Vaissnavi Shukl
I would be lying to myself if I did not admit to being disturbed, depressed and very distracted over the past few weeks. As some of you might know by now, I have been recording this podcast from India and my country has been hurting, burning and grieving as people gasp for oxygen, scramble to find injections and line up for ventilators outside overburdened hospitals. Overburdened, yes, but our healthcare system is not broken. I have been hearing ambulances zoom past my house every 25 minutes and to think that each siren represents a human life sends the chill down my spine.

The current COVID-crisis in India has raised a lot of questions regarding allocation of resources – medical resources, yes, but also economic and financial resources. As local governments and hospitals scramble to provide for the striking demand of oxygen cylinders, ventilators, remdesivir injections and vaccines, a large-scale urban project in the nation’s capital seems to be marching on. I’m talking about the Central Vista Project – a ₹20,000 crore or 2.8 billion dollar project that seeks the development or redevelopment of India’s Parliament, the Central Secretariat and the Central Vista, which is a three kilometer stretch that forms the ceremonial axis of New Delhi.

The juxtaposition of the Central Vista project over the ongoing public health crisis in the country has raised several questions regarding the relationship between political power and architecture. One is forced to confront questions like: what is this obsession with leaving a physical imprint on public memory in the form of architecture? How does right-wing nationalism prioritize public interests? As a nation in crisis, what do we spend on and at what cost? Whose voice gets heard and whose gets suppressed? Who makes the decision and who suffers the consequences?

Amidst everything going on in India and around me, I felt I could not do justice to being my jolly upbeat self and interview a guest. So, for today’s episode, I am going to read an excerpt from my master’s thesis that I completed at the Harvard Graduate School of Design – a year ago – in May 2020. Quite like right now, it was written during a time of isolation and despair. So here’s a piece from my dissertation titled Lotus Blooms and Fighter Jets : New Delhi’s Central Vista Project and the Architecture of National Identity.

My name is Vaissnavi Shukl and this is Architecture Off-Centre – a podcast where we highlight unconventional design practices and research projects that reflect the emerging discourses within the design discipline and beyond. Architecture Off-Centre features conversations with some exceptionally creative individuals who have extrapolated the traditional fields of architecture, planning, landscape and urban design.

It seems a truism that following drastic change in political regimes, the exercise of nation-building often manifests itself in the realm of architecture, which becomes a vehicle to express political supremacy and consolidation by summoning the creation of a ‘new’ national identity. Despite the underlying condition that ruling entities or elected parties move in and out of power, the urge to leave a physical imprint as a demonstration of political authority is a perennial factor. India is no stranger to this phenomenon. In the Mughal era (roughly from the 16th to 18th centuries), the Lal Qila or Red Fort housed the Diwan-i-Am (Hall of Audience) and Diwan-i-Khas (Hall of Private Audiences), which served as the fundamental governing instruments for emperor Shah Jahan and his successors. Later, during the British Raj (1858-1947), colonial architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker designed the Parliament House, which still today functions as the highest legislative body of the Republic of India comprising the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) and Lok Sabha (House of the People). And nation-building continued post-independence when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited Le Corbusier to design Chandigarh.

This thesis addresses some of the ways in which nation-building and architecture are intertwined in India today. I take as my subject the on-going, controversial, and much-publicized Central Vista Project in New Delhi, which was commissioned by the Government of India’s Central Public Works Department in September 2019. The project described in the Request For Proposals (RFP), invited architects to imagine the “Development / Redevelopment of Parliament Building, Common Central Secretariat and Central Vista,” that is, the three kilometre stretch that forms the ceremonial axis of the capital city of New Delhi. What is remarkable about the six video submissions to the competition is not only the exclusive participation of Indian design firms but, more than this, the pointed exploration of how contemporary architectural forms attempt to negotiate visual terms for national identity. From a central square unfurled like a lotus flower above which fighter jets zoom to a sustainable Parliament building with a porous steel structure and solar panels, these videos reflect an ideologically potent perception of Indian nationalism. While all submitted entries were not subjected to public scrutiny, the winning entry garnered tremendous attention. With news headlines ranging from “Modi’s Central Vista plan: The emperor’s new residence and a vanity project!” and “Central Vista project extension of BJP’s divisive agenda” to “Government first, citizen last: Delhi Central Vista plan turns democracy on its head”, the project has aroused interest and incited strong reactions from a diverse range of stakeholders.

The thesis aims to examine these proposals in light of current political movements while undertaking a detailed analysis of the representational techniques and strategies adopted to express visions and ambitions for a new India. Particular focus is placed on the six video presentations, including that of the winning firm HCP. By bringing to the forefront the formal solutions expressed in filmic terms as part of a state-sponsored competition, I seek to explore the complex nexus of the colonial past, official architecture, national identity, and the moving image. The driving questions here are: How do the politics of re-envisioning national identity enter into contemporary architectural production? More specifically, when the foundational ideologies of India’s ruling party are focused on promulgating Hindu nationalism, how does this influence spatial conceptions and the representational qualities of built forms? What, in the end, does this tell us about the ease with which contemporary design adapts to changing ideological premises and offers the semblance of fixity to what is in reality always subject to the volatile rhythms of regime change?

The secular brief for the Central Vista project, which is described in a seemingly straightforward way in the Notice, solicited a wide range of proposals; some were convoluted, politically charged, and immersed in ethnic and cultural polemics, whereas others were pragmatic, technologically driven, and seemingly disinterested in political propaganda. Yet as the urban planner Lawrence Vale has pointed out,

Though many urban designers and architects often seem to regard good design as somehow independent from social and political factors affecting its production and use, design efforts are influenced by politics in at least two important ways. First, architectural and urban design proposals may be subject to challenge by a variety of groups during the planning process. Second, political values, whether tacit or explicit, are encoded in the resultant designs.

Both of these aspects are found throughout the proposals for the Central Vista project, and this thesis has sought specifically to address Vale’s call to explore the six proposals as a “tacit or explicit” reflection of political values through architectural and urban form. Moreover, the Central Vista project offers itself as a testimony to the complex nexus of contemporary architecture and planning, political power, and national identity, all of which are deeply rooted in the already complicated colonial past. This entanglement brings to light the various scales at which a new national identity is conceived; from the macrocosm of urban planning to the microcosm of elements like fountains and lattices, the creation of a new visual image is not restricted by the extents of size, shape, colour, or form.

To return in closing to Vale’s first point concerning the planning process, it is important to highlight the current status of the Central Vista project, which has been harshly criticised for multiple reasons. Among them: first, the polarising nature of its patron Prime Minister Modi, whose Hindu nationalism leaves its stamp on most of the submissions; second, the seemingly biassed choice of HCP as the winning firm, which had already worked with Modi in Gujarat; third, the lack of transparency in the selection process; fourth, as the proposals were circulated in the media, the inflated project costs, which left urban stakeholders out of the picture; and fifth, the environmental concerns resulting from imminent construction. The Central Vista project continues to come under fire even at present moment, when most of the world has come to a standstill. As India is under a strict curfew owing the coronavirus pandemic, headlines such as “India is Locked Down for COVID-19 But Modi Govt Presses Ahead With Central Vista Project” attest to the political power and its control over what is prioritised in the midst of a global emergency and economic crisis. As Vale has summed it up, Architecture helps to reveal who matters in a complex and plural society. It is the setting through which we express ideals like democracy, or freedom, or other kinds of national values, and this colours the way the citizen sees and perceives the government. For better or worse, our buildings serve as stand-ins for those that govern us.
In the end, projects such as the Central Vista underscore the agency of architecture for “those that govern us”—and how, misleading or not, design itself can construe the image of the nation.

Special thanks to Kahaan Shah for the background score. For guests and topic suggestions, you can get in touch with us through instagram or our website through our website archoffcentre.com, both of which are ‘archoffcentre’. And thank you for listening.