Abstract
This article addresses the framing of the rules of preservation of ancient buildings in colonial India and the resulting code of practice that the first Director-General of Indian Archaeology, Sir John Marshall, published in 1923. The code or John Marshall’s Conservation Manual was designed as a prescriptive colonial text, setting down stringent rules for the practice of monument preservation in a colony, and thus constituted a text of authority. Yet, it was also the product of the kind of tension that was implicit in the operation of colonial state power in India, which resulted from the need to reconcile ideas produced in the metropolitan culture of contemporary Britain with local pressures on the ground in the various regions and localities of India. The intentionality of the text that thus emerged must therefore be understood in the context of the multiple audiences that it sought at the same time to address. By examining the context in which the Conservation Manual was conceived and finally produced, that is, from the early years of the twentieth century until its appearance in 1923, this paper hopes to contribute to a clearer understanding of the problems of the preservation of monuments, especially religious structures, in colonial India during two decades of the most intense legislation and regulation of ancient monuments.
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Notes
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Henceforth referred to as SPAB.
- 3.
See, for example, the many speeches of Curzon on the subject, both in India and in Britain. Probably the most famous, and certainly most often quoted of these is the speech he gave to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1900, in which he rather grandly proclaimed that India’s ancient, religious architecture was “a part of the heritage which Providence has committed to the custody of the ruling power.” Lord Curzon, Speech before the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 7 February 1900 (Curzon 1906).
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On Curzon’s attempts to use India’s architectural heritage for staging imperial power (Metcalf 2002).
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On the background to Marshall’s appointment (Lahiri 1997).
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For instance, in 1898–1999 the total expenditure of the Government of India and all provincial governments on archaeology was a total of £7,000 a year; by 1904 this had gone up to £37,000. IOL, IOR/L/PJ/6/674 File 803, President of the Council of the Governor General, or Viceroy Curzon, 18 March 1904, Proceedings of the Legislative Council, Ancient Monuments Preservation Act, Act VII, 1904, Judicial and Public Dept.
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For a recent study of how such ideas established themselves in Britain and Western Europe (Swenson 2007).
- 9.
For a discussion of Ruskin and architectural conservation (Jokilehto 2009, 174–182).
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For an account of the beginnings of the SPAB and William Morris’ role in its foundation and early years (Miele 2005).
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One can get an idea of the defining of positions amongst the architects of the time in an essay written not many years after Reginald W. J. Davies had settled the issue. The essay was entitled “The preservation of ancient monuments” and was awarded the RIBA Silver Medal for an Essay in 1913 (Davies 1913).
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- 13.
Editor’s note: Whereas Sengupta’s essay analyses a prescriptive colonial text in from of a manual to transform (translate) Indian sites into heritage sites under colonial rule, the contribution of Weiler in this volume discusses the ‘archaeologizing’ transformation (translation) of the same sites into ‘picturesque texts’ through the medium of photography.
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For an analysis of British artists in India and the picturesque (Tillotson 2000, esp. 37–57).
- 15.
For a more in-depth discussion on James Fergusson’s work (Juneja 2001).
- 16.
Letter from Thackeray Turner, Secretary to the SPAB, 12 October 1906. ASI, Archaeology File no. 202, 1906.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
Nayanjot Lahiri has addressed Marshall’s impatience with colleagues and staff and his difficulties in dealing with them (Lahiri 2000, esp. 101–104).
- 19.
Editor’s note: For a theoretical discussion of the local, global, and universalist, see this volume’s introduction.
- 20.
I have addressed this problem in my work (Sengupta 2009, 2013, also Dodson 2011).
- 21.
Editor’s note: This colonial distinction between ‘dead’ and ‘living’ monuments is now re-negotiated under the term ‘living heritage’ in modern conservation sciences (compare Warrack in this volume) as well as in anthropological research (compare Luco and Guillou in this volume). In specific circumstances, both criteria may apply to one and the same site (Angkor Wat, see Warrack), a whole ensemble (Angkor Park, see Luco), or a cultural landscape (sacred sites spotted over an ‘ordinary’ landscape, see Guillou).
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Sengupta, I. (2013). A Conservation Code for the Colony: John Marshall’s Conservation Manual and Monument Preservation Between India and Europe. In: Falser, M., Juneja, M. (eds) 'Archaeologizing' Heritage?. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35870-8_2
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