In 1947, India gained independence, a period marked by the construction of many landmark structures. These buildings demonstrated the strength of architecture in nation-building and continue to shape how we perceive Indian architectural identity today. 78 years later, India continues to create structures that define its global presence. However, the ideological foundations guiding these structures appear to be shifting. We transitioned from colonial pressure to globalisation, and now public buildings are advancing singular agendas that supersede globalisation itself.
Designers, clients, and audiences have normalised a cynical contemporary principle of “Form follows Profit,” forgetting in the process that one person’s profit is always another’s loss. The loss here is the erasure of culture and heritage in pursuit of deliberate reconstruction of national beliefs.
Notable urban interventions realised during cultural and moral movements become the building blocks of a nation’s mental map. So what is Indian architecture? And why is it important to search for Indianness in contemporary Indian structures? A prerequisite to this is understanding India’s jewel of a history and the very concept of architecture.
Architecture, at its core, is an art form, and art reflects reality; a reality woven with cultural nuances, political influences, contextual challenges, socio-economic conditions, and frugal resources. In the Indian context, built forms in the coastal south must respond to monsoons and humidity, just as a structure in the western desert must work with abundant stone and arid landscapes; this alignment with context moulds architecture into a cohesive entity. Architecture in India reflects a rich history, incorporating diverse architectural traditions shaped by the many cultures and communities it has housed. Such diversity resists any simplification of Indian architecture to a single aesthetic or collection of motifs; every culture and region it has incorporated, even coercively, has influenced its identity.
The Indian built environment has undergone iterations over several millennia, but throughout the 20th century and into the present, there has been an ongoing search for contemporary Indian identity. This search yielded many architectural styles: Neo-Vernacular, Modern Indian Vernacular, Indo-Deco and some named satirically, such as Bania-Gothic and Anglo-Indian Rococo, as coined by Gautam Bhatia in his book Punjabi Baroque.
But the core issue is a conceptual dilemma: how to define Indian architecture in a global context and determine what makes it essentially “Indian.” The search for Indianness is partly driven by contemporary debates about identity and partly by visible architectural interventions that seem disconnected from India’s design heritage.
Beyond context and culture, architecture also has a prominent (and notorious) connection to social power and politics. Post-independence India aptly demonstrates the link between architecture and political influence. When Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister and a visionary political leader, envisioned a new India emerging from colonial rule, he turned to architecture as a tool of modernisation and nation-building. He understood architecture’s symbolic significance and commissioned Chandigarh, a modernist city designed by Le Corbusier, to represent India’s break from colonial traditions and embrace of technological progress.
A sudden need emerged for creatives who could spearhead the project of building national identity through architecture. This created opportunities for Perin J. Mistri, Eulie Chowdhury, Gira Sarabhai, Charles Correa, and their contemporaries to shape the nation through their expertise. They gave us iconic structures worthy of sustained cultural appreciation.
The transition from that hopeful post-independence era to today’s architectural landscape reveals a troubling shift. Since then, rather than building on the strengths of newly independent India, the nation’s public architecture has been quietly falling prey to ethno-nationalistic campaigns, resulting in cultural malaise.
In recent years, a long-dormant debate over whether Indian architecture should embrace tradition or modernity has repeatedly resurfaced in several key urban projects that define Indian identity globally: the demolition of Raj Rewal’s Hall of Nations, the Pragati Maidan redevelopment, the Central Vista redevelopment, and the demolition of SVP Stadium, part of a broader pattern of demolition and mediocre reconstruction of many such significant structures labelled as “modern”.
The issue reached a critical point recently when Rajesh Advani, writing for The Indian Express, opined on the proposed design for the Bombay High Court Complex, stirring the design community once again. His viewpoint reignited widespread concern among architects about the essence of Indian public architecture. Common speculation about this project focused not on the whopping budget, but on its architectural language and the dialogue it projected with the public. Questions loomed large: Is it Indian enough? Does architecture remain captive to a colonial aesthetic, even after 78 years of independence?
Yet these schisms between tradition and modernity, colonial and Indian, have always carried an urgent subtext: are nationalist agendas the foundation of these designs?
The pioneering Indian architects who defined Indian architecture after independence offer valuable insights into what Indianness meant for them. Perin J. Mistri (1913-1989), the first professionally qualified female architect in India, held progressive architectural viewpoints that integrated modernism with Indian traditions. She was said to champion “new architecture” from a woman’s perspective. Mistri’s views reflected a pragmatic modernism that did not refuse Indian architectural traditions but integrated traditional climate-responsive elements with modern construction methods and aesthetics. This ideology seemed to be mirrored in Urmila Eulie Chowdhury’s (1923-1995) principles. She favoured brick over concrete (despite Le Corbusier’s influence), designed furniture scaled to Indian bodies, and created buildings responsive to local climate and construction practices, rejecting purely imported European styles.
Achyut Kanvinde (1916-2002) observed that Indian architectural expression was confused, lacking clear thinking. He was critical of both extremes: architects who merely decorated concrete buildings with plaster copies of temple and mosque architecture in the name of tradition and nationalism, and those who blindly copied modern buildings from Northern European countries.
In an interview with M. N. Ashish Ganju, by Verendra Wakhloo, he mentioned,
“In India, the search for a new architectural expression must continue—and this must go beyond the satisfaction of matter-of-fact functional needs.”
And B. V. Doshi (1927-2023) considered India as a porous entity with multiple paradoxes and ultimately developed what sources describe as his own language of architecture, forging design sensibilities inherent to India’s climate and conditions, creating a genuine synthesis that addressed Indian needs, culture, and context while embracing the spatial and structural possibilities of modern architecture.
Post-independence creative leaders, though often mentored with strong Western influences, sought to incorporate Indian design elements. So what changed after all these years? How did the creative force’s focus change from inherent patriotism to commercialism?
Pressure to break from colonial influence drove the post-independence decades. Today’s designers, unburdened by that struggle, hold distinct perspectives on Indian identity in architecture.
Bhatia has written significantly about Indian design and identity through his extensive body of work. On how the contemporary question of Indianness arose, Gautam Bhatia remarks,
“I don’t think Indianness ever existed as an imaginative or independent idea. Only when foreign influences came in – such as the Colonial, or the Modern – that Indian became a self-conscious identity”.
Anisha Shekhar Mukherji, drawing upon her more than two decades of experience in architectural research, teaching, and practice, emphasises,
“To reclaim our identity, we will need to shrug off the brain-washing that makes us constantly look to the Western world, and which classifies our indigenous systems as ‘less-developed’, ‘less-attractive’ and ‘backward’. This does not mean that we unquestioningly accept these systems, but that we analyse them, and find for ourselves what is most relevant in them. Such a process of self-realization will lead to self-reliance in sync with our times.”
Architect and academician Rupali Gupte, in a paper by her, Rahul Mehrotra, and Prasad Shetty, notes that, instead of viewing Indian architecture through a simple global-versus-local lens, a deeper analysis reveals multiple, fluid identities that continuously evolve. Contemporary Indian architecture negotiates complex cultural terrain, creating simultaneous overlapping identities. This approach, showcasing changes in societal aspirations, offers a crisp understanding of the relationship between architecture and Indian identity, rather than reducing it to purely “global” or “local” categories. Embracing this pluralistic view captures India’s true architectural identity.
While Aneesha Dharwadker, architect and Founder of Chicago Design Office, says,
“I think contemporary Indian architects are participating in the creation of a ‘warm’ modernism that engages India’s long cultural history without falling into a trap of mimicry. We see quotidian elements like the verandah, jaali, window, stair, and courtyard being re-articulated in new construction projects, for instance. But, Indianness in architecture has been a collage of movements like Dravidian, Islamic, Colonial, Post-Independence Modernism, etc. None of them can be ignored in the longer lineage of Indian architectural identity.”
Aneesha’s perception of Indianness is of a collage of India’s rich history, and she hopes that a sensitivity to the human scale defines future Indian architecture.
In my research and conversations with numerous architects, examining perspectives from the past century, it is evident that architecture in India encompasses diverse and equally significant traits and that Indian architecture essentially reflects the nation’s cultural diversity. It is by default self-reliant, always responding to its context and climate. Indianness manifests in myriad ways: whether as a collage of its history, a definition through its characteristics (lakshanas) rather than a single aesthetic, a productive tension between global and local paradigms, or as a symbol of freedom from colonial constraints.
Acceptance of this Indianness then throws light on the practice of architectural propaganda through immoral intent for political gain. That urgent subtext is gradually becoming crystal-clear. The objectives behind the modern structures require further questioning.
The critical question may not be about defining Indianness, but about its future trajectory and what it should NOT evolve into.
Echoing Achyut Kanvinde’s words, in India, the search for a new architectural expression must continue, for the answer to this search reveals more than what meets the eye. Architecture should refuse to serve single-minded agendas; instead, it should interrogate the ethical and moral foundations of these agendas. Indian architecture does not need ethnonationalism disguised as Swadeshi consciousness.
We stand 22 years from the first century of independence, and within that span, we have regressed from priding on our rich cultural heritage to embracing single-minded practices. As India continues to build its future, a crucial question arises: will contemporary architecture break free from the shackles of false dichotomy between colonialism and nationalism?
References:
- Jawaharlal Nehru on building a New India
- Dystopia’s Ghost
- Where is swadeshi architecture in Atmanirbhar Bharat?
- India’s first woman architect – a tribute to Perin J. Mistri – Art Deco
- Standing Out: Remembering Eulie Chowdhury
- Achyut P. Kanvinde – an interview with M.N. Ashish Ganju
- “Breaking the Barriers” _ A lecture by 2018 Pritzker Architecture Award Laureate, B V Doshi
- 722 Gautam Bhatia, Without architecture
- Is there something called ‘Indian Design’?
- Architecture & Contemporary Indian Identity | BARD Studio
