As someone born in post-British India, and specifically post-Portuguese Goa, I have often been asked what I think of my colonial history. It is not an insignificant question because my grandfather fought for Goa’s liberation from the Portuguese; he was imprisoned in the Fort Aguada jail for four years with other freedom fighters. I, on the other hand, was born in a place and time when Portuguese and British culture had diffused into the native ethos. So many of my childhood friends spoke Portuguese at home. My education was all in strict British English. I looked forward to Diwali, Hindu India’s biggest festival, as much as Christmas. I grew up as a mongrel cultural offspring of two former disparate worlds.
From where I stand, European colonialism in Asia is part of a long history of collisions and infusions between East and West, spanning more than five centuries. It is part of a complex, multi-cultural conversation, beginning with the West’s intrigue with an exotic orient, and transforming into Asia’s assimilation of Western ideas and concepts. This saga was never one-sided or one-dimensional because indigenous cultures – hardly passive recipients of foreign ideas – always cross-influenced the other side. I first discovered this symbiosis in my childhood literature: Rudyard’s Kipling’s infamous Jungle Book was set in the forests of India, with characters named Baloo, Akela and Sher Khan. The Caterpillar that Alice met in Wonderland was smoking a Persian hookah. And Doctor Watson began writing the memoirs of Sherlock Homes after a bullet had injured him in a battle at Khandahar.
As a young architect, I encountered another dimension of this dialogue. The form and style of a Hindu temple in Goa is unlike any other in India. It neither has the characteristic pyramidal vertical shikhara (steeple) of a North Indian temple nor the massive gopurams (gateways) of the Dravidian model. The Goan temple has a cruciform plan, organized on an axis and cross axis punctuated by porches. The sanctum is formally pronounced as a cylinder, capped by a dome and a Renaissance lantern, just like some of the churches in Goa. Centuries of architectural fusion, through colonization, have produced the hybrid form of a Goan Hindu place of worship. There is nothing like Goa’s Shantadurga or Manguesh Temples, either in Portugal or the rest of India.
Such hybridity goes far beyond architecture. In matters of faith, there is the legend of Milagres and Lairai. The story tells of them being born into a Hindu family of seven sisters. Milagres was converted into a Catholic goddess. Lairai remained Hindu, and each has her own festival. But they are connected. Today, Lairai’s Zatra (annual festival) and the Milagres Feast happen in their respective Goan villages within days of each other. As part of tradition, Lairai sends Milagres a kollso (pot) of oil. Milagres sends her an ojem (basket) of flowers. The sisters visit each other on the day of their respective festival. The date of Milagres Feast is set on the second Monday after Easter. The Hindu Lunar Calendar determines Lairai’s Zatra. If the Feast and Zatra fall on the same day, it is considered a bad omen since the sisters are unable to meet.
The cultural identity of such patterns today runs deep within the Goan psyche, but their origins belong to two worlds; their lineage can be claimed as much by the East as the West.
Colonialism means different things to different people and such differences persisted even among the colonials themselves. In his book An Imperial Vision, Thomas Metcalf elaborates on a lesser-known episode: In 1873, at the Society of Arts in India, British architect T. Roger Smith concluded his lecture by urging that “as our administration exhibits European justice, order... and honor.... so, our buildings ought to be European... as a distinctive symbol of our presence to be beheld with respect... by the natives of the country.” Architect William Emerson, who spoke next, contradicted him. The British should not carry a new style of architecture in India, he insisted. They should rather follow the example of those whom they had replaced as conquerors – the Mughals – who had adapted the local ways to their own needs. It was “impossible for an architecture of the West to be suitable to the natives of the East”, he argued.
Colonialism, in this sense, was a constant tension between the proclaimed imperialism of the conqueror and the resilience of the conquered, a theme that pervaded architecture as much as politics. We all know the monumental Viceroy’s Palace in New Delhi (Rashtrapati Bhavan) designed by the British architect Edwin Lutyens. But few know that the amalgamation of Indian motifs and Western classicism seen in this building were incorporated against the wishes of the architect. Lutyens despised Indian architecture and was against the idea of using any Indian motifs in his building. The Viceroy however insisted that the buildings should have a generally ‘Indian’ appearance, to symbolize the increasing role of Indians in government. But mindful of the strong dislike for Indian traditions among the British in India, he proposed an amalgam style as a tactical political negotiation.
There will always be contrasting readings to all colonial patterns. Some might see the manner colonial cities were located, as demonstrating an attitude of superiority towards the natives. The new ‘European city’ was not only different in its form, but also physically detached from the native habitat deemed unhygienic.
For example, New Delhi was planned and built as a City Beautiful model of radiating streets, physically disconnected from the medieval labyrinthine city of Shahjahanabad. A cordon sanitaire (hygienic zone) – whose width was determined by the maximum flying distance of a mosquito – clearly demarcated the two worlds.
The other reading, by contrast, might observe how colonial efforts never failed to respond to local climate, building materials and construction techniques, for both practical and political reasons. Colonial towns and their buildings reveal, upon a closer look, a sensitive and creative amalgamation of native spatial concepts and construction techniques found in neither world. The verandah of a colonial bungalow, the overhangs of a Goan tiled roof and the arcades of Delhi’s Connaught Place are all practical responses to the climate and context of the tropics. The impact of colonialism depends on the sector, be it economic or architectural, and the lens of prejudice and objectives through which a person perceives them.
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Portuguese colonial era dwellings in Goa. Note how a European architectural idiom has been adapted to a tropical moonson climate through window overhangs, arcades and deep porches | |
The more pertinent issue, therefore, is how we might re-read colonialism, not for what it used to be, but how it affects us today. In other words, how we might shift the emphasis on colonialism’s legacy, rather than its history.Many would argue that this legacy begins with the departure of the conquerors. In fact, barely four years after the British departed from India, the famous Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier was invited to design the city of Chandigarh, his largest ever project. He was given a mandate by India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to create an image that would suppress India’s colonial complex. But, as Indian architect Romi Khosla has suggested, the making of Chandigarh was in a sense an ‘Imperial Plan’ not too dissimilar from that of colonial New Delhi. Despite their protest, 24 villages and 9000 residents were displaced by an ambitious vision. The dictum for an unabashed Modernity, however well intentioned, was never subject to the litmus test of the native public.
Where does one draw the line between colonial memory and legacy and how should one choose to define and understand its heritage?
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Colonialism is a subjective terrain claimed differently by different generations. In the post-colonial world, as Vikramaditya Prakash notes, “to be interested in the institutions of the West, especially as they were practiced by the non-West, is to be interested in the interests of the non-West.” For post-colonial offspring, such as myself, colonialism suggests a complex relationship between culture and power that will always be part of my cultural lineage. If it is a tumultuous part of my history, then it is also a natural accompaniment of my cultural inheritance. I am immensely proud to be the grandson of an illustrious freedom fighter for Goa’s liberation. My grandfather’s actions were driven by what could be. Perhaps this is why I find conversations of what we have gained through cultural cohabitation, and what this means for our future, far more engaging than analyses of a colonial history. Goa today is a cultural hybrid of native Hindu culture mixed in so many ways with the culture of the Portuguese that ruled, lived and intermarried with us for 400 years. I need not apologies for this. I need not seek ways to ‘Goanise’ and ‘Indianise’ my colonial heritage. From the time I was born, and even before the first moment I recognized it, it was Goan and Indian to begin with.
(Acknowledgement: The author wishes to thank Paige Kemball Bharne for her critical comments and insights on this essay.)
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