Place of History

Place of History

To talk about history, is to talk about culture. To talk about culture is to talk about how people think under the given circumstances. Thus, to talk about history of Indian architecture, one should essentially try and understand what do spaces mean to particular people? How have those spaces formed and what thoughts are associated with those spaces? Therefore, history of Indian architecture, can be said to represent different cultural thought patterns in time. Our intention is to know those thoughts as they get shaped, nurtured, transformed and manifested into the built environment. Therefore a particular built environment represents certain kind of a culture or represents a particular meaning to particular people. It is “we” who create meanings and therefore, understanding history is like understanding ourselves – how we were thinking about life before, how we think now....what were the differences and similarities in thoughts. It will be realized with extensive research that the concerns of the people remain fairly the same throughout the time, their particularities of course vary. We come to realize that history as much represents the Present as it does the Past. Going by the working of the mind, it should be clear that this kind of approach does not treat time in a linear way, but rather in a cyclic way indicating that certain phenomena are bound to occur after varying intervals of time. History (and Humanities) is a good medium to talk of people, climate, geography, architecture, technology, skills, materials, literature and so on. In a nut shell, history is not static and it should be our intention to uncover the hidden associations of spaces with meanings defined by people. This would be my approach to teach history. 

What we learn from Hindu temple architecture is not the form of the temple and the countless varieties in its expression, but the underlying thought behind it. What should be of concern to us is the matter of spirituality. How is spiritual thought born in the mind? Why did it come to existence so many years before and what was its nature? How has it undergone changes? How has it become so much sophisticated? How has spiritual space of the temple become so much sophisticated? To understand the evolution of the temple is to understand this evolution of thought. To understand the meaning of the space of the temple is to understand symbolism of cosmos. I believe that temple architecture should be taught in this way. 

The dimension of the temple is not lost in contemporary urban lives as well. What is the role of the temple in everyday lives? Where are temples situated in the cities? What is the significance of the temples along river beds, forest areas, hill tops? How are temples constructed today? What contemporary concerns are addressed through the building of the temples in cities? What kind of communities congregate in the temple? How does temple respond with immediate secular spaces? These become issues to be researched – which will reinterpret the role of temples, of spiritual spaces in contemporary times. This can be explored through Research and Design Cell.

Interest in temples has carried me all the way to Vancouver, where a two year research program in Advanced Studies in Architecture was done. Temples have gone abroad wherever Indians have migrated carrying with them their belief systems and absorbing the culture of the place where they settled. The diaspora temple represents an idealized world to the non resident Indians. Under the research, an ethnographic case study of a Hindu Temple for the North Indian community in Vancouver led to discussion on the concept of ‘meaning’ of Hindu temple for this community in a diaspora situation. The meaning was a result of influence of two contexts operating on the community – one of India and the other of Canada and therefore its expression represented a particular way of perceiving and using the temple. This research gave me an opportunity to know more about the diaspora history of Indians, situation in Canada, migration patterns from India to Canada, social and psychological issues that Indians face abroad and how they respond to the issue of Hindu temple by undertaking a qualitative ethnographic case study approach. Thus the research combined characteristics of architectural and anthropological field. 

Apart from the research topic, exposure to a foreign context impacts our perception about ourselves as individuals and as Indians. It is for the first time, I became extremely conscious of my thoughts, who I am and how I am related to the surrounding context and the built environment. It also made me realize the value of our culture, climate and architecture. From this came series of articles such as ‘People and Places’ which talk about the character of spaces in Vancouver and how different they are from India’s context. ‘Sustainability and Memory’ that talks about the importance of creation of meaning through sustainable use of objects. ‘Smart buildings for who?’ which is a critique on Smart Buildings for Indian context.