Pastoral pride
Differing notions of aesthetics in India and Europe

By Meha Mathur
Our commerce and industry minister Kamal Nath has joined issues with the European Union on the conflicting agricultural sensitivities. He believes that the European sensitivity to maintain the pastoral ways of its countryside and its rural landscape is at variance with the Indian sensitivity of having to feed its millions of rural poor. India respects European sensitivities, but Europe too should respect Indian sensitivities, he often reiterates.

True enough, Europe’s emphasis on maintaining the architectural forms as old as medieval times and its pride in its heritage has led to a situation where there is a 13th century village in Germany which is frozen in time. It has been preserved in exactly the 13th century conditions. While India can’t claim any such success in preservation, what it prides itself on is continuous habitation in fort towns like Jaisalmer. Well, anyone who has visited the historic site will vouch that the fort is showing signs of distress under the population pressure, and abysmal hygiene conditions.

Not that we are not enamoured by the beauty of European countryside. While European countryside has become a cherished tourism destination for Indians too, those urban Indians unable to afford it seek solace in rural tourism - sanitised villages with designer huts, rasois and chaupals. On the outskirts of metros are numerous weekend destinations which offer rural recreation like bullock-cart ride, fishing, etc. That, we all realise, is a citydweller’s idea of a village. A village folk would rather graduate to a kasbah-like settlement, the kind of soot-soaked, single-lane townships along the highways that serve the passing-by trucks with boarding and lodging facilities and repair and maintenance shops. A crowded lane with pan shops, dhabas, tyre shops and a PCO is truer to Indian needs than a pristine village hamlet, is the argument that is gaining in strength. After all, who are we to dictate to the villagers that they retain their old ways to serve our weekend tourism needs?

But that’s not the central point of debate in this column. What I want to take up for discussion is the basic difference in attitude when it comes to aesthetics and deference to architectural sensitivities. While Europe goes to one extreme to maintain its urban and rural landscape — so much so that the decreasing rural population is raising fears that the forest area will engulf the rural countryside — in India, as things now stand, every thing must give way to ‘development’. Development, which encompasses roads for faster transport, malls for newer forms of leisure, buildings for office spaces and car parkings for the new car constituency. When even Appu Ghar in New Delhi has to close down for extension of Supreme Court premises, and when the Yamuna embankment is ruthlessly plundered for the upcoming Commonwealth Games Village, can we prevent the plunder of old, deserted structures of, say, Mughal era?

Such is the prevailing mood in the country about urban aesthetics that the Delhi Urban Arts Commission, headed by Charles Correa, has resigned en masse, protesting against the number of road projects that are being forced upon Delhi, in total violation of the aesthetic norms. The commission, according to media reports, had come in for sharp criticism for its ‘rigid’ stand against development projects.

While the country has enough in terms of economic milestones to cherish, it’s pulling down much that was worth preserving and cherishing.