. 49. E. B. Havell, ‘An Administration in India’, Journal o f the Royal Society o f Arts, vol. lviii, no. 2985, 1910, 274-85. 50. The debate following Havell’s paper is included in the above issue of the JoumaL Coomaraswamy’s arguments at p. 290. 51. Ibid., p. 292. 52. Ibid., pp. 296-7. 53. Ibid.

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54. See issues o f M arg Bombay, 1949-53, for early debates on modernity and tradition in art and architecture; also Report o f Seminar on Architecture, Lalit Kala Akademi (New Delhi, 1959). 55. Quoted in Vincent Smith, A History o f Fine Art in India and Ceylon (Oxford, 1911), p. 4. 56. Quoted in Mitter, Monsters, p. 270. 57. Chandra, Study o f Indian Art, pp. 32-3, 57-60, 94-6. 58. Mitter, Monsters, pp. 280-2. 59. See Guha Thakurta, New 'Indian*Art, pp. 175-90. 60. Ibid. 61. Partha Mitter, Thomas Metcalfand Guha Thakurta have pointed out that Havell, like Birdwood, never called into question the propriety o f empire and was at heart an imperialist, with a hostile attitude to political activists and nationalists. However one cannot doubt his contribution to reinstating Indian fine art. See Mitter, ‘Status and Patronage’, p. 300, no. 70; and Guha Thakurta New 'Indian ’ Art, p. 182. 62. Vincent Smith, A History o f Fine A rt in India and Ceylon (Oxford, 1911), pp. 5-6. 63. W. E. Gladstone Solomon, Essays on MogulA rt (Delhi, 1932/1972), pp. 89-96. 64. Ibid. 65. Mitter, ‘Artistic Responses’, p. 361. 66. Dnyana Prakash, a daily from Poona, 1 March 1914, Indian Newspaper Reports (IOR L/R/5/169/1914/Bombay). 67. See W. E. Gladstone Solomon, ‘Modern Art in Western India’, Indian A rt and Letters, vol. 8, no. 2, 1934, 100-15. 68. Rupam, no. 4, October 1920, pp. 30, 34-5. 69. Ibid. 70. Rupam, no. 10. April 1922, p. 70. 71. Englishman, 8 July 1922, File o f Press cuttings on India Society and Indian Art (IOR MSS EUR F 147/104). 72. Rupam, no. 12, October 1922, p. 143. 73. Indian EducationalPolicy, 1913. Being a Resolution issued by the Governor General in Council on 21 February 1913 (Calcutta, 1913). 74. Quoted in Havell, The A rt Heritage, p. 107. 75. See Private Papers o f Lord Zetland, file of press cuttings, 1927-35 (IOR MSS EUR D 609/59). 76. E. B. Havell, A rt Heritage, p. 103. 77. Robert Grant Irving, Indian Summer: Lutyens, Baker and Imperial Delhi (Yale,

1981), p. 126. 78. Ibid., p. 194. 79. Assembly question by N. M. Joshi on 6 March 1925 in Legislative Assembly Proceedings, January-February 1925, vol. 5, part 2, pp. 2033-4; Ketting letter to Lutyens 26 March 1925 in File 1718, PWD 1925 (IOR U P W D /6 /1 162/1925). 80. Letter of 14 May 1925 in file quoted above. 81. Lytton to Birkenhead, 16 July 1925, PWD file 1718, 1925. 82. Ibid.

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83. See 'Masquerade’, Bombay Chronicle 20 March 1925: India Society Papers, 1931-32 (IOR MSS EUR F 147/74). 84. Reported in Rupam, no. 19-20, July-December 1924, pp. 124-8. 85. From file o f India Society Papers, 1931-32. 86. Rupam, no. 19-20, July-December 1924, pp. 128-30. 87. Resolution and reply quoted in The Bombay Chronicle, 20 March 1925. 88. Ibid. 89. Ibid. 90. Leaflet issued by the Prize of Delhi Committee, Bombay: Indian Society Papers, 1931- 32. 91. Note on the Establishment o f a Central A rt Institute at Delhi, by Sir John Marshall: Legislative Assembly Proceedings, vol. 7, part l, February 1926, p. 620. 92. Ibid. 93. Ibid. 94. Legislative Assembly Proceedings, vol. 4, 1927, p. 3631 (IOR V/9/78/1927). 95. The India House scheme was publicised t/u/elndustriesandLabourDepartment, G O I’s Press Communique, 9 November 1928. For the controversy over selection o f artists see India Society Papers, 1931-32. 96. Industries and Labour Department’s Letter No. 1, 196(T), 11 October 1927. 97. India Society Papers, 1931-32. 98. Irving, Indian Summer, pp. 194-5. 99. M ural Paintings in Parliament House, Lok Sabha pamphlet (Delhi, undated). 100. Progress o f Education in India, Quinquennial Reports, 1922-27, 1927-32, 1932- 37. 101. Lord Irwin, Speeches, vol. 2, 1929-31 (GOI Press, 1931), pp. 134-6. 102. See M iner, 'Status and Patronage o f Artists, 1850-1900’, in Stoler Miller (ed.), The Powers o f Art, pp. 289-97, for a more detailed evaluation of the Art Schools.

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CHAPTER 8

‘O ur W ork is Righteous and It Shall Endure’

Traditional architecture, in two main styles, the H indu and the IndoIslamic, was very much a living art at the time o f the British conquest. T h e dom inant H indu tradition, characterized by lavish carving and sculptural embellishment, was still vigorous; the basic style, based on com m on principles embodied in the Shilpa Shastra and Manasara, had developed several regional expressions, Maratha, Rajput, South Indian and Vishnupura (Bengal).1The Indo-Islamic style, the result of the interaction o f the indi­ genous with the Islamic tradition, and whose finest expression was Mughal architecture, had also developed regional variations such as the Deccan style with its more direct Persian influence.2 Though many fine buildings were being built in the Indo-Islamic style (such as the Qudsia Bagh o f Delhi, the great Imambara, Turkish Gate and Mosque in Lucknow, and some of the monuments o f Bijapur), there had been some debasement in the style since the Mughal period. Buildings in both styles were built by traditional architects, mistris, who were in charge o f both the design and decoration, and who built according to prescribed canons and recognized motifs of the age. They did not lack patronage, there being a great deal of monumental building activity in the form of temples and mosques, ghats and palaces, apart from domestic archi­ tecture. The British were fascinated by India’s architecture from the beginning. Several artists like William Hodges and Thomas and William Daniell painted monuments and contributed to the interest. Indian artists o f the Company School were also commissioned by the English in India to paint Indian monuments and buildings and so provide a visual representation of Indian architecture to the people at home. The interest in Indian architec­ ture led to some tentative efforts to imitate Indian styles in England, most notably at Sezincote, the seat of a British ‘nabob’, remodelled by S. P. Cockerell and Thomas Daniell in the early nineteenth century and in the

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Royal Pavilion at Brighton built about the same time. But the interest was short-lived, and the experiments were not repeated though interest in Indian architecture among scholars and artists continued.3 But in spite o f this interest, in spite of the evidence o f a living tradition, and in spite of an Orientalist cultural policy in other areas, official architec­ tural policy, from the first, was to use Western styles and architects for official buildings. Imperialist attitudes could not allow the arts of a subject nation parity with those o f the conquerors; also, architecture was used for state­ ments o f power and cultural superiority. Until British hegemony was established, Company buildings were modelled on contemporary Indian styles, were made o f humble materials, and were simple and unostentatious.4 The English also often hired existing homes from local people, as in the case of the Factory at Surat.5 But once the British became rulers they required grand buildings indicative of their status.6T he logic of power also dictated the form of public building activity: forts, garrisons and cantonments to consolidate and main­ tain a military presence; administrative buildings for purposes o f govern­ ment; churches for worship; palaces for the rulers; and memorials and monuments for the heroes.7The architectural styles adopted for these in the initial years were the outcome, pardy at least, o f necessity. Rather than hire Indian master builders, the Company preferred to use its own officials, familiar with the form and function of the buildings required. Yet Company architecture to the time of Lord Wellesley was large­ ly in amateur hands, mosdy Company engineers. They built in styles that were familiar to them, using architectural handbooks, and the buildings were, with a few notable exceptions, utilitarian in character with little con­ cern for scale, style or psychological impact. The early architectural style was that of the classical revival, the style dom inant in England of the time, and the style illustrated in the Handbooks used by the Company engineers. But transplanted to India, the style became cruder, and very often larger, either due to climatic difficulties, makeshift materials, or visions of grandeur. The inexperience of the engineer architects, who had received architectural training only as pan of their engineering training, in an institution set up only in 1812, also showed.8 Around 1780 there was a change in style and characteristics of official architecture because of a feeling on the part of the British of superiority on two levels, the military and the political on the one hand, and the cultural on the other. Therefore, being merely functional was not enough; the style used had to express magnificence, have large dimensions, and a high profile. There thus began a politically conscious use of architecture, both to express

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domination and as an alternative to the practical exercise of power.9 For instance, in the Hyderabad Residency (for which incidentally, the local ruler was made to pay) grandeur in scale and style expressed British paramountcy and substituted for an overt display of military power.10 So many grand buildings were built in each presidency town in the last quarter o f the eighteenth century that when artist William Hodges visited Madras in 1781 he was struck by the majestic appearance of the city.11 The change became most noticeable during the governorship ofWcllesley who embarked on a lavish building programme in which grandeur was emphasized. T he first of such projects was Government House in Calcutta (between 1799 and 1803): Wellesley had found the existing residence of the Governor-General insignificant and unsuited to his high office. It was modelled by the architect Charles Wyatt, of the Bengal Engineers, on Kedlestone Hall in Derbyshire. An equally grand summer palace at Barrackpore was planned. In Madras, the second Lord Clive (eldest son of Robert, Lord Clive) who had become Governor in 1798, followed in Wellesley’s footsteps with a Government House built for him by John Goldingham in 1802 on similar dimensions.12 But there was conflict between military and political interests on the one hand and commercial ones on the other. The Court of Directors did not share Wellesley’s or Clive’s grandiose vision, and were not impressed with the magnificence of official buildings. The Company was still a trader and the commercial mentality showed through frequently in the Directors’ concern with economy. Informed of the tremendous cost o f the Government House at Calcutta, and Wellesley’s plan to build a country residence at Barrackpore, the Court of Directors showed displeasure at both his and Clive’s profligacy. It was part o f the reason why both men were recalled. A despatch from the Court to the three Presidencies in India followed, stating that the ostentation o f native rulers was not to be emulated— that would ‘prove highly injurious to our commercial interests’.13 It is evidence of the growing Imperial attitudes of the time that the Directors’ views were not shared by all. Lord Valentia, a traveller in India at the time, fully supported Wellesley’s grandiose Government House project and decried the Court’s criticism. In his travelogue he wrote: . . . they ought to remember that India is a country o f splendour, o f extravagance, and o f outward appearances. The Head o f a mighty Empire ought to conform himself to the prejudices o f the country he rules over; and that the British in particular, ought to emulate the splendid work o f the Princes o f the House o f T im o u r. . . . In short, I wish India to be ruled from a palace, not from the counting house, with the ideas o f a Prince, not with those o f a retail dealer in muslins and indigo.14

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So official buildings continued to be on a large scale and in the favoured British styles. Writers Building (Calcutta), the Residencies in Lucknow and Hyderabad, the Churches in Calcutta and Madras, and finally the public monuments to heroes (the Cornwallis Tomb at Ghazipore and the Ochterlony column to commemorate his conquest of Nepal) were all built in the classical style and were reflections of the imperial sentiment. By 1809, Calcutta presented an appearance at once classical and imperial. In 1809 a visitor to Calcutta wrote: O n landing I was struck with the general appearance o f grandeur in all the buildings; not that any o f them are according to the strict rules o f art, but groups o f columns, porticos, domes, and fine gateways, interspersed with trees and the broad river crowded with shipping made the whole scene magnificent.15

The transformation of Calcutta from an insignificant trading centre to the capital of an empire was summed up by Thomas and William Daniell: The splendour o f the British Arms produced a sudden change in its aspects; the bamboo roof suddenly vanished; the marble column took the place of brick walls; princely mansions were erected by private individuals.16

As Sten Nilsson observes, unlike previous conquerors o f India, the British ‘strove consciously not to be absorbed in the Oriental mass. In architecture they had an instrument by means of which they could manifest their status and their ideals.’17 It was not only in size or materials that the superiority was demonstrated but also in style. To use Indian styles would have meant according approval or a status of equality to Indian culture. This the English, particularly after 1818, were not ready to concede— everything about Western civilization was superior. But as tastes changed in England, so too did architectural styles in India, albeit with a time lag. Thus the classical styles acquired overtones not present in the original prototype.18 While the buildings of the late eighteenth century, such as Fort St George and the Banqueting Hall in Madras were either in the Palladian or Baroque styles, the Doric neo-classicism of the Greek revival that came into favour in England was reflected in the later Calcutta Town Hall (1807-13), Bom­ bay Town Hall (1824-33), the Calcutta M int (1824—31) and the Bombay M int (1824-29).,,; Yet in the first phase of British rule the classical and imposing styles o f English architecture, while they represented con­ quest, did not as yet fully embody the concept o f Empire. That was to come later.20 Bentinck’s policy of Westernization coincided with a declining inte­ rest in India’s architectural heritage and meant that for official buildings

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Western style architecture would be preferred by definition. T he Revolt of 1857, with its immediate revulsion for all things Indian, as well as the growing racial arrogance witnessed after it, only confirmed Bentinck’s policy. But, because o f the need for thrift there were few grandiose projects undertaken until the middle of the nineteenth century, and Stocqueler in his Handbook for 1844 notes that there were only eighteen public buildings in Calcutta.21 W hen a new institution was formed, it was the practice to house it in a spacious private dwelling and only to build a separate building for it when it was fully established or funds became available. N ot only were few public buildings built, but grandeur in them was decried for the same reason of thrift. For instance a despatch of 20 May 1857 from the Court o f Directors takes exception to the elaborate workmanship of the Monghyr tunnel and reproaches the Government for extravagance.22 Indian architecture had begun to assimilate Western architectural details, both consciously and unconsciously, as early as the end of the seventeenth century with results that were sometimes harmonious but more often incongruous. The various foreign settlements— D utch, French and En­ glish— scattered around coastal India, exposed Indian builders to Western styles which they unconsciously copied for their Indian patrons or to please their foreign patrons, without fully understanding the underlying principles. The foreign patrons were, in turn, often unable to communicate the Western orders perfectly so that the end product was a hybrid o f Western classical forms inserted into a mostly Indian style. The trend, first evident in the Dutch tombs of Ahmedabad and Surat, was accelerated after 1800 when Indian rulers began to copy the Company’s official architecture, several o f the late nawabi buildings of Lucknow, such as Kaisarbagh, being prime examples.23 By 1828, the Indian aristocracy in the presidency towns had started imitating European ways. As Bishop Heber wrote, Their progress in the imitation o f our habits is very apparent, though still the difference is great. None o f them adopt our dress. But their houses are adorned with verandahs and Corinthian pillars; they have very handsome carriages, often built in England; they speak tolerable English, and they show a considerable liking for European society. Few o f them will however eat with us.24

The trend strengthened after the introduction o f English education had transferred the aesthetic allegiance of the educated Indian A ite to Western culture. This new class preferred to hire Western architects or engineers, or those Indian builders who had imbibed the new styles. The traditional mistri and craftsmen were deprived of patronage as the new styles did not use any

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of the conventional ornamentation of the traditional buildings. Denied public and private patronage, many local builders and craftsmen languished or took up employment as draughtsmen under the Company architects, and began to learn new techniques. By the middle of the nineteenth century, in architecture as in other spheres of life, two traditions had begun to exist side by side— the purely Indian *nd the Western, with some intermingling. The purely indigenous architecture was now patronized only by the conservative, trading and money-lending classes. The government and the new middle classes all pre­ ferred Western architecture, though the new favoured style, especially for official architecture, was the Gothic Revival. Bombay witnessed major urban development after 1860, and most of the important public buildings of the time, including the Secretariat and Public Works Office, the Law Courts, and the Convocation Hall and Library of the University, were built in the Venetian Gothic style. Apart from the fact that it conveyed the Evangelical ideals of religion and morality, it was also cheaper than the Classical style and that counted for a lot with the colonial government.25 Through the Gothic style and profuse use of allegorical sculptural orna­ mentation, the British vision of empire was conveyed. The message was that Britain ruled by conquest but also by understanding the conquered; that power and knowledge went together, and that power was not to be exercised arbitrarily.26It mattered not that this vocabulary, derived from the Greek and Roman tradition, was alien to the masses for whom it was meant, and so failed to communicate itself. The grandeur of a building and its imposing nature were adequate in themselves. Neither were all official buildings both aes­ thetic and practical. Often, only the form or the principle of beauty was attended to without reference to the use to which the buildings were to be put. The problem lay partly in a lack of aesthetic taste, and partly in the manner in which the Public Works Department, formed in 1854 to under­ take all government building functioned. England was passing through a crisis of taste due to industrialization and there was a general weakening of aesthetic perception among the officials in India who in any case were less interested in the Indian arts and crafts than their earlier counterparts. In the absence of public opinion on aesthetics and spurred on by blind faith in the superiority of Western architecture, the Royal Engineers and the PW D produced uninspired buildings. The PW D which should have been, but was not, staffed by professional architects, worked to standard plans which were only slightly modified to meet the needs o f different types o f buildings. The traditional mistris who

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were employed had no hand in the design of the buildings, and were treated as unskilled workers. Those Indians who were associated as draughtsmen and supervisors, had generally graduated from the Engineering College at Roorki and were not from the shilpi or mistri castes and hence had no background in traditional architecture. Commenting on the atrocious taste of the average English civilian o f the time, Val Princep, a British artist who visited India in 1876, wrote: In another hundred years, unless we can arrest their hands, there will not be a good thing in India. They have nothing to do but employ themselves on government works, and having no artistic training nor an atom o f taste they spoil everything.27

British architectural policy had even more adverse consequences in princely India, for the princely rulers were more lavish builders and con­ sequently more important patrons than the British government. Cessation of warfare left large surpluses in princely hands which were now used to assert status and assuage wounded pride through ostentatious display of pomp and splendour. The new palaces of the nineteenth century were in diverse European styles, because of the feeling that social and political prestige derived from a cultural alignment with the British rulers. Conforming to Western culture was believed to be a mark of civilization and to indicate ‘progressive’ views whereas patronage of traditional culture was a sign of backwardness.28 Architecture was the first of the visual arts to come in for systematic study by the British. The ground for it was laid by the work of Ram Raz (Raja), a clerk in the East India Company who ultimately rose to the position of a local judge, and who translated classical Indian texts on architecture. In 1834 he published his ‘Essays on the Architecture of the Hindus’ in which the Europeans were given their first glimpse o f the principles o f Indian architecture and the aims and achievements of Indian artists and architects. James Fergusson, an indigo planter, and partner in a large and prosperous commercial establishment in India, who plunged into architectural re­ searches between 1829 and 1847, built on the work of Ram Raz, and produced a series of works on Indian architecture, culminating in his monu­ mental History o f Indian and Eastern Architecture (1876).29 Fergusson’s interest was part of the concern in Victorian England for the decline in industrial design. Apart from his admiration of the principles of Indian architecture, what interested him even more was that it was still a living art in India and students in Europe could still see ‘what perfect buildings the ignorant uneducated natives of India are now producing because their principles were right, whereas ‘the educated and intellectual European (was) always failing because his principles are wrong.’30

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Alexander Cunningham, a military officer o f the Bengal Engineers and the first Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India (1862-85), expanded systematically the work of Fcrgusson. H e discovered and described a large number o f temples all over north India, particularly in Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, his particular contribution being to trace the development of G upta architecture. James Burgess who followed Cunningham as Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, extended the corpus of known monuments, and contributed thoroughly researched documentation on these. The admiration of these scholars for Indian architecture was essentially an archaeological and not an aesthetic appreciation of Indian art. N or was it free from the biases of the day. Much as he admired Indian architecture, Fergusson deeply believed in the moral and cultural superiority of the West, and in spite of the logic of his own evidence could not grant it the same status as either classical Greek or medieval European architecture.31 So too Cunningham and Burgess cons­ tantly asserted the superiority of Greece and Europe and the inferiority of India. A corollary to this attitude was the assignment of foreign origins to all that was noteworthy in Indian art and a tendency to disparage or ignore Indian scholarly views or opinions. Burgess dismissed Ram Raz’s method­ ology as irrelevant to European research, and Fergusson intemperately attacked Raja Rajendralal Mitra, who had done sterling work on the monu­ mental antiquities o f Orissa, when he deigned to disagree with him.32 Nevertheless under the influence of these scholars and members of the Arts and Crafts Movement, a few attempts began to be made to incorporate some Indian elements into a basic Gothic style. In the words o f Jan Morris, W ithout in any way conceding that Indian culture was the equal of British, or abandoning one jot o f the conviction that they had been called by divine providence to the redemption oflndia, the British began to introduce Indian features and motifs into their imperial architecture.33

It was usually Islamic features that were preferred, resulting in a style generally known as Indo-Saracenic, but which should more appropriately be called Indo-Gothic,34 seen in buildings such as the Victoria Terminus in Bombay, designed by F. W . Stevens (1878), and the Madras High Court and University buildings built by Robert Chisholm, Consulting Architect to the Madras Government (from 1865 to the 1880s). In Lord Napier, Governor of Madras (1866-72), Chisholm had a patron who believed British India required its own architecture, and favoured a blending of two sets of principles.35 Apart from Chisholm there were others who were experimenting with an Indo-British style: Major M ant in Ajmer, who built Mayo College, H. C.

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Irwin in Madras who built the Law Courts and the Madras Art Gallery, George W ittet, the architect o f the Prince of Wales Museum (1905) and the Gateway of India (1911) in Bombay, and John Begg who built the General Post Office, Bombay (1900). Meanwhile, a debate had begun about the relative merits o f Indian or British styles in official architecture. Like the debate over the language m ost suited to impart modern knowledge this debate involved more than costs or functional suitability of the different styles to the climate. Underlying it were more basic political considerations— how best to express Britain’s role in India. O ne section of British opinion maintained that the Government should patronize only Western styles for official architecture, whether classical or Gothic. T. Roger Smith, speaking before the Society of Arts in London in 1873, urged that as our administration exhibits European justice, order, law, energy and honour— and that in no hesitating or feeble way— so our buildings ought to hold up a high standard o f European an. They ought to be European both as a rallying point for ourselves, and as a distinctive symbol o f our presence to be behcld-with respect and even w ith admiration by the natives o f the country.36

The opposite view, voiced by William Emerson, sometime President o f the Royal Institute of British Architects and architect of a college in the indigenous style at Allahabad, maintained that the British should not carry into India a new style of architecture, but should follow instead the example of their predecessors, the Mughals, who had adapted the art of the country to their needs. He insisted that it was ‘impossible for the architecture of the country to be suitable to the natives o f the East.’37 George Birdwood, Major J. B. Keith, E. B. Havell and A. K. Coomaraswamy too were in favour of the traditional local styles. Birdwood pointed out that it is particularly through the neglect o f native architecture and the propagation o f a bastard English style, blindly followed by the people themselves, that the government threatens the slow destruction o f the historical handicrafts o f India. A n never long survives among a people who neglect architecture, the chief o f the arts.38

It was still not too late, he felt, for the Government not only to arrest the decadence of the arts of India but to promote their revival by the encourage­ ment of native hereditary architects. Schools of Art could become agents in this renaissance, but only if they began with a study o f architecture. J. B. Keith also pleaded for the reinstatement of the decorative arts which depended on architecture. He pointed out that the native mistri, educated

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in the architectural guilds in India, was a far superior man to the native engineer educated at Roorki. It was unfortunate that the latter had a pre­ ferential right to employment.39James Fergusson’s work on Indian architec­ ture added an emphasis to the demand for patronage to the Indian mistri for it indicated the existence of a still living tradition, contrary to the claim of those who insisted that the ancient skill had long since ceased. But the Public Works Department, a bastion o f imperialist attitudes, was obdurate and by and large continued to prefer Western styles. Even where Indo-Saracenic styles were used, the expectation was belied that Indian elements would rescue the traditional builders languishing for lack of patronage. N ot only were the buildings designed by Englishmen, but the whole process of design and construction followed Western methods in which the architect and builders were different people— whereas in the traditional method a group o f craftsmen shared the responsibility for design and execution. O n the Indo-Saracenic buildings the traditional mistrisv/ere merely expected to execute the design of the Western architects.40 T o rescue the traditional mistri some Englishmen began to promote the revival of an entirely Indian tradition of architecture. The new movement was pioneered by F. S. Growse, a civil servant and archaeologist of repute, and Sir Swinton Jacob, an engineer who designed and built a number of buildings in Rajasthan, including the Museum in Jaipur, on Rajput models. Both o f them were critical of the policy followed by the PW D. In Jacob’s words: . . . all who take an interest in architecture, and who know what vast stores o f material lie scattered over the land, must regret the poverty o f design and detail which as a rule, characterises modern buildings in this co u n try .. . . Standard plans are too often produced, and buildings are erected by men who have no sympathy with Oriental architecture . . . and hence . . . [we find] the stereotyped conventionalities which destroy all individuality.. . .41

In his Jeypore Portfolio, Jacob brought together a rich collection of* drawings for the architect and artisan from the Indian heritage, hoping to shake the PW D out of its drab, standard approach, and to involve the artisan at the design stage. He was not successful with the PW D, but found willing patrons in the Maharajas of Jaipur and Bikaner who let him put his ideas in practice in the construction of the Albert Hall Museum, Jaipur (1887), and the Lalgarh palace, Bikaner (1896). His work spearheaded the revival of the Indian tradition in these states, more buildings being commissioned in traditional styles. Ironically, the Maharajas who were persuaded by British

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example to return to Indian styles, looked not to local craftsmen, but to British architects for the purpose.42 F. S. Growse, posted first in M athura and then as Collector of Bulandshahr, was even more critical of the PW D than Jacob, and had a continuous tussle with the Department to the end of his days in India. He pointed out that mistris were still being engaged by Indians to build temples, tanks and palaces, and that there was no reason why they should not design and build British official buildings. It would at once be more economical, and productive of artistic variety. He also objected to the PW D practice o f not employing any Indian craftsman unless he had studied at the Government College of Engineering at Roorki (without such study men could not understand enough English to do accounts). His retort was that the policy may produce good linguists and accountants, but would not produce welldesigned buildings.43 Growse embarked on several building projects in Bulandshahr, assigning the major role in designing and construction to Indian mistris, and persuaded the merchants of Khurja, a neighbouring town, to follow suit.' His two aims in his self-assigned mission were to re-Indianize the taste of the gentry, and to demonstrate that craftsmen’s work was actually ‘cheaper, more substan­ tial, and more artistic than that turned out by the Departm ent.’44 For his pains Growse was reproached by the government and transferred to a smaller place. Worse, a circular was issued in 1884, forbidding the em­ ployment of Indian mistris by the government. It decreed that all posts o f even Rs 50 a m onth must be reserved for the holders o f a certificate from the Roorki College of Engineers (which had no Oriental Department, and did not teach indigenous styles).45 Again, a government which claimed concern for preservation and promotion of Indian crafts, and which had set up an organization for preservation of India’s architectural heritage, in practice refused to provide the living artist-craftsman any employment in the PW D, one o f the biggest spending departments. The government also deprived the mistris o f private patronage by creating conditions in which the average Indian, and especially the princely rulers, came to look upon Roorki as representing British notions of art, and the rulers preferred to secure the services of Roorki graduates.46 The m istri was not to understand that the government, for reasons of economy and administrative convenience, was compelled to build unpretentious buildings, uniform in design, and devoid of ornamentation, but that its example need not necessarily be followed in domestic or other architecture. And to the Western-educated classes, the foreign styles stood for progress and enlightenment, as can be seen from the comment of a

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Westernized gentleman of Bulandshahr district. Decrying the efforts made by Growse for a renaissance of Indian methods o f design he said: The works which arc carried out under your direction, however pleasing in themselves have the one fatal drawback that they arc not stamped with official approval. In fact, one o f them was denounced by a competent departmental authority as an absolute eyesore. N othing in the same style is ever undertaken by Government. Your buildings fitly express your own peculiarity o f temperament, but this personal predilection for Indian forms is only a weakness or eccentricity; such designs would be out o f harmony with my own advanced views which are all in favour o f English fashions. The trading classes d6 well to adhere to Hindustani types, but the landed gentry prefer to range themselves with their rulers, and thus to emphasize their distinction from the vulgar.47

Though Growse was not without his defenders, and his efforts were lauded by Purdon Clarke, the Keeper of Indian Art at the South Kensington Museum, and John Lockwood Kipling,48the PW D remained unmoved, firm in its imperialist resolve that things Western were superior. T he same spirit was evident in Lord Curzon’s decision to construct the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta to commemorate the lately deceased Queen Victoria. It was characteristic and typical of Curzon, lover of history and monuments, that he chose to use the Victoria Memorial Fund collected by public subscription to build a magnificent memorial but not for famine relief or for technical education, the other alternatives that had been suggested. The Memorial was to be a commemoration o f notable events and remarkable men, both Indian and European, in the history of India since Mughal times, and was to include paintings, sculptures, manuscripts and personal relics to illustrate the events and periods. The greater part of the cost was to be borne by the government but it was to be supplemented by public donations. Given Curzon’s professed love and concern for Indian art, many news­ papers had expressed the hope that the Victoria Memorial would use Indian artists and material. Calling attention to Curzon’s exhortation to the Indian Princes to help Indian art and industry through greater patronage, the Prativadi of Calcutta, in its issue of 26 January 1903, commented that though architecture was the mother of fine art, the government had done nothing to provide a model architectural work. It hoped that Curzon would follow Indian models for the Memorial though it had been reported that everything except the money was to be foreign.49 But Curzon wanted the Memorial to be a statement of the majesty of British rule, and its law, order and efficiency. In the face of advice from a number of English experts like Havell, and much disappointment amongst Indians, he chose an English architect, William Emerson, and dictated the

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choice of the Italian Renaissance style to him.*0T he entire construction was entrusted to an English company. There was, naturally, great disappoint­ ment among Indians. The Memorial took fifteen years to build from the time the foundation stone was laid by King George, and cost the Indian exchequer Rs 1 crore, or £6,66,666. O n its opening by the Prince o f Wales on 28 December 1921, The Times in London euphorically called it ‘by far the most magnificent building erected in India since the establishment o f British rule, and one o f the most beautiful in the world.* The Indian reception was understandably less ecstatic; nor has the judgement o f The Times been universally endorsed subsequently. By the beginning o f the twentieth century, government architectural policy was coming under increasing criticism, most particularly from E. B. Havell who had taken on the mantle of Growse. Havell blamed the Macaulay doctrine which established the departm en­ tal principle that bad European art was better than good Indian art, so that PW D officers, instead of employing the architectural skills of H indu master builders, used European styles (which were in any case the only ones taught in the engineering colleges). He regretted that every Viceroy, Governor and head of Department had been a law unto himself, and no definite principle had ever been laid down. The importance o f architectural style in relation to the preservation of Indian art and handicrafts had not received official consideration, and architecture was treated as a minor branch o f civil engineering.51 According to Havell, with a few exceptions PW D engineers had never attempted to study the architecture of the country and had worked on the blind assumption that native architects had only built temples and mosques and were unable to build civil buildings. And since official authority and sanction had such an overriding influence, unless the government depart­ ments followed and patronized indigenous art, it would never receive public sanction and patronage. The neglect of master builders, Havell said, also meant a neglect of the art industries dependent on them (stone and wood carvers and painters) leading to a decay of Indian art as a whole.52 Havell regretted that large sums of money were squandered by the PW D to the discouragement of Indian art, while large sums were equally being spent in maintaining schools for its encouragement. The influence of a single School of Art, he said, could not compare with the influence of a big department like the PW D which employed Indian artists only in the most trivial kind of artistic work. Either the Government should stop pretending to encourage Indian art, or it should change its architectural policy. A far­ sighted and just artistic policy, according to him, would be to reform the Digitized by

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departmental system which restricted employment avenues to Indians and was a cause of the current unrest.53 Havell wanted the government to declare in a policy statement its intention to adopt indigenous styles o f architecture in all public buildings and make Oriental architecture a special branch of the PW D. He also wanted it to establish schools of architecture, and regretted that the PW D hired architects, sculptors, and decorators from England, paying them wages several times higher than could be paid locally, in spite of the availability of local talent and local traditions.54 Havell also bemoaned the lack o f co-operation between the Art Schools and the PW D. There was no fixed policy on art matters and the School Principals, junior officials of the Education Department, and lower in rank than the Consulting Architect, had no voice in artistic matters. The Art Schools, he claimed, were quite out o f touch with the best Indian builders and decorators who through lack of state patronage and employment had migrated to the princely states.55 An an da Coomaraswamy too blamed the architectural policy for the decline in Indian applied arts, since architecture is a synthesis of ail the arts and their prosperity is bound up with the prosperity of the art of building. In A rt and Swadeshi (1911) he reproached the Swadeshi movement for not demanding a government commitment to utilize Indian architecture in public buildings and employ Indian architects. Yet he equally made the point that ultimately it was the patronage o f the people which alone could revitalize Indian art. Both Havell and Coomaraswamy failed to move the government. In the A nnual Report on Architecturefo r 1911—12, John Begg, the Consulting Architect to Government, dismissed HavelPs charge. According to him Only art with little vitality could be killed by Government’s letting it alone; which is all we are accused o f doing. It must be unworthy to live if it cannot survive the want o f direct Government patronage. No great art anywhere has had Government patronage.56

The government’s duty was limited, he contended, to raising buildings in a sound, economical and business-like manner. Though the buildings should be artistically designed, it did not mean that public money should be expended on artificial props to an art that had not the vitality to survive without state aid.57As for Havell’s faith in the indigenous master builders, Begg’s retort was that if they existed the government would be only too happy to use them, for its bitterest complaint was the poor quality of assistance available in the country. The entire question of architectural policy became the focus o f national

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and international attention when, in December 1911, at the grand Delhi Durbar King George V made the momentous announcement that the imperial capital would be transferred from Calcutta to Delhi, and that the Partition of Bengal was revoked. The announcement aroused mixed emo­ tions in the assembly present, and reverberated throughout India. From then to its completion in 1931, the building of the new capital was to be of un­ flagging interest not only to Indians but to the European world as well. As expected, there was much opposition from the Bengalis and the English of Calcutta to the shift. There were opponents in Britain too, not the least among them being Lord Curzon who predicted that Delhi would take ten to twelve years to build and would cost not the four million pounds estimated by the Viceroy Lord Hardinge, but around twelve million. Events were to prove him right. Completed only in 1931, New Delhi cost the taxpayer ten million! The building of the new capital was a calculated political move but it proved to be a notable artistic event as well. It brought to a head the contro­ versy which had been raging since the late nineteenth century on artistic, and especially architectural, policy. The rebuilding o f the British Houses of Parliament after they had burned down in 1834 had generated a debate on how the opportunity could be utilized to patronize local art and improve public taste. Competitions and exhibitions attracted widespread attention to the fine arts.58The building o f New Delhi was likewise seen as an occasion to provide similar opportunities to Indians. However, the issue of official patronage to traditional art and architecture in India was wider than that in England and was informed by considerations other than the purely aesthetic or economic. Larger questions o f national identity, and the purpose of British rule in India, were involved, because more than any of the other arts, it was official architecture that embodied the vision of Empire in India. Since Indian architecture was a living and yet threatened tradition, the great question was, should it be allowed to die a natural death or should it be resuscitated? There were two main issues involved, style and method. In the nineteenth century these had boiled down to government patronage for the Indian mistri. But now a new element appeared, the use of the professionally trained Indian architect, rather than the traditional mistri, for whichever style was adopted. Viceroy Hardinge wanted New Delhi to testify to the ‘ideal and fact of British rule in India’, but also wanted a stress on the Indian tradition in

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architecture. He knew it would be ‘a grave political blunder' to implant a purely Western town on the plains o f Delhi. Indian participation in administration was increasing and it was fitting that the new capital should be symbolic of twentieth-century India, with its co-existing civilizations, Hindu, Muslim and British. Therefore on 25 March 1912 he announced in the Legislative Council his inclination towards an Oriental style o f architec­ ture suited to the climate and local surroundings of Delhi. But by the summer of 1912, influenced by the proponents o f Western architecture, he opted for ‘Western architecture with an Oriental m o tif.59 During 1912-13 the resident English advocated a Western style, and felt that New Delhi should be an imperial statement. British Architect remarked editorially on 11 July 1913 that in the question of style it is quite obvious that one o f the first considerations is the political aspect o f the matter. Should the dominant governing race impose on India something of its own style and beliefs, wholly or in part, or should it give every possible opportunity for the prevailing styles o f Indian architecture to be adopted, partly or wholly from political motives?60

Claiming to speak on architectural considerations alone, it concluded that a Western style was more suitable: However able master builders o f India may be, we hardly suppose they would claim to have surpassed the accumulated knowledge o f all others, or to have reared buildings that rank with the great masterpieces designed by European architects, famous in their age and for all time. [It is therefore unthinkable to] allow the new capital of our great Indian Empire to be handed over to the modern master builders or architects o f India, or the combined efforts o f a race o f native craftsmen, however genuine and vital their traditions may be.61

Most advocates of the Western style preferred the English or Renaissance styles. Surprisingly, in view of his long championship of the Indian decorative arts, one of these was Sir George Birdwood, who was now showing his true colours and urging the Viceroy to make the new city ‘the Delhi of the English'.62 But there were champions of the Indian style too in England, the most noteworthy among them being King George himself. In Parliament Joseph King asked the Commons whether it was fair that Indians with their proud heritage should pay for construction of ‘palaces of Italian art' that would effectively exclude native craftsmen and artists.63 And the M orning Post of 22 January 1913 carried a long leader to the effect that the imposition of a foreign style of building is bound to have a paralysing effect on the creative output and labour of the country.

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The Architects and Builders Journal also thought it only correct that the new capital be ‘Indian’ just as British public opinion, in the case o f the rebuilding o f the new Parliament House in 1892, had demanded a tradi­ tional English style. B utit raised the perdnent question o f what was ‘Indian’, since Indian history was an amalgam o f Greek and Mughal conquests. N or did it favour employing Indian talent: native architecture is totally unsuited to the requirements of modern public buildings, and Indian craftsmen are quite as incapable as we British are of trans­ muting the architecture of Moghul temples and palaces into the architecture of a modern Government House.64 One of the staunchest English advocates of the traditional style and the employment o f native craftsmen to design, build and decorate was of course E. B. Havell. He warned that the adoption of a Western style would spell ‘the ruin of Indian craftsmanship, the intellectual impoverishment o f the educated classes and the strangling of Indian art.’65 Almost all the Indian princes were in favour of an Indian style, and in the Legislative Council, where there was considerable discussion, over style, choice of architects, and employment o f Indian craftsmen, Sir Gangadhar Chitnavis voiced Indian opinion that the ‘dominating feature o f the new city should be Oriental in appearance.’66 In a surprising change of stance, John Begg, the Consulting Architect to Government, also pleaded for a definite architectural policy for promoting a blend of indigenous art styles with modern architectural principles as the basis o f the design o f the new capital. According to him, just as in designing Calcutta there had been a certain imperial statement in the design, so New Delhi should symbolize the new re-awakened India of the present and future. Since indigenous skills were available, it would be both practical and economical to use these and Indian materials.67 Others who favoured a fusion of styles included Lord Curzon, Herbert Baker, Annie Beasant, Major L. B. Keith, and Lord Crew, the Secretary of State. In the Legislative Council Ghanshyam Barua claimed Indians would favour an assimilation of all that was good from the West, while conserving the best of their own civilization.68 But the Pioneer M ail of Allahabad took the view that while movement towards synthesis was worthy of respect, it had so far been imitative and reproduced only the decorative features of Indian art, and that it was doubtful if any great building could be produced on these lines. Since the functions o f the buildings in the new capital would be very different from those of

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Mughal buildings, it warned against copying and pleaded instead for a style suited to location and function.69 Meanwhile work on the capital had begun in 1912, with the formation of the Delhi Town Planning Committee to advise on the site and plan for the new capital. And in May 1913, much to Indian disappointment, Edwin L. Lutyens and H erbert Baker were appointed the principal architectural advisers. Initially Hardinge had intended to appoint architects for New Delhi on the basis of an open competition. He did not anticipate any Indians would send in satisfactory plans, but he felt the door should not be shut in their faces; it would satisfy their vanity, and could do no harm. So on 19 September 1912 a despatch had issued about the competition.70 However, due to successful lobbying by Lutyens and Baker with the Viceroy and with public and influential opinion in England, the competition was cancelled and in a controversial decision Lutyens and Baker were appointed principal archi­ tects, reporting directly to the newly established Imperial Delhi Committee. They were to be responsible for the design and building of the Viceroy’s House, the Secretariats, and the Legislative Assembly. The other civil buildings were to be built by PW D architects.71 Lutyens was contemptuous and derogatory about indigenous Indian architecture. He felt India had no real architecture or architectural tradi­ tion— the buildings were little more than ‘tents in stone*. He also argued that nothing Indian was built to last, ‘not even the Taj*. He was equally con­ temptuous of the Eurasian style o f the public buildings o f Madras. But he recognized that the question was not only one o f taste but o f highpolitics, a point emphasized by Hardinge.72 Principally responsible for the Viceregal Lodge, now Rashtrapati Bhawan, Lutyens therefore gave full rein to his imperialist imagination, but tempered it with the use of local materials such as red sandstone and motifs from the Sanchi railings. The vast dome of the house was meant to be a metaphor o f the British Empire. To a great extent Lutyens succeeded in harmonizing the two traditions, and the majestic Viceroy’s House can be said to be a trium phant culmination o f the efforts at synthesis that had begun in the nineteenth century.73 Baker, responsible for the two Secretariats on either side of Government House and the Houses of Parliament, revealed later that New Delhi was conceived by Lutyens and himself as ‘an architectural expression of the facts and ideals of governance.’ He later explained that ‘it is the spirit of British sovereignty which must be imprisoned in its stone and bronze.’74 It had to bear out Lord Curzon’s dictum: ‘O ur work is righteous, and it shall endure.’

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W ithin this imperialist framework Baker attempted an integration. His intention was to weave into the fabric o f the more elemental and universal forms of architecture, the thread o f such Indian traditional shapes and features as may be compatible with the nature and use o f buildings.75

Though the question of styles had been settled the employment of Indian craftsmen and artists was to remain a thorny issue. The question really was whether they should be given a dom inant role in designing and executing the buildings or a subsidiary one of only constructing and decorating under Western supervision. W hen E. B. Havell, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and H. V. Lanchester and other eminent men, including George Bernard Shaw, petitioned the Secretary of State in 1913 to employ Indian craftsmen, they supported the more informal and intuitive procedure of the master builder, working in accustomed materials on site and according to a simple overall brief, in pre­ ference to working from modern offices with plans on paper. They submitted that all the great buildings in the world were built by such unselfconscious craftsmanship, and the unbroken living tradition in India could still produce such work. They also reiterated the point of Growse and Lockwood Kipling that not only was the mistri sornate work more artistic, but was also cheaper than PW D styles.76 The informal methods of working of the mistris were, however, inconceivable to the bureaucracy, and the government replied that ‘the particular method urged in the petition has in India, as elsewhere, long ceased to be applicable to works of any magnitude or of utilitarian pur­ poses/77 The same vague assurance given to Indian members of the Legislative Council followed: government had every desire to encourage the revival of Indian art and would take every opportunity o f doing so; and work would be found on the new buildings at Delhi for a considerable number of carvers and other workers in the decorative arts, though the extent to which they would be employed would depend largely on the designs.78 The signatories however rejected the idea about the extinction o f traditional building techniques, and quoted an official report by Gordon Sanderson on Indian craftsmanship, entitled Types o f M odem Indian Build­ ings, as evidence.79 Further, there was alarm at the intention to separate one part o f building craft from another— to encourage carving and pattern making at the expense of architecture as a whole. To do so would do more harm to Indian architecture than if the government were not to employ craftsmen at all, for it was this emphasis on decontextualized decorative arts that had led to the existing misconception and deterioration of Indian architecture.80

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Sanderson’s work was itself the outcome of a request by the India Society to the India Office in London to instruct officers of the Archaeological Survey to photograph, when on tour, interesting types o f modern Indian buildings in the districts. It also wanted the Survey to note on the craftsmen responsible for their design and decoration in order to understand the principles and practice o f these living arts. It urged action because the number of master builders was diminishing and the quality of their work deteriorating, so that India was losing an invaluable part of her traditional art and craftsmanship. Sanderson produced some superb documentation of many beautiful buildings. He concluded his report by noting that while it was true that there had been deterioration ih Indian architectural standards in British India due to the spread of European fashion and departmental preferences to those who imitated Western styles, the deterioration had probably started even earlier. In contrast to the poor designs produced in British India, he noted the quality of architecture in the Indian States and felt that the remedy lay in guidance of craftsmen and builders by modern trained architects.81 It is clear from a note on the development of Indian architecture ap­ pended to this report that John Begg's earlier stance on traditional archi­ tecture had softened. Begg accepted that the living tradition was an asset of incalculable value and should not be allowed to die out. But he also expressed the view that skilled mistris were few in number and doubted the feasibility of employing them. Like many other admirers of Indian architectural styles Begg argued that the modern world .could not be wished away, and there would have to be adjustments and adaptations in terms of both style and professional expertise. While conceding the need to promote indigenous styles, and reconciled to the employment of artisans to decorate the build­ ings, Begg remained adamant on assigning mistris a more central role. W hile Havell put great faith in the mistri, whom he thought capable of modern building, Begg did not. He wanted a modem architectural profession to develop in modern training institutions as in the UK, imbued with the Indian spirit and using Indian forms of expression.82 And till educated Indians of good families had been trained in modern architectural practice and an indigenous architectural profession had been built up, the imported architect was indispensable.83 The government dismissed Sanderson’s findings, claiming that his views were his own. But it was unable to ignore for long the continuing pressure for patronage to Indian craftsmen. It therefore considered various schemes, one of which was to give some portions of the principal and minor buildings to an Indian designer. Another was to create a studio of native craftsmen directed by an Indian. Lord Hardinge was cool to such ideas. He managed to overrule the demand for the use of Indian indigenous architects, but

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because o f repeated urging from Parliament and press in England had to give some ground over associating craftsmen.*4 London was told that Indian craftsmen had been engaged for decorative work on the main buildings and that within two years it was hoped to assemble a body o f craftsmen under the charge of an Indian master craftsman. A clause had been put into the architects’ agreement to the effect that a School of Craftsmen would be founded in Delhi to collaborate w ith the architects in doing the decorative work on the main buildings. However, as Hailey, President o f the Imperial Delhi Committee, noted, the govern­ ment intended to select experienced workmen who would need no training and the man called ‘master craftsman’ would simply be a superior in charge o f the workmen.8S W ith the beginning of the war in 1914, financial constraints and the Viceroy’s indifference ensured that the idea was quietly dropped, though two to three thousand masons were employed on the project, mostly as skilled labour. Later, in 1926, in his lecture to the Royal Society, Baker was to regretfully admit that though the bulk o f the workforce was Indian, little was attempted to revive or give an opportunity to the many traditional Indian arts and crafts. Noting that the Government had just voted Rs 50 lakhs for the archaeo­ logical department, he regretted that there had been no similar effort and money spent to encourage the living artists and arts, at least in the en­ richment of the new capital.*6 The new capital was finally completed in 1931. T o Lord Irwin, who unveiled the Dominion Columns to formally declare it complete, the capital embodied the fusion of the East and W est that had been envisioned. Indian art had been given its due.87The completed Delhi aroused diverse emotions. The austere amongst Indians of the time saw in it only the expense and the sweat of Indian labour; for others it was not grand enough, the style not being sufficiently decorative. Even the English residents criticized it as being spread too far, bare, and uncomfortable. But many praised the grandeur o f the main buildings even though a mix-up over gradients had brought the Secretariats to prominence at the expense of the Viceroy’s House which had been intended to tower above all. In retrospect too, the city has been equally reviled and praised. For the nostalgic, imperial Delhi was ‘the last and supreme m onum ent of the British overseas Empire before powerful winds of change swept away colonial rule forever.’88 For the more critical, it was ‘an anomaly— too late for arrogance, too soon for regrets, too uncertain to get its gradients right.’89 It lacked ‘both the insolence of conquest and the generosity of concession, and by its deliberate separateness it perpetuated invidious old comparisons.*90

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Whatever the verdict, the building of New Delhi awakened Indians to contemporary artistic issues as nothing else had done. And it has certainly endured as an embodiment o f Britain’s work in India, righteous or otherwise. But New Delhi remained a project suigeneris. It neither affected architectural policy elsewhere, nor helped develop a modern architectural profession in India. O n the eve o f Independence there was very little modern architectural skill among Indians, the government having done very little to encourage architectural training. Most o f the country’s resources in the nineteenth century had been used for expansion of railways, irrigation, and such pur­ poses, rather than development of modern architecture. Architecture had received serious government attention only after 1902. In that year the Government had created the office of the Consulting Architect (or CA) to Government (engineers of the PW D having been entrusted with all architectural work till then). O ne of the duties of the CA was the preparation o f an annual report on architectural work in the different provinces, a complete photographic and textual record of the major accomplishments in design during the year, and for this purpose the government had requested all the provinces to send to the CA’s office photographs of all important construction work. It was hoped to stimulate interest in architecture through the publication o f the reports which documented all relevant work. The first report, prepared by John Begg who had taken over as CA in that year, was published only in 1908. The reports appeared annually (except for 1 9 l6 -1 7 an d 1917-18) to 1921 when the post ofC A was abolished. These, together with the Sanderson Report, have great value as a source on buildings in Indian and European style in twentieth-century British India. In 1907 the government also appointed an architectural sculptor, Leonard Jennings, for ornamentation of important buildings. However, the cost of bringing him in with his equipment, studio and staff was so high that it was felt that it would be better in future to train students of the Schools of Art for this purpose. The Bombay School of Art with its sculpture studio and Reay art workshops, was in a position to meet this need. Begg therefore suggested that government architects should work hand in hand with the Schools of Art to introduce in government buildings such work in the applied arts as the Schools might be able to execute. And since the Calcutta School of Art did not have a modelling studio like Bombay, it was suggested that one be established, to provide continued employment for students of sculpture, as also to fulfil the demand for models and casts from which to execute the carving and sculpture required. Percy Brown, Principal

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of the Calcutta School of Art, welcomed the idea, but to 1910-11 nothing was done about it.91 Up to 1910 all the architects employed by the government were British and only six among them were qualified architects. Because of the shortage of draughtsmen and architectural assistants, the government started a ‘pupilage system* in 1905 whereby one Art School student was trained at a time on the job for five years and received a small salary. To 1910 there was hardly any architectural education, and Indians were themselves yet to become aware of this need, other professions such as medicine and engineering being in greater demand. The Bombay School o f Art had introduced architecture in its curriculum towards the end of the nineteenth century and in 1907 the existing two-year course was extended to four years in order to provide complete training for architectural draughtsmen. This had to some extent made architecture popular, but it was no substitute for on-site training still lacking in India. In 1910 Begg proposed an extension of the pupilage system, presently limited to English students in the CA*s office, to all so as to create Indian assistants and uplift the profession.92 But the idea was never implemented. And since the building ofN ew Delhi was outside the scope o f the CA*s office, and had a special organization of its own, Begg’s aspiration to give on-site training did not materialize either. Thus in the immediate post-Indepen­ dence era government had perforce to look West for expertise for major architectural projects like Chandigarh. Although the debates about ‘Indianness* continued to Independence and after, the old master builders had vanished. The end of British rule also marked, at least temporarily, the end of experiments to evolve an ‘Indian* style based on a fusion of Western and traditional Indian. Colonial policies had destroyed traditional design and skills, altered taste among patrons, and bred an inferiority complex and lack of confidence, so that the young architects who took over after Independence copied the colonial idiom and PW D procedures. Later, influenced by the Modern Movement, they took to international styles in preference to traditional. But it was not only a colonial mentality which made the new generation of architects continue to look West. In 1942, art scholar Percy Brown had predicted that with the popularization of concrete, ‘there will be a tendency to subordinate individuality and nationality, so that all buildings will be of a standardized pattern.’93The move to join the international mainstream was as much necessitated by the emergence of new functional needs, new technologies, and new building materials (all of which required a different response to space, form and material) as the desire to look modern. The new

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Indian rulers chose to move forward with the times and project India as a progressive nation, ‘tradition’ being associated with backwardness, much as had been forecast by The Builder, in 1988: The Europeanised H indu will not care for the revival o f the ancient H indu style; it will not suit his feelings or his taste; he will want to Europeanise his house. This may be regretted on some grounds; but it is the almost certain result o f the expansion o f a European civilization.94

W hen the question of building Chandigarh as the new capital of Punjab came up Prime Minister Nehru wanted it to be a symbol of India’s break with the past, and an ‘expression of the nation’s faith in the future’.95 The style which came to symbolize these aspirations was neither the traditional Hindu, nor yet the Indo-Saracenic, but the modernist style of contemporary Europe, as interpreted by Le Corbusier!

Notes and References 1. G. D. Bearce, ‘Intellectual and Cultural Characteristics of India in a Changing Era, 1740-1800\ Journal o f Asian Studies, 25(1), November 1965, 9-10. 2. Samita Gupta, Architecture and the Raj (Bombay, 1984), p. 26. 3. G. H. R.Tillotson, Tradition o f Indian Architecture(YAc*ndLondon, 1989), pp. 33-4. 4. Sten Nilsson, European Architecture in India, 1750-1850 (London, 1968), pp. 41-6. 5. Gupta, Architecture and the Raj, pp. 31-3. 6. Mildred Archer, ‘Company Architects and Their Influence in India’, RIBA Journal, vol. 70, no. 8, August 1963. 7. Nilsson, European Architecture, pp. 156-7. 8. Jan Morris and Simon Winchester, Stones o f Empire (London and New York, 1983), p. 14; Nilsson, European Architecture, pp. 156-7. 9. Nilsson, European Architecture, pp. 162-3. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., p. 32. 12. See Thomas Metcalf, An Imperial Vision (London, 1989), pp. 10-14, for a discussion on how these buildings, built on British models, incorporated differ­ ences to reflect the political realities in India. 13. Court o f Director’s Despatch to Bengal, 27 April 1803, quoted in Nilsson, European Architecture, p. 110. 14. George Annesley, Viscount Valentia, Voyages and Travels to India, Ceylon in the Years 1 8 0 2 -1 8 0 6 (London, 1809), vol. 1, p. 235. 15. Maria Graham, quoted in Thomas Metcalf, An Imperial Vision (London, 1989), p. 14.

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16. Thomas and William Daniell, A Picturesque Voyage to India (London, 1810), p. ii, quoted in Nilsson, European Architecture, p. 163. 17. Nilsson, European Architecture, p. 165. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Metcalf, Imperial Vision, p. 22. 21. J. H. Stocqueler, Handbook, 1844 (London, 1844), p. 266. 22. India and Bengal Despatches, 6 May 1857-24 June 1857, vol. 105, pp. 813-14 (IOR E/4/844). 23. Tillotson, Tradition, pp. 1-25. 24. Bishop Reginald Heber, Narrative o f a Journey through India, 1824-25 (London, 1828), vol. 2, p. 291. 25. Morris and Winchester, Stones, p. 29. 26. See Metcalf, Imperial Vision, for a fuller discussion of the relationship between culture and power as expressed in colonial architecture. 27. Quoted in M.&W. Archer, Indian Painting fo r the British (Oxford, 1955), pp. 104-5. 28. Tillotson, Tradition, pp. 26-41. 29. O ther works by Fergusson are: IUustrationsoftheRockCut Temples o f India (\%45); Picturesque Illustrations o f Ancient Architecture in Hindoostan (1847); and Tree and Serpent Worship: Illustrations o f Mythology and Art in India (1873). 30. Fergusson, History o f Indian and Eastern Architecture, p. 5. 31. Partha Mitter, Much-Maligned Monsters {Oxford, 1977), pp. 263-7. 32. Pramod Chandra, On the Study o f Indian A rt (Harvard, 1983), pp. 29-30. 33. Morris and Winchester, Stones, p. 31. 34. See Tillotson, Tradition, pp. 46-7. 35. Metcalf, Imperial Vision, pp. 58-62. 36. T. Roger Smith, ‘Architectural Art in India \ JournalofSociety o f Arts, no. 21,1873, 278-87. 37. Emerson quoted in theabove issue o f Joum alofSocietyofArtsm d Thomas Metcalf, Imperial Vision, pp. 66-77 for further details on controversy over styles. 38. Two Letters on the Industrial Arts o f India, published by W. B. Whittington and Co. (London, 1979), pp. 9-10. 39. J. B. Keith to Secretary o f State, 3 October 1886, in Pros. 1-5, File No. 38 of 1888, April 1889, Proceedings of R&A Dept./Archaeology (IOR P/3449/1889). 40. Tillotson, Tradition, pp. 60-1. 41. Jacob Swinton, Jeypore Portfolio, quoted by Tillotson, Tradition, p. 73. 42. Ibid., pp. 73-84. 43. Ibid., pp. 85-90. 44. Growse quoted in Tillotson, Tradition, p. 91. 45. E. B. Havell, Indian Architecture (London, 1913/1927), pp. 241-2; J. L. Kipling, ‘Indian Architecture of Today’, The Journal o f Indian Art, vol. 1, no. 3, 1-5. 46. Ibid. 47. Quoted in Kipling, ‘Indian Architecture’, p. 3. 48. Tillotson, Tradition, pp. 98-102. 49. Indian Newspaper Reports, Bengal (IOR L/R/5/29/1903).

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50. See Metcalf, Imperial Vision, pp. 205-10 for how and why Curzon chose Emerson as the architect and for his many disagreements with him on introduction of elements of Indian design and ornamentation which Emerson, but not Curzon, wished to introduce. 51. E. B. Havell, Essays on Indian A rt, Industry, and Education (Madras, 1910), pp. 103-5, 127-37; ‘Art Administration in India’, Journal o f the Royal Society o f Arts, vol. 58, no. 2985, 1910, 280-1. 52. Ibid. 53. E. B. Havell, The Basisfor Artistic and Industrial Revival in India (Madras, 1912), pp. 117-21. 54. HavellVcriticism of Government’s architectural policy in his letter t The Times, London, quoted in Annual Report on Architectural Work in India: 1908-1909 (Calcutta, 1908), pp. 2-3; Reportfo r 1909-1910, pp. 2-3. 55. E. B. Havell, ‘Art Administration’, pp. 282-3. 56. Annual Report on Architectural Work in India: 1911-12, pp. 5-7. 57. Ibid. 58. Janet Minihan, Nationalization o f Culture (London, 1977), pp. 64-77. 59. Robert Grant Irving, Indian Summer: Lutyens, Baker and Imperial Delhi (Yale, 1981), pp. 102, 340. 60. British Architect, 11 July 1913, pp. 19-20, in Curzon Collection (IORMSS EUR FI 11/435). 61. Ibid. 62. Irving, Indian Summer, p. 103. 63. Ibid., p. 105. 64. The Architects and Builders Journal, vol. 36, no. 934, 11 December 1912. 65. Quoted in Irving, Indian Summer, p. 104. 66. Ibid. 67. John Begg, Introduction to G. Sanderson, Type o f M odem Indian Buildings: Report on Modem Indian Architecture (Calcutta, 1913), p. 5. 68. Irving, Indian Summer, p. 106. 69. Pioneer Mail, Allahabad, 3 May 1912; Curzon Collection (IOR MSS EUR F i l l / 435). 70. See Irving, Indian Summer, p. 93. 71. Ibid., pp. 93-101. 72. Ibid., pp. 101-2. 73. Philip Davies, Splendours o f the Raj (London, 1985), pp. 226-30, for architectural details of the Lutyens buildings. 74. Herbert Baker, ‘The New Delhi’, Journal o f the Royal Society o f Arts, vol. l x x i v , no. 3841, 2 July 1926, 773-85. 75. Ibid., p. 785. 76. E. B. Havell, Indian Architecture (London, 1913/1927), pp. 272-3. 77. Ibid., p. 274. 78. Quoted in Baker, T h e New Delhi’, pp. 785-7. 79. Havell, Indian Architecture, pp. 272-3. 80. Irving, Indian Summer, p. 194. 81. G. Sanderson, Types o f M odem Indian Buildings (Allahabad, 1913), pp. 20-2.

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82. See his comments in A nnual Report on Architectural Work» 1909-1910, pp. 2-3. 83. Paper presented by John Begg before the Royal Society of British Architects on 12 April 1920. Quoted in Rupam, no. 5, January 1921, p. 30. 84. Irving, Indian Summer, p. 108. 85. Ibid. 86. Baker, ‘The New Delhi*, pp. 785-7. 87. Lord Irwin, Speeches, vol. 2, 1929-31 (Simla, 1931), pp. 326-7. 88. Irving, Indian Summer, p. 274. 89. Morris and Winchester, Stones, p. 220. 90. Ibid. 91. Annual Report on Architectural Work in India 1908-1909, pp. 2-3, and Report for 1909-1910, pp. 2-3. 92. Report on Architectural Work, 1911-12. 93. Quoted inTillotson, Tradition, p. 135. 94. The Builder, 3 November 1988, p. 314. 95. See Ravi Kalia, Chandigarh: The M aking o f an Indian City (Delhi, 1987), p. 21.

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CHAPTER 9

O f Sedition and Stratagem

Although the classical Sanskrit play had disappeared around the twelfth century, drama remained a popular and lively art prior to British rule. Com ­ pany civilians John Malcolm and James Forbes have referred to the vitality of Indian drama and the skills of Indian actors. According to Malcolm, in the art of mimicry the Indian actor was ‘hardly inferior in ta le n t. . . to some of the most celebrated performers in England.’1And Forbes, after witnessing strolling comedians enacting Hindoo [sic] plays, wrote: I never saw any Indian theatricals on a larger scale: but on these occasions I have at times heard some very humorous and witty dialogues, but never witnessed represen­ tation that offended piety, morality or delicacy. T hat some o f their dramatic writings merit very high encomium, we may judge from the beautiful play o f Saeon tala, translated by Sir William Jones. N othing can be more innocent, or illustrative o f the simplicity o f ancient H indoo m anners.. . . Some o f [Kalidas’] contemporaries and other H indoo poets even to our own times, have composed so many tragedies, comedies, farces, and musical pieces that the Indian theatre would fill as many volumes as that o f any nation in ancient or modern Europe.2

But soon the tradition was to be supplanted, in urban areas, by a new genre, the result of interaction with Western culture. A new era had begun for Indian theatre. • Theatre was vigorous and popular in eighteenth-century England, and the English carried their interest to India, dramatic performances becoming one o f their favourite pastimes. Modern theatres modelled on British lines came to be built for the purpose. The first such was built in Tal Bazar, Calcutta, even before 1757,3 and a theatre was a must even in up-country setdements.4 The Calcutta Gazette o f those days testifies to the lively Eng­ lish theatre there, hardly an issue being without a review of some play or the other in the Chowringhee Theatre.5 English theatre catered mostly to the Europeans, but Indians were allowed to attend performances and the Indian ^lite responded eagerly to the opportunity.

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Emma Roberts in her Scenes ofHindostariy an account of British life in India in the early nineteenth century, mentions the instance of an English­ man attached to the M int at Secrole (the British settlement near Benaras) who translated into Persian a play that was to be performed in English, for the benefit of the Indian spectators. The manuscript was printed at a press which he had established and Indians were encouraged to come to the play. Able to understand the play with the help of the manuscript, they liberally subscribed to the support of the theatre. But this was an isolated practice, ‘the conciliation of the natives being too little studied in India’.6 Even when the British became more and more exclusive and no longer invited Indians to balls, ever alert to commercial advantage, they allowed pay­ ing Indians to attend their theatre, and parties of beautifully clad Hindustani gentlemen could be seen in Chowringhee Theatre in Calcutta. Emma Roberts noted that they preferred tragedy to comedy so that when the coffers were empty, the management would put on M acbeth or Othello7 This exposure stimulated Indian interest and led to the birth of modern urban drama. Theatrical performances became the vogue and found many wealthy patrons. In the process new ideas and values were introduced which had a potent influence not only on the development o f the Indian stage but also on public attitudes. The stage contributed substantially to the transforma­ tion of social and intellectual life, especially in Bengal and Maharashtra, where it took firm root.8 The first modern Indian play, modelled on the English stage, was a twopart offering by Herasim Lebedeff, The Disguise and Love is the Best Doctor. It was performed in Bengali in 1795. Interestinglyithadactorsofbothsexes, unusual at this time.9 T he plays were not ticketed, and Bengali theatre developed through the patronage of the aristocrats who sponsored drama privately for a select invited audience, paying the entire cost themselves. O ne of the most notable plays of this period was Vidya Sunday acted by men and women in the house o f Nabinchandra Basu in 1835. The pattern was similar on the other side of India. In Sangli, in M aha­ rashtra, Vishnudas Bhave produced the first Marathi musical, Sita Swayamvar> in 1843 for the Raja of Sangli. Though entirely indigenous in character (it was an adaptation o f the Dashavatar folk form), it was similar to English theatre in the manner o f its production on a stage and for an urban audi­ ence.10In Kathiawad local Rajas liberally patronized command performances which later turned professional and went on tour.11 By the middle of the nineteenth century the new Indian theatre had come of age. Between 1857 and 1870 many plays were written in the regional languages with the new urban audience in mind, and more and more

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performances were given for educated audiences. There was also a rapid construction of playhouses in Bombay and Calcutta, and the birth o f troupes such as the Parsi Natak Mandali and Kirloskar Natak Mandali in Maharashtra, and the National Theatre Company in Bengal. T he new theatre was patronized mosdy by a paying urban middle class audience and played by actors drawn from a variety of castes. Both were features new to the tradition where patrons were kings, rich persons, or the entire community; where actors were from hereditary castes; where admis­ sion by tickets was unknown, and the performance was either in a temple or in an open space around which the spectators gathered; and which some­ times lasted all night. In style o f production the new theatre was simply an adaptation of the mid-Victorian stage with all its accessories of painted scenes, costumes and make up, but in theme most early plays were episodes from the epics or myths.12The first original play on a social theme was the Bengali Kulin-KulaSarvasva by Ram Narayan Tarkaratna, on the theme of Kulin polygamy. W ritten in 1853, it was enacted in 1857 atthehouseofBabuJayaram Bysak. It marked the beginning o f the mode o f scenic representation which then became popular in Bengal.13 T he years leading up to the Revolt of 1857 must have been years of simmering political discontent which exploded in 1857. But none of the plays written during this period ever concerned themselves with political questions, a comment on the Anglophilism of the period and ‘the willing acquiescence o f the majority of the people in the cultural subservience of a colonized people.*14 This was an age of professional theatre for popular entertainment. The plays nevertheless had high literary value because of the interest taken in theatre by the new middle-class intelligentsia. M any o f the leading writers of the day wrote for the stage. But Parsi theatre was purely commercial theatre for entertainment, popularized by Parsi professional companies which came into existence around 1850. They made drama a commercial venture, with popular music, gorgeous costumes and spectacu­ lar scenery, and travelled all over India with the productions.15 In the aftermath of 1857 a respect for tradition which ran parallel to the enthusiasm for Western culture became very evident. This cultural nation­ alism was reflected in and fostered by theatre. Drama played a double role: harking back to ancient glory through mythological and historical plays, and translations of Kalidas and other Sanskrit playwrights, it roused Indian pride in culture and heritage and bolstered self-confidence, severely bruised after the failure of the Revolt. And by protesting against contemporary conditions, it awakened the political and social conscience of the people.

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Kulin-Kula-Sarvaswa, the first Bengali play to question social abuses, had indirectly questioned the supremacy of the Brahmin and the rigid caste system. It was followed after 1865 by several social satires by Michael Madhusudan D utt, exposing the hypocrisies of orthodox Hindus, as in Buro Shaliker Ghare Rom (New Feathers on an Old Bird’s Neck), as well as the foibles o f the newly westernized.16 Such plays were the literary counterpart of the Kalighat pats which were making similar satirical comment on the decadence of contemporary Bengali society. The Marathi stage initially concentrated on plays with mythological themes, partly to offset the moral and religious decline that had set in during the last years of the Peshwas, and partly in reaction against the growing and aggressive missionary activity o f the time. From 1840 to 1860, the M arathi stage was in the hands of the upper castes who viewed askance the encroach­ ments of Christian missionaries. Through new plays they attempted not only to purge popular entertainment such as the tamasha and lavani o f its lewdness and decadence, but also to elevate national character and preserve the H indu religion. Plays such as Vishnudas Bhave’s SitaSwayamvar( 1843), reinterpreting mythology, were attempts to reinstate old values and morals such as monogamy, patriotism, generosity, and truthfulness.17 After 1860, however, the ‘mythological* became an inadequate vehicle o f nationalist sentiment. Historical dramas were written for the purpose, beginning with V. J. Keertane’s Thorle Madhavrao Peshwe in 1861. From 1860 to 1910 historical drama was an im portant genre encouraged by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and V. S. Chiplunkar who in their essays used Rajput and Maratha history to introduce patriotic sentiments and deplore political dependence. While in the early years, the historical works of G rant Duff, Malcolm and Elphinstone were used as sources, after 1860, the plays used new Indian interpretations of history and did much to raise patriotic feeling throughout Maharashtra.18 The tradition o f political comment through popular folk theatre forms such as powada and tamasha, which had been in abeyance during the late Peshwa and early British periods, were revived after 1860. Political com­ mentary was incorporated also into keertans (religious discourses using music and dance).19 In Bengal too, growing discontent in the context of famine, rising un­ employment, and the racial arrogance of the British, especially the planters, found an outlet in plays. The first politically significant play was NeelDarpan (M irror o f Indigo), written in 1860 by Dinabandhu M itra and translated into English by Rev. James Long, and produced in 1873 by the National Theatre of Calcutta. Concerned with the oppression of poor peasants forced to

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cultivate indigo by British planters, it created a powerful stir in Bengal. The Anglo-Indian Press raised a hue and cry and the Landholders Associa­ tion o f British India, a planters* body, filed a complaint against the drama. Long was prosecuted and sentenced to one m onth’s imprisonment and a fine. In spite o f this, patriotic drama on British injustice continued to flourish in Bengal with the steady build-up of national sentiment and the deteriora­ tion o f the economy. The situation came to a boil after 1870. The BengalBihar famine of 1873-74 was a major disaster; Lord Mayo had increased the income tax, and though there was a protective duty on Lancashire cotton goods, people knew of Lord Salisbury’s intention to remove all tariffs, an act which would further exacerbate the troubles of the artisans. Added to this was the political unrest caused by several unpopular government actions such as the depositions o f the princely rulers of Baroda and Kolhapur. Nationalist sentiment and political discontent now became more openly expressed in plays and songs. The songs of the H indu Mfela, a national festival started in 1867, were patriotic but not violently anti-British; nor was the patriotic play Bharat M ata seditious in the least. Again, though Jyotirindranath Tagore’s plays Purubikram ( 1874) and Sarojini (1875) were patriotic, they were not seditious.20 About the same time were also written a number o f plays, o f poor literary and dramatic quality, focusing on various injustices received by Indians at the hands of the British. O ne of these was Dakshinacharan Chattopadhyaya’s ChakarDarpan (Mirror to Tea), written in 1875 but never staged, highlight­ ing the brutal treatment meted out to tea plantation workers in Assam. Others were Samudra Darpan (Mirror to the Sea), depicting the exploitation of seamen by the British shipowners; and Gaiktuar Darpan (M irror to the Gaikwar), staged on 22 May 1875, which narrated the harassment and vindictive treatment given to the Maharaja o f Baroda by falsely implicating him on a charge of poisoning a British officer.21 T he events in Bengal found an echo in Marathi drama. N eel Darpan was translated into Marathi in 1872, and the plight o f the deposed Gaekwar of Baroda was also noticed in a Marathi play by Kantikar, Malharrao M aharaj (this play was never performed). Similarly, an incomplete play by S. Ranade dwelt on the unjust treatment of the Kolhapur kingdom by the English.22 Drama was thus becoming much more than an entertainment medium, and had, along with literature, become a vehicle of protest against British rule. In Maharashtra and Bengal particularly, the political and cultural renaissance were linked. Political leaders were also social reformers and writers, or worked closely with them. Thus established Marathi writers like

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206 Patrons a n d Philistines Khadilkar, N. C. Kelkar and Ram Ganesh Gadkari wrote on political and social problems and were actively associated with the stage which also closely reflected the political thought o f Tilak. The growth of M arathi and Bengali theatre paralleled the growth o f nationalist agitation and each influenced the other. The government had shown complete indifference to Indian drama up to 1870. Thereafter, the spate o f plays on nationalist themes made it nervous. In England there existed a tradition o f state control and censorship for political reasons. Licensing o f theatres and popular entertainments began in the reign o f Elizabeth I, while the high arts enjoyed by the Court were less subject to control.23 Under the Censorship Act of 1737 plays were subject to censorship, and Sir Robert Walpole used these powers to silence Henry Fielding’s political satire.24 In Victorian England there was an even greater acceptance of state control over the arts because art was expected to conform to domestic and Christian virtues, and beauty and morality were considered different sides of the same coin. It was believed that artistic expression must be carefully scrutinized to protect the vulnerable from degrading influence and to ensure conformity with accepted canons of morality. Religion and sex were taboo. All kinds of performances were brought under government licensing control, but most o f all the popular entertainments, rather than the ‘high’ arts— because o f fear o f the ‘looser’ morality of the lower classes, and a dread of the mob.25 Entirely predictably, therefore, the reaction to the politically inconve­ nient Indian drama was to control and suppress it. O n 25 December 1870 an anti-sedition clause was introduced in the Indian Penal Code and when the Great National Theatre Company staged the supposedly libellous Gaikwar Darpanin Calcutta, the government took action and arrested some actors. But it was the publication o f ChakarDarpan which led to the begin­ ning of a correspondence to introduce a Bill to empower the government to prohibit certain performances. The Viceroy, Lord Northbrook, on reading the translation of the play in a newspaper, felt it was a scandalous libel on tea planters and wrote to Sir Richard Temple, the Lt-Governor of Bengal, asking him to consult the Advocate-General on censorship. Advised that the government had no power to prevent the publication, circulation or re­ presentation of such matter, and that the English system of all plays being approved by the Lord Chamberlain prior to their production would not be practicable for India, it was decided to draft an appropriate Bill.26 M atters were precipitated by the farce, G ajadanand O Yubaraj ( Gajadananda and the Prince) published in the Am rita Bazaar Patrika on 20 January 1876 and staged by the Great National Theatre a m onth later.

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Earlier, the Prince of Wales, on the occasion o f his visit to India, had visited the house of Jagadananda Mukherjee, a loyalist government pleader and the farce was a burlesque on the episode. In spite of police warnings the play was staged on 23 February and again on 26 February, now under the title Hanuman Charitra}1 Angered, Lord N orthbrook issued an ordinance on 29 February 1876 ‘empowering the Government of Bengal to prohibit certain dramatic per­ formances which were scandalous, defamatory, seditious, obscene or other­ wise prejudicial to the public interest/ In defiance the Great National Theatre produced an improvised farce, The Police o f Pig and Sheep> in an obvious reference to Police Commissioner Hogg and Superintendent of Police Lamb. Upendranath Das’s serious play, Surendra Binodini Natak, was also presented alongside; in it prisoners break open the iron gates and kill a British magistrate. This led to the arrests of Upendranath Das and other members of the Great National Theatre. Charged with obscenity, they were found guilty and imprisoned for a m onth, but acquitted on appeal to the High Court. This acquittal made the government uneasy and probably precipitated the introduction o f the Dramatic Performances Control Bill on 14 March 1876.28 Introducing the Bill in the Governor-Generars Council, a member stated the case for prevention o f acts of sedition or obscenity, rather than punish­ m ent post facto, and cited the English laws that permitted the control of dramatic performances. In the discussion Raja Narendra Krishna, the only Indian member o f the Council, concurred wholeheartedly in the need for the Bill to check ‘a reprehensible tendency in some of our young misguided authors, who abused their imaginative powers in writing objectionable plays for the stage/ But he pointed out that censorship of plays written in the vernaculars would be very difficult and therefore due attention should be paid to the selection o f persons who would be required to pronounce on whether any play was objectionable.29 The draft Bill provoked a controversy which is the first expression of public concern over censorship and curtailment of artistic freedom. While most of the local governments considered the enactment necessary, the British Indian Association was strongly against it, on the grounds that it was unnecessary, that the provisions of the existing laws were ample for all requirements, and that an exceptional law of the kind proposed would have a most depressing effect on the development of national literature. In a country like this, where the influence o f public opinion is feeble, where the executive have a wide discretion, where the rulers have no critical knowledge o f the languages o f the ruled and where national literature is just reviving, the enormous

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arbitrary power proposed to be vested in the executive officers by the Bill may be converted into a tearful [sic] engine o f oppression, and may prove disastrous to the liberty and literature o f the people.*0

The Association further observed that conceptions of decency and propriety differed greatly between European and Indian and it would be arbitrary and oppressive to judge the character of native amusements from a European viewpoint. It recommended instead bringing an errant per­ formance to justice by a regular trial under the existing law.31 These objections were dismissed by Sir Richard Temple on the ground that the plays were not only libellous against individuals or classes, but ‘designed to excite all feelings against the British name and nation, against the tendency o f the British civilization and institutions, and against the results of British rule.’32 Contemporary vernacular newspapers of Bombay and of Calcutta con­ demned the Ordinance and the Draft Bill. The Bombay Samacharof 3 May 1876 was particularly critical of the provision for a censor, on the ground that henceforth performance of popular entertainment would depend on the whim and fancy of a single individual against whose decision there would be no protest or appeal. Even without power to exercise arbitrary authority, many arbitrary acts were in any case committed by the government.33 A perusal of vernacular papers in the Bengal Presidency indicates that while most of the Calcutta papers were against the measure as a politically motivated one, the mofussil papers seemed to believe that censorship was necessary for protecting morality. Thus the Bharat Sangskarak published from the Twenty-four Parganas (6 March 1876) and the H indu H itoshin i (11 March 1876) saw it as a salutary check on the extreme license that was indulged in by actors and actresses.34 The puritanical attitudes and high moral tone adopted by the British throughout the nineteenth century as a claim to cultural superiority also emerge in the Council debate on the Bill. The willingness to concede that the ideas o f propriety and morality were different in Europe and India, and that some Indian practices which might draw disapproval in Europe had the sanction of Indian religion and culture, was counterpoised by the belief that the British had a duty to improve standards. Thus, according to Hobhouse, the British might be accused of error in judgement because they were used to a different standard, yet this ‘particular liability to error was one of those incidents which are absolutely inseparable from our presence here as rulers and administrators of this country.* It would not be an unmixed advantage if, occasionally, ‘a higher standard [was] applied to those who were accus­ tomed only to a lower one.’35 The W hite M an’s Burden weighed heavy.

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Though ‘obscenity' figured largely in the Act, it is clear that in the conditions of the time, it meant ‘anti-British’, for there was little in the drama that was lewd or immoral as understood today, or even according to the norms o f the age. Despite Indian protests, the Bill was enacted on 16 December 1876. It provided that whenever the government was of the opinion that any dramatic performance was scandalous or defamatory or likely to excite feelings of dissatisfaction against the state or likely to cause pain to any private party in its performance, or was otherwise prejudicial to the interest of the public, the state could prohibit such a performance. It also enabled a magistrate or police officer to enter any performance venue and to arrest all the persons assembled therein for the performance. Two years later was passed the Vernacular Press Act, which gagged the native press and made the publication of politically seditious writing punishable. In spite of the restrictions on performance and printing, however, patriotic literature and drama continued to flourish. After 1880 in parti­ cular, political drama became a popular genre even if, to escape censorship, the plays still had to be couched in historical or mythological terms. Between 1880 and 1910, seventy-four such plays were written in Maharashtra, Vasudeva Ranganath Shirwalkar’s Rana Bhimdeva (1892), and K. P. Khadilkar’s Keechak Vadha (1906), being the two most notable. The Marathi stage was particularly influenced by Tilak’s radical politics, and closely reflected his ideas until his exit from centre stage around 1910. S. M .Ranade,S. M .Paranjpe,AnantVamanBarve,NarayanBapuKantikar and others also took up topical political issues and the themes staged were racial discrimination, white man’s injustice, the partition of Bengal, Tilak's trial, and so on.36 As a consequence the Dramatic Performances Act was strictly enforced after 1880, and particularly so after 1890 in the face of a growth of extremist politics in both Maharashtra and Bengal. A. M. Joshi’s Shiva Chatrapati Vijay (\8 9 i), A. V. Barve’s Lokm at Vijay (1898), andG . C. Soman’s Bandh Vimochan (1898) were proscribed under the Act. But by allegorical use o f historical or mythological themes, and by means of covert suggestions, sometimes even of an improvized nature, Indian theatre managed to avoid prosecution while simultaneously conveying the evils of foreign domination, the message of freedom and national regenera­ tion. Whereas the Urdu stage was crude and vociferous in its expression of nationalist sentiments, the more advanced theatres preferred to employ subtle insinuations which were plain to the intelligent audience and yet be­ yond the reach of the law.37Thus the references to Indian dramatic literature

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or performance o f the period as archaic and unprogressive because o f its preoccupation with historical and mythological themes rather than contem­ porary secular concerns are unjustified. At least partly, this was the result o f the need to make a virtue out of necessity. By the end of the nineteenth century state attitudes had changed consi­ derably in Britain as Oscar Wilde, Pinero, George Bernard Shaw and others campaigned for the abolition o f censorship of drama. Simultaneously, efforts, all private, were being made to raise the calibre o f the performing arts by campaigning for the establishment o f a National Theatre, behind which Matthew Arnold had thrown his weight. Thus after the First W orld War, the disreputable aura which had clung to theatre in Britain began to disappear, yielding place to a recognition o f it as a fine art. Many associations were formed which campaigned vigorously for a state funded National Theatre, a demand finally conceded by the Labour Government in 1949. But because of existing political compulsions there was no corresponding change in official attitudes in India. By the first decade o f the twentieth century theatre had become very popular in Maharashtra and Bengal. There were several commercial compa­ nies, reviews of plays in the papers, and endless debates and discussions in journals. Though many more plays were written than produced, theatre had nevertheless matured and had become a forum for propagation o f new ideas and a potent force for change. In particular it had become, along with verna­ cular literature, a leading purveyor of the nationalist message. Many o f the leading figures of the nationalist movement were also leading journalists or prose writers and many prose writers also wrote drama. And so the anger roused by the Partition of Bengal by Curzon found a reflection in theatre in Bengal as well as Maharashtra. Together with many inconsequential plays, there were a few that had great political impact and invited official ire. The plays of Girish Chandra Ghose in Bengal and Khadilkar in Maharashtra, in particular, fell into this category. Girish Chandra Ghose (1844-1912), one o f the first great men o f Bengali theatre— actor, writer, director, and manager of the Great National The­ atre— wrote a series of historical plays such as Siraj-ud-daula and M ir Kasim on the theme of British oppression, using historical figures and situations to convey a contemporary message. Siraj-ud-daula was banned. D. L. Roy explored in his plays not only the history of India in relation to the pressures and uncertainties of the contemporary situation in Bengal, especially British oppression, but also questioned the quality of Indian nationalism, pointing out the exploitation inherent in the Indian social system with its caste and feudal structure.38 The tradition of political comment already present in Marathi folk

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theatre was revived in the late nineteenth century to comment on British rule. Keechak Vadha by K. P. Khadilkar (first sub-editor and later editor of Kesari, the Poona paper founded by Tilak) is a landmark in the theatre of protest. First performed on 23 February 1907 in Poona, it created a sensation; The Times of London called it ‘seditious* and ‘a most pernicious influence* with its ‘sneers and depreciation of British rule*. T he play was an allegory of an incident in the Mahabharata, in which Keechak, the lustful brother-in-law of king Virata, in whose court the five Pandavas and their wife Draupadi have taken refuge incognito, is slain by Bheema, through a stratagem. Though no names were mentioned everyone knew that Keechak was Lord Curzon, Draupadi was India; and Yudhishtira was the Moderate and Bheema the Extremist party in the Congress. The message was that a weak government in London (King Virata) has allowed Curzon to insult and humiliate India. While her Moderate champion advocates gentle (i.e. constitutional) measures, which prove inadequate, the Extremist adopts violent measures, and the oppressor is disposed off without difficulty. The Times correspondent blamed the play for the assassination attempt on Lord M into, and the murder of the Collector o f Nasik,39 and pleaded for stringent censorship: a ‘theory evolved in the West [i.e. freedom of expres­ sion] may not fit in with the facts of the East.* The play was banned in 1910, and Khadilkar was asked to step down from the editorship o f the Kesari, a move which is believed to have affected his creativity in theatre, as also his political writing. Reacting to extremist activity in the province, the government went so far as to ban the printing of all plays under the Indian Press Act of 1910. Disciplinary action was taken against dramatists who were civil servants. District Magistrates were asked to keep a strict eye on the others. O n 27 October 1910, Section 10 of the Dramatic Performances Act o f 1876 was amended and extended to all of Bombay Province.40 M any of the itinerant dramatic companies were made to obtain permis­ sion from the district officials before staging their plays at any place. Plays staged in one district were prohibited in another, and several theatre groups were prosecuted. The trouble and delay experienced in obtaining the necessary permission proved both vexatious and ruinous to dramatic com­ panies.41 For instance, the Collector of Colaba district instituted criminal proceedings against the directors of a company and fourteen others, for staging Vijay Toran by R. M. Mhaiskar in 1909; 500 copies o f the drama were confiscated. Similarly, the Swadeshi Hitaishi drama company was banned from performing a play on Swadeshi and was ruined.42 After 1913-14 political repression eased but vigilance against drama

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continued and there was ruthless repression of theatre once again after Gandhi’s entry into politics in 1920. More plays were written than performed, as texts were proscribed and performances banned. The repression had its effect. After the reunification of Bengal in 1911, Bengali theatre became busy with commercial entertainment, or staged dramas on social themes rather than political. Rabindranath Tagore’s plays diverged from the general direction of Bengali drama. His Dakghar( 1912), Raktakarabi (1924), and M uktadhara (1924) were a quest for lasting values, and for perfection in man and civilization. Tagore tried to indicate the way in which a genuine Indian theatre could come into being, .a theatre which belonged to the soil, and sustained itself on plays inspired by Indian ideals of synthesis rather than conflict. But his work had little influence on other playwrights or production styles.43 Sisir Bhaduri, another giant of the Bengali theatre of this time, both actor and producer, concentrated also on social, non-political, themes. Till then the bulk of drama was either religious or historical, or concerned with the milieu and problems o f the urban middle class. Bhaduri now took up Tagore’s plays and the novels of Sarat Chandra Chatterjee with their deep understanding of upper- and middle-class rural society, and helped to broaden the outlook of Bengali theatre.44 Nationalist protest through drama remained on a low key in Bengal until the influence of Marxism revived political theatre in the Forties. The only im portant playwright of note writing on political issues in the Thirties was M anmatha Ray, who dramatized H indu legends by selecting episodes that highlighted the contemporary political situation. His Karagar (Prison) dramatized the birth of Lord Krishna in prison. Its allegorical significance was not lost at a time when Bengali prisons were full o f those who had been involved in Gandhi’s civil disobedience agitation; nor was it lost on the government, who banned it. After 1910 Khadilkar and other Marathi writers took special care not to arouse government anger while keeping the flame o f patriotism alive in musical plays such as M anapman{ 1911). Thus began the vogue for sangeet natak. The year 1916 was an im portant year for Marathi drama, with many important plays being written and produced: Ram Ganesh Gadkari’s Ekach Pyala, Khadilkar’s Swayamvar and so on. Theatre continued to blossom in the rest o f the decade but the most popular plays were mostly social farces, and had no political content. But political comment did not entirely cease. Plays continued to be Written on political themes. They were not now overfly strident, as, after Tilak’s death, Gandhi had taken the lead and the connection between Gandhi and the Marathi stage was distant. Gandhian

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philosophy replaced Tilak’s ideas for plays such as Gadkari’s Raj Sanyas which explored the ideas o f democracy and self-determination. Moreover, because of severe repression there appeared a growing cleavage between different dramatists about the role of drama in national life, a division encouraged by British civil servants.45 Even as non-political theatre flourished in Maharashtra in the second decade o f the century, the simultaneous growth of prudishness led, as in the case o f literature, to a demand for stricter censorship on moral grounds. The Indu Prakash, an Anglo-Gujarati newspaper o f Bombay, in its issue of 18 August 1911 complained that the new crop of sangeet nataks were in depraved taste, and demanded that the police keep a strict vigil on im­ morality. It lamented that M arathi drama, which had hitherto dealt with the doings of great saints and deities, was now indulging in gross profanities. Worse, not only the masses, but also gentlemen witnessed these plays again and again, and took their children and women with them!46 Similarly, the Hitecchu of 30 January 1916 reproduced an article in Vasanty which complained that the drama M alati Madhav> recently put on stage by the Shri Vidya Vinod Dramatic Company at Surat, had been a degraded and debased adaptation from the original Sanskrit for the depraved tastes o f the masses, and that some of its low songs have become so popular that they were encored half a dozen times! The writer expressed particular disapproval of the acting o f all the female parts in the play which according to him was overdone.47 Though there was little in the plays which would be considered objec­ tionable today, throughout 1916 there were notices under the ‘police’ section o f newspapers, o f this or that drama being obscene, and action against it being demanded. But the government was preoccupied with political issues at this time and one finds no mention of prosecutions made on moral grounds. By 1930 the professional stage in India was on the decline, pardy due to competition from films, and pardy due to its own inner compulsions. The country was in economic and social ferment but theatre gave no evidence of it. There was a shortage of good plays and the economic recession eroded middle-class patronage. Besides, the concepdon of theatre itself was under­ going a change. W ith the spread of education and polidcal consciousness and the urgent need for new expression, a search began for an appropriate theatre to mirror contemporary realides. Professional theatre gave way to amateur activity. T he growth o f amateur theatre in turn sumulated the printing of plays. The spread of Marxist thought brought new life to theatre. Mama

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Varerkar, M. N. Joshi, G. S. Phatak, N. S. Phadkc and others wrote Marathi plays based on communist philosophy. Sonyacha Kalas by Mama Varerkar dwelt on relations between capitalists and labour, against the background o f the Labour strike of 1919. G im iwala o f M. N . Joshi, staged in 1929, had the selfishness of mill owners as its theme.48 Government attitudes to these plays indicate that it was not only antiBritish sentiments which invited retribution but any potentially destabiliz­ ing factor. The perceived Communist threat was met by repression and censorship of drama as well as literature. Though this had some effect on curbing the spate of overtly leftist plays, it did not lessen the impact the Progressive Movement had on drama, making for healthy introspection. A theatre organization owing its inspira­ tion to the Marxist movement which was to have a far reaching impact on theatre throughout India, was formed on 25 May 1943. The Indian People's Theatre Association (1PTA) was the first effort on the part of Indian theatre artists to collaborate in an anti-fascist, anti-imperialist theatre. It was also the first major effort in northern India to take theatre away from purely com­ mercial concerns, to bring it closer to social reality and to the people, and to use it for educative and propaganda purposes. The Progressive theatre movement changed not only the content but also the style o f presentation. It used traditional folk forms like hurra katha of Andhra, the tamasha of Maharashtra, and the jatra of Bengal to convey political and educative messages. In the process it broadened audiences to include the rural masses as well as the urban proletariat. The interaction of the urban with folk theatre served to revitalize both.49 Most of IPTA's early plays were predominantly urban in perspective, largely because the members of IPTA were themselves urban middle-class intellectuals. But later the outlook broadened, and several exceptional plays such as K. A. Abbas' Zubeida, set in rural U.P., were produced. The Progressive Movement had a particularly stimulating effect on Bengali theatre. After Hitler's invasion of Russia in 1942, there was an upsurge of anti-fascist fervour. It led to the formation of the Anti-Fascist Writers' and Artists’ Union in Calcutta, with prom inent artists and writers like Jamini Roy, M anik Bandyopadhyay, Buddhadeva Bose, and Bishnu De, as members. This Union, together with IPTA, attempted to reach a classof people hitherto ignored by the intelligentsia, as well as to focus on subjects not tackled before. Bijon Bhattacharya's Nabanna (New Harvest) became a landmark in Bengali theatre at its first performance for an audience of 7000 in March 1945. Its theme was the death of five million peasants in the Bengal Famine

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of 1943> a man-made calamity caused by human greed and callousness. Apart from his own plays on the subjects, Bhattacharya inspired a number of playwrights to write about superstition, and the exploitation o f the poor and the dispossessed.50 W ith the easing of the political situation in 1944, and release o f theatre enthusiasts who had been in jail because o f nationalist activities, a new allIndia theatre organization was formed under Kamladevi Chattopadhyaya, the Indian National Theatre. Its first production was the ballet Discovery o f India, the harbinger of a new age about to begin. By 1945 however the Progressive Movement was slowing down due to a schism between the political activists and artists, and also factionalism. The Bengal IPTA which had already started disintegrating ceased to function as a coherent organization after 1945. In other parts o f India too, the IPTA slowly lost ground to newer, non-political groups. Communism was losing its appeal with the success o f Gandhi and the Congress in the independence movement. Changing circumstances, rather than government control, led to the demise of the Progressive Movement after Independence. But it had played its role, and had left a lasting impact on the arts. In the Twenties, with the emergence of the untouchables as a political force under Ambedkar, caste entered politics. As consciousness of caste increased, several plays were written in Marathi on untouchability, though mosdy by middle-class caste Hindus. For instance, Gharpure wrote Stvarajya Sadhan, with the aim o f integrating castes by showing how all castes contributed to Independence. K. S. Thakre wrote Khara Brahman advocat­ ing removal of untouchability. It was staged in 1933 and ran for seventy-five performances. However such plays led to disaffection amongst Brahmins, and the government had to appoint a committee to examine the charge that they fomented caste feelings. The committee recommended the removal of offending portions and changes in the name o f the characters. But caste continued to figure as a subject for M arathi plays, especially after Ambedkar began the movement for conversion o f untouchables to Buddhism.51 Even so, caste politics were reflected much less than communal politics on the M arathi stage. After 1923, when the formation o f the Muslim League polarized the religious communities, and H indu-M uslim tensions were high, a number o f historical plays were written in Marathi on H in d u Muslim relations, all advocating the curbing of Muslim aggression and asserting H indu supremacy. The government intervened a number o f times by imposing censorship on the offending publications and performances, mosdy through the Press Acts and Ordinances in force.52

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T o conclude, both the Marathi and the Bengali stages, the most active in India, were influenced by, and reacted to, the different political and social forces afoot in the British period, though to varying degrees. Because politics could not be openly discussed, the Indian stage adopted stratagems to overcome the political compulsions of the time. Though censorship undoubtedly had an adverse impact, the decline of theatre activity by the time of Independence was due not so much to it as to competition offered by the new media, most notably films, to which artists and audiences alike defected. Films both used traditional theatre conven­ tions, and also called for new acting skills. Serious theatre became the preserve of amateur societies and a few professional groups, while commer­ cial companies churned out popular entertainment in a last desperate attem pt to survive. While the modern Indian theatre owed its existence almost entirely to the establishment of British rule and the consequent interaction of the Western theatrical tradition with Indian literary talent, the state played no positive role in its development. Neither could it tame or completely subdue it. T hat role was played by economic forces.

Notes and References 1. Quoted by V. P. S. Raghuvanshi, Indian Society in the Eighteenth Century (New Delhi, 1969), pp. 250-7. 2. Forbes, Oriental Memoirs (London, 1834), vol. 2, p. 78. 3. See R. K. Yajnik, The Indian Theatre: Its Origins and Later Development under European Influence (London, 1933), pp. 83-6. 4. Emma Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics o f Hindostan with Sketches o f Anglo Indian Society (London, 1835), vol. 3, pp. 42-3. 5. W. S. Scton-Kerr (ed.), Selections from the Calcutta Gazettes (Calcutta, 1865). 6. Roberts, Scenes, vol. 1, p. 253. 7. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 87-8. 8. A. Poddar, Renaissance in Bengal: Quests and Confrontations, 1800-1860 (Simla,

1970), pp. 23-4. 9. Yajnik, The Indian Theatre, p. 84. 10. Adya Rangacharya, Indian Theatre (Delhi, 1971), p. 96. 11. Yajnik, The Indian Theatre, p. 92. 12. Ibid., p. 103. 13. Ibid., p. 87. 14. Rustom Bharucha, Rehearsals o f Revolution (Honolulu, 1983), p. 9.

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15. Rangacharya, Indian Theatre, pp. 98-102. 16. Bharucha, Rehearsals, pp. 10-16. 17. N. C. Shanware, Rajakiya Chalwal A ni M arathi Natya Srushti (The Nationalist Movement and the M arathi State) (Bombay, 1977), pp. 1-9. 18. Ibid., pp. 10-34. 19. Ibid., pp. 35-7. 20. R. K. Das Gupta, ‘The Political Background o f the Dramatic Performances Control Act of 1876’, Indian History Congress Proceedings, 21st Session. 1958, published 1959, 510-14. 21. Pramila Pandhi, Suppression o f Drama in Nineteenth-Century India (Calcutta, 1978), pp. 13-35. 22. Shanware, Rajakiya Chalwal, pp. 35-57. 23. See John Pick, The Arts in a State (Bristol, 1988), p. 20. 24. Janet Minihan, Nationalization o f Culture (London, 1977), p. 3. 25. John Pick, Managing the Arts (London, 1986), pp. 27—8; The Arts in a State, p. 32. 26. Pandhi, Suppression, pp. 1-12. 27. Das Gupta, The Political Background, p. 513. 28. Ibid. 29. Proceedings of the council of the Governor-General of India, 1876, vol. 15, pp. 83-4 (IO R V /9 /14/1875-76). 30. Quoted in Pandhi, Suppression, p. 100. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., p. 101. 33. Ibid., pp. 131-2. 34. Indian Newspaper Reports, Bengal (IOR L/R/5/2/1876). 35. Legislative Council Proceedings, 1876, p. 341. 36. Shanware, Rajakiya Chalwal, pp. 35-57. 37. Yajnik, The Indian Theatre, p. 246. 38. For the development o f Bengali theatre during the twentieth century, see Kironmoy Raha, Bengali Theatre (New Delhi, 1978), pp. 67-83. 39. Jackson was assassinated by Anant Kanhcre in 1909 while he was watching the play Sharda. 40. Shanware, Rajakiya Chalwal, p. 95. 41. Anant Vaman Barve, a leading Marathi playwright, commented on these restrictive practices at the 7th session o f the Bharat Dramatic Conference in Bombay in 1911, and suggested that the government should appoint a committee to scrutinize dramatic works with powers to publish a list of approved plays so that all dramatic companies were not inconvenienced. Nothing came of the suggestion. Barve, reported in Indu Prakashof 24 May 1911, Indian Newspaper Reports (IOR L/R/ 5/166/Bom bay). 42. Shanware, Rajkiya Chalwal, p. 96. 43. Raha, Bengali Theatre, p. 105. 44. Ibid., pp. 105-17. 45. Shanware, Rajkiya Chalwal, pp. 102-19, 137-51, 152-77.

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46. Indu Prakash, 18 August 1911, Indian Newspaper Reports, Bombay (IOR L/R/ 5/167/1911). 47. Hittcchuj 30 January 1916, Indian Newspaper Reports, Bombay (IOR L/R/5/ 171/1916). 48. Shanware, Rajakiya Chalwal pp. 178-91. 49. See Rustom Bharucha, Rehearsals, pp. 40-2. 50. Raha, Bengali Theatre, pp. 130-5. 51. For instance P. K. Atre’s play, Vande Bharatam in which he paints an idealist picture o f caste relations. See Shanware, Rajakiya Chalwal> pp. 207-23. 52. Ibid.

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New Patrons for Old

Classical, folk and popular music was part of daily life in India at the beginning of British rule, and no cultural event was complete w ithout it.1As with other Indian arts, it had a long history and tradition and its origins are believed to lie in primordial times.2The learning and practice of classical or art music (with which the following is mostly concerned) was integral to the lives of cultured families, and as a profession it was in great demand as part of ritual worship, as well as for aesthetic enjoyment. In the H indu tradition classical music was a form of devotion and used as a mode o f worship, its aim being to help individuals to realize the Absolute through evoking different states of being. The repertoire, musical forms, and performance practice were all structured with the prime objective o f evoking rasa, variously translated as sentiment, emotion, mood or flavour, in the minds of the audience. But this emotion was not just ordinary emotion, but more akin to the impersonal joy or bliss experienced by contemplation of the Divine.3 Though the early Muslim rulers o f the north had not patronized Indian music because of religious prohibition, the Mughals were great patrons who took pride in having musicians o f note, such as T ansen, at their court. Under their patronage the process of experimentation to synthesize Indian and Persian music, first begun by Amir Khusru, court poet and composer at the court of Allauddin Khilji, reached a new peak. T o the sublimity and strength of H indu music was added the grace and decorative details of the Persian. At the same time, classical music became more secular, the religious content of songs being increasingly substituted by love themes. In the H indu courts however, the religious element continued to be a part of durbari music.4Alongside, there existed a tradition of artha sangitW ith its insistence on emotions and the poetry o f the words. While in the Muslim courts of the N orth music was patronized more as an aesthetic experience, in the South the emphasis on music as a devotional activity continued and patronage of music was also a mode of devotion.5

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In the absence o f documentation on musicians and their lives in the various ruling courts, including patronage and performance practice,6 only a few broad generalizations may be made. Patronage for music for worship came from temples, and for recreation and entertainment from princely courts, aristocracy and cultured families, and finally the salons o f courtesans, the latter playing an im portant role in nurturing the musical tradition. H indu religious music was also sung by Muslim musicians just as musicians of both communities were patronized by H indu and Muslim courts alike. Musicians, like other artists, were respectfully treated by their patrons, and sometimes highly honoured. Remuneration was in both cash and kind, in return for which they were asked to give occasional concerts, entertain guests or teach. Otherwise they were left free to practise their art. T ransmission of the art was according to a guru shishya param paravAiett the teacher accepted a few chosen pupils and trained them in a close intimate relationship, there being no formal teaching institutions. It was mostly an oral mode of communication because of the conviction that the process of writing tends to reduce the quality o f learning. In the North, musicians had become increasingly professional, and had evolved guild-like systems of hereditary brotherhoods, which guarded the professional secrets o f their particular style. In time, these guilds evolved into the well-known ghararut system of regional styles. In the South however, transmission was much less hereditary and did not become institutionalized in a gharana system. Patronage o f the temples counted for more, and consequently these exercised more influence on performance than did the temples of the N orth. According to musicologist Dan Neum an this differ­ ence in purpose of music and different styles o f patronage had its effect on the compositional form and performance practice of the N orth and South Indian traditions of music.7 Below the dlite culture, sustained by the palaces and courts of kings and nobles, was a flourishing traditional culture nourished through the voluntary efforts o f the community, wherein classical and folk forms interacted to create new forms and styles peculiar to a region. The new styles created around the end of the eighteenth and beginning o f the nineteenth century were rooted in folk traditions but had high literary content to o / Unlike the Mughals, the British did not appreciate Indian music, partly because it was so different from their own. Indian music is a purely melodic art whereas the Western system is built on harmony. Besides, a full appreciation o f Indian music is not possible without some knowledge o f its science, technique, and philosophy, which the British did not immediately have. Another reason which has been advanced is that in the early years o f

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British rule, very little o f the really good or classical music o f the Hindus was ever heard by European ears, what was ordinarily played to them being 'the commonest ballads and love songs, with modern Persian and Hindustani ditties, sung by ill instructed screaming, dancing women, at crowded native durbars, marriages and other ceremonies.’9 The better vocalists usually hesitated to perform before foreigners who were apt to show contempt for the music without endeavouring to understand it.10 Early British reactions to Indian music were therefore generally dispar­ aging. Reactions such as that o f the Abb6 Dubois were not uncommon: The sounds produced by these instruments are far from pleasing, and may even appear hideous to European ears. . . . H indu music, whether vocal or instrumental, may be pleasing to the natives, but I do not think it can give the slightest pleasure to any one else, however little sensitive be his ear. . . . Their songs have always appeared to me uninspiring and monotonous, while from their instruments I have never heard anything but harsh, high and car splitting sounds.n

The Abb6 Dubois was a priest who came to India as a ‘political refugee’ from the French Revolution and stayed for thirty-one years, travelling extensively in the South. W hen he left France he was a well wisher o f India but by the time he left India he was a declared enemy o f the'H indus. It is surmised that he was disillusioned by the obstinate refusal of Indians to embrace Christianity, and the unfitness of most Europeans in India to in­ spire Indians with confidence and goodwill. Possibly his disillusionment coloured his judgement.12 In any case, he had scarcely a good word to say of either the Indian character, or Indian music or dance. Captain Thomas Williamson whose notes accompanied the collection of drawings made by Charles D ’Oyly for The Costumes and Customs o f M odem India, in 1813, was equally contemptuous. He wrote: Much skill is displayed on these rude materials; which however they may be tolerated as a novelty, never fail to weary those unlucky auditors, who often are compelled, rather than give offence, to have their heads stunned, and their nerves disordered, by the monotonous and shrill notes which, for hours together, vibrate on their wearied ears. Such is the music o f the East!13

The Company civilian James Forbes, sympathetic to Indian culture, admitted that personally he could not appreciate either vocal or instrumental melody, nor had he heard much said in its favour by others who knew it better. Nevertheless he was aware that there were many treatises on music and was able to give the distinguishing features of the Indian system.14 N or did any o f the early Orientalists make an attempt to study and understand Indian art music, in contrast to the great interest taken by them

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in classical literature and architecture. Amongst the few exceptions was Sir William Jones who, in his treatise On the M usical Mode o f the Hindus (1784), saw in the Indian musical system an affinity with that of the West and compared the raga system with the Gregorian mode. He also attempted to collect the original music sung by Jayadeva but could not, as music was on the decline.15 Francis Fowke,16 Captain Augustus W illard,17 W . Ousley,18 Sir W . W . H unter,19 Col. James Tod,20 R. H . M . Bosanquet and Captain Day21 were some of the other early inquirers into Indian music. However, they looked at Indian music textually, and not as a performing tradition. And as Ashok Ranade has pointed out, British Orientalists and ethno-musicologists equated one nation with one culture, and one culture with one music. In the case of India, the identification was with H indu music alone.22 One possible reason for the minimal scholarly interest was the absence of a written corpus. The Westerner had to find a guru who would accept him as a disciple for several years, but that was not an insurmountable difficulty, considering the efforts made to understand classical learning through the help o f pundits and maulvis. More probably, the lack of interest was due to the fact that music was of little profit in political or administrative terms.23 Scholarly effort in the case o f classical Indian learning was direcdy necessary and rewarding in political and administrative terms, whereas in the case of music it was not. As British life in India became more settled, and the attitudes more imperialist with the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was a with­ drawal from Indian society, and a growing self-reliance in social and cultural life.24 W ith greater opportunities for enjoying their own varieties of dancing and hearing their own music few Englishmen would admit to a liking for the ‘barbarous arts’ of the East.25 Such scholarship as was undertaken contributed to institutionalizing the study of music. Like Indologists in other fields, British scholars o f music devoted themselves to the collection of manuscripts on music and musical artefacts, and to the systematization of the knowledge so gained through a process of classification, cataloguing, and above all, chronological ordering of material. Moreover, in keeping with the ethos of the time, scholars also strove to draw parallels with .Western music, but in the mistaken belief that Indian music was necessarily more primitive than that o f the civilized West.26 Hence the absence o f British patronage, or even its advocacy. Apart from lack of appreciation and advocacy, a third contributing cause for state disinterest in Indian music was that even in Britain the performing arts were given a low priority. Preoccupied as the Victorians were with the

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elevating influence of art on human behaviour and good taste, the perform­ ing arts enjoyed a lowly status because they were held to exert an adverse influence, corrupting the morals and stability of society. Besides, they were deemed entertainment rather than art, and their pursuit was considered frivolous and a waste of time. State aid for music and drama was considered a flagrant waste of public money on ephemera capable of supporting them­ selves.27 The same logic was applied in India despite the fact that British rule itself was eroding not only the traditional patronage patterns but the very position of music in Indian culture. Nor, throughout the nineteenth century, was there an effective Indian demand for state support. Consequently, until the twentieth century, classical music had to depend entirely on local and private support for its survival and development. Yet it was the other British policies, political, economic and educadonal, that impacted on the development of Indian music. For one, they altered patterns of patronage so that there was a shift from traditional to contem­ porary, and private to public patronage. This in turn affected concert structure and performance practice. Until the early decades of the nineteenth century, Indian music contin­ ued to flourish under aristocratic patronage, even though some of the older courts had been impoverished by wars and British annexations, as had the old aristocracy by new land settlements. One section of the aristocracy had also become too Anglicized to patronize Indian music. Nevertheless, prince­ ly and aristocratic patronage continued to be substantial, especially outside British India, and in the States of Gwalior, Indore, Baroda, Rampur, Kolhapur, Sangli and Mysore, which continued to maintain musicians and encourage musical development.28 In fact, deprived of their earlier power and glory, unable to expend their energies or resources in warfare, many turned to the arts for solace and to assert a new identity. In contrast to taste in art and architecture, their preferences in the performing arts continued to be largely Indian,29 with occasional forays into Western dancing and music. The princes continued to sponsor religious ceremonies and festivals, and to patronize music and dance in this connection, and as part of the pageantry of State on special occasions. By 1880, however, the role of the princes as principal patrons was dimi­ nishing, albeit unevehly. While some princes gave up interest in the traditional arts altogether, others, like Baroda, Gwalior, and the Nawabs of Rampur in the North, and Mysore in the South, continued to patronize Indian music. But increasingly the role of the princely patron and feudal

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landlord was being taken over by urban-based m erchant princes and landlords w ho had amassed fortunes through trade and industry, especially in Bom bay and C alcutta. A m ongst these were the brothers S ourendram ohan an d Jiten d ram o h an T agore o f C alcutta w ho offered classical m usicians generous hospitality as well as som e com pensation for their concerts.30 S ourendram ohan T agore had collected m usicians ro u n d him and had started a serious study o f classical music, publishing several tracts on it, including H in d u M usic fro m Various Authors (1882), and U niversal H istory o f M usic (1896). Earlier, in 1872, he had founded the Bengal M usic School in C alcutta w ith forty pupils learning b o th vocal and instrum ental music, the n u m ber increasing to fifty-seven in 1874.31 In Bombay, while som e o f the new m agnates from the Parsi co m m u n ity were extrem ely Anglicized, there were others w ho kept up an interest in traditional music, as did those from the H in d u and Jain com m unities w ho had rem ained traditional in their private and dom estic lives.32 T hey now form ed the audience for m usicians w ho had com e to the cities in search o f livelihood following the decay o f the princely courts. In M adras the policy o f W esternization had been less successful in w eaning th e people away from their traditional culture, and because m usic had deep associations w ith religion, traditional patronage from tem ples and aristocrats continued. M eanw hile a new m iddle class had em erged due to the C om pany's trade, revenue, and education policies,33w hich could have been expected, n o t only to replace the patronage o f the now im poverished feudal aristocracy an d the displaced courts, b u t also to provide a new, m ore broad-based patronage, as had happened in the W est. T his was also, alm ost by definition, the W estern educated m iddle class, w ho, thanks to an Anglicized education, had lost touch w ith their tradition and offered it no patronage. O n ly in the th ird quarter o f the n in eteen th century did a small section o f this m iddle-class £lite, u nder the im petus o f cultural nationalism , tu rn again to their traditional heritage. In Bengal, the spread o f V ictorian m orality and prudishness also pre­ vented middle-class patronage to Indian m usic and dance, associated w ith the decadence o f the princes, and w ith prostitution. In M adras and Bom bay however, there was less an tip ath y to classical m usic on this score and in m any traditional households music, especially devotional m usic, co n tin u ed to be practised as an accom plishm ent by the w om en o f the household, though practice o f m usic as a profession was still looked dow n on. M eanw hile, dissem ination o f new ideas in m usic was helped by the

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introduction o f the printing press and the growth o f the regional language press, both o f which allowed for discussions o f notation systems; different theories, and texts of music. Soon after printing was introduced, many writers produced books on Indian music in English. O ne im portant result of this was a new reliance on the written word, in contrast to the earlier total reliance on the oral tradition for transmission and discourse.34 Middle-class appreciation of classical music began around the Seventies, largely due to the growing nationalist sentiment and the consequent pride in things Indian. Rousing patriotic songs also helped reinstate music as a respectable middle-class vocation, a trend supported in Bengal by the growing unemployment of graduates who had to look out for work other than clerical, and who took to teaching and the practice of music and art. Fortuitously, a band o f brilliant composers like Rabindranath Tagore simultaneously came on the scene and gave leadership in the appreciation of Indian music, making it eminently respectable. Exposed to both Western and Indian classical music, Rabindranath was also deeply impressed by folk music and by using it in his compositions he brought back vitality to a music which was becoming too rigid due to its fear of changes. This trend was later to be exploited more fully by film music. In the South the revival of middle-class interest in Carnatic or the South Indian style of classical music came sooner than in the N orth, because the break in the classical tradition there was less sharp, though no one great personality was responsible for the revival. Learning Carnatic music in cultured families had continued to be part of the social system and musicians were still able to read the theory and history of Carnatic music from the scriptures and old texts, whereas in the N orth many musicians had lost touch with the earlier textual tradition. At the same time, attempts began to be made by people like Chinnaswamy Mudaliar to popularize Indian music among the English educated Indians and Europeans by making it more intelligible in Western terms, in works like Oriental Music in European Notation (1893). In Western India the renewal of interest in classical music was helped by the appearance of the sangeetnatak^opxAzTYieA by Kirloskarand K. B. Deval; it contained a lot of music in the semi-classical tradition, and had become a vogue among the middle-class intelligentsia from the Eighties onwards. These natak mandalis or drama groups became an important source of patronage for art musicians who acted as ‘tune selectors’ for the productions of the mandalis and helped train the actor-singers.35 A further step towards broadening middle-class patronage and transform­ ing it from purely private to public was taken when several circles, music

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clubs and mandalis or sabhas? began to be formed towards the end of the nineteenth century. One such was the Sangeet Samaj of Calcutta, estab­ lished by zamindars and professionals to hold monthly concerts and plays. However, more concerned with entertainment than promotion, it soon collapsed. In Bombay, the patronage of rich Parsis and Gujaratis, and in Poona that of the Maharashtrian middle-class intellectual ^lite, led to the formation of societies like the Parsi Jnanottejak Mandali (1871)36 and the Pune Gayan Samaj (1874) with the objectives of reviving the taste for Indian music among the Hite and to arrange for concerts and music classes on new lines. The Parsi Mandali which provided the initial support and opportunity for study of the authentic corpus of Hindustani music to Pandit Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (undeniably the greatest scholar of Hindustani classi­ cal music in modern times)37also established three colleges of classical music in India.38 This last represented a new phenomenon, the institutionalization of musical training in place of the traditional guru-shishyaparampara. Informal and unwritten training was superseded by a fixed, written curriculum, examinations and certificates. Underlying this institutionalization was the belief that by ‘modernizing’ training a higher status would be bestowed on the practice of the performing arts.39 There were great changes in the condition o f musicians, their repertoires, the performance context, and patronage patterns in the twentieth century. The transition from the traditional informal patronage with support in cash and kind, to a formal relationship between patron and performer, was helped by government policies which had led to urbanization, and an expansion in the money economy, as well as increased mobility due to improved transport system. It broke down the earlier close relationship between patron and performer, as the latter could, and did, travel afar. Further, it encouraged musicians, no less than others, to charge fees for tuition and performance in place of the customary gifts and hospitality. The greater mobility meant greater exchange of musical repertoires and a diminution of regional specialization and isolation. Moreover, exposure to the West had familiarized many people with Western music, and new instruments like the violin and harmonium were introduced into India in the nineteenth century, and began to influence both folk and classical music. But perhaps the greatest impact on Indian music was made by the advent of new technology— the radio, printing press, sound amplification and recording, and film. Music could now reach larger numbers and so altered the performance context. The twentieth century brought a renewed European interest in Indian

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art music. Towards the end of the nineteenth century itself, there had been some interest on the part of a few British officials. At the inaugural function of the Madras branch of the Pune Gayan Samaj in 1883, a government official, Sir Charles Turner, had voiced the view that the social distance between Indians and the British could be bridged through music. But this presupposed, he said, that they understood each other’s music and in this, organizations such as the Samaj had an important role to play.40 In spite of such pious wishes and also efforts at written notations, the interaction over music never really happened. But as European outlook towards its own performing arts changed in the twentieth century as a result of Modernist movements and other factors, and as efforts began to be made in England to raise the calibre of the per­ forming arts, European interest in a scholarly study of Indian music also increased. It once again became the subject of research by scholars like Fox Strangways, H. A. Popley and Arnold Bake. Their research in and interpre­ tation of the structures and techniques of classical Indian music helped Europeans to appreciate it better.41 But when at last it belatedly came, state support to Indian music was not the result of British advocacy. It was the result of two other developments, one political and the other technological. The first, the result of the spread­ ing nationalist feeling, was the growing demand from Indians for bringing music into the educational curriculum, and the other, the introduction of the radio. The growing nationalist sentiment brought ‘peoples’ patronage* to music and helped it make the final transition to respectability. The famous Abdul Karim Khan sang before Tilak who urged that revival of Indian music must become a part of the National Reconstruction programme. Vishnu Digambar Paluskar’s music was sung in the Dandi March led by Gandhi in 1930. His version of the Vande Mataram was sung at every session of the National Congress. But the new audiences were not so discriminating as the earlier £lite audiences, since they had no grounding in the tradition, and they had to be re-educated into the finer nuances. This led to efforts to revive and popularize classical music through re-education on the one hand, and to changing concert compositions to entice lay audiences on the other.42 The credit for reviving, popularizing and developing Hindustani classical music in the early twentieth century goes largely to Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (1860-1933) and Vishnu Digambar Paluskar (1872-1931). Bhatkhande left his law practice in 1910 to devote himself entirely to music. He toured all over India and established contact with like-minded con­

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temporaries with the aim of modernizing music education and developing a system of notation which bears his name. Apart from organizing several music schools (among them, the Madhoji Sangit School for the Maharaja Scindia at Gwalior, and one for the Maharaja of Baroda) he was the moving spirit behind the All India Music Conferences (discussed below), which are landmark events in the history of Indian music. Vishnu Paluskar was not only a great singer but also an excellent teacher. His great desire was to improve the status of music and musicians in Indian society. Through his printing press for music, the music journal he published, the several classes he opened in Bombay and elsewhere, and finally through his establishment of the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya (1918), Paluskar made an invaluable contribution to popularization and dissemination of music as well as to institutionalization of music teaching. There were two aspects to institutionalization of music: one, creating new institutions devoted exclusively to music education and two, introducing music into university and high school curricula. In both, the aim was to bestow prestige on music and its practitioners.43 And it was in this institutionalization of music training that the state was at last to play some part. Due to nationalist demands, music had been introduced into the school curriculum in some provinces in 1900, but progress was slow till the devolution of powers under the Government of India Acts of 1919 and 1935 (which made education the responsibility of popularly elected governments in the provinces). It led to the association of a larger number of people in shaping educational policies, and therefore to more Indianization of education, including experiments with the contents of education fit for India. Consequently, not only was music introduced into the school curriculum more widely, but special music schools were started in many provinces. In 1926 there were thirteen special music schools with 2500 pupils in Bombay, receiving a total of Rs 5000 in government grantsin-aid.44 The All India Music Conferences, the first of which was convened in 1916 by the Maharaja of Baroda, and which was followed by three others at Delhi (1918), Benaras (1919), and Lucknow (1925), are landmark events in Indian music history. Characterized by strong nationalist underpinning, the Conferences are significant because they mark a move from private to public patronage. Though princely rulers and aristocrats supported the confer­ ences, at least a third of the income came from public subscriptions. More­ over, the aim was not to please or entertain the patrons or serve the deity; instead the concern was with the art itself.45 The Conferences stressed the importance of spreading music education

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throughout the country to make it widely accessible.46 At the first Confer­ ence the possibilities of reducing Indian music to a regular system of notation and of synthesizing northern and southern music systems were examined, and the establishment of a National Academy of Music was recommended, though nothing came of it immediately. After the Legislative Council had moved a resolution in 1924 favouring the introduction of Indian music into schools however, music became an optional subject in the curricula. The most notable outcome of the Lucknow Conference was the es tablishment of the Marris Academy of Music, in 1926, in Lucknow (later renamed the Marris School of Hindustani Music), with provincial government support. The Academy provided for advanced courses of instruction and granted diplomas to pupils.47 The Conferences gave an impetus to the establishment of music acad­ emies and colleges all over the country and plans were set afoot for the creation of faculties in Indian universities. By 1947, a few universities had introduced music as a subject though it was largely for an orientation in the art, rather than for performance. To achieve a high performance standard a student still needed apprenticeship with great artistes. The Conferences, and the practice of public ticketed concerts which followed, had a profound effect on Indian music culture, changing perfor­ mance practice and music training. Large audiences required the use of electronic amplification which in turn affected vocal technique. The shift to middle-class patronage led to visible shifts in musical tastes as well, putting a premium on less serious and less lengthy performances, while the move from the intimate chamber to the anonymity of the large hall led to the rise of maestros who commanded large fees.48 A further change in the music scene came with the introduction of film and radio into India. They emerged as new patrons for Indian music. Though the first Indian film Raja Harischandra, by Dadasaheb Phalke was made in 1912 it was only with the coming of sound in 1931 that music received a tremendous stimulus. The fast growing film industry drew on the old Indian theatrical tradition of integrating dance, music and drama in a composite performance, and hence offered a tremendous potential for employment of musicians. Though the growth of films affected Indian music considerably (the subject has been dealt with in many modern studies and is outside the scope of this work), the government’s film policy did not impact on music directly. By contrast, the broadcasting policy did, for it provided direct state patronage to music. In 1925, the Indian Broadcasting Company, a private company with almost totally Indian capital, was given the monopoly of broadcasting in

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India, chough the government retained the right to regulate it as necessary. No direct support, financial or otherwise, was contemplated. In 1930 the IBC ran into financial difficulties and the government took it over, it being decided that broadcasting could not be run entirely on commercial lines because of radio’s great potential for education and propaganda. O n 1 April 1930 the Indian Broadcasting Service was started, and a broadcasting station was set up in Delhi in 1934. Though an autonomous corporation on the lines of the British Broad­ casting Corporation (BBC), established in 1927, would have been an obvious model to follow, an organization under government control was considered essential for political reasons. Similarly, though the provincial governments were free to develop programmes on education, rural uplift and other subjects which were within the State list, overriding powers in the matter of broadcasting were reserved for the imperial government because the provincial governments were, by now, largely controlled by Indian nationalists and it was deemed politically inexpedient to leave such a potent instrument for propaganda in their hands. But political control was not to be overt. On 25 September 1935, Sir A. G. Clow, intervening in a debate in the Imperial Legislative Assembly on supplementary grants for development of broadcasting, made a policy statement that broadcasting would be utilized onlyfor cultural and entertain­ ment purposes political broadcasts would not be allowed.49 A separate office of the Controller of Broadcasting was set up under the Department of Industries and Labour in 1935 and Lionel Fielding, an expert from the BBC who had been invited to organize the new department, became the first Controller. O n 8 June 1936, the name of the ISBS was changed to All India Radio (AIR), its mandate being to entertain and educate, and it was because of this mandate to entertain that the state, through the broadcasting system, became a major patron of music. Not unnaturally, the BBC was taken as a model for programming. Right from the beginning the BBC had taken upon itself to mould public taste, and though popular entertainment was offered, quality programmes, literary, musical and dramatic, as well as lectures and discussions on a wide choice of subjects, were broadcast. In the broadcasting programmes of most count­ ries, music takes up the largest chunk of time, and the BBC was no exception. It particularly fostered public interest in classical music and did much to sponsor good music and musical traditions. It was the BBC which was mainly responsible for extending audiences for art music in the inter-war years.50 It was not easy however for AIR to follow the lead of the BBC. The overall conditions were different. The sum allocated for development of broad­

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casting (Rs 40 lakhs in 1936), was vastly smaller than the amounts spent in Europe at the time. Other difficulties in overall programming cited by the official Reporton Development o f Broadcasting in India (1936) were language, communalism, poverty, the absence of cheap home made receivers, and the almost complete absence of any entertainment tradition in the Western sense, the comparatively narrow interests of the average, even literate, man, and the state of political unrest.51 Secondly, there were the difficulties relating specifically to music pro­ gramming. There were three main trends in Indian music. In the first there was a rigid interpretation of the rules of classical music by schools which wanted to uphold the perfection of tradition. In the second there was experimentation with combining light and classical music and encouraging amateur singers so that the 'immoral1 associations with courtesans and singing girls could be obliterated. Finally there was a definite breaking away from present standards combined with the adoption of notation and harmony, and a demand too for better voice production and quality.52 A later report, commenting on progress up to 1939, observed that the promotion of classical music through radio and the adoption of a standard policy for broadcasting music was a difficult task. First, the whole art of music had fallen into the hands of prostitutes and mirasis, so that an attitude had developed that there is something inherently immoral about music itself. Second, Indian music, built almost entirely on vocal melody, lacked a system of notation, and there were few generally accepted standards, not only as regards song and composition but also voice production and the art of singing generally. Third, the various schools of classical music tended to adopt a rigid and uncompromising attitude towards change and progress, including the increasing impact of Western music through the media of gramophone records, films and orchestras. Fourth, the distinction between the so-called 'classical* and ‘light* music was to a large extent confused by a consideration of the words associated with each type, and thus frequently became not a distinction between classical and light but between ‘religious’ and purely ‘erotic* music.53 Additional reasons quoted for the lack of a standard policy were that one section of the public demanded that the employment of singers should be regulated by their morals while another wanted that professionals and not amateurs should be hired. The nationalistic outlook demanded the reten­ tion of all things Indian, and therefore all traditional music, whereas the younger generation preferred light ‘film* music in preference to the tradi­

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tional. There was also the communal angle, many listeners advocating that a communal percentage be observed in choice of artists in spite of the cross­ religious composition of the community of musicians. Further, the attitude to classical music differed between N orth and South, and from province to province. The classical tradition being more dominant and unbroken in the South, meant Madras gave 60 per cent air time to Carnatic music. In Bombay on the other hand, there was a demand for European music as well as light and classical Indian music. In Calcutta, the preference was for Western music and Rabindra Sangeet, rather than classical music. In Delhi, Lahore and Lucknow, due to the influence of the Marris College of Music at Lucknow, the classical tradition remained strong, though the majority favoured light music. But classical music was strongly supported by influential persons in the Assembly and elsewhere, and the prejudice against light music because of its immoral and erotic associations was still strong. Following the preferences of its listeners, AIR in North India devoted over a third of its time on the air to classical music.54 Though the Report cited above shows some ignorance of the many developments which had restored the status of classical music in society, there was also truth in some of the observations. The result was that though classical music received increasing patronage through the radio, a consistent policy did not evolve until Independence, and programming proceeded, through a process of trial and error, to reconcile divergent pulls. In 1938 AIR divided its broadcasting time as follows: music (including Western music): 60.2 per cent; drama, prose, and poetry recitals: 4.2 per cent; ‘others’: 35.6 per cent. After Independence the share of music in overall programming fell to about half, with the share of both classical and light Indian music in this going up and the share of Western music sharply declining.55 Though the patronage offered by radio broadcasting in the pre-Independence period was considerable, it was nowhere as extensive as it was to become after Independence. Nevertheless, it made a major impact on the musical tradition. For one, it made a tremendous and unprecedented demand on musical talent and overtook all the traditional forms of patronage in sheer volume. It also introduced several changes in the quality and in the performance context of music, such as shortening of a recital, the use of amplification, the introduction of orchestration and so on, and purists may debate whether the changes have been for the better or worse. Finally, broadcasting served to separate art from the moral and social background of the artist to the extent that its policies concentrated on merit alone.

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To sum up, British government policy played no part in the preservation, promotion or development of Indian classical music almost to the end of British rule. It was the princely states who saved it from decline. Even in the twentieth century, state policy was only a marginal factor in the renaissance of Indian music. The main contribution of the state was in reinstating music in the educational system at the instance of the nationalists, so that it helped to reassimilatc a new generation of Indians into the cultural tradition, and to provide a more broad-based patronage for the art. The combined result of all the factors which went into the making of the musical renaissance of the Thirties was the breaking of the traditional performance context and the patronage pattern. The shift in patronage to a ticket-buying public was particularly important in causing changes in Indian music culture. It led, as we have said, to a shortening of the duration of a performance. There were changes too in the composition of the music performed, some ragas being performed more often and others going out of the total corpus, partly due to changes in public taste and partly because evening concerts meant the prevalence of evening ragas at the expense of the morning, though the latter were saved from extinction by the radio. Though new training institutes could teach students musical theory, for a high level of performance skill apprenticeship to a guru still remained necessary. The introduction of new instruments, new systems of notation, Western style orchestras and the gramophone and recording media made for further changes in both content and performance traditions. Film and radio brought in a new genre of light music, which was a fusion of old art music, folk music and Western melodies.*1In music, as in the case of dance, the old nexus of princely patron-musician courtier was broken and patronage firmly shifted to the middle class.57Though classical music had once again become a respectable vocation by the time of Independence, it was left to the Independent government to make it more central to Indian cultural life.

N o tes a n d References 1. V. P. S. Raghuvanshi, Indian Society in the Eighteenth Century (New Delhi, 1969), pp. 250-1. 2. Perviz N. Dubash, Hindoo Art in Its Social Setting (Bombay, 1936, reprinted New Delhi, 1979), p. 179. 3. Kapila Vatsyayan, ‘Indian Aesthetics and Art Activity’, in Indian Aesthetics and Art Activity (Simla, 1968), pp. 104-5. 4. O. Goswami, The Story o f Indian Music (New Delhi, 1957), pp. 254-77.

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5. Daniel M. Neuman, ‘Patronage and Performance of Indian Music’, in B. Stoler Miller (ed.), The Powers o fA rt (New Delhi, 1992), p. 254. 6. Ibid., p. 249. 7. Ibid., p.255. 8. Kapila Vatsyayan, Some Aspects ofCultural Policies in India (Unesco, Paris, 1972), p. 13. 9. Meadows Taylor, Confessions o f a Thug, quoted by Ethel Rosenthal, The Story o f Indian Music and Its Instruments (London, 1928), p. 44. 10. Ibid., pp. 44-5. 11. Abb6 J. A. Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Translated by Henry K. Beauchamps (Oxford, 1897), p. 595. 12. A. Aronson, Europe Looks at India (Bombay, 1946), pp. 37-8. 13. Captain Thomas Williamson, The Costumes and Customs o f Modem- India. From A Collection o f Drawings by Charles D ’Oyly (London, 1813), plate 19. 14. James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs (London, 1834), vol. 2, pp. 306-7. 15. Quoted in Public Opinion and Official Communications about the Bengal Music School and its President, Published by I. C- Bose and Co. (Calcutta, 1877). 16. Francis Fowke, On the Vina or Indian Lyre (London, 1788). 17. Captain Augustus Willard, Treatise on the Music o f Hindustan (London, 1834). 18. W. Ousley, Anecdotes o f Indian Music, Oriental Collections (London, 17971800), vol. 1. 19. W. W. Hunter, ‘Indian Music’ in The Imperial Gazetteer o f India, vol. 6 (2nd ed. London, 1886), pp. 110-12. 20. James Tod, Annals and Antiquities o f Rajasthan (London, 1920). 21. Captain Day, The Music and MusicalInstruments o f Southern India and the Deccan (London, 1891). 22. Ashok D. Ranade, Indology and Ethnomusicology: Contours o f the Indo-British Relationship (New Delhi, 1992), pp. 35-6. 23. See Edward Said, Orientalism (London, 1978), p. 10. 24. For an account of the social life of the British in the nineteenth century see Dennis Kincaid, British Social Life in India (London, 1938),- pp. 104-5; Otto G. Trevelyan, The Competition Wallah (London, 1866); Hilton Brown, The Sahibs (London, 1948); and H. H. Dodwell, The Nabobs o f Madras (London, 1926). 25. Kincaid* British Social Life, pp. 104-5. 26. Ranade, Indology, pp. 63-5. 27. See Janet Minihan, The Nationalization o f Culture (London, 1977), p. 154. 28. See Ashok Ranade, Maharashtra Art Music (Bombay, 1989), pp. 54-5 for an extensive list of small courts in present-day Maharashtra that sponsored wellknown classical musicians. 29. Vatsyayan, Cultural Policy, p. 13. 30. Ranade, Maharashtra Art Music, p. 55. 31. Public Opinion and Official Communications about the BengalMusic School and its President (Calcutta, 1877). 32. Guy and Swallow (ed.), The Raj: 1850-1900 (London, 1989), p. 217. 33. See B. B. Mishra, The Indian Middle Classes: Their Growth in Modem Times (London, 1961).

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34. See Ranade, Contours, pp. 68-73, 77. 35. Ranade, Maharashtra A rt Music, pp. 56-7. 36. It is uncertain when these societies were founded; the Jnanottejak Mandali was probably founded in the 1870s and the Sangit Samaj later. See Wim Van Der Meer, Hindustani Music in the Twentieth Century (The Hague, 1980), p. 123. 37. Ranade, Maharashtra Art Music, pp. 69, 88. 38. Van Der Meer, Hindustani Music, p. 123. 39. Ranade, Contours, pp. 76-7. 40. Ranade, Maharashtra A rt Music, p. 87. 41. Arnold A. Bake, The Music ofIndia (London, n.d.); H. Fox Strangways, The Music o f Hindostan (Oxford, 1914). 42. Ranade, Maharashtra A rt Music, pp. 58-9. 43. Ibid., p. 68. 44. Progress o f Education in India, 1922-27, Ninth Quinquennial Review, vol. 1, 1929, Govt Press. 45. Neuman, Patronage and Performance, p. 252; Ranade, Maharashtra Art Music, p. 62. 46. Ibid. . -47. Progress o f Education in India, 1922-27, p. 279. 48. Neuman, Patronage and Performance, p. 253. 49. Legislative Assembly Proceedings, 25 September 1935, vol. 6, pp. 1839-40 (IOR V/9/129). 50. Janet Minihan, Nationalization, pp. 203-14. 51. The Report of the Controller of Broadcasting on Development o f Broadcasting in India, submitted in March 1936, quoted in Broadcasting in India: Report on the Progress o f Broadcasting in India up to 31 March 1939 (Simla, 1940), p. 18 (IOR V/27/970/2). 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid., p. 21. 54. Ibid., p. 22. 55. India Annual, 1958, Govt of India Publication (New Delhi, 1958), pp. 168-9. 56. For a more detailed discussion of the changes in the music tradition see Ashok D. Ranade, On Music and Musicians o f Hindoostan (New Delhi, 1984), pp. 54-67. 57. The following books are useful sources for an overview of the situation of music during the British period: D. P. Mukerji, Modem Indian Culture: A Sociological Study (Bombay, 1942/1948), pp. 149-75, Indian Music (Poona, 1945); B. V. Keskar, Indian Music: Problems and Prospects (Bombay, 1967); and Win Van Der Meer, Hindustani Music in the Twentieth Century (The Hague, 1980).

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CHAPTER 11

‘Where is Your Dance?’

Dance was the one art form which remained almost totally outside the pale of state intervention all through the British period. It survived purely on private patronage. Paradoxically, it was the lack of state attention which ensured the continuity of the indigenous dance tradition, without much Western impact on techniques and modes, unlike literature and the visual arts where Westernization was actively promoted by state policies.1 At the same time it would be inaccurate to say that classical dance did not escape a brush with history. For, as will become evident, the classical Indian dance of today is a re-created category, influenced by the Western ethical and performing traditions. In its performance context, its teaching institutions, and above all, its raison d'etre, it is different from the original tradition. O ut­ wardly the form may be similar but the spirit is not. Dance was at once a mode of worship, a secular accomplishment, and a popular pasdme in pre-British India. As in the other arts there were two streams— a high or margi tradition rooted in religion and temple worship (formalized, spectacular, and practised only by professionals because it required long and rigorous training) and the desi stream which included popular, folk and tribal dance (spontaneous, participative and recreative and of the community). Though the two streams were distinct, there was much interdependence between them in any particular region, as well as between the forms of different regions, so that dance was a living tradition which was evolving continuously.2 . That a mature dance tradition was in existence before the second century a d is clear from the fact that the Natya Shastra, the earliest and most important treatise on dramaturgy dating to this period, presents exhaustive material on all its aspects, teaching, practice and apprenticeship, codifying gestures, poses and movements. The high tradition, which alone is considered here, claimed divine origin tracing descent from the god Shiva who, as Nataraja, the Lord of Dance, is said to have created the world through his cosmic dance. This myth is

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adequate indication of the religious component of dance. Dance was a way of reaching God, wherein the role of the dancer was to induce in the viewer a state of being in which the Divine Reality could be experienced. Therefore from Vedic times onwards, dance was a part of religious ritual in temples and flourished under hieratic direction. There was also a secular tradition of dance. From classical literature it is evident that in ancient India, women and girls of high birth and rank received training in dancing which was held in high esteem as an art. It was also an essential accomplishment of courtesans, who enjoyed a high place in ancient society. The coming of Islam modified the classical dance tradition wherever the influence of Islam was felt, though most notably in the North. Because dance had no sanction in the Islamic religious tradition, it could continue only as a secular pastime. O n the eve of British rule both the religious and secular traditions were flourishing, and were exceedingly popular at all levels of society. Secular dance for aesthetic pleasure was liberally patronized by the royal courts and nobility of Muslim India, as well as by the Marathas, Sikhs and other Hindu rulers in their territories, it being a common practice to maintain troupes of dancing girls who would accompany the rulers even to the batdefield.3It was equally enjoyed by the ordinary people in sabhas, samajas, or ghoshtis (secular gatherings) and on occasions such as marriages and festivals.4 Because of its place in worship, to every temple of importance, especially in peninsular and South India, were attached six to eight devadasis, temple dancers, whose duties included singing and dancing before the deity twice a day, and participating in all the important public ceremonies and functions. They were paid in free gifts of land or in money for these duties. Devadasis were particularly prominent in the great temples of the South, especially in Tanjore, though the custom also prevailed in the temple ofjejuri in Maharashtra, where they were called Murlis; in temples of Goa, where they were called Bayaderes or Naikinr, in the temple of Mahakala at Ujjain; and at the Jaggannath temple in Puri in Orissa, where they were known as Maharis.s Dance as an art form nurtured by the Devadasis could only reach a high level of perfection because of the distinct nature of the Devadasi institution. Yet this institution was to come into disrepute in the nineteenth century. It will help to look at the custom in some detail. The Devadasis were often recruited in infancy, with some parents dedicating their daughter to God. After dedication the girl was not permitted to marry, because she was considered married to God, a symbolic marriage

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238 Patrons and Philistines ceremony being enacted on her reaching puberty. She was expected to serve God through her dance, the dedicatory rituals themselves committing her to intensive instruction in the arts of dance, song and playing of instruments, from teachers who were invariably men. Freed from the customary grahasta (householder) duties of a married woman, the Devadasi was free to devote herself to her art and a public demonstration of her skill was a necessary pre­ liminary to her professional career.6 The Devadasis thus became the most accomplished women, well read, cultured and well dressed, a fact remarked on by travellers like Marco Polo (1292-93), Duarte Barbosa (1500-16) and Pietro Dello Valle (1623).7 There was no Devadasi caste or ja ti as such. The women originally belonged to various castes, even though the profession in South India had become confined to a rather unique and specialized temple artisan caste grouping which in its internal organization displayed the operation of pragmatic, competitive and economic considerations which made for a high standard in professional artistic activity. The women of the caste group were the dancers, whereas the men were players of musical instruments like the nagaswaram, and teachers of dance. The nagaswaram players intermarried with the dancers (those not dedicated), but significantly, it was the women dancers who were the privileged members of their community, because it was the female profession which was better rewarded, enjoyed higher status and had privileges which were denied to the men. Because the women were the primary bread winners, formal authority in the family and in the caste grouping also rested with them.8 Though the Devadasfs office was heredi­ tary, heredity without adequate qualification was not sufficient and proven skill was equally necessary.9 Traditional accounts of the Devadasi custom present the women as originally pure and chaste but as having over time brought the whole custom into disrepute by becoming concubines or courtesans of priests and rulers, either due to economic necessity and/or abuse of the system. Current and especially feminist work on Devadasis,10has pointed to the place assigned for sexuality in the Indian religious tradition: the sexual activities of the Deva­ dasis were an integral part of the religious system right from the begin-ning. At the ritual marriage itself, songs celebrating sexual union were sung before the ‘couple’, as they were on other occasions, the Gita Govinda^ Jayadeva’s erotic poem, being a part of the regular repertoire. Amrit Srinivasan maintains, from her study of Devadasis of South India, that though forbidden to marry, a Devadasi was not prevented from leading a normal life involving sex and child-bearing, and a variety of competitive and social pressures and traditional community obligations worked towards the setting up of liaison arrangements between her and rich patrons. The

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extra-marital alliances were however temple sanctioned and institutional­ ized. The music and dance at the puberty ceremonies were in fact also meant to attract patrons from the rich and high caste families of the society. Only the eldest son of the rich patron community could accept the Devadasi as a concubine, and the woman’s dedicated status made it a symbol of social prestige and privilege to maintain her.11 Sexual liaisons were thus in no way demeaning. As NityaSum angalioi the Eternal Bride, a Devadasi was invited to, and welcomed in, all homes on ceremonial occasions.12A similar system obtained at the Jaggannath temple at Puri.13In sum, in this system household and cultural arrangements were designed to ensure caste purity, intercaste segregation, and task specialization which, together with secured livelihood, made for artistic excellence and continuity of practice.14 Between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries the dance tradition had fragmented and developed regional variations. Though all regional styles subscribed to the basic principles of the Natyashastra, their theme and content was conditioned by the growth of regional literary traditions which in turn were influenced by shifts in religious emphasis. W ithin these differ­ ent styles further variations were introduced by family traditions or Samparadayas.15 As British power encroached on the territories of Indian princes and left them powerless they turned ever increasingly to music and dance, seeking through their patronage to nurture distinct styles which would be identified with them.16Thus at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nine­ teenth century there developed, under royal patronage, the five major styles of dance seen today, Bharata Natyam, Odissi, Kathakali, Kathak, and Manipuri. W hat is called Bharata Natyam today was the dance of the Devadasis of South India known as Dasi Attain. Perhaps the pristine form of classical dance, it was initially confined to the temple, but later came also to be performed at the royal courts and at important social occasions such as weddings. These dancers were called rajadasis and alankaradasis}1 The Maratha rulers of Tanjore (1674-1855) and especially Raja Serfoji II (1798-1832), the penultimate ruler, were great patrons of the art and under them this dance form reached a high water mark. Bharata Natyam took centuries to evolve and develop, but it attained the form familiar today in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, due to the tutelage of the famous Tanjavur Quartet— the four brothers Chinniah, Ponniah, Vadivelu and Sivananda— who served as masters of music and dance at the court of Serfoji II. They systematized and codified the technique of the art and devised its present repertoire.18 The Odissi style developed from the dance of the Maharis, the Devadasis

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at the Jagganath temple in Puri, and was equally nurtured and refined by the patronage of the local rulers. Meanwhile in Kerala, Kathakali as seen today, was developed between 1665 and 1847, though its roots can be traced back to over 1500 years ago. Many of the rulers not only wrote the scripts for the dance dramas, but were also actors, dancers and musicians, the art reaching its peak under Swati Tirunal, Maharaja of T ravancore (1813-47) who was a great patron of musi­ cians and dancers and also a composer.19 In the North also, royal patronage led to the development of the Kathak form under Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab of Oudh, who was himself a dancer and composer, and who initiated a new style— the Lucknow gharana—through his two court dancers, Kalka Prasad and Binda Din. Evolving from story telling in temples, Kathak had moved from the temple to the court during Mughal rule, and developed thenceforth in two distinct milieus— the Hindu courts, especially of Jaipur, and the Muslim ones of Delhi, Agra and Lucknow. The more virtuoso art was performed by men, whereas women used a style which emphasized sensuality. The performers of this dance or nach came to be know as nach waits (thus the British term, nautch girl). It was this dance which was most commonly seen by the British and came to be associated with voluptuousness, and its dancers with easy virtue.20 Its use only for pleasure divorced from religion, devoid of the rigorous discipline and artistic interpretation which had made it an art form in classical times, lowered the status of dance itself, along with that of its practitioners. O f all the cultural practices which attracted the newly arrived British, none exercised as much fascination as the ‘nautch*. Many of the early British ‘nabobs’ became patrons of the popular variety of the nautch, so that many troupes of dancing girls left the cities between 1778 and 1785 and setded in cantonments where they met with liberal encouragement from British officers.21 British reactions to the nautch varied depending on the setting in which it was witnessed and the gender of the viewer, the men often enjoying the less desirable aspects usually reserved for male company alone. Artists were particularly taken with it, as can be seen in Mildred Archer’s catalogues of works of British painters in India. They include several pictures by artists like Thomas Daniell, Thomas Hickey, Captain Robert Grindlay and others of the dancing girl and the nautch.22 Like sati, hooka smoking and snake charming, nautch was considered ‘quaint’, ‘exotic’, or ‘picturesque’. The graceful dress of Indian women appealed to English painters, but social

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constraints made women of good family inaccessible to the artists who then turned to village women, dancing girls or Indian mistresses of the English for their subjects. Besides, nautches were one of the few Indian entertain­ ments to which Europeans were invited and which the British had therefore much occasion to observe.23 Early writings on India thus mention the nautch frequently. James Forbes, a Company civilian, in his Oriental Memoirs, notes: Many o f the dancing girls are extremely delicate in their persons, soft and regular in their features, with forms o f perfect symmetry; and although dedicated from their infancy to this profession, they in general preserve a decency and modesty in their demeanour, which are more likely to allure, than the shameless effrontery of similar characters in other countries. Their dances require great attention, from the dancer’s feet being hung with small bells, which sound in concert with the music. Two girls usually perform at the same time; their steps are not so mazy [sic] or active as ours, but much more interesting; as the song, the music, and the motions of the dance combine to express love, hope, jealousy, despair, and the passions so well known to lovers, and very easily to be understood by those who arc ignorant of other languages. . . .24 All the large cities in Hindostan, contain sets of musicians and dancing girls, under the care of their respective duennas, who are always ready to attend for hire at weddings, and other festivities; or to finish the evening entertain­ ment of the Europeans and natives; and many of them accompany the Asiatic armies to the field.25

Having accompanied the Pcshwa on one of his campaigns he gave an eye witness account of this last practice: . . . some of the [dancing girls] officiate as choristers in the sacred tents dedicated to the Hindoo gods; many belong to the officers and others form a common Cyprian corps.26

The Abb^ Dubois, in the late eighteenth century, mentions that apart from singing and dancing they also prostituted themselves. He admitted however that their dancing was graceful and that the women were modestly dressed and well behaved. He went on to say that they were the only women in India who may learn to read, sing or dance and therefore for that reason these accomplishments were held in abhorrence by other virtuous women.27 Mrs Belnos, a resident of Calcutta during the early nineteenth century, who took a keen interest in her surroundings and captured them in her sketches and paintings, was clearly taken with the nautch. Four of her Twenty Four Plates Illustrating Manners in Bengal (1832) illustrate dance and in the note accompanying Plate 16 showing three dancing girls she wrote,

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‘Europeans who do not understand the meaning of each figure, find their dance insipid and dull, but the Natives who perfeedy comprehend every motion are passionately fond of these Nautches.’28 Thanks to these paintings and written accounts the dancing girl came to be regarded in Europe as a romantic figure, ‘a symbol of Oriental opulence, a creature of incredible luxury and uncurbed sensuousness, or tropic passion and jewelled magnificence’,29 and coloured the British imagination of the East as a romantic and fabled, or else a depraved land, depending on indi­ vidual predilections. But surprisingly, no serious attempts were made by the British to study the classical origins of dance, or its techniques and meaning. Possibly it was because the classical art survived only in the temples, and what was seen outside was a very debased version. Serious study of the artistic form would have required an access to temples, which would have been difficult for a foreigner. (The Abb^ Dubois who obviously had occasion to see it in its temple setting was so repulsed by Hinduism that he was unlikely to devote himself to a serious study of the art!) In any case the early British fascination with the nautch began to wear off after 1818 as attitudes towards Indians became disdainful. At parties hosted by Indians, the English generally sneered and joked about the restrained and formalized gestures of the Indian dances, which were compared poorly with the lively gaiety of a cotillion.30 Then suddenly sounded a loud clanging gong, And there burst on the eyes o f the wondering throng A bevy of girls Dressed in bangles and pearls And other rich gems, W ith fat podgy limbs— And sang a wild air Which affected your hair While behind them a circle o f men and of boys With tom-toms and pipes, made a terrible noise.31

Consequently, the British ceased to patronize the nautch. Captain Thomas Williamson, in his description of one of the sketches of Charles D ’Oyly (a dancing woman ofLucknow before a European family) considered the cessation ‘a circumstance by no means discreditable, nor to be regret­ ted.’32 In another watercolour by Sir Charles D ’Oyly titled Nob Kishen’s Nautch Party, intended as an illustration to D ’Oyly’s satirical poem, Tom Raw, the Griffin (1828), but omitted from the published version, the mirth caused by the nautch cannot be missed.33

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By the early nineteenth century the European attitude to Indian dance had become ambivalent thanks to the growing imperialist sentiments and the spread of the Evangelical doctrine and missionary influence. It was at once morally condemnatory and reluctantly admiring of the grace and beauty of the women and the dance which many still considered exotic.34 The missionaries particularly considered Indian dance obscene and immoral. While music, sculpture, painting, architecture, and even drama had religious sanction and connections with the Church in Christianity, dance had had no place in it. The erotic temple sculptures, and temple dancers offended the sensibility of the missionaries who did their best to stamp out the practice and to persuade the Indians to condemn it. Emma Roberts’ reaction to the nautch given by the Raja of Benaras, is typical of the new attitudes. She found it tiresome; the accompanying music was shrill and strange, and the dancing ‘even more strange, and less interesting than the music’. The whole repertoire she found repetitive and monotonous, and in the presence of European women dull and decorous, but, ‘when the audience is exclusively masculine, it is said to assume a differ­ ent character.’35This reaction was to become more and more common over the remainder of the century. The following description of a nautch by a ‘Competition Wallah’, as the new civilians recruited on the basis of an open competitive exam were called, tells its own story. One of a series of letters written home describes a tumasha held by the Raja of Futtehgunge to which all English residents had been invited. First came a nautch, which afforded a striking example of the profound dissimilarity in taste between Asiatics and Europeans . . . though a being of awful experiences, I could not have believed in the existence o f an entertainment so extravagantly dull as a nautch. A young lady not remarkable for her charms, dressed in a very splendid robe, which was several inches too long for her, came forward a few paces, stumbling over her skirts and commenced a recitation in a singular and monotonous key, accompanied by three musical instruments of barbaric fashion, which I concluded to be sackbuts and dulcimers. . . . All this while, two stunted girls had been coming forward at intervals o f some minutes, who after waving their arms in time to the music, turned short round and ran back to their places. Meantime, anotherwoman, with a sword between her teeth and bells on her fingers, was throwing about her head and hands in the most ungraceful contortions. And this is the famous nautch, on which natives of the higher class gaze in rapture for three, four, six hours together!36

Victorians prudes also wrote indignant and disparaging articles which condemned all Indian dance as abopninable. Thus a verse in the Lays o flru t

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The Reverend Mcphcrson believed that the nautch Was a most diabolical sort o f debauch; He thought that that dance’s voluptuous mazes Would turn a man’s brain and allure him to blazes! *That almond eyed girls, Dressed in bangles and pearls, And other scant jim Disclosing their limbs, W ith movements suggestive And harmony festive, W ith fire in their eyes and love on their lips, And passion in each of their elegant skips, As beauteous as angels, as wicked as devils, Performed at these highly indelicate revels.37

So strongly did some Westerners feel about the immorality of the Indian dance that a Miss Tenant is reputed to have made the journey all the way from England to India to persuade cultured Indians to boycott their own dances.38 O n the other hand, the dancing girl remained an alluring figure for the creative muse and in 1830 a ballet, The God and the Dancing G irl which had the bayadbre as a central figure, was performed in Paris. This was followed in 1877 by another ballet entitled La Bayadbre in Russia, choreographed by the great ballet teacher Marius Petipa. This ballet has remained a favourite over the years, ballerinas like Anna Pavlova having danced the central role.39 Given such attitudes it is not surprising that the state offered no patronage to Indian dance. It could hardly be otherwise when even in England itself, classical dance was not considered an art worthy of state support until the twentieth century, the Royal Opera House as a national forum for opera and ballet being set up with state subsidy only in 1949.40 There was no demand for state patronage from Indians either, because Indian attitudes towards their own dance had themselves undergone a change by the middle of the nineteenth century, thanks to missionary influ­ ence and the introduction of English education. While dance for aesthetic pleasure and entertainment continued to be patronized by the princely rulers, the feudal landed aristocracy and the urban rich, it was, for that very reason, shunned by the newly emergent Western educated middle class with a different value system. The more serious tradition represented by temple dancers also came in for attack from the same section of society because of this change in value systems. Among the new dlite there were two attitudes, both unfavourable, towards Indian dance. For the extremely Anglicized who turned to Western arts wholesale it held no interest. The others, though still adherents of Indian

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culture in many ways, had nevertheless internalized Christian ideas of morality imparted through a Western education. Both the Hindu revival and reform movements fostered by the cultural nationalism of the mid-nineteenth century were responses to powerlessness under constant moral condemnation by the rulers, and were an effort to assuage the resultant feelings of inferiority. The one tried to prove the traditional Hindu morality as equal or superior to the Christian ethic, and the other to purge.Hindu society of its ‘immoral’ or ‘regressive* elements, including the Devadasi. Both movements used Western criteria to judge what was ‘moral* or otherwise. Precisely because they were reacting to Western criticism, both Brahmoism and the new Hinduism were ascetical and puritanical in practice. The Brahmo Samaj began its moral crusade with an attack on four vices, sensual­ ity, drunkenness, dishonesty and falsehood. The new Hinduism too believed that moral discipline was indispensable to spiritual achievement and for it sexuality was suspect. The moral discomfort felt by the new middle class at the degeneracy of both the Westernized £lite, with their free mixing of the sexes denoting a loose morality, and the debauchery of the traditional feudal aristocracy, satirically expressed in much of the Bengali and other vernacular literature and the Kalighat pats; made dance a target of attack. Young men took vows to avoid all dance performances because nautch girls were persons of dubious character, and all theatre, because the actresses were demi-mondes.4I When neither the profession of dancer nor attendance at a performance was considered respectable, it happened that the other Indian arts were being revived due to a resurgence of cultural pride; but dance faced a reversal. In the late nineteenth century, an Anti-Nautch Campaign began, aimed at eradicating the institution of temple dancers and preventing men witnessing dance performances. Using the considerable oratorical and journalistic skills of its leaders, most of whom were doctors, lawyers and educationists, the campaign urged collective public action in the form of signature campaigns and presentation of memoranda demanding a ban on dance by Devadasis. The latter were condemned for their sexual activities, and labelled prostitutes, no distinction being made between religiously sanctioned and secular practice, nor between dance and dancer, so that the one was condemned along with the other. The Anti-Nautch Campaign hoped that as a result of its efforts, ‘pro­ miscuous musical entertainments’ would grow obsolete, and that due to social discouragement and its ‘natural unsuitability to India[!] dance w ill lapse as a relic o f the past. (Emphasis mine).42While dance was to be discouraged,

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music was to be ‘weaned from its present low associations’ and made a ‘more respectable acquirement—a profession with some and an accomplishment with m any, so that ‘all the genuine pleasure to be derived from that noble art may, after a generation or two be fully repaired.’ For this, Indian music, ‘rich in devotional and unfortunately pretty full in the amorous element’, had to be ‘considerably improved on the purely social side’.43 The Campaign was especially virulent in Bombay and the South. In the South it was taken up by The H indu which held that nautch parties were vulgar and indecent, and brought disrepute to Hindu society. In 1893, it supported a representation to the Viceroy and the Governor of Madras by the Hindu Social Reform Association urging them not to attend nautch parties. Neither the Viceroy nor the Governor saw any reason to agree, but The H indu was undaunted and hoped that the Association would not allow the matter to be dropped. When a nautch was given by the lawyers of Tanjore to the visiting Governor of Madras in 1898, The Hindu exonerated the foreign dignitaries (because they were ‘too good natured to offend’ their hosts) but not so the hosts and other guests because ‘we know it to be a fact that it is not so much to please the guests as to please themselves that our people are sometimes so partial to nautch girls.’44 Under such pressure, Mr E. L. Thornton, Collector of Trichinopoly, issued a circular to his subordinates in May 1905, advising them not to arrange nautch parties in his honour because his sympathies were with the movement. Because the dances were associated with the Devadasi system, he said, ‘we must sacrifice the innocent pleasure the performance affords, to avoid the appearance or rather the suggestion of evil.’45 Many enthusiasts looked upon the Anti-Nautch Campaign as only a crusade against the dancing girls and music, but in fact it was part of a wider movement for social reforms and purity initiated by nationalists to revitalize society, and to rid it of its perceived weaknesses. It demanded purity in other respects also, such as eschewing adultery, unchaste conduct, cheatingand so on. The Indian Social Conference, first convened in 1887 to concentrate on social issues so as to leave the Congress free to debate political issues, at its ninth session in 1895 in Poona recorded its satisfaction that the Anti-Nautch Campaign had found much general support in all parts of India. It recommended that the various Social Reform Associations persevere in their adherence to this self-denying ordinance. The reform lobby was strongly influenced by Christian religion and morality with its abhorrence of Indian eroticism, and amongst the practices it wanted rejected were use of erotic poetry and songs as part of religious

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practices; the existence o f regimental bazaars where soldiers found pleasure from the native women; a landed aristocracy who kept a large army of entertainers; customs that lent dignity o f caste to the basest of professions, and worked on the ignorance of the devoted to gratify base sensuality—a reference to the Devadasi system—and finally, polygamy and child marriage. It is important to note that the Campaign was also the result of a concern with the status of women and sprang from the same Swadeshi ideology which provided the philosophical underpinnings of the Bengal School of art. The Nationalist discourse on tradition considered women as the supreme em­ bodiment of the Indian tradition and great value was placed on their purity and chastity.46 The nautch only degraded women. Nationalists, led by Justice Ranade and others, wanted abolition of the Devadasi custom as one of the measures to improve women’s status. Ranade especially urged respect and care for women.47 It was the exploitation of women inherent in the Devadasi system and not danceper seywhich was the main target of the movement, but in effect it affected both. As a result of the campaign several cases were filed in the courts and most verdicts went against the Devadasi system. Though bound by customary law to recognize the prevalence of the practice, the judges nevertheless de­ nounced it in strong terms, labelling the sexual activities inherent in the custom as ‘prostitution’ under religious cover, and ruling that because of this the Devadasis could not engage in their traditional professiort of dancing in worship of deities in temples.48 This meant that the Devadasis had to forgo the endowments and perquisites which they received from the temples and many of them went to court to retain their rights. Due to strong pressure, the government also issued a despatch in 1911 desiring nationwide action to be taken against these performances.49 Amrit Srinivasan and Fr^d^rique Marglin allege that the reformist posi­ tion on Devadasis adopted Western patriarchal attitudes and notions of women’s status, and of sexuality and immorality. The moral depravity of the Devadasi could only be proved by using Western constructs of ethical behaviour since sexuality was an integral part of the Indian religious tradi­ tion, and the custom had general sanction.50 Srinivasan points out that the extra-marital alliances of Devadasis could not be equated with prostitution because they were part of a highly complex network of relationships which bound the temple, the temple-serving artisan castes, rich patrons and the community together for mutual benefit.51 For the patron the Devadasi ‘acted as a conduit for honour, divine acceptance and competitive reward, at the same time as she invited “invest­ ment”, economic, political and emotional in the deity.’52 For the Devadasi

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the custom offered economic and professional benefits as well as social honour, and the temples received the patronage of rich men, and a task force for temple services, the children of Devadasis beiny absorbed into temple service. As for the community, it reaped the benefirs of task specialization and rigorous and hereditary transmission of skills, in the form of excellence in art.53 Srinivasan further maintains that it was really female independence, pro­ fessional and sexual, implicit in the social organization of the custom, which offended the patriarchal values of the reformists, and to which there was equal opposition from the male members of the community itself.54 According to Marglin it also suited the colonial government to label the custom prostitution, as political capital could be made about the depravity of the subject nation. Further, though the official position was one of non­ interference in religious matters, when it came to court cases it was British moral judgement which prevailed over religious custom.55 ‘In a situation of power less ness, moral condemnation on the part of those in power must have aroused intense feelings of inferiority*, and such fears could only be sup­ pressed ‘by eradicating the offending custom or institution.*56The combined result of litigation and social pressure was a complete suppression of the sadir nautch and its secular performance. Meanwhile serious European interest in Indian dance, as opposed to the prurient fascination that had always existed, was growing. Several Europeans now approached Indian dance not only as a spectacle or a curiosity but as a living art to be studied for its own sake. The change in approach meant that the relationship of Indian dance to eroticism and the institution of Devadasi were more sympathetically considered. In his essay on the dancing girl in 1922 O tto Rothfeld distinguished between the South Indian style of dance followed by the temple dancing girls in the Madras Province, especially of Tanjore, and the Northern style of Delhi and Lucknow followed mosdy by Muslim women. He thought the Tanjore school was more sophisticated, more imaginative, more traditional, and almost as good as Russian ballet. Deficiencies such as a ‘lack of a finer sense of artistic purpose* he put down to a lack of education and training on the part of the dancer, the refusal of experts to impart their secrets to all pupils, and most of all to a lack of artistic sensibility in modern India because ‘there was no popular participative dancing in India, save in rural and tribal areas i .57 In spite of these deficiencies Rothfeld believed dance to be the most ‘living and developed of existing Indian arts*, and regretted that it had been made the special object of attack by social reformers on the ground of morality and

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not the art itself. He blamed the reformers for the degradation of the dancers as well as the deterioration of the art form. Their narrow-minded morality combined with a lack of aesthetic taste was responsible, he said, for forcing those women into a shameful traffic who would otherwise have earned a decent competence with artistic pride. Consequently those women who alone preserve the memory of a fine Indian art* were getting fewer. Rothfeld was pained that they, who in their best period were the most accomplished of women, able to read, write, sing, play and dance, should be so stifled of their independent and graceful lives.58 Choreographers and dancers of classical ballet also became interested in Indian dance as artists. La Bayadere, mentioned earlier, was followed by The Talisman using a medley of Indian characters, from KingAkbar to ‘Amravati, Goddess of the Heavenly Spirits’, and in 1912, by Le Dieu Bleu ( The Blue God) a ballet about the god Krishna, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, who also played the principal role. But the interest was more in terms of Indian dance theme than technique, since none of them had seen Indian dance first hand, and their work was based on fancy and what could be culled from books and paintings.59 Nevertheless, they aroused the interest of the great ballerina, Anna Pavlova, who having played the title role of La Bayadbe in 1909, wanted to produce other ballets on Indian themes. She came to India in 1929 hoping to see the classical dance. But by then it was being kept alive only in a few pockets in the interior so that all she saw was the ever popular nautch, the only dance to be seen in cities. Disappointed, she had asked, ‘But where is your dance?*60 Her question aroused Uday Shankar, who through a chance association had begun to choreograph and dance with her, to discover his heritage. At Pavlova’s suggestion he began his exploration of th$ different classical traditions still extant in different parts of India, and to take training in them. In 1935, he declared that Indian dance was far from dead as was feared at the time of Pavlova’s visit; it lived in the interiors, in Malabar, in Tanjore, and in Manipur. ‘It is very fortunate,’ he commented, ‘that these surviving artists are illiterate in the modern sense of the term, very orthodox and backward. Thanks to these handicaps they have still preserved the art without contamination and it is a great blessing to artists who sincerely wish to learn and study.’61 Uday Shankar then used the classical techniques he had learnt to create Indian ballets. Influenced by the nationalist spirit, as well as by the new ideas brought in by Marxism and the Progressive movement, he created, between 1930 and 1947, ballets such as The Spirit o f India, India Immortal, Rhythm

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o f Life, and Labour and Machine. Through his association with Pavlova, he made Indian dance known throughout the West, and later founded an institution for training a younger generation of dancers— the Indian Cul­ tural Centre at Almora, set up in 1938.62 It was perhaps inevitable that the revival of classical Indian dance was heralded by Western style ballet using its forms and themes, rather than by a reinstatement of the established forms of dance.63Western education had so thoroughly permeated the Indian psyche that every cultural restatement was in Western terms using Western categories.64 Simultaneously, the same national fervour which had led to the artistic renaissance in other fields, enthused a few dedicated individuals in different parts of India to resurrect the local styles of their region. The result was a sudden renaissance of classical dance in the Thirties. Long before Pavlova came to India, Tagore, on a visit to Manipur, had been enchanted by the Manipuri dance he saw there and brought its gurus to Shanti Niketan, the institution he had founded for the study of Indian arts in Bengal in 1901. His championship of the dance, as well as his explorations of folk music and dance had led to a revival. In Kerala, Kathakali was being given new life by the poet Vallathol, who founded the Kerala Kala Mandalam in 1924 for study, training and performance of the art.* Its success led the princely state of TravancoreCochin to give it land and money, and in 1937 the Kala Mandalam moved to its present location in Cheruthurthi. Meanwhile, sadir nautch, the dance of the Devadasis of the South, was caught up in the cross-currents of a debate over reform and revival. Even as the reformists campaigned for an abolition of the custom of Devadasis and with it the performance of their dance, there began simultaneous efforts to revive its ‘pure form* as Bharata Natyam. That revival was spearheaded by E. V. Krishna Iyer, an advocate of the Madras High Court who campaigned to remove the stigma attached to the art and was consequently engaged in a long battle with the leaders of the AntiNautch Campaign. When young women from respectable families refused to learn Bharata Natyam from the great Nattuvanar Melattur Natesa Iyer of the Pandanallur School, Iyer himself learned the dance and performed in public in 1926. To demonstrate the existence of a still strong tradition, Iyer began a search for the remaining great dancers of the tradition and intro­ duced them to Madras society. Among these were the Kalyani sisters, Varalakshmi, and the matchless Balasaraswati. In 1927 Iyer organized the first All India Music Conference in Madras

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during a session of the Indian National Congress, as an offshoot of which the Madras Music Academy was born in the following year. But when he presented the Kalyani sisters at the Music Academy in 1931, there was an uproar.65A battle ensued between those who supported revival of the art, and those who opposed it because they were against the Devadasi custom. The issue of reform and revival had become politicized in the 1920s, and dance became a pawn in the political rivalries between regional parties within the larger colonial context.66 Revivalism was backed by the Brahmin nationalists who dominated the Congress and the Theosophists, as well as leading figures in the world of the arts such as E. B. Havell and Ananda Coomaraswamy, all ofwhom supported a revival of Indian Aryan culture in the cause of political nationalism and denounced Christian materialism and morality.67 Reform, on the other hand, was supported by Christian missionaries, aligned with the non-Brahmin Dravidian movement of Ramaswamy Naicker, which wanted abolition of the Devadasi custom and their dance as part of their overall Self Respect Campaign. Their stand was backed by the men of the Devadasi community who resented the women’s superior status and economic independence, as well as their liaisons with Brahmin patrons. They stood to gain by the abolition of the custom both economically and in terms of self respect. For one, since the reform movement forced Devadasis to acknowledge the moral supremacy of grahasta values, including a conventional marriage, and to relinquish all rights to temple service and its privileges, the men could claim huge dowries for marrying Devadasis. For another, they stood to benefit from the land reforms which had been initiated in the Twenties as part*of the effort to abolish the custom.68 The Maharaja of Mysore, one of the first to take steps to abolish dedication of girls, had recognized that the custom would not end so long as the enjoyment of land and other hereditary incomes depended on temple service. He therefore confirmed the land and inams (hereditary grants) of Devadasis, subject to payment of due rent, without their having to perform any kind of service in the temple.69 Madras had followed suit after Dr Muthulaxmi Reddi asked in the Legislative Council, in 1927, for a complete ban on dedication of girls to temples, and settling of mirasi and inam lands on Devadasis irrespective of temple service. Though Sir C. P. Ramaswamy Ayyer had justified the conti­ nuance of the system and pleaded the government’s inability to give effect to the resolution because of the religious nature of the mirasiand inam lands, the Act of 1929 finally conferred the requested right on the Devadasis. But

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it also recognized the rights of men of the family as co-partners so that it led to enormous litigation in which the women invariably suffered.70Ironically, then, in the name of reform to raise their status, the Devadasi women lost their economic independence as well as their power, status and privileges. The Brahmin/non-Brahmin divisions were encouraged by the British who had a stake in preventing unity and so played up the divide, officially supporting the non-Brahmin-missionary nexus on the grounds of morality and women’s rights.71 In 1932, the Daily M ail o f Madras, an Anglo-Indian paper, sponsored and encouraged an epoch making debate over the merits and demerits of South India’s traditional dance. The strong defence of the dance by a few, including Iyer, in its columns, shook the people into an awareness that there was still a valid form, regardless of the moral judgements passed on it,72 so that when Iyer presented the Kalyani sisters again at the Music Academy in 1933 the performance was accepted without a murmur.73Iyer followed it up by presenting Balasaraswati at the All India Music Conference in Benaras in 1934. Her virtuoso performance there ensured that Bharata Natyam would forever have a place in modern India. But in order to reclaim the dance and make it respectable, it had been found necessary to separate the ‘sinful’, and ‘immoral’ part of the dance tradition from the beauty of the art. This meant divorcing dance from its existing context and presenting it in a secular setting on the one hand, and inducing educated girls from the higher castes to take up its practice on the other.74 A new 6litc class o f performers arose. Rukmini Devi Arundalc made history as the first Brahmin girl to perform the Bharata Natyam in public in 1935, having taken lessons from Devadasi Mylapore Gauri Amma, and later from the great nattuvanar Pandanallur Meenakshi Sunderam Pillai. She changed the format of the dance and in order to raise the status of the dance gave it a devotional rather than an erotic content. Inspired by Tagore’s Shanti Niketan, she went on to found the Kalakshetra in Madras as an institution for the integrated study of South Indian arts.75 The upper class 6\itc orientation of the Theosophist/Brahmin/Congress combine in the revival of the ‘pure’ dance showed in the increased textualization of the dance which again harked back to the Natya Shastra; in Sanskritization of the organization of dance teaching in institutions like Kalakshetra; in the puritanical reform of the content and presentation of the dance at concerts by purging it of its erotic elements; and finally in combin­ ing the teaching and performing functions in a woman, who became both a practitioner and interpreter of tradition.

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Following Uday Shankar, a number of other dancers began to produce ballet in the Indian style, among them Madam Menaka who revived and used the Kathak style, and Ram Gopal and Rukmini Devi who produced ballets using the Bharat Natyam technique. A host of other dancers followed suit.76 N ot only did the colonial state play no part in this renaissance of dance, which was entirely the fruit of private effort (with public support for many of the new institutional initiatives with donations and patronage) but its only intervention on the side of the Anti-Nautch Movement would have led to the eclipse of the classical tradition had it not been for the timely intervention of a few dance lovers. It is also noteworthy that on this issue the government preferred to intervene through the Courts rather than through legislation. T o the end there was no central enactment for the abolition of the Devadasi custom, in spite of intense agitation. Instead, individual provinces dealt with it independently. In Bombay, the movement for suppressing the dedication of girls to temples had started around 1910, and in 1912, the government enacted legislation to stop dedication of minorg\r\s to temples; a full fledged Act to cover all women came only in 1934 with the passing of the Bombay Devadasis Protection Act. The princely states of Mysore and Travancore both stopped the dedication of Devadasis in 1910 and 1930 respectively. In spite of the long and intense agitation for such legislation in Madras, by the time the Madras Prevention of Dedication Act was enacted in 1947, the custom was already dead. Economic and social pressures had been ahead of legislation which, inter alia, specifically declared dancing by a woman in the precincts of any religious institution, or in any procession of an idol or deity, as unlawful. By the end of British rule dance had come out of the temple forever, and dance for the courts was also a thing of the past. The new patrons were largely the educated upper and middle class. The closed auditorium, the stage, and ticketed entrance radically altered the context of performance as did the distance between the artist and audience, the amplification, lighting and costumes. There was a change too in the transmission patterns, with teaching in modern institutions by women teachers replacing,' or existing alongside, the older gurukula. The late revival, and the reasons for it, meant that when Independence came no tradition of large, paying audiences had yet been established. Conse­ quently it became necessary for the new Independent government to extend more direct patronage, and to create new audiences by bringing dance back into the education system. Hence dance is also the one art form which has brought the question of state patronage to centre stage in recent times.77

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Notes and References 1. Kapila Vatsyayan, Some Aspects ofCultural Policies in India (Unesco, Paris, 1972), p. 44. 2. See Kapila Vatsyayan, Indian Classical Dance {New Delhi, 1974), pp. 1-3. 3. Mohan Khokar, Traditions o f Indian Classical Dance (New Delhi, 1979/1986), pp. 49-53. 4. -Ibid., pp. 24-31. 5. For a general overview of the custom of Devadasis and their contributions to dance see S. K. Chatterji, Devadasi, Temple Dancer (Calcutta, 1945); Otto Rothfdd, Indian Women (Bombay, 1922), pp. 151-74; A. K. Singh, Devadasi System in Ancient India: A Study o f Temple Dancing Girls o f South India (New Delhi, 1990); and Mohan Khokar, Traditions o f Indian Classical Dance (New Delhi, 1979/ 1986), pp. 47-8. 6. Amrit Srinivasan, ‘Reform and Revival: The Devadasi and Her Dance’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 20, no. 44, 2 November 1985, 1869-70. 7. Khokar, Traditions, p. 48. 8. Srinivasan, ‘Reform and Revival’, pp. 1871-73. 9. Ibid., p. 1869. 10. Ibid., Fr&terique Apfel Marglin, Wives o f the GodKing: The Rituals o f the Devadasis o f Pun (Delhi, 1985). 11. Srinivasan, ‘Reform and Revival’, pp. 1869-71. 12. Also see Seskia C. Kersen boom-Story, Nityasumangali: Devadasi Tradition in South India (Delhi, 1987), for further details of the concept, function and form of the Devadasi tradition and her place in society. 13. See Wives o f the God King 14. Srinivasan, ‘Reform and Revival’, p. 1971. 15. Vatsyayan, Indian Classical Dance, pp. 3-4. 16. Vatsyayan, Cultural Policies, p. 13. 17. Khokar, Traditions, p. 76. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., pp. 103—4. 20. Ibid., pp. 132—4. 21. Mildred Archer, ‘The Social History of the Nautch Girl’, Saturday Book, 1962, pp. 242-3. 22. Mildred Archer and Ronald Lightbown, India 0£renW(London, 1982); Mildred Archer, Company Drawings in the India Office Library (London, 1972). 23. M. Archer and Lightbown, India Observed, pp. 13, 45. 24. James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 62. 25. Ibid., p. 62. 26. Ibid. 27. Abb£ Dubois, Description o f the Character, Manner and Customs o f the People o f India, and o f their Institutions, Religious and Civil (Oxford, 1817), pp. 387-9. 28. Mrs Belnos, Twenty-Four Plates Illustrating Manners in Bengal (London, 1832). 29. Otto Rothfeld, Women o f India (Bombay, 1922), p. 154.

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30. Dennis Kincaid, British Social Life in India (London, 1938), pp. 104-5. 31. Ibid. 32. Thomas Williamson, Costumes and Customs o f Modem India. From a Collection o f Drawings by Charles D'Oyly (London, 1813), plate xv. 33. The painting is reproduced in Guy and Swallow (eds), Arts o f India: 1550-1900 (London, 1990), p. 204. 34. Marglin, Wives o f the God King pp. 3-6. 35. Emma Roberts, Scenes o f Hindostan, pp. 252-3. 36. Sir George O tto Trevelyan, The Competition Wallah (London, 1895),

pp. 105-7. 37. Quoted by Lily Strickland, ‘Nautch-girls and Old Rhythms oflndia’.Arai, vol. 25, August 1925, 680. 38. Kay Ambrose, Classical Dances and Costumes o f India (London, 1950), p. 33. 39. Khokar, Traditions, p. 221. 40. Janet Minihan, The Nationalization o f Culture (London, 1977), pp. 28,139-43, 185-96, 225-45. 41. Nirad Chaudhuri, Autobiography o f An Unknown Indian (London, 1951),

pp. 211-14. 42. R. Venkataratnam Naidu, ‘Social Purity and the Anti-Nautch Movement’, in C. Y. Chintamani (ed.), Indian Social Reform (Madras, 1901), p. 278. 43. Ibid. 44. Rangaswamy Parthasarathy, A Hundred Years o f The Hindu (Madras, 1978), p. 73-4. 45. Ibid. 46. Tanika Sarkar, Nationalist Iconography: Images o f Women in Nineteenth-Century Bengali Literature quoted in Tapati Guha Thakurta, The Making o f a New 'Indian ‘ A rt (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 192-3. 47. Quoted by Naidu, Social Purity, p. 279. 48. A. K. Singh, Devadasi System, p. 125. 49. Srinivasan, ‘Reform and RevnoT, p. 1873. 50. Marglin, Wives, p. 6. 51. Srinivasan, ‘Reform and Revival’, pp. 1869-71. 52. Ibid., p. 1870. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid., p. 1873. 55. Marglin, Wives, p. 8. 56. Ibid., p. 8. 57. Otto Rothfeld, Women o f India, Chapter 2, ‘The Dancing Girl’ (Bombay, 1922), pp. 158-73. 58. Ibid. 59. Khokar, Traditions, p. 222. 60 Ibid. 61. Uday Shankar, ‘Reawakening of India’s Classical Dance’, Illustrated Weekly o f India, 20 June 1935, 19. 62. Khokar, Traditions, p. 223. 63. Ibid., p. 220.

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64. See Ma/gjin, Wives o f the God King, p. 3. 65. SuniJ Kothan, 'History: Roots, Growth, and Revival’, in BharataSatyam: Indian Classical Dance Art (Bombay, 1979/1982), pp. 27-8. 66. Srinivasan, ‘Reform and Revival’, pp. 1873—4. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. Singh. Dcvadasi System, pp. 125-6. 70. Ibid., pp. 127-8. 71. Srinivasan,‘Reform and Revival’, p. 1875. 72. Faubion Bowers, The Dance in India (New York, 1953), pp. 9-10. 73. Kothari, ‘History’, p. 28. 74. Marglin, Wives o f the God King, p. 6. 75. Kothari, ‘History’, p. 28. 76. See Enakshi Bhavnani, The Dance in India (Bombay, 1965). 77. See Sruti (Madras), no. 84, September 1991, pp. 35—40; no. 85, October 1991, pp. 25-32 for details of the recent controversy over state patronage o f dancers.

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CHAPTER 12

In Retrospect

The British conquest of India added its own pieces to the mosaic of Indian civilization, already shaped by several cultural influences. By the time the two-century-long relationship came to an end in August 1947, considerable changes had taken place in Indian society. For one, it had become stratified into four distinct groups. There were the masses, tribal and rural, who continued to make and live their culture, characterized by mostly spontane­ ous, participatory, oral and traditional activity, much as they had done from time immemorial, as well as an educated and Westernized mass which had lost contact with its cultural past. But there was also a minority dite, Western educated but consciously and deeply rooted to traditional values and culture, and striving to combine the best of East and West, and a group of traditional scholars, writers, artists, musicians, and craftsmen who, though again a minority, had been responsible for preserving tradition and continued to practise their art and set standards along traditional lines, away from the political and social mainstreams.1 For another, though many identifiable regional cultures had developed, the need for a united struggle for independence had led to a national identity, so that in intellectual and political thought there was the idea of a distinct, cohesive, Indian culture.2 Art activity was more strongly urban based than ever before, and in almost all the arts the old guilds had more or less disappeared so that the market was almost the sole regulator of artistic quality. Simultaneously, the state had emerged as controller of such artistic activity as was deemed to impinge on public morality or political stability. The patronage pattern too had changed radically, with a shift from aristocratic to middle class, and private to public patronage through institutions and the market, and institutional training had either completely supplanted the earlier guru-shishya tradition of transmission or co-existed with it. But perhaps the most outstanding change had been in the world view of art and its purpose. Its connection with religion had been permanently

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loosened, and new technology, a cash economy and the world of commerce had left an irreversible impact. The least changed of the high arts were classical music and dance, while visual arts and literature were deeply affected, and modern Indian drama was a creation of the Raj itself. Film and radio had emerged as new cultural media as well as major patrons that drew on traditional art forms such as musical theatre and folk art, but followed no traditional conventions. The state had played a significant part in these cultural transformations confirming that the state can influence the direc­ tion of cultural change through its choice of policy objectives and methods of intervention, that the choices made are dictated by political goals even in a seemingly non-political arena, and that both goals and policy are in­ fluenced by scholarly interpretation and advocacy. On the basis of the foregoing survey and the benefit of hindsight it is now possible to draw together the common threads running through the Indian experience of state intervention in terms of its motives, its method, its achievements and failures, and its legacy to the successor government. We have seen that the most fundamental factor dictating policy was the desire to reinforce dominion over India for power and profit, and many of the policies, particularly as regards education, art, and architecture, were designed to be instruments of cultural conquest. But economic compulsions were also a major consideration. It was cheaper to use local skills for administrative purposes than to import them from Britain; hence the education measures and the training in art and architecture. Art Schools were primarily vocational schools prompted by employment and trade consider­ ations; the various early surveys of all kinds which led to archaeological conservation and promotion of the decorative arts were motivated as much by the hope that new products, resources and skills would be unearthed and new markets tapped as by intellectual curiosity. Belief in the power of art to improve and elevate character, and in the power of a state to mould artistic taste, are also revealed in decisions such as the establishment of museums and art galleries, and the holding of exhibi­ tions. Selection of policy objectives and instruments was further informed by a vision of society founded on middle class values as understood in Britain of the time. O f course the desire to create a middle class society was based not only on a normative judgement but also the political consideration that it is easier to permeate amongst an 6lite middle class the values of the rulers, than to assimilate the masses. Finally, a desire not to be found wanting in comparison with the Mughals also played a part in British interest in the Indian arts.

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But unlike the Mughals, the British rulers never became major patrons in the traditional sense. True, the British took on responsibilities for the arts far wider than anything attempted so far. Yet, equally clearly, not all these responsibilities received equal emphasis. In contemporary terms, conserva­ tion, of the heritage received the most emphasis throughout, both in terms of financial allocations and administrative effort, though this related to the tangible heritage but not oral tradition, traditional dance, or music. Promo­ tion of contemporary artistic activity in the form of patronage of artists and scholars, training, and provision of facilities for the creation and dissemina­ tion of the arts received very limited attention. Moreover, promotional effort was confined to literature and the visual arts. In literature itself, vernacular literature was promoted at the cost of the classical languages, and in the visual arts, the decorative arts rather than painting or sculpture. As has been seen, except for music, the performing arts received no support, and were instead a target for negative policies. Again, transmission of artistic skills received limited attention, being confined to the visual arts and literature, while modern architectural train­ ing, music education, and archaeological training received some limited attention in the later decades, mostly due to insistent Indian demand. Provision of cultural facilities such as art studios, art galleries, theatres and auditoriums was almost totally neglected. The British rulers had not needed the same kind of personal services from artists as had been expected by earlier rulers, and the relationship between the artist and the British government was therefore relatively impersonal. Moreover, patronage was extended not on an individual and personal basis but in accordance with the concept of public good. Though works eulogizing individual rulers were not required, art was nevertheless employed to bolster the collective image. Consequently, patronage was less flexible and more rule-bound.3Patronage was extended according to criteria that were entirely Western, and with an emphasis throughout the nineteenth century on ‘usefulness’ rather than artistic merit per se. Moreover, there was always a tension between the desire to encourage art and the need for economy. Though no definite statement is possible about the total allocations and expenditure on the arts over the entire period, or at different stages, or even for the different arts, it is clear from the few individual indications available that rhetoric far outran actual financial support. Image building was an important part of the policy of cultural imperialism and official rhetoric always attempted to present the English as just, humane, cultured and anxious to uphold Indian interests even above their own. Thus given the gaps between sentiment and action, and between

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intention and effect, there were only five Art Schools, a handful of schools of music, and some museums that had materialized in the entire period. The decay in the industrial arts could not be checked, art instruction was limited and inadequate, and even for conservation significant funds were spent only after Curzon committed the government irrevocably to it in 1902. The impact on the arts was due not to the amount of funds committed but the result of pax Britannica as a whole. It has been maintained that there is no relationship between what a government spends on the arts and the quality of life or the artistic pro­ ductivity of the country, and that artistic output depends on the quality of the debate between the state and the artist and constraints on artistic expression.4 Certainly the revival of Indian arts owed less to government support than to the revival of the nationalist sentiment and the return of selfconfidence and esteem which had been lost through the humiliation of conquest and constant reiteration of the inferiority of Indian character and achievements. As for the constraints on artistic expression, the overt ones such as the Dramatic Performances Act and censorship measures were less important than those implicit in the system, because the former in fact stimulated rather than suppressed artistic expression thanks to nationalist fervour: The more basic constraints were the imposition of a different language and different value system and aesthetic standards, which caused a loss of self-confidence and a shackling of creativity. By setting up museums, libraries and exhibitions the British strove to fulfil the inspirational role of art, but encouraged the critical debate between the artist and the state on the purpose of art only indirectly, by provoking a nationalist, anti-state, discourse. It was this which provided the spark igniting artistic expression. By and large, in line with its general philosophy of laissezfaire, support to private organizations was preferred to direct operation, except in archae­ ology and conservation of monuments. Here the policy was more dynamic than even in England, where a number of private trusts were entrusted with preservation of the heritage. Partly this was because the quantum and nature of work was much vaster than in England, and partly because in India public interest in historical preservation did not exist, and educational and other policies had wiped out the traditional support without replacing it with a wider market-oriented patronage. Even then, it is important to note, the renaissance of the arts was almost entirely due to private patronage, hardly any of the new cultural organizations which came up from the late nineteenth century onwards receiving government assistance.

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But if the British rulers were both patrons and philistines the reasons were inherent in the political situation. In an unfamiliar land, policy was tentative and experimental out of necessity and a comprehensive and coherent policy could only evolve slowly. As Thornton points out, empires are built by men of action who are reacting to situations as they occur and who take the decisions diat are the best possible at the time.5 Only later is it possible to see the necessary corrective. This last was provided by intellectuals and scholars in England, as well as by the Court of Directors, the Secretaries of State and the advisory India Council, who also pleaded for proceeding according to a policy rather than *a//raraction. But they too could not be free of the pressures and prejudices of the time. The government funding of international exhibitions, museums, cultural insti tutions, and scholarly work in England, was bitterly resented by Indians. This was partly because the institutions, though paid for by Indian money did not benefit Indians directly; but even more because the representatives of these British cultural institutions, such as the India Society, accepted as arbiters on matters Indian were listened to with greater respect than Indians themselves. It is clear from the survey that the British chose those interventions which harmonized self interest with duty. Thus patronage to classical and vernacu­ lar literature for compilations of grammars, dictionaries and translations served the purpose of getting to know the subjects in order to manage them effectively, as well as the administrative need for better communica­ tion through the native languages. Similarly, introduction of English learn­ ing served both to bring ‘enlightenment* to an ‘inferior*, backward people, which was the duty of a civilized nation, and to widen markets for England’s industries by creating like lifestyles. Conservation of the artistic heritage was one of the grand successes of colonial arts policy but this emphasis was not without its political logic. It is not entirely fortuitous that those Viceroys and Governors-General who did the most in this field, Mayo, Canning, Lytton, and above all, Curzon, were also the most imperial minded. They were also the ones who were either indifferent to the contemporary arts or tried to control them where they expressed dissent. Though history and antiquarian research has engaged the British mind since the eighteenth century and the part played by intellectual curiosity cannot be belittled, supporting conservation also fitted in well with the selfimage of the British as great empire builders. It was considered befitting to show respect to the past achievements of a culture. Added to this is the fact that it showed the subjects how great had been their past, how low they had

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fallen, and therefore how much they needed the guiding hand of the rulers to rise again. Moreover, in any society contemporary arts tend to ask awkward ques­ tions and destabilize the Establishment, whereas conservation of past achievements is less controversial and less threatening of the status quo. It is hardly surprising therefore that in British India conservation was favoured over promotion of contemporary arts. Unfortunately, self interest and duty could not always coincide, and this led to the many contradictions between statement of intent and practice; between different policies, and within a policy itself. For all the govern­ ment rhetoric about promoting Indian arts, and preserving them from decay, concrete proof of good intention was missing and there was a shadow between precept and practice, as in Lord Curzon’s case. And as we have seen, there were inconsistencies between different art policies so that while Art Schools were promoted to encourage Indian art, the PWD policy discour­ aged it by promoting Western architectural styles. While art policies were trying to stimulate external demand for Indian art goods through international exhibitions, reform of design, and so on, the free trade policies annulled the far greater potential of the Indian market by allowing free trade and the import of cheap machine made goods. But for its political inexpediency the appropriate action would have been to levy tariffs on those goods whose import directly effected the art industry in trouble. A distinct middle-class bias in art policy is also very apparent though welfare of the masses and their moral and material progress were always stated to be major goals of British policy, and the British claimed to be better guardians of the interest of the common Indian than local elites. The main purpose of the education policy was to create a middle-class society which would have a vested interest in continuance of British rule, and the early encouragement and support to Indian traditional learning, and to learned societies, the creation of manuscript repositories, archaeological work, all served to emphasize high culture. The folk arts were not a subject of policy except as anthropological curiosities to be surveyed. In Art Schools and in architectural policy the educated artist and architect was favoured over the artisan who was only ostensibly the target of policy and the Art Schools in fact deepened the divide between the artisan and the 6litc artist. By stretching a point one could argue that in the three areas where government was most active—conservation of art heritage, preservation and promotion of industrial arts, and patronage to vernacular literature— the government was acting on behalf of the common man, providing him access to the heritage via museums, exhibitions and preserved monuments; helping

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the artisan to improve his living; and bringing the administration closer to the people through the use of the vernacular languages, instead of the classical languages of Sanskrit and Persian understood by few. But in fact the patronage to vernacular literature benefited the growing urban middle class, not the rural masses, who had no access to education of any kind, and to literature only via an oral tradition. As for monuments, museums, exhibitions as sources of inspiration, only extreme naivet^ or deliberate ignorance could make anyone believe that they were used by the common man for instruction rather than entertainment and that an artisan would read the A n Journal or have access to the catalogues prepared by Watson and placed in a few select places. The crux of the matter of course is that in relation to India there was always a hidden agenda and stated objectives were not always the real ones. It was in the nature of the colonial confrontation that success in the stated objective would mean a failure in the non-stated, or vice versa as in the case of Art School policies. They were unsuccessful in their stated objective of stopping the deterioration in the decorative arts but successful in the unstated one of inculcating European tastes amongst Indians. The British Indian state very emphatically believed that it could and should mould people’s artistic tastes, whether in the field of literature, art or dance. The important question that remains in such cases is whose taste is to become the standard. Given the colonial situation, there was no doubt about the answer. The educational policies too, impacted on the different arts differently, encouraging vernacular literature but not the performing arts. The pro­ fessedly neutral policy to religion saved the traditional arts from a devastation far greater than they would have suffered with overt Christianization. But through curriculum manipulation or judicial interpretation, existing ideas of morality in art changed and this almost caused the demise of Indian classical dance. If there is a lesson here for the contemporary state it is that in any arti­ culated cultural policy the interlinkages between different government policies need to be carefully scrutinized for possible adverse effects. Apart from hidden agendas at least a part of the blame for the distance between intended and actual effect of colonial policies has to be laid at the door of faulty assumptions on which policy was based. They were faulty partly because the British became exclusive and distanced themselves from Indians, and partly because of the influence of the Orientalist discourse. As Edward Said has pointed out, most of the researches concentrated on the classical past and only in the late nineteenth century was any attention

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given to the study of contemporary culture. Moreover, India and Indian arts were studied mostly as a textual universe of books and manuscripts, but not as live manifestations or artefacts so that the performing tradition was excluded from the scholarly purview. This also meant that the focus of attention was always on the high or classical arts, at the cost of the folk. A policy based not on mutual self-respect but paternalism could not but be flawed, especially since during the greater part of British rule, the Indians had no part in the process of interpretation and representation. Even the inputs of Indian intellectuals into the great communication process were seldom given credit at the time and are only now being acknowledged. One may well ask why the great Orientalist discourse wielded such in­ fluence on policy as it did, and why it received such state support. The answer is that the scholarly activity had political utility. This was most clearly articulated by Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General. ‘Every accumu­ lation of knowledge, and especially such as is obtained by social communi­ cation with people over whom we exercise a dominion . . . is useful to the State.*6 For Richard Temple, Governor of Bombay and Bengal in the late nineteenth century, ‘The pursuit of Oriental learning imparts grace and dignity to the conduct and policy of England in the East. . . .’7LordCurzon in his argument for a School of Oriental Studies said: O ur familiarity, not merely wi th the languages of the people of the East but with their customs, their feelings, their traditions, their history and religion, our capacity to understand what may be called the genius of the East, is the sole basis upon which we are likely to be able to maintain in the future the position we have won . . . [Emphasis mine].8

It can be claimed that policies to promote cultural imperialism via assimilation or hegemony of knowledge had failed in their objective because ultimately Indians achieved their independence. One can equally consider them successful because even when nations free themselves politically, they never emancipate themselves fully from cultural bondage. Political bondage is easy to perceive whereas cultural imperialism works at deeper levels and holds people willing slaves. In the words of Edward Said, ‘the modern O rie n t. . . participates in its own Orientalizing*.9 Repeated reference to Western interpretations as authoritative led over time to an acceptance even by Indians of the Western vision or version of their society. For instance the British pictorial, fictional and historical accounts of the revolt of 1857 never mentioned that Indian atrocities were reciprocal responses to British abominations, or that there was full-fledged participation of many peasants and urban poor in that revolt. Indians

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accepted the British interpretation of 1857 as a mutiny, and its leaders cruel villains, until nationalist histories challenged it.10 Even after Independence, leaders who were the products of British India and too deeply assimilated to be able to commit themselves wholly to traditional culture, have continued to commit their societies to a Western view of life and society. The technological superiority of that structure was particularly attractive to an economically backward country moving rapidly into a modern era. Gandhi provided a solitary exception. The Indians too used the arts to achieve political goals. An awareness of the cultural heritage was the first step in the growth of the nationalist sentiment, and the nationalist discourse which ran parallel to the British Orientalist discourse. The nationalist struggle stimulated a renaissance of the arts which in turn became effective carriers of the nationalist message. It must be acknowledged that the use of the arts for political purposes was not unique to imperial Britain or the nationalist movement. Commenting on the Italian Renaissance, Bernard Berenson remarks, ‘It was the passion for glory, in reality, rather than any love of beauty that gave the first impulse to the patronage of the arts in the Renaissance.’ In Venice, the state encouraged painting, as did the Church, in order to teach its subjects its own glory in a way they could understand without being led on to critical enquiry. Thus the frescoes o f Lorenzetti at Siena were admonitions to govern in accordance with the Catechism, the pictures in the Great Hall of the Doge’s palace in Venice were of a nature to remind the Venetians o f their glory and also of their State policy.11

The eclectic Mughal policy of patronage of Hindu artists and art styles was as much a political j udgement of what was prudent as an artistic decision. And during the colonial period the Indian princes spent lavishly on the arts to compensate for lack of actual power. Nor have independent India’s democratic rulers refrained from using the arts for political purposes. Festivals of India abroad have become a major arm of diplomacy, festivals within the country have been yoked to the publicity and propaganda needs of ruling parties. Echoes of the old resentment at money being spent on cultural extravaganzas for political aims when more worthwhile cultural causes and institutions languish for want of funds, continue to be heard. The same instruments of control— censorship, control of dramatic performances and the press, licensing of theatres and cinemas— have been used to maintain or uphold a political position, albeit more sparingly; and occasionally cultural institutions have been subverted to a particular political cause. It is all part of the legacy of the colonial state.

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O n the positive side the colonial government left behind a solid founda­ tion of achievements for its successor to build upon. Most fundamentally, new concepts of state responsibility had been created and accepted, and an extensive institutional infrastructure built up, for the discharge of this responsibility. The ground work for many of the official cultural institutions set up after Independence, such as the three Akademis and the National Gallery of Modern Art was done during British rule. The new government was also bequeathed a bureaucracy charged with the administration of the arts, including a separate department of the central government to deal with culture. One of the most valuable legacies was the substantial documentation of the arts resulting from the British need for information as part of the business of governance. This is invaluable for reinterpretation of tradition and further creative activity. O n the other side of the coin, British policies led to several dichotomies in the organization and reception of art. For instance, the distinction which had always existed between folk or desi art and classical or margi art not only sharpened but became firmly embedded in the rural-urban dichotomy, so that folk arts were relegated to the rural areas, and high arts to the urban areas. A similar sharp distinction had also been created between practitioners in the indigenous traditional sector such as the mistri, pundit, and maulvi, and those in the modern sector, the artist, architect, and professor. In each case the member of the indigenous sector had lower social and economic status. Moreover, as classical learning declined, and knowledge of the clas­ sical languages diminished, the knowledge embodied in ancient texts was forgotten or relegated to the background. This meant that future generations of artists would forgo much that was valuable and relevant in their own traditions. One of the important tasks which independent India has had to undertake is to resuscitate many of these texts to provide the needed balance to unthinking Westernization. The oral tradition though alive had become equated with rural, low status creation, whereas in an earlier era even high culture, say philosophy, Ayur­ veda or yoga, was orally transmitted. The result was that the potential of orality for quick dissemination of knowledge went unrecognized, much to the detriment of mass education. It was British educational policies in particular which created a deep chasm in Indian society, between the English-educated few and the masses. Vernaculars came to be associated with the rural and poorer classes and with traditional culture, whereas English education was the mark of the urban, Westernized, ‘modem’ 6\\tc. Gandhi in particular deplored the attitude of cultural superiority assumed by the average English-educated graduate over Digitized by

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millions of his brethren, and the estrangement that thus ensued. He also blamed English education for its negative effect on creativity and originality. He saw that though knowledge was acquired, it was seldom assimilated, so that there was only a superficial imitation of Western culture, a grasping at the shadow, and never the substance. The exclusion of arts from education also had the long-term effect of preventing the development of paying audiences, particularly for the per­ forming arts. The assimilation of the traditional arts was considered unnecessary for a meaningful social life. Due to this, the dependence of the artists on state patronage increased after independence and in the process created schisms in the artistic community who, long accustomed to being spoken for by outsiders, never learned the art of consensual representation and united action. O n the other hand, the identity crisis of the Indian intellectual initiated a vigorous debate on what was meant by ‘Indian’ and what was ‘tradition’, and much artistic experimentation, to evolve a uniquely Indian idiom, modern yet rooted in tradition. Unfortunately, much source material that should have been available for the exercise has remained inaccessible to Indian scholars and artists because the great Orientalist discourse led to its concentration in Western reposito­ ries— libraries, museums, archives and private collections—for the benefit of Western scholars. The most important and insidious effect of British rule on artistic creativity is an invisible one, and will take long to remedy. This is the sense of inferiority that subjection had bred in Indians. The destructive effect of a sense of inferiority has been expressively summed up by Graham Wallas in Human Society. Athens, during the last quarter o f the fifth century b c was not well governed; and if the British Empire had then existed, and if Athens had been brought within it, the administration would undoubtedly have been improved in some important aspects. But one does not like to imagine the effect on the intellectual output of the fifth century B C if given the best o f Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s public school subalterns had stalked daily through the agora snubbing as he passed that intolerable bounder Euripides or clearing out of his way the probably seditious group that were gathering round Socrates.12

Not surprisingly, one of the central themes of the anti-colonial nationalist movements everywhere has been to release the people from the contempt and low self-esteem consciously cultivated by the rulers. At his trial in March 1922, Gandhi said that he was satisfied that many English and indeed Indian officials honestly believed that they were administering one of the best systems in the world, and that India was making steady, if slow progress. What they did not know was that a subtle but effective system of terrorism Digitized by

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and an organized display of force on the one hand, and the deprivation of all powers of retaliation and self-defence on the other, had emasculated the people and induced in them the habit of simulation. A vicious circle was in operation: the rulers despised the ruled because they lacked character. But the system of government that was imposed by the rulers was such as to prevent the ruled from expressing any character worth the name.13 One consequence of this lack of self-confidence was to make both the Indian public and Indian artists and writers look West for approval and validation of their art. An artist acquired stature in his own eyes and in the eyes of the public only when he was acclaimed in the West. A second is a ten­ dency to look to the government for everything. The performing and visual arts had survived in spite of great odds, and even experienced a renaissance, largely due to private initiative and patronage. Self-reliance was part of the nationalist challenge, but once that spirit was gone, the underlying attitude of dependence encouraged by the British surfaced. Immediately after Independence the arts became excessively dependent on the state for funding, and state subsidy became important for the survival of individuals and institutions. Only of late has there begun a greater effort to involve the community in support for artistic endeavour. At the same time, it must be acknowledged in all fairness, that given conditions at Independence, but for state support (especially to the performing arts) there would not have been the great revival that has since been witnessed. The early British assertion of Indian inferiority in morals (especially sexual morals) and the later emphasis on Indian spirituality, led to a suppression of the earthy vital quality of Indian arts. It bred a morality which went further than the English in prudery, and led to the development of an inverted inferiority complex which manifested itself in a virulent condem­ nation of Western sexual mores. This was most evident in relation to films, literature and drama and comes out clearly from the Legislative Council debates and Press reports in the pre- and post-Independence years. Conse­ quently, one legacy of the Raj has been an obsession on the part of the new rulers to protecr Indian society from the loose morals of the West. Censor­ ship, a political instn "lent of British domination, was now considered necessary in older to guard society from Western permissiveness. Life has come full circle! After Independence, the urgent challenge was to overcome cultural bondage and the legacy of an inferiority complex which the British had bequeathed. It was important that a non-British past be resurrected and glorified, as well as a splendid new future envisioned. It was also important to make appropriate assertions of this in the international arena. Nationalist leaders in the immediate pre-Independence period had stressed international

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cultural relations, and clearly this had to become a continuing emphasis in policy in the post-Independence period. Obviously the arts had a part to play in defining the country’s new identity to itself and to the world. The new government had therefore first to retrieve what had been lost, link it to the present and build on it for the future. But first very difficult questions needed to be answered, for example regarding tradition and Indian-ness. There was the further problem of balancing the claims of the older traditional arts against those of the newer more lively arts that had survived or come into being and were now equally a part of Indian culture. There were other tasks ahead: re-orienting education to revive cultural pride, the promotion of new cultural values consistent with scientific and technological change and the endurance of traditional values; patronage to the arts in the absence of princely courts and temple patronage; creation of an infrastructure for the promotion of arts; and finally, recognition of the plurality of Indian culture, bridging the communal divide, as well as bringing popular culture into the mainstream. In sum, in the coming years the new Government would have to expand and consolidate, as well as undo and repudiate; and attempt much where nothing had been attempted at all. How well the colonial legacy has been handled by the inheritors is another story altogether.

Notes and References 1. Kapila Vatsyayan, Cultural Policies in India, p. 15. 2. Ibid., pp. 15-16. 3. See C. M. Naim, ‘The Moghul and British Patronage of Urdu Poetry’, in Barbara Stoler Miller (ed.), The Powers o f Art, pp. 269-74. 4. John Pick, Arts in a State, pp. 9-10. 5. Thornton, Doctrines o f Imperialism, p. 52. 6. Letter of Hastings to N. Smith, 4 October 1784, quoted by David Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance (Berkeley, 1969), p. 18. 7. Richard Temple, India in 1880 (London, 1881), p. 343. 8. Quoted in Said, Orientalism, p. 214. 9. Edward Said, Orientalism, p. 325. 10. See C. A. Bayly, ‘From Company to Crown: Nineteenth-Century India and its Visual Representation,’ in Bayly (ed.), The Raj (London, 1990), pp. 134-7. 11. Bernard Berenson, Italian Painters o fthe Renaissance (Oxford, 1952), pp. 5-6,12. 12. Reginald Reynolds, White Sahibs in India (London, 1st ed. 1937, 3rd rev. ed. 1946), p. 174. 13. See Thornton, Doctrines, pp. 158-61, 180-1.

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p. 18. Anand, Mulk Raj, ‘A n and Interaction o f Culture’, Cultural Forum, July 1965,

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Select Bibliography 281 ‘Anglo-Indian Architecture in Calcutta’ (Editorial comment), M odem Review, voL x l , no. 79, 1864, pp. 1-10. Appasamy, J., ‘Indian Art Since Independence’, LalitKala Contemporary, Triennale Special, no. 7, 1968, pp. 15-18. Archer, Mildred, ‘The Social History o f the Nautch Girl’, The Saturday Book, 1962, p. 242. --------- , ‘Company Architects and Their Influence in India’, RIBA Journal, vol. 70, August 1963. --------- , ‘Indian Architecture and the British, 1780-1830’, RIBA Drawing Series (London, 1968). --------- , ‘India and Archaeology. The Role o f the East India Company: 1783— 1858’, History Today, April 1962, pp. 272-9. Archer, W. G.. ‘British Contributions to the Study of Indian Art’, Cultural Forum, Delhi, October 1961, pp. 88-91. Baker, Arnold A., ‘Indian Music and Rabindranath Tagore’, Indian A rt and Letters, vol. 5, no. 2, 1931, pp. 81-102. --------- , ‘Some Aspects o f the Development o f Indian Music’, extracted from the Proceedings o f the Royal Musical Association, Session l x x v i , 9 February 1950. Baker, Herbert, ‘New Delhi’, Journal o f Royal Society o f Arts, 2 July 1926, vol. l x x i v , no. 3841, pp. 773-85. Bearce, George, ‘Intellectual and Cultural Characteristics of India in a Changing Era: 1740-1800’, Journal o f Asian Studies, November 1985, 25(1), pp. 3-17. Bose, Bani, ‘A Short History o f the National Library’, Modem Review, vol. xeui-xav, February 1953, pp. 128-32, 207-10. Buck, E. C., ‘Preface’ to 1st Number, TheJournal ofIndian A rt and Industry, vol. 1, no. 1, October 1883. Burns, Cecil, ‘The Functions o f Art Schools in India’, Journal o f the Royal Society o f Art, vol. l v i i , 1908-1909, pp. 631-41. Byron, Robert, ‘New Delhi’, The Architectural Review, January 1931, pp. 1-15. Coomaraswamy, A K., ‘The Function of Schools o f Art in India: A Reply .to M r Cecil Burns’, Modem Review, 1910. Das Gupta, R. K., ‘The Political Background o f the Dramatic Performances Control Act o f 1876, Indian History Congress Proceedings, 1958,21 st Session, published 1959. ‘Exhibitions (Notes)’, TheJournal o f Indian A rt and Industry, vol. ill, no. 28, 1890. Ganguli, O. C., ‘Fostering Indian Art in Benaras’, Illustrated Weekly o f India, 25 May 1930, pp. 12-13. Ghose, A , ‘Fifty Years o f the Archaeological Survey’, Ancient India, no. 9, 1953, pp. 41-2. Ghose, Hemendra Prasad, ‘British Philistinism and Indian Art’, Calcutta Review, no. 248, 1907, pp. 253-73. ----------, ‘Indian A t ’, Calcutta Review, no. 231, January 1903, pp. 98-107. Goetz, Hermann, ‘The Great Crisis: From “Tradition'* to Modern Indian Art’, Lalit Kola Contemporary, nos 1-2, 1962-64, pp. 8-14.

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282 Select Bibliography Havcll, E. B., ‘Art Administration in India’, Journal o f the Royal Society o f Art, vol. Lvui, no. 2985, 1910, pp. 274-85. Heath, Lionel, ‘The Mayo School of Art, Lahore’, Indian A rt and Letters, vol. 5, no. 1, 1931, pp. 14-18. Hendlcy, Col. T. H .,‘On Indian Museums’, TheJournal o f Indian A rt and Industry, vol. xvi, no. 125, January 1914. ‘India Society’s Exhibition of Modern Indian Art, Editorial, Journal o f Indian A rt and Letters, vol. vm, no. 2, 1934, pp. 85-99. Irwin, John, ‘Treasures o f Indian Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum’, Marg, vol. 29, no. 4, 1976. ----------, ‘Art and the East India T rade’, Journal o f Royal Society o f Arts, vol. 120, June 1972, pp. 447-63. Jag Mohan, ‘The Bombay Art Scene in the Forties’, LalitKala Contemporary, no. 28, September 1979, pp. 21-8. Kipling, J. L., Indian Architecture Today’, The Journal o f Indian Art, vol. i, no. 2 (nos 1-16), pp. 1-5. Mitra, Ashok, ‘The Forces Behind the Modern Movement’, Lalit Kala Contempo­ rary, nos 1-2, 1962-64, pp. 15-19. Natesa Shastri, ‘The Decline of S. Indian Arts’, The Journal o f Indian A rt and Industry, vol. in, nos 28 and 29, 1890. Rehman Habib, ‘Architectural T eething Problems’, CulturalForum, October 1970, pp. 47-53. ‘Resolution on Museums and Exhibitions, 14 March 1883, Reproduced in Journal o f Indian Art, London, vol. i, no. 1 (1-16), October 1886, pp. 1-6. Rothenstein, Sir William, ‘The Genius o f Indian Sculpture’, Journal o f the Royal Society o f Arts, vol. l x x x v i , June 1938. Royal Asiatic Society o f Bengal, Proposals Made in Connection with Cultural Reconstruction in India, Parts I & II, 1944-45 (Calcutta, 1945). ‘Seminar on Architecture, March 1959’, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 1959. Shankar, Uday, ‘Reawakening of India’s Classical Dance’, Illustrated Weekly o f India, 30 June 1935, p. 19. Sanyal, B. C., ‘Art Education: Its Relevance to Contemporary Art’, in Ram Dhamija (cd.), Sixty Years o f W riting on Arts and Crafts in India: A Collection from Roop Lekha, 1928-1988 (New Delhi, 1988). ----------, ‘SirGeorgcC. M.Birdwood. His Life and W ork’,Joum aloflndianA rtand Industry, London, nos 61-9, January 1900, pp. 45-7. Smith, Roger, ‘Architectural Art in India’, Journal o f Society o f Arts, 21, 1873, pp. 278-87. Solomon, Gladstone W. E., ‘Indian Art and the Bombay Movement’, The English Review, vol. 103, no. 620, November 1934. --------- , ‘Bombay and the Revival of Indian Art’, Indian A rt and Letters, London, May 1925, pp. 11-22. ----------, ‘Modern Art in Western India’, Indian A rt and Letters, vol. vui, no. 2, 1934, pp. 100-15.

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Select Bibliography 283 Spear, Percival, ‘Bentinck and the Taj’, Journal o f Royal Asiatic Society o f Great Britain, October 1949, pp. 180-7. ‘Special Number on Museology’, Cultural Forum, vol. vin, nos 1 and 2, January 1966. Srinivasan Amrit, ‘Reform and Revival: The Devadasi and Her Dance’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 20, no. 44, 2 November 1985, pp. 1869-75. Stamp, G., ‘British Architecture in India, 1857-1947’, the Sir George Birdwood Memorial Lecture, Royal Society o f Arts Journal, vol. cxxix, no. 5298, 1981. ‘The Modern Movement o f A n in India: A Symposium’, Lalit Kola Contemporary, nos 1 and 2, 1961-64. Younghusband, Sir Francis Edward, ‘Culture as the Bond of Empire , Journal o f the Royal Society o f Literature, London, 1927, pp. 22-8.

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Index

Ajanta and Ellora caves, 70 conservation of, 74 documentation of, 76-7; as decorative art 127, 153 as inspiration for nationalist art, 146 Akademis, 32, 266 Amravati, stupa and sculptures, 70, 72 Anglicists, 45-6, 51 See also Grant, Charles; Macaulay (Lord); Mill, James; Trevelyan, Charles Anglicization, 8 See also English education; Westernization Anglo-Orientalist debate, 24, 44-8 Antiquities, 70, 77, 80, 83 See also Illegal appropriation Applied art; see Decorative arts Archaeology British interest in Indian, 70-2, 84-5 and debates over centralization, 92, 95 departments in charge of, 77-8, 80, 82, 84, 93-4 and conservation policy, 24, 29, 69, 72, 75-97, 259. 261; and Curzon, 85-90; financing of, 80-1, 84, 88, 91-4; and heritage, 20; Indian public opinion on, 85; and employment of Indians, 90, 92 journals of, 73 and surveys, 70-2, 77, 79-80, 82-3, 114 Archaeological Survey of India, 78-84, 88-92, 95, 97, 181, 193; and museums, 107-8 See also Antiquities; Burgess;

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Cunningham; Illegal appropriation; Legislation; Monuments; Museums; Societies Architecture debate on traditional Indian vs. Western: architectural styles, 182, 188-92, 196; architects, 192-5 Indian, traditional, 120, 174; British interest in, 114, 174-5, 180-2; Hindu, 174; Indo-Islamic, 174; patronage by Indian princes, 183, 190; patronage by Indian trading classes, 120, westernization of, 178-9 Indo-British, 29, 181-3 modernist, 196-7 and other arts, 138, 182, 186-7, 192 Western, patronage of. in Bombay, 179; in Calcutta, 176-8; by East India Company, 175; by Indian rulers, 120, 180; by middle classes, 120; for official buildings, 175-9; for Victoria Memorial, 148, 185-6 policy of colonial state, 175-97; contradictions in, 184, 186; criticism of, 186-7; and imperialism, 175-7, 179, 182, 185-6, 188-9, 191, 194; and decorative arts, 138, 186-7, 192; towards traditional Indian architecture, 184-5, 188, 192-3, 196; and Western bias, 20, 24, 29, 175-97 See also Baker; Begg; Curzon; Growse; Jacob; Lutyens; Monuments;

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Index

New Delhi; Public Works Department; Westernization; Cultural imperial- ism Architects British, patronage of by Indian rulers, 183-4 Indian, traditional (mistri), 174, 183-4, 193, 266; and patronage, 174, 178-80, 182-4, 186-8, 192-4 Indian, professionally trained, 195-6, 266; patronage of, 188, 195 Roorki graduates, 180, 183-4 Art and journals, 111, 131-3, 136-7, 164-5; and nationalist debate on art, 145-6, 159-60 Indian indifference to, 160-1, 170 introduction into school and university curricula, 160, 162 patronage of Indian: by Mughals, 112, 265; by British individual's, 114, . 117, 119-20; and the state, 111, 115, 119, 137, 152-3, 161; by Indian middle classes, 118-20, 144; by Indian Hite, 144; by regional courts, 112 renaissance of Indian, 167, 170 traditions, Indian: and aesthetic standards, 16, 152; difference from Western, 16, 18-19; Hite, 12, 15, 266; folk, 12, 15, 266; Hindu, 15, 111, 113; holism in, 11, 16; Islamic, 112; new, 145-7, 159; pre-colonial, 15; spiritual interpretation of, 66n28, 111, 121, 152-3, 156-8; tribal, 12, 15; westernization of, 116 traditions, Western, 16 See also Artists; Art policy; An schools; Decorative art; Exhibitions; Fine art; Museums; Painting; Societies Art Policy, 115, 119-20, 122-39, 152-3, 168-70 criticism: by Coomaraswamy, 153-5; by Havell, 150-2, 154-5 and handicraft policy, 111 impact of, 168-9

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lack of, 152-3 preservation preferred to contemporary art, 111 See also Art, patronage of Art schools, 111, 169, 258, 260, 262-3 and architecture, 182, 195-6; in Bombay School of Art, 161-2 changes in curriculum of, 148-9, 162, 167 critique of, 134, 136-7, 138, 151 and decorative art, 125-7 and employment of graduates, 127 establishment of, 123-6 financing of, 126 impact of, on taste in art and artists, 144, 168-9 Indianization of, 162; Havell’s attempts at, 149-50; debates on, 153-5 and modem Indian an, 167 need for, 132, 137-9 Schools of An: in Bombay, 124-7, 157-62, 164, 167-8, 195-6; in Calcutta, 107, 124, 126-7, 148-9, 159-62, 195; in Lucknow, 161-2; in Madras, 124-7, 138, 148-9, 162; in Lahore, 125, 138, 162, 167 State policy on, 123r*7, 155, 169, 260, 262-3 Arts definition of, 5, 11-12 documentation of, 266 literary: British attitudes to, 18, definition of, 11; state policy towards, 259 performing, 30; British attitudes to, 18, 19; definition of, 11; state policy towards, 29, 259; and women, 30 policy, definition of, 13, 22, 261; origins in India, 2-3, 20, 28-9 state intervention in, 1-8, 20, 22-3, 32-4, 257-8; colonial context of, 8-11, 19, 263; contradictions in, 262-3; debates about, 4, 22; department for, 33-4, 266; in

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Index independent India, 32-4, 265-9; and legislative assembly debates, 33-4; reasons for, 6-9, 14»11, 55, 258, 261 transmission of, 16, 257, 259; and oral tradition, 266 visual, 29, 30, 32; British attitudes to, 18, 113-14, 116-17; definition of, 11; state policy, towards, 259 See also Archaeology; Architecture; An; Cultural imperialism; Dance; Decorative arts; Fine arts; Language; Literature; Music; Orientalism; Patronage; Theatre Anists, 16, 111 and anisans, 111-12, 119, 127, 144, 163, 168, 266 British amateur, 116, 140n27 criterion for selection, 4-6 status of, 116-18, 144-5, 168 training of Indian, 162-7 patronage of British artists, 114, 116; by state, 115; by Indian rulers, 115-16 patronage of Indian artists: by Indian aristocracy, 111-12; by British, 114-19; and state discrimination, 114-15; need for patronage and employment, 122-3, 127, 160, 162-5, 267 Arts and Crafts Movement, 27, 121-2, 129, 152, 181 Asiatic Society of Bengal, 24, 33, 85 and Amravati sculptures, 72 and Bengal renaissance, 41 and literature, 49-50 and museums, 102-3, 109 and recommendations on art policy, 6*27, 32 state support to, 42, 70 0

Baker, Herbert, 163, 166-7, 190-1, 194 Balasaraswati, 250, 252 Begg, John, 182, 187, 190, 193, 195-6 Bengal School of Painting (Nationalist

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School), 28, 146-7, 153, 157-9, 161, 166-7, 247 See also Swadeshi and art Bengal Renaissance, 40, 63 Bentinck, Lord William, 24, 47-9, 50-1, 73, 177 Bhatkhande, Pandit Vishnu Narayan, 30, 226-8 Birdwood, George, 18, 27, 122, 133, 146 and architecture: traditional, 138, 182; western, 189 and art, 155-6 and crafts, 125, 135-6; criticism of government policy on, 127-9 Bombay Art Movement, 159-60, 162 Books see Translations; Literature Bose, Nandlal, 146, 158, 162 British Indian Association: and Dramatic Performances Bill, 207-8 Broadcasting, 31, 229-30 and music, 230-2 Brown, Percy, 165, 167, 195-6 Buchanan, Frances, 71, 114 Burgess, James, 83, 181 Bums, Cecil, 153—4 Canning, Lord, 78-9, 261 Carey, William, 39-40 Censorship, 59, 260 by independent Indian state, 265, 268 literary, 58-62 in relation to artistic expression, 207, 209-16, 260 of theatre, political, 206-7, 214; public condemnation of, 207-8, 217»4l; effect of, 207, 209-16; on moral grounds, 213 Chisholm, Robert, 155, 181 Cinema, 31 .See also Theatre Cole, H. H., 82, 130 Colebrook, Henry T., 38-40 Colleges Hindu College, Benaras, 39, 41, 50 Hindu College, Calcutta, 42 Poona Sanskrit College, 51

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Index

Sanskrit College, Calcutta, 49-50 at Benaras, Agra and Delhi, 50 Sec also Educational institutions; Societies; Universities Coomaraswamy, A K. and archaeology, 182, 187, 192 art collection of, 160 on art policy, 153-5 and dance, 251 his interpretation oflndian art, 111, 148, 152, 156-7 and nationalist art, 147, 159 Cornwallis, Lord, 20, 39 Craftsmen see Artists; Decorative arts Cultural imperialism and assimilation, 9, 47 and arts policy, 9, 169, 258-9, 263 and British contempt for: India, 21, 23, 27, 45; Indian dance, 242-4; Indian fine arts, 113-14, 120-1, 125; Indian music, 221-2 and deculturization, 11 definition of, 8-9 internalization by Indians, 116, 145, 149, 151-2, 169, 196, 244-7, 265, 267-8 through scholarly representations, 8-11, 26, 28, 116 and White Man’s Burden, 8-9, 208, 258 See also Architecture, policy of colonial state; Imperialism; Orientalism; Westernization Cultural institutions, 30, 34, 250 Bharat Kala Bhavan, 30, 159 Indian Cultural Centre, Almora, 30, 250 Kerala Kala Mandalam, 30, 250. See also Kalakshetra, Shantiniketan; Societies, Universities Cultural nationalism, Indian, 27, 29-31, 265, 267-9 and debates on art, 27, 145-6, 159 and theatre, 203-5, 209-12 and impact on dance, 245 and middle class patronage, 28, 30

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and British response to, 28-30, 32-3, 265 See also Bengal School of Painting; Censorship Cunningham, Alexander, 76-9, 81-2, 181 Curzon, Lord, 5, 27, 29, 260-1, 264 and architecture, 147-8, 185-6, 188, 190 and conservation, 78, 85-90 and decorative an, 147-8 and museums, 106 Dance, classical Indian, 236-53 as mode of worship, 236-7 as popular an, 236 as secular tradition, 237 change in performance and patronage of, 236, 250, 252-3 European interest in, 248-9; and Anna Pavlova, 32, 244, 249-50 Natya shastra, 236, 239, 252 patronage: by colonial state, 236, 244, 253; by aristocracy, 237, 244; by the masses, 237; by temples, 237 revival of, 250, 253; debates on, 250-2; role of £lite performers in, 252 styles of: Bharata Natyam, 239, 248, 250-3; Odissi, 239-40; Kathakali, 240, 250; Kathak, 240, 248; Manipuri, 250 transmission, changes in, 252-3 See also English education, impact on Indian attitudes towards dance; Devadasis; Nautch Daniell, Thomas and William Daniell, 17, 70, 114, 174-5, 177, 240 Decorative arts, 16, 111-12, 119-20, 129-47 and art goods, 103-4, 113, 119; competition with, 119-20, 128-9, 135-6; patronage of, 119-20, 122-3 British interest in, 113, 120-3 decay of, 120, 122-3, 129, 135-6

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Index definition of, 11 policy, 122-3, 128, 130-4, 136-7; and exhibitions, 121-3, 130; and training, 123-4; Indian reactions to, 134-3; lack of patronage as key to, 137 See also Arts and Crafts Movement; Fine Arts; Museums Devadasis, 237-9, 245, 247-8, 250-3 See also Dance; Nautch Dhurandhar, M. V., 146 D’Oyly, Charles, 221, 242 Drama see theatre Dubois, Abbe, 17.221,241-2 East India Company, Policy of Court of Directors, 261 on architecture, 175-6, 178 on an goods, 122 on conservation, 24-5, 70-1, 74-5, 79 on education, 42, 47 on literature, 49-50 on museums, 102 Educational Department of India: responsibility for culture, 33, 266 Education, English contradictions in policy, 63-4 criticism of, 64, 150, 153 introduction of, 24; reasons for, 261-2 impact of, 51, 244, 263; on architecture, 178; on an, 120, 144-5, 149-51, 155, 160, 168; on anisans, 136; on ans, 266-7; on class differentiation in India, 24, 63-5, 266-7; on Indian attitudes towards dance, 244-5, 250; on vernacular, 52 See also Anglo-Orientalist Debate; Cultural imperialism; Nautch; Orientalism, Westernization Educational institutions, 39; traditional Indian, 42, 91 See also Colleges; Societies; Universities Elphinstone, Mountstuan, 47, 51 Emerson, William, 182, 185

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Evangelicals, 21-3, 26, 46, 116, 120-1, 179, 243 Exhibitions, 111, 123, 130, 134-5, 261 Great Exhibition of 1851, 26, 103, 121-4 criticism of government policy on, 135-7, 151 See abo Decorative arts, Museums Fergusson, James, 27, 73, 78, 81, 117, 122, 138, 146, 153, 180-1 Financing of arts, 260 of conservation, 260 See abo Archaeology Fine art, 16, 111-12 and the British: bias against Indian, 27, 113-14, 116-17, 119-21, 139, 149, 153-6; purchases of Indian, 114 and decorative art, 16, 27, 111-12, 149, 154, 168-9 lack of patronage of, 155 See abo Decorative arts; Paintings Folk art see An Forbes, James, 201, 221, 241 Fort William College, 39, 40-3, 48-9 Ghose, Girish Chandra, 210 Gilchrist, John, 18, 40 Grant, Charles, 23, 45-6 Griffiths, John, 127, 129, 137, 153 Growse, F. S., 183-6, 192 Halhead, Nathaniel, 38-9 Handicrafts see Decorative arts Hardinge, Lord, 29 and architecture, 188-9, 191, 193 and conservation, 73, 75-6 Hastings, Marquess of, 42, 72-3 Hastings, Warren, 19-20, 41 art collection of, 101, 114 and education, 38-9 Havell, E. B., 133, 172«61 and criticism of arts policy, 162

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and Indianization of an schools, 148-55 and spiritual interpretation of Indian an, 157 and suppon for Indian architecture, 182, 185-7, 190, 192-3 suppon for Nationalist School of An, 159 Heber, Bishop Reginald, 17, 23, 70, 178 Hendley, Major, 18, 133, 155 Heritage see Archaeology, conservation Hodges, William, 17, 70, 114, 174, 176 Hunter, William, 18, 222 Illegal appropriation of antiquities, 76, 81, 83-4, 93-7; and Indian public opinion, 89, 93-7; official response to, 83-4, 88 and monuments, 69-70, 72-3, 77, 80-1, 86-7, 89 See also Legislation Imperialism, 82, 148 See also Cultural imperialism; Architecture, state policy and imperialism India Society, London, 32, 156, 159, 164, 167, 193, 261 Indian Council of Cultural Relations, 33 Indian National Trust for An and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), 32 Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), 31,214-15 Indianization, 9, 28, 32, 151 attempts at: in architecture, 184; in an schools, 137-9, 148-55; in education, 41-2 See also Cultural nationalism; Swadeshi Indian-ness debates on, 155, 158, 196, 267 Indology, 91 See also Orientalism Indus Valley Civilization, 90, 92 Industrial an see Decorative Ans Industrial Revolution and crisis of taste in England, 120, 125, 169, 179

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and materialism, 26-7 Inscriptions, 71, 77, 81 Irwin, Lord, 167, 194 Jacob, Swinton, 130, 183 Jones, William, 18-19, 38-9, 45, 122, 222 Journal o f Indian Art see An Kalakshetra, 30, 34, 252 Kalighat Pats, 118-19; and dance, 245; and theatre, 204 Keith, J. B., 78, 83, 135-6, 138, 182, 190 Khadillcar, K. P., 206, 209-12 Kimberley, Earl of, 131-3 Kipling, John Lockwood, 124-5, 130, 133, 135, 185, 192 Krishna Iyer, E. V., 250-2 Languages, Indian and educational policy, 40-2, 48-52, 91 and Fon William College, 39-42 Persian, 37; preservation of, 49; translations from, 39, 43-4 Sanskrit, 37; preservation of, 49; translations from, 39, 42—4 See also Anglo-Orientalist debate, Literature, Translations, Vernacular Legislation Ancient Monuments Preservation Act, 1904, 29, 88-9, 93-6, 106 Antiquities (Export Control) Bill, 1947, 95-6 Bengal Regulation XIX 1810, 73, 81 Bombay Devadasis Protection Act, 1934, 253 Copyright Act, 1847, 57 Customs Act, 1878, 96 Dramatic Performances Act, 1876, 28, 207-9, 211, 215, 260 Government of India Acts, 1919, 1935, 30, 95 Imperial Library Act, 1902, 106

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Index Indian Museum Act, 1866, 103, 106-7 Indian Press Act, 1910\ 60, 211,215 Madras Prevention of Dedication Act, 1947, 253 Madras Regulation VIII, 1817, 73, 81 Newspapers (Incitement of Offences) Act, 1908, 60 Obscene Books and Pictures Act, 1856, 28, 57-8, 62 Registration of Books Act, 1867, 58 Treasure Trove Act 29, 1878, 81-3 Vernacular Press Act, 1878, 28, 58, 209 Liberals, British, 21, 23 Library, Imperial (Calcutta), 106 Literature, Indian, 20, 45 and educational policy, 39, 44, 62-5 patronage of: in Indian tradition, 37-8; by missionaries, 38-9; by private institutions, 43 state intervention in, 28, 38-44, 48-50, 261; discrimination against Indian scholars, 44; financing of, 41-2, 44, 57; withdrawal of patronage to, 57, 60 See also Anglo-Orientalist debate; Languages; Vernacular Lloyd George, 161-2, 164 Lutyens, Edwin L, 163, 167, 191 Lytton, Viceroy, 58, 78, 163, 261; and conservation, 81-2 Macaulay, Thomas Babington (Lord), 23, 45-8 Mackenzie, Colin, 71-2 Malcolm, John, 47, 51 Malet, Charles, 18, 70 Manuscripts, conservation of, 77, 85 Marris Academy of Music, 229, 232 Marshall, John, 88, 92, 107, 163, 165 Marxism and an, 168 and literature, 60 and theatre, 212-15 Metcalf, Charles, 47

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Mhatre, Ganpat Rao Kashinath, 146 Mill, James, 23, 45-6, 116-17 Mill, John Stuart, 23 Missionaries and education, 39, 46 and scholarly interest, in India, 23; in literature, 18, 38 and Serampore Mission, 39, 41 Modernism, 31-2, 159; and architecture, 196-7 Monuments, 69 conservation of, 78-81, 89-90 See also Archaeology, Illegal appropriation Morris, William, 31, 128-9, 152 See also Ans and Crafts Movement Munro, Thomas, 47 Museums, 69, 77, 89, 101-10, 261 Archaeological, in India, 89, 106-9 An goods (crafts) museums, 104, 131, 134 British Museum, London, 104 Indian an in British museums, financing and acquisition of, 101-5, 135, 261 of Fine ans, Bharat Kola Bhavan, 159 India House Library and Museum, London, 102-3; India Museum, London, 104-5 Indian Museum, Calcuna, 106-8, 134 Indian Museums: depanments responsible for, 104; and education, 107; establishment of, 103, 105-9, 122; financing of, 103, 107-8; problems of, 106-9; rationale for, 104 National Museum, New Delhi, 109 provincial Indian Museums, 103, 106-7, 122 and state policy in India, 77, 101-10, 261 temple Museums, 109 See also Asiatic Society of Bengal, museums Music, classical Indian, 30, 219 Original from

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AJI India Music Conferences, 228-9, 250-1 and the british, early reactions to, 220-2, scholarly interest in, 222, 227 and nationalism, 227-9, 233 new technology, impact of, 225-7. 229 53 patronage of. 219-20; by aristocracy, 7.19 -20, 223, 233: British lack of, 222. change in pattern of, 223, 225 -6. 228, 233: by courtesans, 220; by mass media. 229, 232; by middle classes. 224—6, 233; by Mughal s, 219; by temples, 220. 274; by urban merchants and I indlords, 224 performance, change in pattern of, 226, 229, 233 and religion. 219 styles of: in Bengal, 225, 232; Carnatic, 220, 225; Gharana system, 220; light music, 231-2; difference between Northern and Southern tiaditions, 219-20, 225, 232; in Western India, 224-8, 232 * and syncretism, 219-20 transmission of, in traditional system, 220; changes in, 225-8, 233; through music schools, 228-9; through general education, 228-9, 233 Sec also Broadcasting; Theatre National Gallery of Modern Art, 33,

266 Nautch, 19, 21, 240 British reactions to, 240-3 campaign against, 245-7, 253 See also Orientalism New Delhi, building of and debates on, architectural style, 188-94; on use of Indian motifs, 163-7, 192 as artistic event, 188, 195 Newspapers and the arts, 30, 53, 57, 85, 89-90, 105 Digitized by

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Orientalists, 18. 24. 38, 41, 44-5, 78; and architecture, 90, 91; and music, 221-2; see also Birdwood, George; Gilchrist, John; Hendley (Major); Hunter, William; Jones, William; Malley, Charles; Wilson, H. H. Orientalism, 8, 116, 129, 175, 261, 263-4, 267 definition of, 18 and archaeological conservation, 76-8 and art, 152T 158-9 and benefits to western scholarship from state intervention, 25, 50, 76, 79, 122-3, 134-6, 264. 267; through museums, 101, 104-5 and literature, 41, 50 and museums, 101 and nautch, 240-2 and representations of India: by British travellers, 17, 113—14; by British painters, 17, 70, 114, 116; by’ amateur artists, 140n27; by Company officials, 17, 70; by missionaries, 18, 23, 38. 39, 46; need for scholarly, 26, 28 See also Cultural imperialism. Imperialism Oriental studies, 90-1 Painting, 111 schools of: Bombay school, 157; Company School, 116-17, 174; Deccan School, 112-13; Glass painting, 118; Miniatures, 112; Mughal, 112, 153; Mysore school, 113 See also Bengal School of Painting, Kalighat Pats Paluslcar. Vishnu Digambar, 227-8 Paternalism, 158, 264 Paternalists, 47. See also Anglo-Oriental Debate; Munro, Thomas; Elphinstone, Mountstuart; Malcolm, John; Metcalf, Charles Patronage Indian tradition of, 17; changes in, 21, 257; by religious institutions, 17 Original from

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Index in Britain, changes in, 17, 22 British vs Mughal, 258-9; of literature, 43, 55; of architecture, 182; of an, 155, 169 of the arts: by the state, 22, 257; in relation to artistic expression, 132, 260; by the colonial state, 19, 259; by middle classes, 17, 26, and nationalism, 28, 30; by Hite and aristocracy, 17, 21, 26, 112; by private institutions, 260 need for Indian, 153 See also Architecture, policy of colonial state; Arts, policy; Arts, state intervention; Artists, patronage of; Dance, patronage of, Decorative arts, policy; Fine arts; Languages; Literature, patronage, state intervention in; Museums; Societies; Vernacular, state intervention in Photography, 74, 77, 79-81, 117-18 Pre-Raphaelites see Arts and Crafts Movement Prinsep, James, 48, 70, 103 Progressive Artists Group, 168 Progressive Writers Association, 31, 60 Public opinion in India on conservation, 85, 89-90, 93-4 on museums in Britain, 105 and newspapers, 13 Public Works Department, 154, 179, 192. 195 criticism of, 150, 183-4, 186-7 and archaeology, 18, 82, 84, and preference for Western architecture, 183, 185, 196 and traditional Indian mistris, 184 and art schools, 127, 154, 187, 262 Ram Mohan Roy, Raja, 21, 40, 42, 47 Ram Raz, 145, 180-1 Ravi Verma, Raja, 119, 145-7, 157 Revolt of 1857, 203, 264-5 and British attitudes towards the arts, 25, 77-8, 103, 178 Ripon, Lord, 27, 82, 129 Roberts, Emma, 17, 70, 113, 202, 243 Digitized by

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293

Roorki, Government College of Engineering, see under Architects Royal Asiatic Society, England, 73-4, 78 Bombay branch, 77 Rukmini Devi (Arundale), 252-3 Sanderson, Gordon, 192-3 School of Oriental and African Studies, 32, 39 Sculpture, 111-14, 117, 119 Shantiniketan, 30, 34, 158, 250, 252 Societies Arcs, 26, 136, 147, 158-9, 161, 165 Asiatic Society of Bombay, 24 Literary: Madras, 24, 103; Bombay, 26 Archaeological, 107; of Delhi, 24 Educational: Bombay, 43; Calcutta, 43, 49; Calcutta School Book, 42, 49, 54; Calcutta School. 42, 49; Calcutta Vernacular Literature, 54; Madras School Book, 54. Vernacular Literature Committee of Bengal, 53 Music, 225, 235*36 Regional Societies and Nationalism, 107 See also Asiatic Society of Bengal; Cultural institutions; India Society, London; Royal Asiatic Society Solomon, Gladstone. 158, 165 State, definition of, 12 State intervention/policy see under Architecture; Art; Arts; Artists; Cultural Imperialism; Dance; Decorative art; Fine Art; Languages; Literature; Museums; Orientalism; Societies; Vernacular Swadeshi movement, 28 and art, 146-7, 158-9, 162; British support for, 147, 150, 156-8, 161 and dance, 246-7, 249-50 See also Indianization; Vernacular Tagore, family, 157 Abanindranath, 146-7, 150, 159-60, 162; Balendranath, 145; Gaganendranath, 168; Original from

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Jatindramohan, 158; Jkendramohan, 224; Rabindranath, 146, 168, 212, 225, 250; Sourendramohan, 224 Taj Mahal, 69, 72, 73, 88, 153 Thanjavur Quartet, 239 Theatre English: in England, 201; in India, 201-2 Bengali, 202-5, 210, 212, 214, 216 Marathi, 202-5, 209-13, 215, 216 Indian: pre-colonial, 201; changes in tradition, 202-3; patronage of modern, 202-3 and role in Indian nationalism, 203-5, 209; in Bengal, 204-5, 210, 212; in Maharashtra, 204-5, 209-12 and social Issues: in Bengal, 56, 204, 212; in Maharashtra, 56, 204, 212, 215 and Competition from films, 213, 216 and absence of state role in development, 216 See also Censorship; Communism; IPTA Tilak, Bal Gangadhar, 204, 209, 212-13 T ranslations of Indian texts, 38-9 and linguistic research, 40-4 See also Languages; Literature; Vernacular; Education Transmission see under Arts, Dance, Music Trevelyan, Charles, 45, 47, 124 Uday Shankar, 249-50, 253 Universities establishment of, 30, 34 See also Colleges; Shantiniketan Utilitarians, 21-3, 25, 116 Vandalism see Illegal appropriation Vernacular administrative use of, 49 in education, 51-4, 62 and English, 52, 63 literature, 24, 29, 37, 40-5, 50; resurgence of, 52-3, 55-6, 59 and missionaries, 18, 38, 41 Digitized by

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and nationalism, 57, 61; official response to, 57-62 and newspapers, 53, 57, 59 state intervention in, 38-44, 51-5, 57, 62-5, 259, 262-3; in Bombay, 51, 54, 56; in Bengal, 51, 54, 56; and censorship, 57-62; and Indian public opinion, 57; Madras, 54, 56 Victorian attitudes towards art goods, 180 internalization by Indians of, 245-7, 268 towards architectural conservation, 78 towards museums, 28-9, 101, 131 towards performing arts, 222-4, 243-4 regulation of public morality, 58; in theatre, 206 towards sculpture, 117 Victoria Memorial. See under Architecture VidyaJankar, Mritunjay, 40-1 Watson, John Forbes, 104 Wellesley, Arthur and archaeological surveys, 71 and architecture, 176 and Fort William College, 39 and Orientalism, 20, 41, 47 and painters, 115 Westernization, 63-4, 265 as official policy: in architecture, 175-97; in education, 24-5, 41, 63 of architecture, 178-9 art, 116 music, 233 of Indian 4lite, 21, 26, 30, 51, 56, 116, 265, 267-8; in architectural tastes, 120, 178, 180, 184-5, 196-7; in an tastes, 116, 120, 144-5, 149, 151 political inexpediency of, 19, 28 See also Cultural imperialism; English education; Orientalist^ Wilkins, Charles, 38-9, 102 Williamson, Thomas, 221, 242 Wilson, H. H., 18, 44-5, 48, 63-4 Woodcuts, 118-19 Original from

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