BCD 2017

T H E B U I L D I N G C O N S E R VAT I O N D I R E C T O R Y 2 0 1 7 45 BUILDING CONTRACTORS 2 THE CONSERVATION OF BRITAIN’S HERITAGE IN INDIA JAMES SIMPSON T HE CULTURAL links between the UK and India remain strong. Modern Britons tend to cringe with embarrassment when thinking of the Empire or the Raj, but this is not, in my experience, an attitude shared by most Indian professionals. The British left behind a unified democratic country that worked, as well as a cultural overlay comparable to that of the Moghuls, which is as significant to the sub-continent as the legacy of the English language. India’s cultural heritage may be as great as that of any country in the world and the architecture of British India is now a ‘shared heritage’ of classicism, art deco, brick and lime plaster, Minton tiles and cast iron from Glasgow. As the economy in a country of 1.25 billion people develops, this heritage is increasingly at risk, but growing prosperity is an opportunity as well as a threat. The modern conservation movement in the UK was born half a century ago: in India it is still young. The opportunities for knowledge transfer in conservation and the potential rewards from joint working are substantial and, in the age of ‘Brexit’, we should cultivate them. Philip Davies’ recent paper, written for the Department of Culture Media & Sport, urges engagement with ‘Britain’s Overseas Heritage’: the time for this is right. Britain’s architectural heritage in India is largely concentrated in cities like Bombay, Madras and Calcutta (now officially renamed Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, although their old names are still in popular use), and in the hill stations like Shimla. Lutyens’ New Delhi is well known, but the public buildings, churches, banks and warehouses and, perhaps most of all, the ordinary street architecture of all the major cities make a fine legacy indeed. A great deal of this heritage is in a severe state of decay. This is perhaps particularly true of Calcutta, which was the capital of British India from 1690, when it was founded as the East India Company’s trading station on the Hooghly River, until 1911 when the capital was moved to Delhi. Calcutta continued to thrive as a centre of trade and commerce until its separation from East Bengal (now Bangladesh) in the mid-20th century. Since then, not helped by 35 years of communist state government, it has declined. The architectural legacy of Calcutta, a city of 4.5 million people, makes it one of the world’s great historic cities. Only last year, our own secretary of state for international development, Priti Patel, proposed to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee that it should be awarded world heritage status. In a scheme initiated by Sir Bernard Feilden and supported by the Charles Wallace India Trust, Indian architects have been coming to the UK to study conservation through what are now Master’s degree courses at York – originally at the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, another Feilden initiative with Patrick Nuttgens – and, more recently, in Edinburgh and elsewhere. The development of India’s conservation movement has largely been fuelled by these architects and by a handful of homegrown initiatives. In Rajasthan, for example, the energy of Faith and John Singh – creators of the Anokhi chain and of the Jaipur Foundation The Victoria Memorial Hall, Calcutta: the project was instigated by Lord Curzon and the architect was Sir William Emerson with Vincent Esch as executive architect in India. Building began in 1904 and was completed in 1921 by Martin Burn & Co.