by John Keay
CHAPTER TEN
A Subject of Frequent Remark
Sixty miles west of Datia and Gwalior, the long hill fortress of Narwar rises in shaggy scarps above scrubland. A neat white village nestles against its flank, from whence a broad path, paved with slabs of red sandstone, winds up the hill. The steps are shallow enough for cavalry to clatter up and down, and the cusped gateway at the top is big enough to admit an elephant. Today, only one leaf of the great studded door remains, leaning out precariously from a single hinge. The stately flight of steps beyond is spattered with cow dung, and vegetation sprouts from every crack in the stonework. To left and right on the level summit a scene of bewildering devastation unfolds. Trees grow through the masonry of nameless halls, their roots lifting the stone floors. A row of pillars leans sideways, like dominoes frozen in fall. In the prickly undergrowth a hole, no bigger than a rabbit’s, reveals vaulted chambers black with bats. And in a sun-filled pavilion projecting out from the cliff-top, where the last of the mirror-work mosaic is flaking from the stucco, herdsmen bivouac amongst their flocks, the smoke of their fire blackening the painted ceiling, fragments of mirror-work crunching underfoot.
Narwar was a Rajput palace in the sixteenth century, and became one of the six great strongholds of the Moghuls in the seventeenth. It reverted to the Rajputs in the eighteenth, and was still in use at the end of the century. But by the time Cunningham visited it in 1864, it was deserted, with the vegetation already in control. Today, its interest lies in the fact that nothing much has ever been done to preserve it: it remains much as it was 100 years ago. Real ruins, those that have escaped the attentions of the archaeologist and the conservationist, have a special appeal. The past seems to cling more closely to them. At Narwar nature, and not tourism, has taken over. Lizards scuttle across the white marble of the royal bathrooms, and a vulture poses, wings draped, on the highest cupola. Here, away from the manicured lawns and the two rupees admission charge, one senses the romantic beauty of sheer desolation and the very real excitement of archaeological discovery.
In the nineteenth century the neglected state of sites like Narwar was the rule rather than the exception. Thomas Twining, the young man who was privileged to dine with Sir William and Lady Jones in Calcutta, visited Agra and Delhi in the 1790s.
As we advanced [into Delhi] the ruins became more thickly scattered around us, and at length covered the country on every side as far as the eye could see. Houses, palaces, tombs, in different stages of delapidation, composed the striking scene. The desert we had passed was cheerful compared with the view of desolation now before us. After traversing ruined streets without a single inhabitant for a mile, I saw a large mausoleum at a short distance on our right. I made my way over the ruins towards it with a few of my soldiers, leaving the rest of my people on the road. Dismounting and ascending some steps, I came upon a large square terrace flanked with minarets, and having in the centre a beautiful mausoleum surmounted by an elegant dome of white marble. I had seen nothing so beautiful except the Taje Mehal. It was in vain to look about for someone to gratify my curiosity. The once most populous and splendid city of the East now afforded no human being to inform me what king or prince had received this costly sepulchre&. But the name of ‘Humayun’ in Persian letters of black marble, which chance or respect had preserved untouched, made it probable that this was the tomb of this excellent monarch.
It was indeed the tomb of Humayun, son of Babur and second of the Great Moghuls. But so little cherished was this masterpiece of Moghul architecture, then only 300 years old, that even its identity had become a matter of conjecture.
Within a decade of Twining’s visit the British were established in Delhi. This in itself was no guarantee of a more enlightened policy towards ancient monuments. But the Islamic monuments of Agra and Delhi were safe enough from the terrible depredations of the railway contractors. Their varying fortunes in the nineteenth century had far more to do with swings in official policy.
At first the British Resident and his staff in Delhi were much in awe of their surroundings. The ruins of all those old Delhis-Indraprastha, the Qutb, Tughlakabad, Ferozabad – were poignant reminders of the transitory nature of dominion. Even in Shahjehanabad (the Old Delhi of today) the signs of decay were already there. A Moghul emperor still lived in the Red Fort, the court ritual was still minutely observed. But the reality of power and the sources of wealth had passed away. The imperial treasury was being milked by several hundred dependent relatives and favourites; the palace itself was becoming a shanty town for all these scroungers. In 1825 Bishop Heber found the Diwan-i-Am, the colonnaded audience hall, choked with lumber, and the imperial throne so deep in pigeon droppings that its mosaics were scarcely visible. Pipal trees were sprouting from the walls of the little Pearl Mosque and in the Diwan-i-Khas, or private audience chamber, half the precious stones in the floral inlays had been prised from their white marble setting. ‘All was desolate, dirty and forlorn’, and in the formal gardens ‘the bath and fountain were dry, the inlaid pavement hid with lumber and gardener’s sweepings, and the walls stained with the dung of birds and bats’.
The Bishop’s next port of call was Agra. As he approached the city he passed by the massive tomb of Akbar at Sikandra, ‘the most splendid building in its way that I have seen in India’. Unlike the other Moghul tombs, Akbar’s has no central dome and consists of five diminishing storeys bristling with little domed chattris. Fergusson, pursuing his theory that Akbar alone adopted Indian architectural styles, would suggest that it derived from the lay-out of a Buddhist monastery. Its other distinguishing feature is a colossal gateway with towering minarets at each of its four corners. According to Twining the top sections of all these minarets had snapped off ‘having been struck and thrown down by lightning’; but by the time of Heber’s visit money had been granted for repairs and an officer of Engineers was already on site.
The 1820s saw the first spurt of energy in this direction, and in Delhi, too, efforts were being made to restore some of the more important buildings. As Garrison Engineer between 1822 and 1830, Major Robert Smith was the man chiefly responsible. He was an artist of repute and a great admirer of Moghul architecture. One of his first assignments was to repair the Jama Masjid, the great mosque built by Shah Jehan. Its skyline is one of the most dramatic in India and it was the massive dome that, according to a contemporary, most needed Smith’s services.
The dome had several trees growing out of the joinings in the stones, and parts of the back wall had fallen down, and had been taken away by some heathen Hindoo to make himself a tenement; this part was also repaired. Major Smith is particularly well qualified for the charge of restoring such magnificent relics of art, as much by his exquisite judgement and taste in the style of the works, as his acknowledged professional talents, which place him amongst the foremost of his compeers.
No doubt emboldened by this success, Smith moved on to the Qutb Minar. But here, inexplicably, that ‘exquisite taste and judgement’ seemed to desert him. In 1803 the building had been seriously damaged by an earthquake: some of the balustrades were shaken loose, the main doorway collapsed and, worst of all, the crowning cupola fell off. Smith’s job, as well as clearing and landscaping the whole site, was to make good this damage. A sketch that had appeared in an early number of the Asiatic Society’s Journal purported to show the original cupola; Smith rejected this as too much like ‘a large stone harp’. Instead, he produced his own design – an octagonal stone pavilion, above the dome of which there was to be a smaller wooden cupola and on top of this a short flagstaff.
The work had barely started when Bishop Heber visited the site and delivered his oft quoted dictum ‘These Pathans built like giants and finished their work like jewellers.’ (He was wrong of course: the builders of the Qutb were not Pathans; the giants were Turks and the jewellers Indians.) But by 1829 Smith’s work was finished and was immediately greeted by a storm of protest. ‘A silly ornament like a parachute, which adds nothing to t
he beauty of the structure,’ thought one observer. According to another, the pavilion made the whole thing look top heavy and the wooden cupola was like ‘an umbrella of Chinese form’. The Governor-General was more upset about the flagstaff, ‘an innovation which whether viewed as a matter of taste, or with reference to the feelings of the Moghul court or population of Delhi, has little to recommend it’.
Smith hit back. The emperor liked the flagstaff, especially since his own flag was flown from it. As for the pavilion, there was no telling precisely what the original had looked like. Moreover, the whole tower was a hotch-potch of inconsistencies, having been built by three different sovereigns and already extensively repaired. His design for the pavilion and cupola was wholly authentic – very similar to the decorative arrangements found on the roof of the nearby tomb of Safdar Jang.
This explanation can have convinced no one. The tomb of Safdar Jang is generally cited as a good example of what happened to the Moghul style when it went to seed. Ornate, florid even, and of a particularly sickening colour of sandstone (‘too much the colour of potted meat’, thought Bishop Heber), it was an odd model on which to base the restoration of one of the earliest and most admired examples of Islamic architecture.
Perhaps to spare Smith’s feelings, no official action was taken; but the wooden cupola was not to last long. ‘The lightning struck it off, as if indignant at the profanation.’ It was not restored, and in the 1840s, with Smith gone to England, the stone pavilion was quietly moved to the gardens, as a summer-house.
Alexander Cunningham first visited the site in 1839, after the wooden cupola had fallen but while the stone pavilion yet remained. ‘The balustrades of the balconies and the plain slight building on the top of the pillar do not harmonize with the massive and richly ornamented Pathan architecture,’ he noted in his diary. He thought Smith’s repairs were admirably executed, but the restorations were lamentable. It was not only the crowning pavilion that was wrong. Smith had also added balustrades where they were missing and had redesigned the fallen entrance. He should simply have repaired the original entrance but, in his own words, he had ‘improved it with new mouldings, frieze and repair of the inscription tablet’. The result, about which Fergusson and Cunningham were for once in complete agreement, could best be described as ‘in the true style of Strawberry Hill Gothic’. The flimsy balustrades were ‘an even greater eyesore, as they form a permanent part in every view of the building’. Cunningham recommended that they be replaced with something more in the massive style of the Tughlakabad battlements. Smith’s balustrades might then be ‘sold with advantage in Delhi as they belong to the flimsy style of garden-house architecture of the present day’.
Much more successful was Smith’s landscaping of the whole site. The Qutb, like so many of India’s monuments, was being ransacked by curio hunters and taken over by squatters. Clapboard hovels and hessian lean-tos buttressed the walls of the great mosque; occasional visitors filed off specimens of the iron pillar and made off with the broken capitals. By clearing the whole site, laying out lawns, and providing for gardeners and caretakers, Smith anticipated the work of the twentieth-century Archaeological Department.
His success can be measured by the decision of the Resident, Sir Thomas Metcalfe, to establish his country residence beside the gardens. For the purpose, Metcalfe conceived the macabre idea of adapting an old Mohammedan tomb, leaving the ground floor with its sepulchre untouched, but converting the next floor and verandah into living apartments, and the grand hall beneath the inevitable dome into a dining room. From this bizarre mansion his daughter would escape into the Qutb itself.
The grounds on which the pillar and ruins stood had been laid out & as a beautiful garden and the place was kept scrupulously clean and in excellent repair&. Many a time have I, with Colonel Richard Lawrence, taken a basket of oranges to the top of the Qutb pillar to indulge in a feast in that seclusion, but we were careful to bring down all the peel etc. as nothing disorderly was allowed within the precincts of those beautiful ruins and buildings.
Robert Smith’s other works included some repairs to Shah Jehan’s Red Fort. Besides the imperial apartments and the halls of audience, so vividly described by Heber, the fort included a small garrison of troops nominally under the command of the emperor, but recruited and commanded by a British officer. For their protection, and because the place was still considered to be of strategic value, Smith was ordered to repair the walls and to clear the ground in front of them, a task which he apparently carried out with an admirable mixture of military zeal and architectural sensitivity. Otherwise little was done to what Fergusson called ‘the most magnificent palace in the East, perhaps in the world’. With the emperor and his entourage still in residence, it was not directly a British responsibility. In the 1830s the first great blast of British vandalism, fired by Macaulay’s rhetoric and fanned by financial retrenchment, left the palace untouched. The emperor was refused the pension he thought necessary for the maintenance of the buildings but there was no attempt, as at Agra, to sell off their assets.
The second wave of anti-Indian vandalism came with the Mutiny of 1857. This time neither Delhi, the scene of British carnage and Indian resistance, nor the emperor, considered one of the leading conspirators, was spared. The ransacking of the city when it finally fell, the looting of the imperial palaces, and the desecration of the mosques, form one of the blackest chapters in the history of Anglo-Indian relations. A proposal to raze the whole of Old Delhi was eventually rejected, but within the Red Fort only ‘isolated buildings of architectural or historical interest’ were preserved. About half the entire complex, including the extensive zenana quarters and the beautiful colonnaded gardens, were simply blown up and replanned as barracks.
The excuse for this deliberate act of vandalism [wrote Fergusson] was, of course, the military one, that it was necessary to place the garrison of Delhi in security in the event of any sudden emergency. Had it been correct it would have been a valid one, but this is not the case&. The truth of the matter appears to be this; the engineers perceived that by gutting the place they could provide at no trouble or expense a wall round their barrack-yard, and one which no drunken soldier could scale without detection, and for this, or some such wretched motive of economy, the palace was sacrificed! The only modern act to be compared with this is the destruction of the summer palace at Peking. That, however, was an act of red-handed war, and may have been a political necessity. This was a deliberate act of unnecessary vandalism – most discreditable to all concerned in it.
Even the few architectural gems which were officially reprieved were not exempted from the attentions of looters and prize-agents. The white marble Diwan-i-Khas had already been deprived of the Peacock Throne by the Persian, Nadir Shah, in 1839, of its silver ceiling by the Marathas in 1760, and of much of its jewelled inlay by thieves, according to Heber. Now the kiosks of the four corners of the roof were stripped of their copper-gilt plating by a prize-agent who claimed that they were movable property. The marble paving in front of the building, and the colonnade that surrounded it, went the same way.
In the Diwan-i-Am, the inlaid panels behind the imperial throne were unique. They were of black marble and, since the central panel portrayed Orpheus and a group of animals, almost certainly the work of a European. Fierce must have been the competition to secure such gems. Captain (later Sir) John Jones was evidently first off the mark and, having prised the precious panels off the wall, had what Fergusson sarcastically called ‘the happy idea’ of setting his loot in marble surrounds as table tops. Two of these he brought back to England and then sold to the government for a not inconsiderable £500; they went on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Meanwhile the Diwan-i-Am itself was turned into a military hospital. As further proof that the fort was now to be regarded solely as a military installation, the ground outside the walls was cleared to a distance of 500 yards. No doubt this action was prompted by memories of the siege of Lucknow; wi
th a field of fire extending to 500 yards, a besieged garrison should be safe from snipers and sappers. How many buildings were thus demolished it is impossible to say; but the compensation paid out amounted to a staggering £90,000. At least one mosque disappeared; but then mosques were in a separate category. The more sacred a building, the more eligible it was for reprisal. Various ideas were entertained about the most suitable fate for the Jama Masjid. Some thought it should be blown up, others that it should be sold or converted into a barracks. A more ingenious idea was to turn it into a hall of remembrance for the victims of the Mutiny; the paving stones of the great courtyard were to be inscribed with the names of all the Mutiny martyrs (British only, of course). But luckily no decision was reached. Five years later passions had died down sufficiently for it to be quietly returned to the Mohammedans of Delhi.
Other mosques had to wait considerably longer. The Fatehpuri Masjid remained in the hands of the unbelievers till the 1870s and the Zinat-ul-Masjid, after a chequered career as a private house and a military bakery, was eventually returned to its congregation by Lord Curzon in 1903. Curzon also managed to restore the gardens of the Red Fort and to get back the black marble table tops from the V & A. With the help of drawings prepared by Major H. H. Cole in the 1880s, and using the services of a specially commissioned Italian mosaicist, the panels were restored to their original position in the Diwan-i-Am in 1909. Cole would have been delighted, for it was he, above all others, who first brought the deplorable state of the palace buildings to official attention. The ceiling of the Diwan-i-Khas was as much a scandal as the missing marbles of the Diwan-i-Am. In honour of a visit by the Prince of Wales it had been ‘repainted in black, red and gold instead of the original pattern and the central rose converted into a sort of starved starfish, the effect being extremely harsh and glaring’. Cole restored the original reds, blues and greens on a gold background and did away with the starfish.