The idea that monuments have re-lived histories across time, and therefore different lives beyond its original intended, is perhaps not very new, but the reflections of the author scouring the archives and looking for alternative histories waiting to be discovered, is inventive. And then to connect it to affect is what makes monuments human and within the grasp of the present, in a way that one can somehow form one’s own relationships with them. Differing relationships are established depending on whether it is from the “owners” (Archives) authority, public or intellectuals. “Building Histories” as a title is very appropriate because that is what historiography does. From her readings of catalogues of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan documenting Mughal monuments of Delhi, to the politically reconfigured articulations presented by Archives of the ASI, the book is very intensely researched1 across several modes of archival materials.

The methodological framework she uses from the perspectives of Foucault and Derrida account for the inventive spirit (they have given her new eyes) in reinterpreting South Asian histories through European Philosopher’s liberated eyes looking at “archives” for what they embody in its materiality and differently in its spirit. Reading archives as Mrinalini has done, has shifted the site of fieldwork from the monument to its representations in its textual and drawing sources. Her argument that monuments reside as much in the archives as in the actual sites is her contribution to the changing patterns of architectural historiography. Or as per Derrida’s definition, the power of “consignation, which lends it the unity of an ideal configuration”. In a way can one consider this to be a curator’s perspective? The unexpected appropriated uses over times by varied occupations suggests the changing lives of the same monuments projecting them into parallel universes, in a manner of speaking. In the author’s own words,

At the heart of this book is an interrogation and recalibration of the modern definition of the monument—particularly as it was created by European theories and policies of preservation in the nineteenth century.

Referring to other current debates she locates the discussion in the book as a cross-pollination between architectural history and “the cultural and political dynamics” engaged within the current debates of art history. Spanning a period from the 1850s to the 1900s, she selects 5 monuments based on Sir Syed’s catalog2 which has helped in grounding the book on a solid foundation, historically speaking.

The first chapter (1857: Red Fort / 25, Mutiny, Memory, Monument) describes the alternate uses of the Red Fort beginning with its bloody appropriation by the British Raj. This moment also historicizes the take-over (term used by choice because of its commercial implications) of India from the East India Company by the British Crown. It describes the changing projections of the monument’s histories3 suiting the changing tides of public perception.4 In the aftermath of the occupation of the Red Fort, there was looting and arson by the frenzied winners spurred by the sheer blood-lust for revenge of their lost forces. This incident inspired a woman in Calcutta to write an especially poignant poem titled “Delhi”5, adding sublimation to the historical moment of barbaric consummation. The history tells its usage as a site of pillage, a military garrison right up to its historic moment in being protected as a National Monument, albeit in British times.

The second chapter (1918: Rasul Numa Dargah, Interrupting the Archive: Indigenous Voices and Colonial Hegemony) elucidates the struggle for its survival led by Muslim custodians to save the building and its landscape from being erased by the British in 1918, in probably being one of the first cases of heritage protection.6 As her histories explain the rampant land acquisitions undertaken to build the new capital of the British Empire,7 the consideration of existing “minor” monuments8 was most complex due to its perceived heritage value.

The third chapter (1932: Jama Masjid, A Menacing Mosque Reveals the Limits of Colonial Power) explores the primary and central shrine and religious place of Muslims in Delhi and its political staging across time for varied causes. This is seen through theoretical contexts of Bennet.9 From the first voice raised to free India, in 193210 instigating an impassioned audience to join in the National struggle led by Gandhiji, to the commercial agency of the site and then again to its political moment11 in 1947 when Independence was finally grasped, the chapter is an exotic story of the aesthetics of the monument which till date is somewhat of a social spectacle.

The fourth chapter (1948: Purana Qila, The Many Origins of Partitioned Nations, Cities, and Monuments) plays upon one of the most important moments in the life of the monument when it housed the victims of the Partition, (a most tragic historical moment which tore apart any semblance of Hindu-Muslim harmony) who like the metaphorical baby, was delivered from the extremely painful birth-pangs of a newly born India. At the same time, it lays claim to the mystical moment from the mythical Mahabharata to which is attributed12 its ancient link to a Hindu civilization of antiquity, moments which the inventive British were building their own histories helping the “poor” Indians understand their own exotic pasts!13

In the fifth and final chapter (2000: Qutb Complex, Secular Nations and Specters of Iconoclasm), the author observes how “the colonial project” seeds dissent (supported by historical confirmations by Sir Syed)14 and religious divide into Indian minds by exposing the  Qutb Minar as the site of Islamic iconoclasm, the reverberations of which erupted in 2000 in the form of non-state actors demanding the purification of Qutb as a Hindu religious site.15

The book draws upon an excellent choice of archival photographs, providing the much-needed visual context complimentary to the reading. Methodologically, it appears that the author has taken three ideas upon which she has built diachronic histories of the five monuments through the process of “reading between the lines” for extracting alternative histories. The first idea is to have situated her study on the basis of a well-documented historical catalog for an unquestionable set of case studies. Secondly, it is the method of examination of archives through perspectives of Foucault and Derrida, for their projections by state authorities, and thirdly she has inspected the historical moments of those sites in which significant changes occurred to the perceived static history of the monument, into challenging and equally historic times, thereby giving the monument a multilayered significance and a radically inventive paradigm. The overall structure of the book is very simple and easy to decipher, paradoxically, while narrating a very complex historiography.

Appropriating the authors writings as “public” scholarly works and building upon it our own histories, I shall leave the reader with a question - could the relationship of the “lived in” experience of the monuments through phenomenological lenses been explicitly addressed complicating the narrative scholastically, entering into realms of abstract philosophy?

Nirmal Kulkarni
Date: 29^th April, 2022

• 1. Drawing detailed portraits of each of the five monuments, Rajagopalan examines how archival narratives were authored and even tempered to insert specific affects by both the colonial government and later by the nation-state. 
  Updated on Nov 10, 2017 07:38 PM IST, Hindustan Times | By Sudhirendar Sharma
• 2. On pg 10 of the book.
• 3. “Three visual technologies - photography, the illustrated newsmagazine, and the panorama—each reproduced the Red Fort (as well as other monuments of Delhi) as a site of British loss or victory.” (Pg. 38).
• 4. This chapter looks at the manner in which surplus histories generated by the Mutiny of 1857, profoundly impacted the narrative and visual framing of the Red Fort in Delhi as well as in the imperial metropole. (Pg. 28).
• 5. (Pg. 42).
• 6. Yet, as this chapter shows, there were many robust examples of grassroots activism regarding preservation in Delhi in the early twentieth century. (Pg. 62).
• 7. As non-movable properties (and therefore different from loot or objects of antiquity) the fate of many monuments was determined by their proximity to the new capital and the redevelopment potential of their associated lands. (Pg. 66).
• 8. Evidence of the increasingly vocal protests around the acquisition of minor monuments can be found in a 1923 order sent by the Deputy Commissioner’s Office to the Jama Masjid Managing Committee (JMMC)—administrator of the largest and most powerful mosque in Delhi. (Pg. 81). This forms an excellent entrée into the next chapter.
• 9. To apply Bennett’s theoretical framework of “vibrant matter” to the Jama Masjid is to understand it as more than simply a mute relic of Delhi’s past but rather as an object that continually unleashed its agency, acting as a political catalyst, a capitalist agent, or an advocate for Indian nationalism. (Pg. 90).
• 10. Although the colonial government has regulated that the mosques of Delhi should not be used for political activity and requires Hindus to obtain special permission to enter the city’s mosques; Hindus and Muslims are increasingly gathering in large mosques such as the Jama Masjid to rally support for the anticolonial movement. (Pg. 87).
• 11. The repeated use of Delhi’s grandest mosque as a politically charged space outside of state control created an affective aura of sovereignty and autonomy around it.
• 12. The archival narratives of this monument emphasized the history of Delhi as a series of imperial cities stretching back to the second millennium of the previous era. The affective appropriations of the monument, meanwhile, were more problematic as they reflected the macabre violence and dispossession that accompanied the birth of India as an independent nation-state. (Pg. 122).
• 13. The European audience that Syed Ahmad was writing for, were also eagerly constructing India’s past as a narrative of the rise and fall of various empires. (Pg. 126).
• 14. The scholarship of Cunningham, Fergusson, and to a degree even that of Syed Ah- mad, fore-fronted Islamic iconoclasm to explain the architecture of the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque. Their words created an aura of historic violence around the monument. To use Sara Ahmed’s concept of “affective stickiness,” the mosque acquired an emotional charge that invoked Islamic wrath, the mutilation of Hindu monuments as well as persons, and the brutal appropriation of existing material culture in the creation of a glorious, albeit tainted, architecture. (Pg. 161).
• 15. On that November day in 2000 the Hindutva protestors are refused entry into the Qutb complex and several are arrested by the police. The narrative of the destruction of twenty-seven Hindu temples espoused by the Hindutva protestors, however, is far from fantasy and echoes claims made by nineteenth-century colonial archaeologists that the Qutb complex resulted from a violent destruction of Hindu architecture at the hands of “barbarous and idol-hating” Muslims in the twelfth century. (Pg. 153).