India Discovered (24 page)

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; with 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.

Although designated Curator of Ancient Monuments,
Cole, like Cunningham, was not directly responsible for conservation. His job, which lasted only four years, was simply to report on what needed doing and to encourage the local Public Works Departments to get on with it. Their co-operation could not always be counted on, and it is notable that his two major successes were at places where no such department existed. One was Sanchi, the other
Gwalior.

Two hundred miles south of Delhi, and commanding the traditional route to the western sea-ports and the Deccan, Gwalior is all that a great natural fortress should be. It towers 300 feet above the plains with castellated walls that march along the contours and merge into the sheer rock faces. Palaces teeter on the brink of the abyss and massive gateways command the only points of access.
For as long as history, this has been a place of immense strategic importance, and it was probably fought over more than any other hill on the subcontinent: since the thirteenth century it has changed hands more than twenty times and by the British alone it was stormed three times. Scattered about on the flat summit are Hindu temples, Jain caves, mosques and palaces, testimony to a long and unbroken
record of civilization. If ever there was a site that deserved preservation and invited research, this surely was it.

Yet when Cole arrived there in 1881, the place was still neither celebrated nor cared for. Only Cunningham had really examined it. In 1844, long before he started the Archaeological Survey, he undertook, at his own expense, some repairs to the larger of the two beautiful Sas-Bahu
temples.

I found the sanctum empty and desecrated, and the floor of the ante-chamber dug out to a depth of fifteen feet in search of treasure. This hole I filled up; and I afterwards propped up all the cracked beams, repaired the broken plinth, and added a flight of steps to the entrance, so that the temple is now accessible and secure, and likely to last for several centuries.

This probably
saved the structure of the building, although it remained for Cole to rediscover its sculptures beneath the smothering of plaster administered by some zealous Mohammedan.

Gwalior was both beautified and desecrated by the Mohammedans. Jehangir and Shah Jehan added palaces to those of the previous Rajput owners, but their ancestor, Babur, was the man responsible for disfiguring the Jain statues.
Admittedly, the full frontal nudity and colossal dimensions of these rock-hewn figures positively invited the attention of iconoclasts. On the other hand, they proved fully a match for the most zealous hammer and chisel: Babur had to rest content with removing more than a hundred sets of genitalia plus a mixed bag of noses, toes and ears.

No doubt the pounding of cannon during successive sieges
also took its toll of the fort’s antiquities. But it was the brief period during which British troops occupied the place that inspired Fergusson to deliver one of his most damning attacks.

We have ruthlessly set to work to destroy whatever interferes with our convenience, and during the few years we have occupied the fort, have probably done more to disfigure its beauties and obliterate its memories, than was caused by the Mohammedans during the centuries they possessed or occupied it. Better things were at one time hoped for, but the fact seems to be, the ruling powers have no real heart in the matter, and subordinates are allowed to do as they please, and if they can save money, or themselves trouble, there is nothing in India that can escape the effect of their unsympathetic ignorance.

Gwalior’s misfortune was the same as Delhi’s: it was taken over by the mutineers in 1857 and its guns were turned upon the British. Its fate, too, was the same – the billeting of a garrison in its palaces and the establishment of a large barracks at the foot of the fortress.

For his information, Fergusson relied heavily on the French traveller, Louis Rousselet, who visited the fort in the 1860s.

The English [wrote Rousselet] are busily employed reducing the need for archaeology and obliterating this precious source of Indian history. Already all the buildings to the left of the east gate have been reduced to rubble and the same fate is reserved for the rest & even for the Jain sculptures. When I returned in December 1867, the trees had been cut down, the statues shattered by workmen’s picks, and the ravine filled with rubble for a new road being built by the English – rubble in which lay the palaces of the Tomars and the Chandelas [Rajput clans], the idols of the Buddhists and the Jains.