India Discovered (25 page)

Rousselet was indulging in gallic overstatement, but Cole’s sober report of 1880 was no more reassuring. A concrete parade ground now stretched over the rubble to the left of the main gate.
The buildings on the right had been spared, but the first, the glorious Man Singh palace, was being used for the commissariat stores. Its two little courtyards, perhaps the most elegant of their kind, had been whitewashed and split up by hideous partitioning. Next door, in the Karan palace, the domed Bara-dari, so much admired by Babur, was being used as the mess, ‘I regret to report,’ wrote Cole,
‘that travellers have removed stone carvings, pieces of coloured tile work, and other fragmentary relics, whilst a few years ago whole columns were taken to adorn gardens in Morar [the barracks], and stones found their way to places even beyond.’

Fortunately Cole’s visit coincided with the first pangs of remorse. The British Resident was anxious to make amends and Major Keith of the Royal Scots
had been sent to restore what he could, working under Cole’s direction. With a grant of £100 from regimental funds, he had just rescued the Teli-ka-Mandir, a ninth-century temple of particular interest in that it failed to conform to any of Fergusson’s classifications. One thing about it, though, was certain: it was not meant to be a coffee shop. Major Keith found alternative premises for the regimental
elevenses, and set about clearing the place up.

At Cole’s suggestion, the temple’s precincts were turned into a rough and ready museum where all the statuary and carvings that still littered the fort could be collected together and protected. The most touching relic there is the gateway, a curious monument in that it was painstakingly constructed by Keith from the carved fragments of buildings
which fellow comrades-in-arms had destroyed only twenty years before. His penance also included clearing the Man Singh palace of the partitioning, carefully scrubbing off all the whitewash, and ensuring that no more of the beautiful tiling on the outer walls was removed. Six years later the British garrison was withdrawn from Gwalior, and the fort once again became the responsibility of the local
maharajah.

The tragedy of both Delhi and Gwalior was that their forts also contained their palaces; the British found it difficult, or simply inconvenient, to distinguish between the two. The same was true of Allahabad. Not only was the Ashoka pillar knocked down to make way for fortifications, but the fort’s most precious structure — the Pavilion of the Forty Pillars – was also demolished, ‘its
materials being wanted to repair the fortifications’. Another pillared building, also from Akbar’s reign and known as the Zenana Hall, was spared – only to be turned into an arsenal. The intervals between the pillars were bricked up and, in Fergusson’s day, ‘whatever could not be conveniently cut away is carefully covered up with plaster and whitewashed, and hid by stands of arms and deal fittings’.

And it was the same story at the Agra fort. There the magnificent Diwan-i-Am became the arsenal and ‘was reduced to as near a similarity as possible to those in our dockyards’. The Akbari Mahal became the prison, and the Salimgarh kiosk a canteen. At least one of the white marble pavilions facing the river – perhaps that from which the imprisoned Shah Jehan had gazed forlornly downriver to his
Taj Mahal – was commandeered as an officer’s quarters. With the marble and its delicate floral inlays liberally coated with whitewash, it was considered a house of elegant simplicity.

Sir John Strachey, Governor of the North-West Provinces in the 1870s, changed much of this. A plaque, discreetly sited in Shah Jehan’s palace and dated 1880, was set up by Lord Lytton to commemorate his conservation
work. It specifically mentions only the Taj Mahal, although Fergusson reports that his work was concentrated on the fort. Here the worst abuses were rectified, and the first tentative steps at restoration made.

Across the Jumna and somewhat upstream, lies the tomb of Itimad-ud-Daula, another gem of white marble and mosaics. In it Major Cole, who was more used to dealing with Indian squatters
than Europeans, found a party of British officers comfortably ensconced. True to type, they too had covered the walls – and especially the magnificent paintings – with regulation whitewash. Cole got them expelled, removed their various partitions and doors, and prepared the most elaborate diagrams to show how the paintings should be restored.

Whether the Taj Mahal was also the victim of such
tasteless and irreverent treatment is by no means as clear as one would expect. Lord Curzon, in bestowing upon India’s best known building the full weight of viceregal patronage, painted the most lurid picture of past transgressions. English picnickers had been known to ‘while away the afternoon by chipping out fragments of agate and cornelian from the cenotaphs of the emperor and his queen’. Drinking
parties were given in the gardens and balls on the marble terrace; the
jawab
to the east of the tomb (matching the mosque to the left) was rented out to honeymooners, and the minarets were much in demand for suicides. One can imagine the empty champagne bottles bobbing about in the fountains, an orchestra thumping away in the recessed
liwan,
and a lovelorn subaltern enjoying a cheroot on the tomb
of Shah Jehan.

No doubt there was some truth in all this. The gardens were certainly used for picnics and functions; that, after all, was what they were built for. Similarly the
jawab
was intended as accommodation for visitors. It was here that young Thomas Twining had stayed in the 1790s.

In the evening I walked about the noble terrace and luxuriant gardens of my charming residence, of which I seemed to be the master, for the
derwan
and his men, who had accompanied me from the outer gate, having returned to their post, I saw nobody belonging to the place except a few gardeners among the orange trees. I also rambled about every part of the Taje itself, enjoying a feast that seemed too great for me alone&. Nothing in architecture can well exceed the beauty of this structure viewed from my pavilion at the corner of the grand terrace.

The deep respect shown by Twining may be regarded as more representative than the acts of vandalism mentioned by Curzon. Moreover, this respect was more than matched by official concern for the fabric of the building. Even in the eighteenth century there were evidently arrangements for its maintenance. William Hodges mentioned that the revenue
of certain lands was set aside for the purpose; and another artist, Thomas Daniell, found the building ‘in very good repair’ in 1788, although the following year the cullice was struck down by lightning and the dome also received ‘material injury’.

As well as the earthquake which damaged the Qutb Minar, 1803 saw the capture of Agra by the British. The Taj must have suffered too, and it is probable
that the loosening of some of the marble sheets on the dome resulted from this convulsion. By 1810 the situation was serious enough for the Governor-General, Lord Amherst, to call for a report on ‘the nature and extent of the repairs which the Taj may require with a view to its being preserved in that perfect state which the reputation of the British government and a regard for the feelings
of the population demand’. The committee responsible was in being for fourteen years, and presumably made good the earthquake damage. Certainly Bishop Heber found both building and gardens ‘kept in excellent order by government’ in the 1820s. According to Emma Roberts, who visited Agra five years later, the bishop had been too ill to appreciate all its beauties; she thought Agra the loveliest city
in India and contrasted the considerable government expenditure on the Taj Mahal with the neglect of the city’s other monuments.

In 1838 Mrs Postans reported that the Taj ‘is a gem of too great value for the British government to lose, and a sum is set aside for the purposes of its repair and preservation’. A similar verdict was reached by the American, Bayard Taylor, in the 1850s: ‘the building
is perfect in every part. Any delapidations it may have suffered are so well restored that all trace of them has disappeared.’ And, perhaps most convincing of all, that severest of critics, James Fergusson, could find no fault with the official attitude to this
“chef d’oeuvre
of Shah Jehan’s reign’.

The Taje Mahal & has been fortunate in attracting the attention of the English, who have paid sedulous attention to it for sometime past, and keep it now, with its gardens, in a perfect state of substantial repair.

It is thus curious to find, in a recent work on the Taj, the assertion that it was woefully neglected in the nineteenth century, indeed all but dismantled. This startling accusation evidently stems from the notorious efforts of Lord Bentinck, Governor-General in the early
1830s and the patron of Macaulay, to balance the books of the Honourable East India Company. It is true that the marble floor of the bathroom in Shah Jehan’s palace in the Agra fort was dug up and auctioned. The bath itself had been removed by one of Bentinck’s predecessors, who intended it as a present for George IV. Bentinck thus vandalized an apartment that was already imperfect. Moreover, when
the auction proved a dismal failure, the idea of further sales was promptly dropped. But, even if it had been a success, it seems highly improbable that Bentinck would have turned his attentions to the Taj Mahal. And there is certainly no evidence that wrecking crews were already poised to commence operations. Insensitive and arrogant as they undoubtedly often were, the
sahibs
recognized that
what Kipling called ‘the ivory gate through which all dreams pass’ was in a class apart. They admired it unreservedly; indeed, loved it.

This could be said of no other building in India and by the 1890s, in spite of Fergusson’s fulminations, in spite of the valiant efforts of Cole and those of a few enlightened Governors like Strachey, India’s architectural heritage was a source of shame and
embarrassment. ‘The means, or rather want of means, taken for the preservation of India’s monuments must be a subject of frequent remark,’ warned the 1894 edition of Murray’s
Handbook for Travellers in India.
All too often the sporadic attempts at conservation, forced on the government by outside pressures, had been left to local Public Works Departments, whose efforts had frequently proved ‘seriously
injurious to the monuments’. Cunningham’s Archaeological Survey had been too academic, Cole’s Curatorship too short-lived and ill-funded; it was time to think again.

In 1899, Lord Curzon, the newly-arrived Viceroy, made a speech to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta in which he reviewed the government’s archaeological record in terms that must have gladdened the heart of every orientalist.

There have been periods of supineness as well as activity. There have been moments when it has been argued that the state had exhausted its duty, or that it possessed no duty at all. There have been persons who thought that, when all the chief monuments were indexed and classified, one might sit with folded arms and allow them slowly and gracefully to crumble into ruin. There have been others who argued that railways and irrigation did not leave a modest half lakh of rupees [£3750] per annum for the requisite establishment to supervise the most glorious galaxy of monuments in the world.

Before the year was out Curzon had submitted to London proposals for the reorganization of the almost defunct Archaeological Survey as an Archaeological Department under a Director-General. The responsibility
for the exploration, study and conservation of India’s monuments was now to be an imperial one as opposed to a provincial one; and the sum of at least £7500 was to be made available from central funds to supplement the contributions of the provincial authorities. The scheme was approved in 1901, and in 1902 John Hubert Marshall, a Cambridge graduate who had been taking part in the Minoan excavations
in Crete, arrived as the new Director-General. He was just twenty-six years old and he was to hold the post for twenty-six years.

A law for the protection of ancient monuments had to be drafted, the staff of the new department, including an increasing number of Indian scholars, recruited and trained, and the excavation of selected sites pursued and publicized. But the main preoccupation of both
Curzon and Marshall was to provide for a thorough, systematic and continuous scheme of conservation. An idea of the scope of the task can best be gained from what was actually achieved during the first five years.

In the south, the main problem was the vegetation. Numerous sites, including the vast spread of Vijayanagar, were cleared and opened up with paths and approach roads. The temples here,
as well as the Kailasanatha at Kanchipuram, were restored, although most of the Dravidian shrines were still in use and maintained by their own Brahmins. In western India, Curzon won the support of the Jains for the careful conservation of the Mount Abu temples, and in Bijapur, Ahmedabad and Burhanpur, structural repairs were made to many of the principal Mohammedan buildings. On the other side
of the country, the first serious attempt was made to rescue the site of Gaur from complete obliteration by the jungle; in Bhuvaneswar, those temples not still in use were repaired and protected. At Konarak, the Black Pagoda was treated to preserve it from the ill effects of sea salt. In the process of removing the rubble and sand from its base the famous sculpted wheels and horses were unexpectedly
uncovered. They confirmed that the temple must have been planned as a sun chariot. The wheels are some of the most intricately carved objects in the whole of India, and it was the massive strength of the horses that convinced Havell that the Indian sculptor could handle martial themes just as effectively as he could religious ones.

In central India the ruins of the Mohammedan cities of Dhar and
Mandu were opened up and partly restored. With the co-operation of the local rajah, Khajuraho’s temples were also overhauled and the jungle cut back. But central India was still largely in the hands of native rulers. The Archaeological Department could advise and prompt them, but the initiative and expense must be theirs. A now-famous site like Gwalior was well maintained; others, like Narwar,
received only scant attention.