1 00:00:00,570 --> 00:00:07,650 So thank you so. What I want to do today is. 2 00:00:07,650 --> 00:00:20,430 Give you a glimpse of some of the things that I've been thinking about in the light of a long debate that is still going on and has not abated on. 3 00:00:20,430 --> 00:00:22,050 You know, the debate between, you know, 4 00:00:22,050 --> 00:00:32,460 what is a sacred structure which should be put up and what does it mean about India's sort of essential religious 5 00:00:32,460 --> 00:00:41,850 identity and birthplace of gods and so on and so forth that that idea is still very much political alive today. 6 00:00:41,850 --> 00:00:49,170 And I want to sort of use that as a way to think back and then go back and revisit one 7 00:00:49,170 --> 00:00:55,260 of the one or two ideas that I worked with in my book on the Ganges or the Ganga, 8 00:00:55,260 --> 00:01:00,360 which is the name of the book in the. In the Indian edition. 9 00:01:00,360 --> 00:01:13,410 I will use the word Ganges for now for for the sake of convenience, but you know, I have no particular malicious intent there. 10 00:01:13,410 --> 00:01:19,860 Am I the goddess, of course, is going up, but. 11 00:01:19,860 --> 00:01:25,860 So in my book, The Ganges, the many pasts of an Indian River, 12 00:01:25,860 --> 00:01:37,300 I look at the emergence of the the valley of the Gangetic Valley as a kind of an Indian version of a middle country. 13 00:01:37,300 --> 00:01:43,940 A historic political and symbolic landscape and. 14 00:01:43,940 --> 00:01:50,510 It has to do with the idea that, in fact, the so-called sort of Hindu pilgrimage, 15 00:01:50,510 --> 00:02:00,440 a set of sights along that river basin actually have a much deeper history of books, especially the legacy of Buddhism and Jainism. 16 00:02:00,440 --> 00:02:05,410 And then before that, in any number of. 17 00:02:05,410 --> 00:02:12,700 Animism, animistic and an indigenous coast that were sort of absorbed into many of these traditions 18 00:02:12,700 --> 00:02:24,160 and therefore arguing for a sort of true plurality and a sort of a mixed legacy of the space. 19 00:02:24,160 --> 00:02:30,340 So this middle country, a historic, political and symbolic sacred landscape, 20 00:02:30,340 --> 00:02:38,290 cannot be neatly folded into a sort of a unitary, monolithic Hinduism, which I think we all know. 21 00:02:38,290 --> 00:02:48,910 In fact, I argue in the book that that sexuality actually comes from things like long centuries of Buddhism and Jainism and things like that. 22 00:02:48,910 --> 00:03:01,270 But this river basins saw the rise and fall of kingdoms, empires, you know, the burgeoning and reigning of various forms of trade and pilgrimage, 23 00:03:01,270 --> 00:03:08,190 both from within and connected to outside of the the boundaries of the subcontinent. 24 00:03:08,190 --> 00:03:14,400 But they also talk in the book about how the space was fought over across centuries, 25 00:03:14,400 --> 00:03:25,150 that fight said witnessed building destruction, sacking looting of cities, markets, walls, forts and places of worship. 26 00:03:25,150 --> 00:03:33,790 And this long and embattled history of the passing of regimes and the transmission of objects, artefacts, structures. 27 00:03:33,790 --> 00:03:38,590 The ideas of conquest and the assimilation of defeated are politically humble tribes, 28 00:03:38,590 --> 00:03:48,860 kingdoms, empires, entire panorama and deep history of that legacy. 29 00:03:48,860 --> 00:03:56,720 Begs a central question about the entanglement of three objects of intellectual history that I think you might be interested in. 30 00:03:56,720 --> 00:04:08,300 I'm sure you are. One is, of course, the history of the political history of the sacred and the history of the temporal, and these are connected. 31 00:04:08,300 --> 00:04:11,000 In what ways do boss institutions practises, 32 00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:20,510 customs forms of religious beliefs persist or manifest their presence within the depths of all successive regimes, 33 00:04:20,510 --> 00:04:26,960 including in the Church of Mongol regimes that displaced previous regimes? 34 00:04:26,960 --> 00:04:42,110 And then, of course, the coming of British rule? How are stretches of time and folded within the temporal frames of the architectures of conquest? 35 00:04:42,110 --> 00:04:50,110 How does the epochal reckoning of history conjure up the ghosts of regimes past? 36 00:04:50,110 --> 00:04:57,490 And in what sense does, and this is where I borrow heavily from the historians of architectural spoiler. 37 00:04:57,490 --> 00:05:13,670 And what Sense does a spoliation and including ruins and remnants of monuments evoke the sense of both loss and possession of the past itself? 38 00:05:13,670 --> 00:05:21,990 So that is the opening gambit. Now, all historians are sporty and not just architectural historians. 39 00:05:21,990 --> 00:05:29,690 Wrestled with several questions. And again, at the risk of repetition, I would say. 40 00:05:29,690 --> 00:05:34,670 You know, they asked the question, how are figures, emblems, buildings, structures, 41 00:05:34,670 --> 00:05:42,770 architectural spaces, assimilated, incorporated, reused, memorialised or repatriated? 42 00:05:42,770 --> 00:05:48,570 When a new regime comes in. Especially after a war and conquest. 43 00:05:48,570 --> 00:05:56,670 And then, of course, how do we reckon for those historical traces, what are the terms of such reuse? 44 00:05:56,670 --> 00:06:01,530 Is it simply the reuse of materials from buildings destroyed or dismantled? 45 00:06:01,530 --> 00:06:11,610 And by the way, by this I implicate especially the various kingdoms of southern India, in fact, where much of this started. 46 00:06:11,610 --> 00:06:20,250 And in fact, in my book, I talk a lot about the assimilation of the iconography of the Gangetic Valley in the south and the the various fights between 47 00:06:20,250 --> 00:06:28,530 the older ones and the challenges and the challenges and the children's is it the reuse then of materials of buildings, 48 00:06:28,530 --> 00:06:34,380 temples destroyed or dismantled pillars, domes, lintels, murals or inscriptions? 49 00:06:34,380 --> 00:06:48,590 Or it is such appropriation a deeper reflection of the desire to consume, subsume and rehabilitate the aesthetic invisible presence of those regimes. 50 00:06:48,590 --> 00:07:00,050 Is it perhaps an oblique acknowledgement of the historical gravitas and character of the material past itself? 51 00:07:00,050 --> 00:07:05,960 Or and sometimes this is what historians especially also point to or hint at? 52 00:07:05,960 --> 00:07:16,340 Is it an Apple triptych gesture? The evil I do to ward off of male villains and curse of the vanquished and the slain? 53 00:07:16,340 --> 00:07:25,560 Is it a prophylactic measure? Like the circulation of the Sphinx image in ancient Greece. 54 00:07:25,560 --> 00:07:34,110 Do fall in pillars or defaced images involve a magical transubstantiation of their potency. 55 00:07:34,110 --> 00:07:37,080 Our selective acts of destabilisation, 56 00:07:37,080 --> 00:07:48,020 as in the stripping away of fragments of building the structure and attempt to put one's own mark on the past itself as a trophy. 57 00:07:48,020 --> 00:07:54,290 And many of these ideas are there in either directly or indirectly in architectural history. 58 00:07:54,290 --> 00:08:01,530 My task today here is to speculate from there to talk about history itself. 59 00:08:01,530 --> 00:08:10,530 Not what history tells us about spoiling, but what is polio and spoliation, tell us about history itself. 60 00:08:10,530 --> 00:08:15,150 Now, of course, one of the most common least commonly studied aspects of spoliation be study 61 00:08:15,150 --> 00:08:19,830 in India in the Indian history is the desecration and destruction of temples, 62 00:08:19,830 --> 00:08:24,630 the looting and recycling. First, you know, recycling them, 63 00:08:24,630 --> 00:08:31,110 the destruction of images and the display of trophies in the temples and battlements of conquering 64 00:08:31,110 --> 00:08:40,080 regimes sometimes and die cities became the objects of destabilisation such as Varanasi and canals, 65 00:08:40,080 --> 00:08:50,800 most famously Varanasi. And this often happened along the valley of the Ganges and in my book. 66 00:08:50,800 --> 00:08:57,460 I've tried to show how, in fact, Condones became the most invaded Indian city of all time. 67 00:08:57,460 --> 00:08:58,960 So much so that the architecture, 68 00:08:58,960 --> 00:09:13,930 the ruins of the place are sparse and a list of notable invaders of that city over centuries show a remarkable succession of marches and sieges. 69 00:09:13,930 --> 00:09:18,040 And by implication, the number of times the city must have been deserted, 70 00:09:18,040 --> 00:09:26,650 depopulated and rebuilt and rehabbed re inhabited at least 30 major times in 71 00:09:26,650 --> 00:09:31,570 13 major invasions that took place between the 7th and the 13th centuries. 72 00:09:31,570 --> 00:09:40,200 I think in my book, I even have a list with all the dates and details and classic textbook fashion. 73 00:09:40,200 --> 00:09:44,130 So, you know, this included the Gujarat pretty hard as the rush recruiters, 74 00:09:44,130 --> 00:09:52,070 the partners, the Chandlers, the first Navid's the god of valleys and the courts. 75 00:09:52,070 --> 00:10:00,540 And of course, if you think about the Alabama treaty and the coming of British rule, then you can add that to this list. 76 00:10:00,540 --> 00:10:06,510 Now, Ghannouchi came into prominence as the ancestral stronghold of the Mochrie rulers, 77 00:10:06,510 --> 00:10:13,110 and Harshvardhan, if you recall from Schoolbook Histories, made it the centre of his sprawling empire. 78 00:10:13,110 --> 00:10:17,160 All the Hirsch's dynasty came to an unexpected end after his death. 79 00:10:17,160 --> 00:10:25,770 The image of the imperial city on the Ganges had left a lasting impression on subsequent political imagination. 80 00:10:25,770 --> 00:10:33,720 Some of the earliest descriptions of the city, such as in the work of the Chinese pilgrim and monk shrines, sunk on. 81 00:10:33,720 --> 00:10:43,530 The West Bank of the Ganges speaks of its imposing waterfront battlements, towers and most eye on a cliff overlooking the passage of boats, 82 00:10:43,530 --> 00:10:54,330 pilgrims and traders, commanding, in fact, the fertile plains of the Upper Ganga Yamuna, though up. 83 00:10:54,330 --> 00:11:03,440 Which was back then known as intervening. It enjoyed a strategic military advantage over the rest of the valley, and in fact, as you know, 84 00:11:03,440 --> 00:11:07,730 the political focus has shifted from the eastern part of the Gangetic Valley, 85 00:11:07,730 --> 00:11:13,530 which was my brother to that part later in that at the end of the Gupta period. 86 00:11:13,530 --> 00:11:24,300 Noted for its abundance of temples, sacred bathing spots and building attractions cannot possibly as sacred as Varanasi of later times, 87 00:11:24,300 --> 00:11:32,250 and its name was, you know, actually sort of invoked in the genealogy. 88 00:11:32,250 --> 00:11:43,910 If you if you follow the coast history of India, a genealogy of Brahmins often claim allegiance to the connotes. 89 00:11:43,910 --> 00:11:50,930 Which is, you know, mythical land and genealogical both. 90 00:11:50,930 --> 00:11:56,510 And, of course, the other city that we find in this sort of kind of Banaras nexus is, 91 00:11:56,510 --> 00:12:02,900 of course, a city which has now been renamed the city of Allahabad, 92 00:12:02,900 --> 00:12:08,900 which actually had a damn long time ago, a perfectly fine name that the U.S. dominated the 12th century. 93 00:12:08,900 --> 00:12:17,910 This raja the king of pilgrimages. But, of course, sometimes will be renamed places we don't necessarily want to. 94 00:12:17,910 --> 00:12:24,040 Look up the history of that place. I'll leave it at that for now. 95 00:12:24,040 --> 00:12:34,300 This was the place which appeared as a lava, things dropped, but on the moral map in volcanoes here, 96 00:12:34,300 --> 00:12:39,970 along with Prague and Varanasi as emblematic of this middle Gangetic kingdom 97 00:12:39,970 --> 00:12:44,800 because this is the one of the prime crucibles of the Indian historical imaginary. 98 00:12:44,800 --> 00:12:51,610 And we are, as I said, before still spilling the blood over its monumental legacies. 99 00:12:51,610 --> 00:12:59,050 Now I just want to make one point that you know this this idea of the Majima issue, which is a Buddhist constant concept. 100 00:12:59,050 --> 00:13:10,780 Originally, the Middle Kingdom actually is in some ways a shift away from the old biomedical and Vedic conception of sacred land. 101 00:13:10,780 --> 00:13:18,600 And you know, this is something that I explore in the book about, you know, which parts of of the northern Indian sort of. 102 00:13:18,600 --> 00:13:29,580 Geographical, spatial, imaginary are sort of, you know, appropriate for certain kinds of worship and where they begin to encounter people. 103 00:13:29,580 --> 00:13:39,240 You know, who are not part of the sacred domain, but I just want to say that that was redefined because of the of the the great resurgence, 104 00:13:39,240 --> 00:13:46,020 especially of Mahayana Buddhism for over the last centuries. But we can maybe talk about that later. 105 00:13:46,020 --> 00:13:50,050 That's not the main focus of this talk. 106 00:13:50,050 --> 00:13:59,500 And one of the ways to appreciate the conception and fight over this sort of space that I have described as a fundamental core of 107 00:13:59,500 --> 00:14:10,280 the Indian geographical and historical imaginary is to try and conceive of an erasure of the line between what we call political. 108 00:14:10,280 --> 00:14:20,620 And what we called sacred. Just as Hindu regimes of the 19th century support each other over the historic legacy of such spaces. 109 00:14:20,620 --> 00:14:27,330 And therefore, the various kingdoms dating even back to the time of Ashokan antiquity. 110 00:14:27,330 --> 00:14:31,800 So must have the courage and the mom looks who had succeeded them. 111 00:14:31,800 --> 00:14:40,260 And such a re-imagining. One could think of the reclamation of things like pillars and letters and images, 112 00:14:40,260 --> 00:14:47,070 defaced images from the ruins of Buddhist, Hindu and Jain structures at places such as the Terminator, 113 00:14:47,070 --> 00:14:57,780 not just as the appropriation of objects and symbols of defeated regimes and kings, but indeed the antiquity and the historical legacy of. 114 00:14:57,780 --> 00:15:09,660 And this is a word that we have to use a little bit more carefully pre-Islamic rulers and regimes in a manner very similar to the it did Cordoba, 115 00:15:09,660 --> 00:15:25,750 Spain or the Abbasid in the former realms of the Byzantine Empire or in sustaining lands. 116 00:15:25,750 --> 00:15:32,320 Now, the historic history of spoliation and spoliation, architectural borrowings go back to, 117 00:15:32,320 --> 00:15:36,870 of course, the entire, you know, the terminology comes from a Roman precedence. 118 00:15:36,870 --> 00:15:44,380 So I must sort of give you a little cameo of what we, you know, what we have from Rome. 119 00:15:44,380 --> 00:15:58,170 And especially because much of this language was was put in place again in the in the annals of British colonial architectural description of India. 120 00:15:58,170 --> 00:16:03,570 And that Roman precedence is worth going back to in their own case, 121 00:16:03,570 --> 00:16:13,210 the seizure of objects as talismans from defeated from the defeated symbolic appropriations of the strengths of one's enemy. 122 00:16:13,210 --> 00:16:20,900 Which is why weapons have fallen combatants were surprised by Roman patricians and plebeians alike. 123 00:16:20,900 --> 00:16:29,180 The sack of temples and capture of idols, particularly noteworthy in the Roman campaigns waged against the Greek islands of the Aegean, 124 00:16:29,180 --> 00:16:38,180 intended to strip the enemy of its divine protection graven images of conquered regimes ended up in Imperial Treasury, 125 00:16:38,180 --> 00:16:45,320 as well as in private collections as cumulative inventories of past campaigns and laurels. 126 00:16:45,320 --> 00:16:50,240 At times such, Boulia also serve to reaffirm the supreme virtues. 127 00:16:50,240 --> 00:16:54,320 The stars of the Roman gods in Roman ways are worshipped. 128 00:16:54,320 --> 00:16:58,580 The display and public affirmation of trophies in the Temple of Jupiter, 129 00:16:58,580 --> 00:17:06,810 the adornment of patrician villas which shields enemies standards broken off beaks of vessels destroyed in naval combat, 130 00:17:06,810 --> 00:17:15,800 show a rich harvest of the militarised society of Rome, which coveted the relics of worthy foes, 131 00:17:15,800 --> 00:17:20,940 especially those collected from distant and exotic frontiers of the empire. 132 00:17:20,940 --> 00:17:28,300 The Roman case is instructive. And thinking about societies that were oriented towards routine warfare, by the way, 133 00:17:28,300 --> 00:17:33,490 the Romans also worried about the legal precedent about this kind of seizure. Cicero talks a lot about it. 134 00:17:33,490 --> 00:17:36,850 And then of course, you know, if you look at the history of the early Islamic empires, 135 00:17:36,850 --> 00:17:47,390 you can see a tremendous amount of sort of riding on what is jai's and what is allowed, which is not in terms of actual spoliation. 136 00:17:47,390 --> 00:17:51,340 But imagine the distribution of spoils. Who gets to keep it? 137 00:17:51,340 --> 00:17:59,390 Who gets to distribute it? So there's a long legacy here. 138 00:17:59,390 --> 00:18:04,860 We can invoke in the Roman case, the example of plunder during the siege of the Greek islands, 139 00:18:04,860 --> 00:18:11,150 where arms and armour of enemy chieftains slain in distant battlefields were taken, 140 00:18:11,150 --> 00:18:18,200 idols were taken from temples, ago, horrors and shrines and how they were reinstated in Roman shrines. 141 00:18:18,200 --> 00:18:26,180 You can see the collection of paintings, sculptures and other objects of art that poured in from the Greek campaigns. 142 00:18:26,180 --> 00:18:29,750 As Margaret Myers, the architectural historian, 143 00:18:29,750 --> 00:18:37,010 points out the most sought after prises of war in the Roman case for objects from personal collections. 144 00:18:37,010 --> 00:18:44,930 This is referred to as spoiler in see statues, paintings, vessels of precious metal textiles, 145 00:18:44,930 --> 00:18:53,390 carved objects of wood and ivory dedicated to sanctuaries and buildings reading the Roman history. 146 00:18:53,390 --> 00:19:05,240 Sort of gives us a certain kind of appreciation of a similar process, which you know, has been still not fully understood in the Indian context. 147 00:19:05,240 --> 00:19:09,230 Now, in the case of Indian history, there's an exceptionalism, 148 00:19:09,230 --> 00:19:15,710 and the exceptionalism is the so-called history of quote unquote Islamic conquest of India. 149 00:19:15,710 --> 00:19:24,740 And this exceptionalism, I would argue, places an equally exceptional burden on the history of spoiling and spoliation. 150 00:19:24,740 --> 00:19:30,440 And as you can imagine, not only did it animate a certain colonial conception of Indian history, 151 00:19:30,440 --> 00:19:41,810 but of course that in turn animates today a certain nationalistic and maybe sometimes unfortunate in certain traditions, 152 00:19:41,810 --> 00:19:46,510 a reckoning of this of this bust. 153 00:19:46,510 --> 00:19:58,130 And in the political practise. Now, I will not go here into the question of whether such kind of a periodisation of Islamic conquest is warranted, 154 00:19:58,130 --> 00:20:09,330 appropriate or not, or how such epochal divides might be motivated by colonial, nationalist or contemporary religious imaginaries. 155 00:20:09,330 --> 00:20:20,610 But this is a a sign and a period in which the history of sport here takes centre stage in the history of Indian historical imagination. 156 00:20:20,610 --> 00:20:23,760 This particular period? 157 00:20:23,760 --> 00:20:34,410 The reckoning, often top autochthonous past has been at least since colonial times fraught or injected with a sense of loss dispossession, 158 00:20:34,410 --> 00:20:39,630 especially over the history of the selective appropriation and reuse of buildings and materials 159 00:20:39,630 --> 00:20:46,710 from the Hindu Jain Buddhist antiquity as an essential is an essential part of its history. 160 00:20:46,710 --> 00:20:55,170 And this is why there could have been ash of shines as the gallery of this kind of a museum ology of this kind of history. 161 00:20:55,170 --> 00:21:03,350 Just as the appropriation of Roman Roman antiquities are key to the making of Carolinian monuments in Europe. 162 00:21:03,350 --> 00:21:13,700 This these are the the makings of a particular kind of Hindu rate, Indian antiquity, except that they do not evoke feelings. 163 00:21:13,700 --> 00:21:22,410 Those in Carolinian here did not evoke feelings of national or popular antipathy between the French and the Italians today. 164 00:21:22,410 --> 00:21:28,340 I'm this, I'm mistaken, and you should tell me if that is the case. 165 00:21:28,340 --> 00:21:35,510 They bear witness to the role of architecture in absorbing bits and pieces of this material past, 166 00:21:35,510 --> 00:21:40,280 which is another really famous historian Maria Hanson has pointed out, 167 00:21:40,280 --> 00:21:46,310 is an essential element of all forms of architecture spoiler in this regard, 168 00:21:46,310 --> 00:21:52,310 structures like the arc of Constantine in Rome and its layers of recycled fragments of previous reliefs. 169 00:21:52,310 --> 00:22:04,280 And, you know, and artefacts pose a fundamental challenge to the very authenticity and historical and temporal placement of objects. 170 00:22:04,280 --> 00:22:10,940 They remind us that fragments put together in different epochs have their own unique aura and significance. 171 00:22:10,940 --> 00:22:17,210 And this is a second lesson that we can draw from the architecture of historians who study sport, 172 00:22:17,210 --> 00:22:27,590 which is that it is really not about appropriation always. It is also about acknowledgement, even perhaps gratitude. 173 00:22:27,590 --> 00:22:33,920 Architectural historians such as Richard Brilliant, therefore make a distinction between spoliation, say, 174 00:22:33,920 --> 00:22:41,660 which have invoked already and spoiler in Ray Ray, meaning things room let in the taking of material. 175 00:22:41,660 --> 00:22:46,790 Objects of the making of virtual entities slowly and read might include, for instance, 176 00:22:46,790 --> 00:22:52,130 books, libraries, texts, formula charms, incantations, forms of knowledge. 177 00:22:52,130 --> 00:22:59,250 Forms of decoding forms of translation. The Rosetta Stone. 178 00:22:59,250 --> 00:23:07,410 Now, my emphasis in the rest of the stop is the second aspect the appropriation of texts and objects of histories, 179 00:23:07,410 --> 00:23:14,850 along with monuments of the past and in fact, therefore time itself. 180 00:23:14,850 --> 00:23:19,870 And therefore, the tongue in cheek, the test of time. 181 00:23:19,870 --> 00:23:29,860 I want to emphasise the persistence, resilience resumption of this kind of a bust, not just in the sense of antiquity, 182 00:23:29,860 --> 00:23:42,390 but certain forms of temporal reckoning that are, I believe, are at the heart of the lingering spectral and emotional quality of polio. 183 00:23:42,390 --> 00:23:52,760 As the object of history, we cannot get rid of that. Now I'm going to place before you two examples of the ways in which. 184 00:23:52,760 --> 00:23:58,000 The past appropriation of objects and artefacts might usefully perplex. 185 00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:02,050 A simple narrative of spoliation that we are familiar with. 186 00:24:02,050 --> 00:24:08,490 And I start, therefore with a Shokin's Ashokan pillars. 187 00:24:08,490 --> 00:24:17,820 Think of the ocean pillars, which are a staple of undergraduate history textbooks that we have familiar with the pillars bearing 188 00:24:17,820 --> 00:24:24,390 the edicts of the modern Emperor Ashoka made of sandstone quarried near the Camer Hills and Jeannot, 189 00:24:24,390 --> 00:24:34,860 the Mirzapur district of U.P., a place that I visited many times, chiselled there and transported to various sites during the third century B.C. 190 00:24:34,860 --> 00:24:39,520 Now, Sugar himself was a great appreciated if of past objects. 191 00:24:39,520 --> 00:24:49,270 He, after all, dug up any number of structures and redistributed the relics across the Ashokan imperial landscape. 192 00:24:49,270 --> 00:24:57,370 The the most famous of these pillars was the Allahabad pillar with the elaborate pillar inscription is not only bears a stroke, 193 00:24:57,370 --> 00:25:04,950 his message to his subjects, but also the inscription of the fourth century Gupta imperial monarch, some of them. 194 00:25:04,950 --> 00:25:11,290 And on top of that, the 17th century model, emperor Jahangir. 195 00:25:11,290 --> 00:25:21,960 Reinstalled during Jong-Il's father, Akbar's reign from its original location to the great Ford on the Ganges overlooking the proud confluence. 196 00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:30,370 Similarly, both the Delhi top rugby player that stands over the palace now in ruins, a philosopher according and the Daily Mirror below. 197 00:25:30,370 --> 00:25:42,610 Both transported by rail cars and and then, of course, barges along the river during the 15th century by the very curious and perhaps. 198 00:25:42,610 --> 00:25:46,240 Amateur scholar, historian of the time, the Delhi Sultan Feroz Shah, 199 00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:56,650 who who has been lavishly praised by early British historians for his antiquarian impulses during the Tulip Dynasty. 200 00:25:56,650 --> 00:26:06,430 Now this kind of palimpsest of successive regimes in terms of murals and inscriptions is very much for me within the purview of sodium. 201 00:26:06,430 --> 00:26:16,990 But my question is that while we are so excited about the defacement of images and the and the appropriation of pillars, 202 00:26:16,990 --> 00:26:25,840 why does not the success of the appropriation of these pillars invoke any kind of similar outrage? 203 00:26:25,840 --> 00:26:32,110 And that is because, you know, we are in fact. 204 00:26:32,110 --> 00:26:41,090 Sort of conditioned in some ways to think about different forms of appropriation as as different forms of national outrage. 205 00:26:41,090 --> 00:26:42,440 And this goes back, in fact, 206 00:26:42,440 --> 00:26:56,820 to the way in which some of the historians and scholars of architecture in British India also tried to figure and sort out good from bad polio. 207 00:26:56,820 --> 00:27:05,400 To use a shorthand. I'm going to give you the example of Vincent Smith, who in the Atlantic society pages in a very, 208 00:27:05,400 --> 00:27:09,690 very well known exposition on the Iron Pillar of Morality, 209 00:27:09,690 --> 00:27:16,960 speculating on its origins and transportation to Delhi during the period of the Pollard dynasty. 210 00:27:16,960 --> 00:27:25,700 And debating whether it was unthinkable the second or so on and so forth set the context for this architectural marvel. 211 00:27:25,700 --> 00:27:35,750 By first describing the good of Minot as a kind of setting of the pillar and could ominous architectural sleight of hand. 212 00:27:35,750 --> 00:27:43,950 Remember, he's describing the Iron Pillar, but then he is commenting also in the same breath on the on the courtyard of the winner. 213 00:27:43,950 --> 00:27:50,760 He notes how the courtyard of the main structure was fashioned out of the pillars of Hindu enjoin temples, and I quote him. 214 00:27:50,760 --> 00:27:57,750 These temples were with slight exception. Utterly overthrown. 215 00:27:57,750 --> 00:28:05,260 So that one stone was not left upon another. This is quote unquote. 216 00:28:05,260 --> 00:28:15,440 And then he says, goes on to say the ground on which the mosque stood was quote the original undisturbed platform of a Hindu temple. 217 00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:26,870 And the court, again, Muhammad is left intact, the beautifully constructed double flooring resting on its massive rubble foundation. 218 00:28:26,870 --> 00:28:35,130 And this is these these are very interesting words. What is fascinating about Smith's account is that the very same passages where he described 219 00:28:35,130 --> 00:28:40,980 decries the crass appropriation of Hindu and Jain columns in the construction of the could not. 220 00:28:40,980 --> 00:28:49,700 He also describes the installation of Ashokan pillars, as I said in Feroz Shah Kotla. 221 00:28:49,700 --> 00:28:54,030 Again, branching off from the commentary of the island villa. 222 00:28:54,030 --> 00:29:04,320 Varosha, as I said before, did not destroy a monument, but in in the routine act of Royal Prerogative simply repaired and reclaimed these pillars, 223 00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:11,510 exhibiting a fine sense of antiquarian curiosity in this metaverse, I quote. 224 00:29:11,510 --> 00:29:16,740 It's quite quite delightful. He acted, in fact. 225 00:29:16,740 --> 00:29:22,070 In the same way as Kings of all ages. 226 00:29:22,070 --> 00:29:27,410 And the immense pains he took to move the show because one of its from made up and Delhi, 227 00:29:27,410 --> 00:29:33,770 some could go some way to Prague along the river in boats was and again here, 228 00:29:33,770 --> 00:29:38,660 just like Napoleon and other princes who have taken similar troubles to quote, 229 00:29:38,660 --> 00:29:46,430 obtain positions of Egyptian obelisk for the declarations of their capitals. 230 00:29:46,430 --> 00:29:56,800 It's it's a small example from a particular historian, but I hope you can share my wonderment at this kind of. 231 00:29:56,800 --> 00:30:05,310 Double notes of history. Now, famously, in the Jamie Masjid of connotes, again back to connote James Ferguson, 232 00:30:05,310 --> 00:30:10,740 the domain of architectural historians of 19th century India insisted on certain rules of thumb 233 00:30:10,740 --> 00:30:17,590 separating the elements of the Hindu from what he called the elements of the centre ascending style. 234 00:30:17,590 --> 00:30:19,300 In the early mosques, he notes, 235 00:30:19,300 --> 00:30:26,320 the Muslim rulers quote appropriated the remains of Jaina architecture to save themselves the trouble of erecting the whole 236 00:30:26,320 --> 00:30:37,240 building from original materials vexed by the resulting jumble of what appeared as historically and artistically incompatible. 237 00:30:37,240 --> 00:30:39,760 Ferguson's search for the exact seams, 238 00:30:39,760 --> 00:30:49,150 the lines where the forms of Muslim and Hindu architecture had been joined had been clustered, had been sort of suture together. 239 00:30:49,150 --> 00:30:57,370 Looking at the Jemmy Masjid in Karachi, the converted from a Hindu temple by Ibrahim Shahjahanpur in early 15th century. 240 00:30:57,370 --> 00:31:07,320 Ferguson described it as quote Undoubtedly a giant temple rearranged on a plan similar to a mosque in Cairo. 241 00:31:07,320 --> 00:31:16,200 The roof and dome are pure examples of giant architecture, so that quote, no trace of the Moorish style is seen internally. 242 00:31:16,200 --> 00:31:23,700 He's not comparing this to the the guy who reads us, you know, Mamluk, the mass of the Sun. 243 00:31:23,700 --> 00:31:36,170 He's comparing it directly to the Islamic architecture that's evident in and different mom looks at the looks of Cairo. 244 00:31:36,170 --> 00:31:40,340 And the great could have been out near the roof and in less visible areas, 245 00:31:40,340 --> 00:31:45,110 you know, noted the fragments of cross legged figures belonging to Jane Saints, 246 00:31:45,110 --> 00:31:55,270 which she called a Hindu, remains an architecture here for for Ferguson, therefore presents. 247 00:31:55,270 --> 00:32:02,950 The indisputable and visible reminder of Islamic conquest, Islamic triumph in Hindu adversity. 248 00:32:02,950 --> 00:32:14,210 But equally importantly. The line drawn between India and Saudis sending not simply a technical demarcation of architectural style, 249 00:32:14,210 --> 00:32:19,910 but in fact I would suggest the sign of incompatible histories. 250 00:32:19,910 --> 00:32:35,810 Clearly marking one epoch from the other. So we move, in fact, in the same notes, in a different register to a certain kind of reckoning of time. 251 00:32:35,810 --> 00:32:39,140 Then Bill Gazetteer published at the turn of the century because, you know, 252 00:32:39,140 --> 00:32:48,870 this was one of the most widely read things in its chapter on Indian architecture distilling, Ferguson put it in this way. 253 00:32:48,870 --> 00:32:49,350 Of course, 254 00:32:49,350 --> 00:33:02,530 what is popularly known as set of Sydney architecture in this style was adopted by the Muhammed's when they became the ruling race in India. 255 00:33:02,530 --> 00:33:11,490 So here, not the the word religion has been replaced by the word race. 256 00:33:11,490 --> 00:33:17,400 This is exactly the kind of historical demarcation that was popularised by James 257 00:33:17,400 --> 00:33:22,980 Dodd in his widely and widely popular annals of antiquities of Rajasthan, 258 00:33:22,980 --> 00:33:25,440 much read, much admired, 259 00:33:25,440 --> 00:33:35,720 where he wrote the definitive elegy of the death of the Great Britain of Jahan slain during the valiant fight against shop, including. 260 00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:38,750 I've been working on a different project, 261 00:33:38,750 --> 00:33:49,120 which is to say how big and Bengali historians and especially novelists before historians got absolutely smitten with Todd. 262 00:33:49,120 --> 00:34:00,720 Todd, live lives as we know this already, I mean, Todd lives as well and alive in the in the passages and annals of Indian history even today. 263 00:34:00,720 --> 00:34:06,270 Now we can see going back to Todd, and this takes us back to the beginning of the stock. 264 00:34:06,270 --> 00:34:15,950 That Islamic conquerors had finally broken down the defence of India's Middle Kingdom and reached the supposed inner sanctum. 265 00:34:15,950 --> 00:34:22,330 And the ultimate ignominy of this vanquishing was not just the fall of connotes. 266 00:34:22,330 --> 00:34:33,420 But the desecration of the holy city of Varanasi or Benaras, which is very interesting in many ways. 267 00:34:33,420 --> 00:34:42,720 After Varanasi fell to the Turks, there were quoting Tod scenes of devastation, plunder and massacre that lasted through the ages, laments Dodd. 268 00:34:42,720 --> 00:34:48,660 One of the most celebrated passages, I'm sure you've read it before and called all that was sacred in religion and 269 00:34:48,660 --> 00:34:54,560 celebrated in art was destroyed by these ruthless and barbarous invaders. 270 00:34:54,560 --> 00:35:05,270 The what's sacred here has been replaced now with the idea of this, you know, 271 00:35:05,270 --> 00:35:17,840 desecration and and history really as it as if as if this was a a land which had been shored up from the ravages of time and conquest, 272 00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:27,940 but now open to spoliation, which is historically the opposite of what you know, at least Korus tells us. 273 00:35:27,940 --> 00:35:30,580 In this and other instances, we see that in fact, 274 00:35:30,580 --> 00:35:39,160 the history of Islamic conquest in Hindu defeat has already become a part of the historic antecedents of empire and colonial rule. 275 00:35:39,160 --> 00:35:47,120 Integral to its own temporal succession, explanatory logic and historical muse. 276 00:35:47,120 --> 00:35:53,790 Maybe you can even sometimes I'd like to think of it as a kind of historical picturesque. 277 00:35:53,790 --> 00:36:02,090 With the ruins in place. I mean, think of the famous cartoon of James Daniel in the memo and the map of Hindustan, 278 00:36:02,090 --> 00:36:07,010 where by the Brahmins are exchanging knowledge with Britannia. 279 00:36:07,010 --> 00:36:12,830 This is the image that, well, you know this image, so I don't show it to you. There's always the temple is always there. 280 00:36:12,830 --> 00:36:15,350 The very far distant. 281 00:36:15,350 --> 00:36:31,280 And and that tells you something about the reminder of the of Hindu antiquity in a map of of of a newly emerged and ascendant company regime. 282 00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:40,400 So the appropriation of Todd in the early nationalists historical imaginary about the enslaving invasion of India and the end of Hindu India. 283 00:36:40,400 --> 00:36:47,180 The idea that the Turkish invaders denied Indians their rightful inheritance and most importantly, 284 00:36:47,180 --> 00:36:53,390 the yearning for a far distant past where the Hindus were the sovereign subjects 285 00:36:53,390 --> 00:36:58,610 of their history is plainly evident in the the writings of nationalists. 286 00:36:58,610 --> 00:37:06,900 So I'm going to take you to one last vignette. And this is a very interesting character. 287 00:37:06,900 --> 00:37:13,020 And you know who this is are said that distinguished Indian civil servant, congressman, 288 00:37:13,020 --> 00:37:20,910 economic historian, one of the architects of the drain theory in that sense, a nationalist par excellence. 289 00:37:20,910 --> 00:37:29,690 And maybe you know this, or maybe you have forgotten one of the earlier exponents of the historical novel in Bengali. 290 00:37:29,690 --> 00:37:40,520 That was taken much with the history of the decline of the Rajput warriors of Western India and composed in early novel known as Rajput Jeevan Qanbar, 291 00:37:40,520 --> 00:37:46,040 which translates as the twilight of Rajput life inspired by Colonel Todd. 292 00:37:46,040 --> 00:37:54,560 By the way, this inspiration of Todd goes back to the young Bengal and the poets such as Michael Madhusudhan, 293 00:37:54,560 --> 00:38:04,250 that the different people have written about how Todd was appropriated by the students of Henry Louis Vivian D'Orazio, 294 00:38:04,250 --> 00:38:10,750 which is which makes interesting reading in itself, but maybe for another time. 295 00:38:10,750 --> 00:38:18,250 This is inspired by Charles stirring passages, Rajput bravery against the bullets at the end of the novel. 296 00:38:18,250 --> 00:38:25,900 If you ever look it up, that accepts a passage from Todd from the Annals of Antiquities of Rajasthan, 297 00:38:25,900 --> 00:38:30,460 where he remarks on the valour and resistance of Rana Plaza of Moi, 298 00:38:30,460 --> 00:38:37,840 who defied Akbar but and refused to surrender to the other forces and ran away on his favourite horse, 299 00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:44,760 etc. as we knew I had to study in school book histories in India. 300 00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:54,550 The, you know, the Indian fellas, as it were. In his novel and other novels celebrating the rise of Shivaji and the military 301 00:38:54,550 --> 00:39:00,140 resurgence against Muslim rule in another novel and subsequent novel called. 302 00:39:00,140 --> 00:39:07,310 And I'm not making this up, Maharashtra, given what the dawn of Maharashtrian life. 303 00:39:07,310 --> 00:39:11,330 Dust describes the journey of Shivaji in this novel. 304 00:39:11,330 --> 00:39:16,790 He is going to meet Aurangzeb Imperial Delhi, where he is thinking about joining Aurangzeb, 305 00:39:16,790 --> 00:39:27,450 scored quite vexed by the fact that he has been invited by the Movile Rajputs. 306 00:39:27,450 --> 00:39:37,560 Who have invited him to and his contemporaries, if one thing and people like that are part of this noble wrecking of the moguls, I as a Hindu join. 307 00:39:37,560 --> 00:39:42,650 In a remarkable passage in which Shivaji is travelling. 308 00:39:42,650 --> 00:39:59,220 In Old Delhi. Imagine this. And that speaks in everybody's voice as it were, and then describe Chavez's reckoning with Indian history. 309 00:39:59,220 --> 00:40:08,790 And I want to just read that passage I've translated for you and I quote the entire way was full of the ruins of all Muslim palaces. 310 00:40:08,790 --> 00:40:16,440 The first Muslims had established a capital near the old fort of B, who arrived with two large soon after having conquered Delhi. 311 00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:22,110 And thus one can see the remnants of mosques, palaces and mausoleums have that spot. 312 00:40:22,110 --> 00:40:25,860 And the world famous good of Minard was built here as well. 313 00:40:25,860 --> 00:40:34,530 In course of time, newer emperors began to raise new palaces and residences for the north, and the city gradually began to spread north. 314 00:40:34,530 --> 00:40:45,560 Shivaji could not count how many palaces, mosques and minarets, how many ruins of pillars and tombs he saw on the way. 315 00:40:45,560 --> 00:40:52,850 As she traverses this landscape of ruins, readers of the novel are treated to a panoramic view of history, 316 00:40:52,850 --> 00:40:57,290 and there are lakes and successions of the aspirants to the throne of Delhi of guns. 317 00:40:57,290 --> 00:41:08,390 And though these laws, when Shivaji passes these tombs in cemeteries, is thoughts John predictably to the passage of historical time itself. 318 00:41:08,390 --> 00:41:15,210 Well, coming from the Ford of Petteri to modern Delhi, not to what modern? 319 00:41:15,210 --> 00:41:22,070 Shivaji felt as if the history of India had been inscribed on that very highway. 320 00:41:22,070 --> 00:41:26,900 Each palace and each mansion where a page of a page of that history, 321 00:41:26,900 --> 00:41:40,140 its symmetry and letter remorseless time was the historian or else why would history have been written in such a script? 322 00:41:40,140 --> 00:41:44,890 Now, as the art historian Barry Flood has suggested. 323 00:41:44,890 --> 00:41:52,210 Very, very provocatively, and interestingly, we need to reconsider iconoclasm, for instance, in a very different way. 324 00:41:52,210 --> 00:41:58,900 The destruction of temples, not simply as a universal sign of conquest, destruction, 325 00:41:58,900 --> 00:42:05,750 desecration, defacement or recycling or the redefinition of images and monuments. 326 00:42:05,750 --> 00:42:15,350 But acts that must be understood within very specific historical and spatial contexts. 327 00:42:15,350 --> 00:42:22,700 And this is a subject that we cannot enter into today because it my talk is really borrowing 328 00:42:22,700 --> 00:42:30,290 from the work of historians of Somalia and occupations and historians of architecture. 329 00:42:30,290 --> 00:42:36,470 I'm really musing on the possibilities of that kind of work and what what it 330 00:42:36,470 --> 00:42:43,750 means for the way we think about historic historical time and temporal aspect. 331 00:42:43,750 --> 00:42:55,390 The histories of conquest of war and spoliation are woven into the texture of Indian colonial and nationalist historiography in a very different way. 332 00:42:55,390 --> 00:43:02,590 And the way they are woven into this historic currency, in fact, betray an underlying temporal. 333 00:43:02,590 --> 00:43:08,690 Emotional affect and epochal consciousness. 334 00:43:08,690 --> 00:43:22,820 Mere assertions of the complexity of historical agency in the various political minutiae of who defeated home and who took what from whom. 335 00:43:22,820 --> 00:43:31,720 The defeats and conquest of regimes cannot therefore easily dislodge such a deeply ingrained imaginaries. 336 00:43:31,720 --> 00:43:37,900 Because of the long antiquity and sort of history of the views of the past 337 00:43:37,900 --> 00:43:43,870 that have animated the practise of Indian history over a long period of time. 338 00:43:43,870 --> 00:43:51,840 Here today, I have indulged you and try to present a different way of thinking about polio. 339 00:43:51,840 --> 00:43:59,600 Not just as desecration easy or patient, but as claims over the past itself. 340 00:43:59,600 --> 00:44:07,010 Before we can change the terms of such reckoning of history, of antiquity, of age and epoch. 341 00:44:07,010 --> 00:44:15,940 We need to understand the depth and complexity of the relationship between the IDF soldier and. 342 00:44:15,940 --> 00:44:23,930 Time itself. And time by this, I don't mean necessarily historical time or chronology. 343 00:44:23,930 --> 00:44:30,320 I mean, a certain kind of regime of temporality or regimes of temporality. 344 00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:38,930 With that last part, I will open this two to two questions. 345 00:44:38,930 --> 00:44:46,310 This is a very open ended. It's exploration I have. 346 00:44:46,310 --> 00:44:55,490 Not moved on to visit, it could be easily be a corollary here to, you know, the the Elgin Marbles, you know, 347 00:44:55,490 --> 00:45:02,220 the the reconstruction of the bottom stoop in the Imperial Museum, which today is the Indian Museum in Calcutta. 348 00:45:02,220 --> 00:45:12,920 And I can see already chats people talking about that. Maybe, you know, that's that's something that we can discuss. 349 00:45:12,920 --> 00:45:16,580 But the notes of the appropriation of the Archaeological Survey of India, 350 00:45:16,580 --> 00:45:22,850 etc. are a little bit different from the way in which, you know, we have talked about. 351 00:45:22,850 --> 00:45:28,770 The history of buildings in pre-colonial period. 352 00:45:28,770 --> 00:45:39,237 But yeah, so that is all I have to say today, and I hope I have not offended anybody too much.