Keywords colonialism princely patronage travel Maghrib Jami Mosque built heritage

May 27, 2017 | Autor: Jyoti Pandey Sharma | Categoria: Architecture, South Asian Studies, South Asia
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IJIA 1 (2) pp. 269–300 Intellect Limited 2012

International Journal of Islamic Architecture Volume 1 Number 2 © 2012 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/ijia.1.2.269_1

Jyoti Pandey Sharma Deenbandhu Chhotu Ram University of Science & Technology

From Marrakesh to India: A Colonial Maharaja’s Pursuit of Architectural Glory in Kapurthala Abstract

Keywords

This article explores a case of feisty internationalism in India’s Islamic architecture during the colonial era. An Indian ruler with a passion for building, Maharaja Jagatjit Singh (1872–1949), ruler of the princely state of Kapurthala, commissioned a mosque in his capital, Kapurthala, in the early decades of the twentieth century. Departing from convention, the archetype was not drawn from the subcontinent’s mosque-building tradition, but from Morocco in the Maghrib (Muslim North Africa). The patron was an inveterate traveller and tourist who frequented Europe and also visited its colonies including Morocco. He was impressed by Marrakesh’s landmark twelfth-century Kutubiyya Mosque that became the prototype for Kapurthala’s Jami Mosque. Designed by a French architect, Kapurthala’s Jami Mosque is a complete aberration in the subcontinent’s Islamic history owing to its allegiance to a Maghribi prototype. It represents a unique, idiosyncratic endeavour by a non-Muslim ruler subscribing to western cultural practices and seeking inspiration beyond the scope of his home in order to raise a mosque for his Muslim subjects. The article asserts that the Maharaja’s endeavour, sadly neglected both by the public and academia, deserves a place in the subcontinent’s vast corpus of Islamic built heritage as an invaluable cultural resource to be safeguarded for posterity.

colonialism princely patronage travel Maghrib Jami Mosque built heritage

Introduction Colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent following the 1857 Uprising brought the Indian subcontinent directly under the British crown with the reigning British monarch, Queen Victoria, heralded as Empress of India. The colonial domain comprised territories under direct British control and those 269

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under Indian rulers, the latter collectively referred to as ‘native states’ that owed allegiance to the British crown. Ruled by Indian rulers with some degree of autonomy, princely states ensured valuable support to the cause of colonization in all its manifestations. This article focuses on one of several Indian princes, the ruler of Kapurthala state in colonial Punjab, Maharaja Jagatjit Singh (1872–1949). The Maharaja, an avowed champion of modernity, subscribed to model princely conduct but also stood out among his largely Anglophile peers as a staunch lover of all things French. His passion for building resulted in a spectacular architectural legacy that lies ignored both in popular perception and in the domain of scholarship. This study hopes to redeem this anomaly by drawing attention to Maharaja Jagatjit Singh’s architectural patronage focusing on a Jami Mosque that he raised for his Muslim subjects.

The British Raj and Princely India More than 500 princely states of varying geographical size and political importance constituted post-1857 British India; continuing as British allies until the end of colonial rule following which their states were integrated into the Indian nation.1 Depending upon its size and importance in the colonial political scheme, a princely state’s ruler was granted an appellation such as raja, nawab or maharaja. Some rulers came from a distinguished ancient lineage, while others were upstarts who asserted their power following the decline of Mughal rule, and some had been elevated by the British in order to consolidate their power. While the rulers collectively constituted an important cog in the colonial governance mechanism, the nature of their relationship with the colonial state, given their respective provenance, was multidimensional and complex.2 Metcalf in his study on the political ideology of British rule in India has asserted that the British, on the one hand, perceived Indians as being incapable of change, while on the other, regarded them as amenable to being cast into a western mould.3 This ideology projected Indian rulers as despots, with a propensity to abuse power unless kept in check thus legitimizing British dominion. At the same time it also applauded Indian princes as natural leaders of their people with whom they had a cultural connection that the British could never establish. Individual treaties determined their exact relationship with Indian rulers. The British, however, had the authority to take appropriate action to prevent misrule in the subcontinent, even as they regarded Indian rulers as the ideal vehicle to shoulder the responsibility of a civilizational change in their respective states, that were projected as stagnating relics from the past in need of western redemption. Viceroy Curzon spared no words to eulogize India’s embrace of modernity and the role played by the indigenous ruling class as beacons of progress in this endeavour. There is in this place such a pleasing and uncommon blend of old-world interest with the liveliest spirit of modern progress, that one hardly knows whether the imaginative or the practical side of nature is more thrilled by all that one sees and hears. […] Native Chief has become, by our policy, an integral factor in the Imperial organisation of India. […] I claim him as my colleague and partner. […] His figure should not merely be known on the polo-ground, or on the race course, or in the European hotel. […] his real work, his princely duty lies among his own people.4

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From the colonial perspective the model Indian prince was an upholder of his ancient Indian tradition as well as a role player in his state’s march towards modernity, thus combining the best of the East and the West. The British realized full well the potential of this elite group’s reach among the masses because their world-view was one in which the indigenous ruler remained the fount of all authority: political, military, religious and cultural. Despite colonial public claims of being partners, the relationship remained one of inequality and therefore, contested with Indian rulers responding to the Raj ideology in ways more than one, through acceptance, adaptation and even rejection. Indeed, modernity in colonial India was far from being simply a colonial import. As Jyoti Hosagrahar has convincingly argued, the western notion of modernity was hardly the sole legitimate version, for encounters with traditional cultures produced varied forms of expression resulting in a complex overlay of ‘Indigenous Modernities’.5 Indeed the indigenization of metropolitan ideas in colonial urban India produced an array of heterogeneous and non-universal institutions that contradicted the colonial assumption that Indians were primitive, stagnant and could redeem themselves only by faithfully adhering to what their colonial overlords recommended. Architecturally speaking, both built forms and urban landscapes across India reinvented themselves after coming in contact with western influences. Prior to the Uprising, these arrived via Europeans present at the courts of Indian rulers with the former contributing to the evolution of the latter’s taste for not just products and ideas of European provenance but also architecture inspired by prevalent European fashions. This cultural adoption is most spectacularly demonstrated by the nawabs (rulers) of the state of Avadh, who had never travelled outside India and relied on Europeans in addition to books and pictures sourced from Europe for inspiration. The outcome was an architecture that borrowed extensively from western sources resulting in a large corpus of buildings. Lucknow’s Qaisarbagh Palace, built in the mid-nineteenth century for the incumbent Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, was among the most spectacular outcomes of this cultural exchange between the indigenous and foreign. It stood in a large complex with an assortment of buildings both old and new, and relied on Mughal domes, kiosks and arcades as well as European pediments, classical orders and stucco statuary as articulation elements [Figure 1].6 With the influx of western education continuously bolstering the idea of European cultural superiority, gradually the mantle of western influence was cast beyond the elitist quarters over the larger demographic landscape in urban India, manifesting itself in the changing streetscape of cities. Not just havelis (elite mansions) but also their more modest counterparts and shop fronts began to sport design elements borrowed from the West, notably classical pediments and orders much to the amusement of European visitors [Figure 2]. One visitor remarked during the course of a visit to Delhi in the early nineteenth century that ‘the houses are of various styles of architecture, partake occasionally of the prevailing fashions of the west. Grecian piazzas, porticos, and pediments are not infrequently found fronting the dwellings of Moslem or Hindoos’.7 Indeed, in the culturally tumultuous times ushered in by colonization, indigenous built-form types chartered a course that did not necessarily conform to the western import. Following the Uprising, western influence on the built environment extended its reach beyond buildings for personal use to embrace the larger landscape. What had begun as a largely personal adoption of European mores gave way to a state policy aimed at modernization of the subcontinent. From

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ASI, UP vol. 2, Year ?/229/?

Figure 1: Qaisarbagh Palace, Lucknow: palace built by Nawab Wajid Ali Shah that was demolished following the Uprising.

Kapurthala Postcard compendium.

Figure 2: View of Kapurthala’s main street: western influences visible in buildings.

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the colonial perspective, this entailed the introduction of European knowhow and technology to create a safe and healthy living environment for the subcontinent’s Europeans. Indeed, the colonial vision of a progressive India was one marked by good governance, effective laws, educational advancement, improved communication, increasing material prosperity and developing infrastructure of railways, roads, canals and public works. Modern Indian princes, whose credentials as aspiring progressive men were unceasingly underscored by the British, were to become the agents of change. Princely India’s acceptance of modernity was again multi-layered and fragmented. While states like Gwalior and Baroda launched the modernization programme enthusiastically focusing on industrial development, commercial growth and governance based on western ideals, others like the Rajputana states espoused modernity with a degree of caution while upholding the traditional ideal of a benevolent patrimonial ruler.8 Indian rulers commissioned public works, often as grand architectural ensembles, raising buildings for governance, education, industry, health care, travel and leisure inspired by urban institutions of industrialized Europe. Indeed railway stations, museums, libraries, clubs, hotels, hospitals, schools and colleges together with public parks, botanical and zoological gardens claimed city space as new urban landmarks supplanting older cultural institutions.9 In comparison to their predecessors who had rarely ventured beyond India’s shores, frequent jaunts to Europe, particularly Britain, exposed the modern princes to the metropolitan culture that they were desirous to replicate in their respective states.10 It should therefore, hardly be surprising that the architectural works of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century princely India reflected prevalent stylistic fashion with Classical and Gothic styles of the metropole vying with the indigenous, notably Mughal architectural tradition. An examination of three different buildings in the capital of Kapurthala state in Punjab reveals the eclectic nature of the built environment in princely states. Kamra Kothi, a palatial residence built by Maharaja Jagatjit Singh’s ancestor in the 1830s and subsequently added to by other rulers, reflected like its Avadh counterparts, an amalgam of both the indigenous and the western styles. Two buildings commissioned by the much travelled and architecturally informed Maharaja Jagatjit Singh in the late nineteenth century aligned themselves completely with the western tradition: first, the Kapurthala Club and Cinema Hall that was in the Classical style; and second, a royal villa, Villa Buona-Vista, in the manner of an Italian countryside residence, set in a wooded setting alongside a local rivulet [Figure 3a, 3b, 3c]. As Europeans lay sole claim to being the arbiters of aesthetics, the indigenization of metropolitan architectural ideals was viewed critically and as a demonstration of a debased taste. James Fergusson, who is credited with pioneering a scholarly approach to the study of India’s architecture, on a visit to Lucknow pronounced Qaisarbagh Palace as surpassing all other buildings of the nawabs in ‘grotesqueness’ with the palace ‘being in extent and arrangement by no means unlike the Louvre and Tuileries as joined together by Napoleon III’. He went on to accuse the nawabs and Indians in general of having rejected their own building tradition to ‘produce the strange jumble of vulgarity and bad taste we find at Lucknow and elsewhere’.11 This perception soon transcended the aesthetic domain to become a yardstick for judging an Indian ruler’s morality or lack of it where emulation of western design elements implied that a ruler lacked character and capability thereby legitimizing the

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Kapurthala Postcard compendium.

Figure 3(a): Kamra Kothi, Kapurthala: stately mansion with indigenous and western design elements.

Kapurthala Postcard compendium.

Figure 3(b): Kapurthala Club and Cinema Hall: designed in the Classical style.

Kapurthala Postcard compendium.

Figure 3(c): Villa Buona-Vista, Kapurthala: designed like an Italian villa.

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annexation of his territory to those of the British as was demonstrated by the British in Avadh following 1857.12 Following the Uprising, the colonial state continued to rely on architecture as a tool to orchestrate authority. Metcalf has examined the colonial power discourse in architectural terms arguing that the state, in its anxiety to legitimize its rule against the backdrop of a rapidly modernizing Europe, projected British dominion as a seamless extension of Mughal rule.13 An architectural style, called Indo-Saracenic, an invention by British architects in the late nineteenth century, became the preferred style for buildings of the Raj as it combined the convenience of modern European planning with traditional Indian, notably Mughal, design aesthetic by way of perpetuating continuity. Indeed, while the style was in keeping with the British political discourse, both progressive and traditional at the same time and was used by the colonial state for a diverse range of built-form types, princely India’s response was varied. While political expediency prevented the British from coercing princely India into adopting the Indo-Saracenic style, they nevertheless had their way in some states with princely minorities. Some rulers responded by either adopting the Indo-Saracenic as their own, and others by confining the use of the style to public infrastructure in their anxiety to be seen as progressive. Furthermore, there were rulers who rejected the Indo-Saracenic as being too Indian and favoured European styles, particularly for buildings for their personal use.14 Maharaja Jagatjit Singh belonged to the last category as this article will discuss in the following section.

Kapurthala State and Its Maharaja Maharaja Jagatjit Singh was the ruler of the princely state of Kapurthala that formed part of the Punjab. He ascended to the throne as a minor in 1877 and assumed complete ruling powers in 1890 ruling the state until his demise in 1949 [Figure 4].15 He was a Sikh ruler of a state with a religiously heterogeneous

Kapurthala Postcard compendium.

Figure 4: Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala: standing seventh from the left with a group of the ruling princes of India who attended His Highness the Maharaja of Kapurthala’s Golden Jubilee in 1927.

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population that was predominantly Muslim followed by Hindus. During the early days of his ascendancy, the state was administered by the British who also took charge of the Maharaja’s upbringing, providing him with tutors, notably a Mr. Wood, whose liberal education shaped the young prince’s vision as a leader in days to come. Indeed, Maharaja Jagatjit Singh epitomized the modern maharaja of the British Raj heading a forward-looking administration that encouraged people’s participation in governance sectors like agriculture, industry and public works.16 Possessor of a secular bearing, he firmly believed merit to be the only indicator of capability. Justice and fair play rather than religious or ethnic affiliations influenced his decision-making.17 He was convinced that education was the tool that would uplift his people, patronizing educational institutions across the state, with the progressive inclusion of exclusive schools for girls in an age when literacy was largely seen as a male preserve.18 While conforming to the colonial code of princely behaviour, Maharaja Jagatjit Singh also possessed a strong individualistic temperament that was demonstrated by his great appreciation of all things French, adopting French mores not simply by way of material culture but also in conducting the business of his court. A perusal of his personal diaries from 1892 onwards reveals that he regarded French culture as the fulcrum of cultural sophistication and Paris as the epicentre of aesthetics. Not only did he speak the language fluently, he also wrote his personal diaries in French. Furthermore, the bulk of the tomes in his library were in French and he introduced French as a foreign language in Randheer College, a college in Kapurthala that he patronized. His predilection towards the French made him a subject of much curiosity and remark among his contemporaries and the British, even as he remained a loyal ally.19 Maharaja Jagatjit Singh was unique as a nineteenth-century indigenous traveller who travelled to see the world to broaden his perspective. While this itinerant tribe largely comprised of Anglophiles like T.B. Pandian who considered London as ‘the world’s greatest metropolis’, the Francophile Maharaja loved visiting France, especially Paris.20 Overseas ventures undertaken by princely India were generally discouraged by the colonial state with the former expected to focus on fulfilling their obligations at home and keeping themselves abreast of the modernization bandwagon through colonial institutions rather than by direct contact with the West.21 Not one to be tied down by such diktat, Maharaja Jagatjit Singh’s greatest desire had always been to see ‘something of the world outside India. […] Ever since I can remember it was my great ambition to travel in Western countries, and judge for myself of the marvellous things that were told me concerning them’.22 He travelled both to the West and to the East visiting Britain, Continental Europe, America as well as China, Japan and Java. Viewing travelling as a mode of education, the Maharaja not only indulged in personal leisure pursuits that set a benchmark in opulent indulgence, prompting Curzon’s remark as cited earlier in this article, but also took care to emphasize the import of his jaunts in adding to his knowledge that would ultimately benefit his people.23 Foreign travel in the late nineteenth-century went beyond the physicality of the enterprise in the form of travel memoirs penned by indigenous travellers that were meant as carriers of cultural practices of the West to people at home.24 Like his fellow travellers, the Maharaja wrote of his experiences

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resulting in two books, My Travels in Europe and America, 1893 and My Travels in China, Japan and Java, 1903. Possessing a rare objectivity, he judged the western world on his own experience of it and did not travel with the mindset of unquestioned western cultural superiority like many travellers who had nothing but praise for what they encountered. As expected, it was France, Paris in particular, that excited his ‘imagination […] to the highest pitch. […] I am full of anxiety to see everything and ascertain whether the ideal is after all a reality’.25 The Maharaja was certainly not disappointed with his first impression of Paris calling it the ‘Queen of cities’.26 He also went up the Eiffel Tower that he admired greatly and remarked that ‘The whole of Paris lay before us, and we realised what an immense city it is. […] We remained at the top lost in wonder and admiration for a long time’.27 He was, however, not alone, Paris with its grand urban restructuring programme fashioned under Haussmann was the epitome of urbanity. As Burton has asserted, few were able to discern the difference between London and Paris and those who could were understood as truly cosmopolitan.28 Indeed with the Maharaja declaring that London did not measure up to Paris in ‘beauty and brightness’, it is only to be expected that Paris and its urban landscape should whet his architectural urges.29

The Maharaja’s Architectural Patronage Maharaja Jagatjit Singh, in the words of his grandson, was the ‘Shahjahan of Kapurthala’.30 Indeed the Mughal badshah (emperor) had set a high bar in architectural patronage in terms of the number of works commissioned, constructional excellence and aesthetic refinement. That the Kapurthala Maharaja proved himself to be a worthy candidate of this appellation becomes evident as his architectural legacy is examined. Not only did Maharaja Jagatjit Singh build some of the finest buildings for his personal use in Kapurthala city, but he also undertook public works across Kapurthala state. Buildings were constructed for governance, education, health care, leisure and worship and urban planning measures were initiated for Kapurthala city. The Maharaja invited Patrick Geddes, a sociologist and pioneer of the town planning movement, to prepare a report for the improvement of his capital in 1917.31 He had already introduced municipal governance to Kapurthala in 1896 under which the city acquired an improved system of sewage and water supply, roads and public open spaces. Apart from Geddes, the Maharaja was also in touch with Herbert Baker, the architect who collaborated with Edwin Lutyens on the planning and building of New Delhi, who visited the Maharaja at Kapurthala and prepared the layout for a new city at the Maharaja’s behest. This assignment was by Baker’s own admission among the very few works that he had undertaken as a professional while in India, besides the New Delhi buildings. Baker’s plan did not see the light of day, being abandoned on account of the tremendous expense involved.32 Maharaja Jagatjit Singh’s choice of architectural style particularly for buildings destined for his personal use echoed his predilection for French habits. He cultivated a refined sensibility for French aesthetics that in his opinion was unmatched by any other, and was reflected not just in the buildings commissioned by him but also in the furnishings and numerous art pieces that adorned them. Historic French architecture came to

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Brigadier (Retired) Sukhjit Singh.

Figure 5: Jagatjit Singh Palace, Kapurthala: a grand conception inspired by historic French architecture. define Kapurthala’s built environment, earning it the sobriquet, ‘Paris of Punjab’ in the popular imagination. Lending credence to this perception was the royal palace, Jagatjit Palace, built by the Maharaja in the early twentieth century. The palace was designed by a French architect following a competition between a local builder, William Emerson and M. Marcel. Of the three, the last won expectedly.33 Marcel, a French Beaux Arts architect, designed Jagatjit Palace seeking inspiration from French palaces, namely the Louvre and Fontainebleau. Set in extensive landscaped grounds, Jagatjit Palace was furnished with the latest items of furniture and decoration imported from France and vied with other contemporaneous princely palaces as one of the grandest in colonial India 34 [Figure 5]. Indeed its patron had declared that once completed it ‘will be one of the finest buildings in Northern India’.35 In a true reflection of eclecticism and also to appease the state that favoured the Indo-Saracenic style, some prominent public buildings adopted the latter namely the State Durbar Hall built in 1889 and the Jubilee Hall built as an addition to Randheer College to commemorate 25 years of the Maharaja’s reign in 1915 [Figure 6a, 6b]. While scant attention has been paid to the construction of religious buildings of the indigenous faiths in the colonial era, princely India was actively engaged in constructing houses of worship, notably temples and mosques. The Maharaja’s patronage of religious buildings in Kapurthala city included the State Gurudwara (Sikh place of worship), built in the Indo-Saracenic style and the other, the subject of this article, a Jami Mosque built for Kapurthala’s Muslim population. He was, however, not content with just commissioning buildings but wanted to showcase his architectural exploits to the world. In the early 1930s, he got printed in France a set of postcards featuring all the prominent buildings commissioned by him in Kapurthala. The postcard set invariably formed part of an array of gifts presented to guests who visited the state.36

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Kapurthala Postcard compendium.

Figure 6(a): State Durbar Hall, Kapurthala: designed in the Indo-Saracenic style.

Kapurthala Postcard compendium.

Figure 6(b): Jubilee Hall, Randheer College, Kapurthala: designed in the Indo-Saracenic style.

Mosque Building in Colonial India The Uprising greatly impacted the mindset of Muslims across India. Castigated as potential rebels and victimized by a discriminatory state policy, they were largely alienated from the colonial modernizing influence. Their quest to redefine their collective cultural identity took political shape in the early twentieth century in the form of the Khilafat Movement (1919–24) as Muslims across India came together to show solidarity with the Ottoman Empire and to save it from dissolution after the First World War.37 Closely associated with the nationalist movement for some time, the Khilafat

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Movement drew sustenance from the support of Indian rulers, notably Muslim, including those of Hyderaband and Rampur. In Punjab, the political activism that came to symbolize the movement was largely centred in urban areas including Lahore, Sialkot and Gujranwala. Maharaja Jagatjit Singh, who unlike some of his peers did not harbour any political ambitions, did not align himself with the Khilafat Movement and, furthermore, his religious identity did not compel him to join ranks with the Muslims.38 Kapurthala, despite an overwhelming majority of Muslims (over 60 per cent of the population) did not see much action. This scenario in the state can also be attributed to Maharaja Jagatjit Singh’s merit-driven statesmanship that led to the appointment of Muslims to the highest offices in the administration thus engendering a general sense of well-being among the entire community. The act of commissioning Kapurthala’s Jami Mosque was therefore not one of appeasement of the majority community but born of the desire to cater to their interest. Indeed, in his opening address to the congregation in Kapurthala on the occasion of the Jami Mosque’s inauguration on March 14, 1930, the Maharaja declared that while the capital city had a Hindu temple built by his ancestors and that he had only recently built the Gurudwara for the Sikhs, it was only natural to build a mosque for his Muslim subjects.39 The Maharaja’s secular credentials were also attested to by His Highness the Aga Khan, in a speech he delivered in the Jami Mosque on January 26, 1934 declaring that the people of Kapurthala were fortunate to be the subjects of a ruler whose sense of justice was commended across the country and they should be willing recipients of the many improvement programmes that had been undertaken by the Maharaja. He went on to describe the Jami Mosque as a symbol of its patron’s spirit of tolerance and secularism besides being a work of art that ‘will go down to future generations as a spiritual message from the Islam of the West to the Islam of Asia of which the Punjab was the heart and core’.40 The colonial state out of political wisdom did not intervene in the commissioning of religious buildings, leaving the rulers with the freedom to choose an appropriate architectural expression. While western building styles recommended by European architects were popular with the indigenous elite (including Indian princes) for official, residential and cultural buildings, for religious architecture, including mosques, western influence was greatly limited. Indeed, it was the erstwhile mosques built across the subcontinent during centuries of Muslim occupation that came to be regarded as the ultimate symbols of the Islamic faith. While there is no denying that the era of great mosque building had indeed passed with the decline of Mughal rule, mosques continued to be built in the colonial era and were patronized by royalty, wealthy merchants as well as the proletariat. Most were likely to be relatively modest conceptions that paled in comparison to grand mosques, particularly Mughal Jami Mosques. There were, however, some exceptions that recalled the great building endeavours of the Mughals. Two spectacular mosques built by nineteenth-century princes demonstrate how the baggage of the past was difficult to shed in religious architecture even as the subcontinent marched on the road to modernity. Moti Masjid and Taj-ul Masjid were built by Nawab Sikandar Jahan Begum and Nawab Shahjehan Begum respectively, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Both were built in the city of Bhopal, the capital of the princely state of the same name located in central India.41 The patrons, like their largely male peers, were British allies and typified the progressive ruler in line with colonial policy but their mosques drew inspiration from Mughal imperial archetypes notably Jami Mosques at Fatehpur Sikri, Agra and Delhi [Figure 7a, 7b, 7c]. Adopting

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ASI, UP, vol. 40 (1932–34); 6127/1932–34.

Figure 7(a): Jami Mosque, Fatehpur Sikri: view from the south-west.

ASI, Agra, vol. 3 (1960–61, 1964–65); 1187/61.

Figure 7(b): Jami Mosque, Agra: view from the bridge.

ASI, Delhi, vol. 1 (1954–55, 1959–61); 1493/55.

Figure 7(c): Jami Mosque, Delhi: view of sahn from entrance gateway.

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ASI, UP, vol. 43 (1937–39); 6683/1937–39.

Figure 8(a): Mosque in the Taj Mahal Complex: view of the sahn and sanctuary. the well-established mosque design vocabulary with a large cloistered sahn (courtyard) entered via gateways, ablution pool and fountain, and a sanctuary oriented towards the west and crowned with onion-shaped domes and minarets reaching out to the skies, the Bhopal mosques marked their presence in the city’s skyline not only on account of their impressive scale but also for their high recall value of the subcontinent’s Muslim, and notably Mughal, past that continued to live in perpetuity in the popular imagination [Figure 8a, 8b]. Likewise, mosques patronized by non-imperial patrons notably

Commissioner, Archaeology, Archives and Museums, Government of Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal.

Figure 8(b): Taj-ul Masjid, Bhopal: under construction.

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ASI, UP, vol. 17 (1911–13); 2431/1911–13.

Figure 9: Serai Wali Masjid, Kerana, Muzaffarnagar District, UP: view from the east.

wealthy merchants and traders as well as by those with relatively modest means also tended to be inspired by the Mughal archetype, amply demonstrating that it was the past that determined the present in religious architecture [Figure 9]. Clearly, it was difficult to break new ground in mosque design, and the safest approach was to rely on the past as a prototype to be faithfully replicated. It is in this regard that Maharaja Jagatjit Singh’s Jami Mosque at Kapurthala charts a novel course in the subcontinent’s Islamic architectural legacy with its patron demonstrating his trait of departing from convention.

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Kapurthala’s Jami Mosque The capital city had a mosque of modest size, built in the conventional Mughal style, that was used by the community for prayer; however, the Maharaja, as outlined in his inaugural speech, envisioned a new mosque as a grand architectural conception. In keeping with his love for all things French, he displayed a remarkable internationalism in this project. He did not resort to convention in the mosque’s architectural conception and instead engaged a French architect to design the mosque. This manner of collaboration was certainly a first in the subcontinent where designers of indigenous religious edifices tended to be craftsmen, generally indigenous and, if not, at least affiliated to the same cultural context. Moreover, such builders executed their work in relative obscurity. While contemporary mosques continued to emulate the well-established Mughal mosque design vocabulary as seen in Bhopal, the Kapurthala mosque was based on an imported Maghribi (Muslim North African) model that had evolved in the Mediterranean region, notably in Algeria and Morocco. The French colonization of Algeria in 1830 heralded the beginning of a period of political, economic and cultural restructuring of the African Mediterranean.42 The French engaged in a number of large-scale urbanization schemes that dramatically changed the urban fabric of many North African cities, namely by adding modern villes nouvelles alongside traditional madinas (old city quarters). By the beginning of the twentieth century, Morocco was positioned as a popular French leisure destination that was safe and culturally compatible for French tourists. Its added attractions included the natural landscape of mountain ranges; forests; an extensive coastline; diverse flora and fauna; pleasant climate; and a cultural landscape of old imperial cities, notably Rabat, Fez, Meknes and Marrakech that teemed with scenes of picturesque beauty. The French institutionalized Morocco’s leisure industry by creating infrastructure, notably improved modes of transportation and luxury hotels making it a haunt of the world’s well-heeled including Indian princes like Maharaja Jagatjit Singh.43 Morocco’s monuments were a major source of tourist attraction and included not only the vast ruins from the region’s Roman past but also the markers of its Islamic identity. Maharaja Jagatjit Singh visited Morocco in April 1922 and expectedly travelled to Morocco’s ancient imperial cities including Marrakesh.44 This city was founded in the mid-eleventh century and rose to become a centre of power, learning and art for the Almoravid and Almohad dynasties. It epitomized the typical Islamic city of the Maghrib, with its bustling picturesque madina, royal palaces and extensive gardens over which towered the Kutubiyya Mosque, the city’s most impressive architectural showpiece. The Kutubiyya Mosque was rebuilt in the twelfth century over the remains of an earlier mosque by the Almohads. Its lofty square-shafted minaret pierced the city skyline making it a strong visual marker in the landscape to create a vision of such impact that it became the prototype for the Islamic house of prayer not just for its own geographical context but also for mosques far and wide including Kapurthala’s Jami Mosque. When Maharaja Jagatjit Singh decided to build a mosque in his capital it was to Marrakesh’s Kutubiyya Mosque that he turned to for inspiration. Indeed, as articulated by him in his opening address to the congregation in Kapurthala, on the occasion of the Jami Mosque’s inauguration, the Maharaja declared that when he set his eyes on Kutubiyya Mosque, which he characterized as

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an example of the ‘orthodox western style’, he realized that his long-standing dream of building a mosque for his Muslim subjects could finally be realized.45 His dream was further bolstered when, during the course of his travel to Paris, he saw the Great Mosque built by the French government and consecrated in 1926 that was also inspired by Marrakesh’s Kutubiyya Mosque, thus reinforcing the latter’s appropriateness as a prototype for his own project.46 Thus both the original and its Parisian counterpart ‘solved the problem’ for the Maharaja as he decided to model the Kapurthala mosque on the western Maghribi pattern rather than subscribing to the indigenous prototype.47 Maharaja Jagatjit Singh hired the services of Monsieur Monteaux, a Parisbased architect, about whom little else is known, to design Kapurthala’s Jami Mosque after the Kutubiyya Mosque.48 This act of patronage permits one to draw the following inferences: on the one hand, while his proclivity towards the West and its material culture caused him to undertake this unique project of international collaboration, unheard of in those times, for a religious building by hiring a foreign architect. On the other, he also adhered to convention by not encouraging the architect to explore a new vocabulary of mosque design inspired by contemporary architectural developments. The Maharaja’s admiration for Paris’s Eiffel Tower notwithstanding, he, like his indigenous contemporaries, subscribed to the conventional view that historic mosques of the past lent a certain identity and legitimacy to newer mosque-building ventures. While the Begums of Bhopal relied on indigenous prototypes, the Maharaja, in keeping with his temperament, looked to the Maghrib for a model worthy of emulation. Certainly he was seeking inspiration from an archetype that was recognized as an important symbol of the faith in the Muslim world and that predated the era of great mosque building in the Indian subcontinent, being almost contemporaneous with the earliest, somewhat rudimentary, mosque-building enterprise of the Sultanate as manifest in mosques at Delhi and Ajmer in the thirteenth century. That the Kutubiyya Mosque has continued to serve as an archetype is borne by the fact that more than sixty years after the building of Kapurthala’s Jami Mosque, King Hassan II of Morocco built a mosque in Casablanca, designed by a French architect and modelled on Marrakech’s Kutubiyya Mosque.49 Furthermore, this turning to the West, as it were, was a reaffirmation of the Maharaja’s absolute conviction in the superiority of western, notably French, aesthetics. The Kapurthala postcard compendium featured the Jami Mosque pronouncing it as ‘The State Moorish Mosque’, an obvious reference to its prototype’s geographical context [Figure 10]. Kapurthala’s Jami Mosque’s construction commenced in 1927 and was supervised by an Indian engineer, Lala Lekh Raj. It is not known whether Monteaux himself came to Kapurthala but as the Maharaja stated in his speech, he did prepare the drawings as instructed by his client and the scheme was subsequently executed under indigenous supervision by a specially constituted ‘Juma Masjid Construction Committee’.50 The latter practice was not new as a bulk of colonial buildings built by military engineers were based on prototypes found in popular pattern books and professional journals like The Builder imported from Britain and in some cases buildings were erected on the basis of designs being sent from Britain.51 That Lala Lekh Raj played an important role in the mosque’s construction is borne by the fact his contribution was singled out for praise by the patron who declared that the former had ‘given practical shape to every detail in the plan’.52 The construction cost

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Kapurthala Postcard compendium.

Figure 10: Jami Masjid, Kapurthala: as printed in the Kapurthala postcard compendium. was approximately four lakh rupees (Rs. 400,000/-) and the Maharaja allocated an annual sum of three thousand rupees (Rs. 3000/-) for repair and maintenance.53 The total site was eight acres and included besides the mosque proper, a garden and orchards of citrus fruits and peaches that contributed some revenue for its upkeep.54 The Jami Mosque was consecrated in a grand ceremony held on March 14, 1930 in the presence of a large congregation, the Maharaja in attendance and the ruler of the neighbouring princely state of Bhawalpur, Nawab Sadiq Muhammad Khan Bahadur, as guest of honour. Other guests including several Europeans and indigenous elite besides notable Muslims were also present [Figure 11].55 Indeed, much like past practice, notably under the Mughals, the consecration of a mosque was a celebratory affair that relied on exhibitionism to reinforce the notion of the ruler as a keeper of the faith among his people. Only here the ruler was a progressive non-Muslim who demonstrated an exemplary secular outlook as he reigned over a state where the majority were Muslim. The ever-benevolent patriarch hoped that his architectural creation would ‘be the harbinger of spiritual and worldly blessings to the Muslims of my State’.56 The building of the mosque sent out a message to Kapurthala’s Muslims that their interests were being addressed. As for the unconventional choice of style, the inclusion of senior Muslim officials of the state in the mosque’s construction committee ensured their concurrence at all stages. When the imperial government questioned the exceptionally large amount of state revenue being spent on a place of worship, the Maharaja justified his endeavour as an attempt to cater to his subjects’ interest. Their reservations notwithstanding, all viceroys who visited Kapurthala in the 1930s and 1940s were also taken to the Jami Masjid, underscoring its place as a site of interest in the capital.57 Indeed, the mosque was perceived as an important architectural addition to the city.58 It stood within a walled enclosure enveloped by fruit orchards

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Brigadier (Retired) Sukhjit Singh.

Figure 11: Jami Masjid, Kapurthala: inaugural ceremony, 1930.

Brigadier (Retired) Sukhjit Singh.

Figure 12(a): Jami Masjid, Kapurthala: view from frontal garden, 1930.

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Janhwij Sharma.

Figure 12(b): Jami Masjid, Kapurthala: view from frontal rose garden, 2011.

with entry gates and was fronted by a garden to give it the desired foreground. The garden was formally laid out with beds for flowers, fruit-bearing trees together with a lawn traversed by brick-paved walkways. At its centre was a marble fountain of European inspiration, rising in a three-tier basin from a marble pool shaped like an eight-pointed star. Beyond the garden stood the mosque with its flat roofline much like its archetype, broken by the tall square minaret to the north [Figure 12a, 12b]. The entire structure was raised on a plinth and accessed by a wide flight of steps placed centrally in the eastern face. The façade was articulated as a colonnade of horse-shoe arches, the latter somewhat alien to the subcontinent, with a central projecting portal opening into the sahn (courtyard). Barring the portal that was ornamented with bands of arabesque and calligraphic inscriptions framing the opening, the rest of the façade was unadorned and finished in stucco. Flanking the entrance portal were two symmetrically arranged small courtyards, each with a pool and basin in the centre and ablution chambers that opened into the sahn. The latter, unlike the usually square proportions of mosques in the subcontinent, was rectilinear with its edges defined by horseshoe arched cloisters on all sides and the west forming the sanctuary [Figure 13]. The sahn’s northern and southern ends had bays projecting into it, recalling the entrance, each also serving as an ancillary entrance with an arched cloister and flights of steps. Both bays had a marble basin and flanking pools sunk into the floor for ritualistic ablutions [Figure 14]. These substituted for the ablution pool that usually formed the sahn’s centrepiece in the subcontinent’s mosques.

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Brigadier (Retired) Sukhjit Singh.

Figure 13: Jami Masjid, Kapurthala: view of sahn with the devout offering namaz, 1930.

Janhwij Sharma.

Figure 14: Jami Masjid, Kapurthala: sahn with projecting bays with basins, 2011.

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Brigadier (Retired) Sukhjit Singh.

Figure 15: Jami Masjid, Kapurthala: sanctuary with mihrab and minbar, 1930.

Janhwij Sharma.

Figure 16: Jami Masjid, Kapurthala: mihrab bay in a state of disrepair, 2011.

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Water came from a well at the rear of the site and was circulated via underground pipes to fill not only the pools but also to irrigate the garden and orchards. The roof also reflected the Mediterranean character, with a shallow pitched roof in glazed clay tiles in a blue-green finish over the cloister that was mounted with a pronounced pyramidal roof over the projecting pavilions with an overhang carried on a decorative corbelled eave in stucco. The sanctuary was marked centrally by the highly ornamented mihrab (main arch) niche in the qibla (west) wall with an elaborately carved marble minbar (pulpit) adjoining it [Figure 15]. Two doorways at both ends of the shorter sanctuary wall opened into small courtyards provided with an eight-pointed star pool and fountain. The mihrab’s horseshoe form was articulated via painting on stucco and moulded stucco decoration with a pattern in red, blue and gilt that fanned out from its centre and was supported by calligraphy bands to draw the worshipper’s attention [Figure 16]. The patterns were designed and executed by students of Lahore’s Mayo School of Art, a leading art school of colonial Punjab.59 The mihrab bay was crowned with an octagonal pyramidal roof, finished internally in timber and resting on a drum pierced with openings, three to a side, to let in light and finished externally in glazed tiles [Figure 17a, 17b]. All pyramidal roofs were topped by metal finials designed as three spheres of diminishing size that recalled the finial crowning the Kutubiyya Mosque’s minaret. Like its prototype, the Jami Mosque’s singular minaret emerged from a square plan recalling the bulkiness of the original and was pierced with small openings framed by ornamental bands in stucco. It was topped with a blue-green glazed tile roof that culminated in the three-sphere finial and was a dominant visual marker in the city’s skyline. The Jami Mosque was a rallying point for the city’s Muslim residents who continued to use it for prayer until the advent of Indian independence. In the upheaval that followed the partition of the country post-independence, the

Janhwij Sharma.

Figure 17(a): Jami Masjid, Kapurthala: mihrab bay ceiling in timber panelling, 2011.

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Janhwij Sharma.

Figure 17(b): Jami Masjid, Kapurthala: pyramidal roof finished in glazed tiles over mihrab bay, 2011. mosque lost its worshippers as Kapurthala’s Muslims migrated to Pakistan in large numbers altering the ethnic demography of the state. Following independence the mosque gradually ceased to function as a ritual space and became more of an architectural landmark.

Conclusion Today, Kapurthala’s Jami Mosque is under the care of the Punjab government’s Department of Archaeology, which is responsible for its upkeep.60 While the number of worshippers using the Jami Mosque today is a pale shadow of the bygone era, it is a prominent landmark in the city that boasts of an impressive corpus of colonial built heritage. The Jami Mosque also forms part of the subcontinent’s rich repertoire of Islamic built heritage, with the unique features inspired by religious architecture beyond the subcontinent’s domain. While it could be argued that the patron simply replicated an existing and famous Maghribi prototype, it is important to underscore how rare instances of innovation in mosque design are in the Indian subcontinent, even in contemporary times. 61 In this light Kapurthala’s Jami Mosque is an attempt by its patron, an Indian by birth but a European by temperament, to provide a place of worship for his subjects but on his whim of recreating a piece of his much-loved French Maghrib in his homeland. While the state is engaged in the conservation of Kapurthala’s Jami Mosque, it is also imperative that the site plays a role in the city’s urban life

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by engaging both the city residents and tourists as a place of historic interest as well as on account of its unique architectural style that was alien to the subcontinent. It is also important to draw attention to the Jami Mosque as a subject of scholarship having been ignored by academic work, which tends to concentrate on mosque building in the subcontinent within the chronological limits of Muslim rule from the twelfth to the mid-nineteenth century. While it is conceded that mosque building in colonial India did not attain the heights of the bygone era, there were certainly some examples of princely patronage that stood out, among them Kapurthala’s Jami Mosque can most certainly lay claim to being a worthy candidate for consideration.

Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Brigadier (Retired) Sukhjit Singh, grandson of Maharaja Jagatjit Singh for sharing his thoughts on his illustrious grandfather and also allowing access to Maharaja Jagatjit Singh’s travel books, particularly My Travels in Europe and America 1893, personal diaries, photograph albums and postcards. Early twentieth-century photographs of Kapurthala’s Jami Mosque and Jagatjit Singh Palace are part of photograph albums, while Figures 2, 3a, 3b, 3c, 4, 6a, 6b and 10 are from the Kapurthala Postcard compendium. Collectively, they form part of a private collection held at Kapurthala and have been reproduced by the kind permission of Brigadier (Retired) Sukhjit Singh. Figures 1, 7a, 7b, 7c, 8a and 9 are courtesy of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Photo Archives, New Delhi. Figure 8b is courtesy of the Commissioner, Archaeology, Archives and Museums, Government of Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal. Contemporary photographs of the Jami Masjid have been generously shared by Janhwij Sharma, Director (Conservation and World Heritage), Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi. This article is an enlarged version of the paper presented by the author at the Fifth International Conference on Islamic Arts and Architecture organized by the Department of Architecture and Ekistics, Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, India in New Delhi from November 11–13, 2011. The presented paper formed part of the published conference proceedings.

Suggested Citation Sharma, J. P. (2012). ‘From Marrakesh to India: A Colonial Maharaja’s Pursuit of Architectural Glory in Kapurthala’, International Journal of Islamic Architecture 1: 2, pp. 269–300, doi: 10.1386/ijia.1.2.269_1

Contributor Details Dr. Jyoti Pandey Sharma is an Associate Professor in Architecture at Deenbandhu Chhotu Ram University of Science and Technology, Murthal (Haryana), India. She engages with issues pertaining to built heritage and cultural landscapes, particularly those concerning the Indian subcontinent’s legacy of Islamic and colonial urbanism, and has published both nationally and internationally. She has been a recipient of a summer fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, Harvard University, to examine the colonial public park as a novel, civic spatial import in cities of pre-colonial origin in the Indian subcontinent. She is currently engaged

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in examining the colonial state’s response to the subcontinent’s built heritage as a UGC-Associate at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India. Contact: Department of Architecture, Deenbandhu Chhotu Ram University of Science & Technology, Murthal 131 039, Haryana, India. E-mail: [email protected] Dr. Jyoti Pandey Sharma has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

Endnotes 1. For an account of princely India’s integration into the Indian state following independence, see V.P. Menon, Integration of the Indian States (Madras: Orient Longman, 1985). 2. For a discussion on the relationship, see J. Sutherland, The Relations Subsisting between the British Government in India, and the Different Native States (Calcutta: G.H. Huttmann, Military Orphan Press, 1837); and Bhupen Qanungo, ‘A Study of the British Relations with the Native States of India, 1858–62’, The Journal of Asian Studies 26.2 (February 1967): 251–65, for a pre-1857 and post-1857 account respectively. 3. Thomas R. Metcalf, The New Cambridge History of India: Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 4. Sir Thomas Raleigh, KCSI, Lord Curzon in India: Being a Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy and Governor-General of India, 1898–1905 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1906), 217–18. Curzon delivered this speech on November 29, 1899 on the occasion of the state banquet held in his honour to mark the Viceroy’s first visit to a prominent Indian prince, Maharaja Scindia at Gwalior. Such official speeches were the order of the day to continuously reinforce the need for Indian princes to conform to model princely behaviour. 5. Jyoti Hosagrahar, Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism (New York: Routledge, 2005). 6. For a discussion on the architectural patronage of the Avadh nawabs, see Rosie Llewllyn-Jones, A Fatal Friendship – The Nawabs, the British and the City of Lucknow (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985). 7. Anon. as cited in Anthony D. King, Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), 204–05. 8. Ian Copland, The Princes of India in the Endgame of Empire, 1917–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); and G.H.R. Tillotson, The Tradition of Indian Architecture: Continuity, Controversy and Change since 1850 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989).

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9. Jyoti P. Sharma, ‘Colonial Intervention and Urban Transformation: A Case Study of Shahjahanabad/Old Delhi’ (Ph.D. diss., De Montfort University, 2005). 10. Julie F. Codell, ‘Reversing the Grand Tour: Guest Discourse in Indian Travel Narratives’, Huntington Library Quarterly 70.1 (March 2007): 173–89, accessed July 5, 2011, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/hlq.2007.70.1.173. 11. James Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, vol. 2 (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, reprint, 1998), 326–28. 12. The Curator of the Provincial Museum at Lucknow, Dr A. Fuehrer, remarked in the late nineteenth century that Lucknow best represented the ‘influence of a depraved oriental court and its politics upon art and architecture […]’ as cited in Llewllyn-Jones, Fatal Friendship, 240. Such observations were commonplace after the Uprising becoming acceptable arguments for the annexation of Avadh by the British for the good of its people. For a complete discussion, see Llewllyn-Jones, Fatal Friendship, 237–42. 13. Thomas R Metcalf, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj (London: Faber and Faber, 1989). 14. For a discussion the following are recommended: Metcalf, Imperial Vision and Andreas Volwahsen, Splendours of Imperial India – British Architecture in the 18th and 19th Centuries (London: Prestel Verlag, 2004). 15. For a discussion on the history of the Kapurthala state, see L.H. Griffin, The Rajas of Punjab: Being the History of the Principal States in the Punjab and their Political Relations with the British Government (Lahore: Punjab Printing Company, 1870). Griffin was among the British officers who administered the affairs of Kapurthala while Maharaja Jagatjit Singh was a minor. For an account of the Kapurthala state under Maharaja Jagatjit Singh, see Anju Arora, The Princely States: British Paramountcy and Internal Administration, 1858–1948: A Case Study of the Kapurthala State (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 2001). 16. Maharaja Jagatjit Singh was the quintessential Indian prince who kept himself abreast of the latest developments in the fields of manufacturing and agriculture emerging from Europe to better the lot of his people. He set up Jagatjit Industries Limited in 1944 to manufacture a wide variety of products ranging from dairy items to alcoholic beverages. In 1917, he asked for the loan of the services of Sir Albert Howard, a noted agricultural scientist in colonial India, that resulted in the creation of an agricultural department and a state development fund for Kapurthala. Sir Howard also acted as an agricultural adviser to princely states in central India and Rajputana. For a discussion on Sir Albert Howard’s career in colonial India, see Louise E. Howard, Sir Albert Howard in India (London: Faber and Faber, 1953). 17. Personal communication with Maharaja Jagatjit Singh’s grandson, Brigadier (Retired) Sukhjit Singh, December 5, 2011. Henceforth, Brigadier (Retired) Sukhjit Singh.

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18. The Maharaja patronized Kapurthala’s first educational institution, Randheer College, a Sanskrit school upgraded into a college and named after his grandfather. The college offered instruction not only in Indian languages but also English and French followed by the introduction of natural sciences. Randheer College attracted students from other princely states in North India and was affiliated to Calcutta University till 1882 when it was affiliated to Punjab University that was set up in Lahore. 19. The French influence penetrated into Punjab via French mercenaries and adventurers who played an active role in organizing the army of the Sikh rulers of the Punjab states notably that of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Besides military roles, they were also given charge of civilian duties and were part of the ruler’s durbar thus paving the way for the ingress of French influence in court. For a discussion on European adventurers including those of French origin, see C. Grey, European Adventurers of Northern India (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, reprint, 1996). 20. T.B. Pandian as cited in Antoinette Burton, ‘Making a Spectacle of Empire: Indian Travellers in Fin-de-Siècle London’, History Workshop Journal, 42 (Autumn 1996): 129, accessed July 15, 2011, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/4289470. 21. Shompa Lahiri, Indians in Britain: Anglo-Indian Encounters, Race and Identity, 1880–1930 (London: Frank Cass, 2000). 22. Jagatjit Singh, My Travels in Europe and America 1893 (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1895). 23. Singh, Travels. 24. A mention must be made of the following works as seminal examples of indigenous travel writing in the late nineteenth-century: Jhinda Ram, My Trip to Europe (Lahore: Mufid-i-am Press, 1893); Behramji M. Malabari, The Indian Eye on English Life, or Rambles of a Pilgrim Reformer (Westminster: A. Constable and Company, 1893); T.N. Mukharji, A Visit to Europe (Calcutta: W. Newman & Co., 1889); Lala Baijnath, England and India: Being Impressions of Persons, Things, English and Indian, and Brief Notes of Visits to France, Switzerland, Italy and Ceylon (Bombay: Jehangir B. Karani, 1893); and T.B. Pandian, England to an Indian Eye, or English Pictures from an Indian Camera (London: E. Stock, 1897). 25. Singh, Travels, 52. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., 57. 28. Burton, Spectacle of Empire, 126–46. 29. Singh, Travels, 58–59.

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30. Personal communication with Brigadier (Retired) Sukhjit Singh, December 5, 2011. 31. Patrick Geddes spent about five years in India in the early twentieth century teaching and also surveying and preparing town planning reports for about fifty Indian cities including Kapurthala. Writing to the Maharaja of Kapurthala in 1917, Geddes marvelled at the Indian city’s ability to sustain urban life. While a number of sources examining Geddes’s work exist, for his work on India, the following is recommended: Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, Patrick Geddes in India (London: L. Humphries, 1947). 32. Herbert Baker, Architecture and Personalities: By Herbert Baker (London: Country Life, 1944). Herbert Baker also designed the memorial erected by the Imperial War Graves Commission at Neuve-Chapelle, France to commemorate the Indian soldiers martyred in the First World War. Maharaja Jagatjit Singh was invited as a special guest on the occasion of the unveiling of the memorial on October 7, 1927 by the Secretary of State for India, the Earl of Birkenhead. 33. Metcalfe, Imperial Vision, 1989. William Emerson was an English architect practising in the subcontinent designing buildings both for the colonial state and for princely India in the prevalent eclectic fashion as epitomized in Allahabad’s Muir College, Bombay’s Crawford market and the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta. Emerson’s design for Maharaja Jagatjit Singh’s Kapurthala Palace, published in The Building News in April 1874 was based on the Indo-Saracenic style that the patron rejected in favour of a French inspired layout. 34. Today the Maharaja’s palace functions as a military school for boys who aspire to join the country’s armed forces. Its altered usage notwithstanding, the building continues to be awe-inspiring and is a priceless repository of India’s colonial past that needs to be protected as a cultural asset. 35. Singh, Travels, 2. 36. The postcards were bound together as a compendium of Kapurthala’s important buildings notably those patronized by the Maharaja. The collection also included, among others, images of the Maharaja with his progeny and state officials and with other Indian princes who had been invited to Kapurthala on the occasion of his Golden Jubilee in 1927. 37. For a detailed account of the Khilafat Movement, see Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilisation in India (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1982). For a discussion on the political situation in Punjab, see Samina Awan, ‘Nationalist Politics in the British Punjab: An Alliance between Muslim League Parliamentary Board and Majlis-i-Ahrar-i-Islam’, Pakistan Journal of History and Culture 30.2 (2009): 67–82.

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38. The following account of the political situation in the state is drawn on a personal communication with Brigadier (Retired) Sukhjit Singh, April 8, 2012. 39. Jagatjit Singh, ‘Speech delivered by His Highness the Maharaja of Kapurthala State, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Juma Masjid Mosque, Kapurthala, 14th March, 1930’. The Maharaja, who was proficient in both Persian and Urdu, delivered a speech in Urdu that he dictated to his Urdu secretary, Munshi Bashir Ahmed that was subsequently translated into English and given to the Maharaja’s private secretary for the records. Copy of translated speech provided to the author by Brigadier (Retired) Sukhjit Singh. 40. His Highness the Aga Khan, ‘Speech of His Highness the Agha Khan in the Juma Masjid Kapurthala, on the 26th of January 1934’. The speech forms part of the private collection of Brigadier (Retired) Sukhjit Singh. 41. In an age where men dominated polity, Bhopal’s ruling family produced four illustrious and progressive women rulers, the begums of Bhopal who were granted the appellation of nawab, despite their gender. The begums brought economic and social development to the state and transformed the capital, Bhopal, into a culturally vibrant city. For an account of the reign of the Bhopal begums, see Shahrayar M. Khan, The Begums of Bhopal: a Dynasty of Women Rulers in Raj India (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2000). 42. For a discussion, see C.R. Pennell, Morocco since 1830: A History (New York: New York University Press, 2000). 43. For an account of the development of tourism in Morocco, see Claudio Minca and Rachele Borghi, ‘Morocco: Restaging Colonialism for the Masses’, in Pau Obrador Pons, Mike Crang and Penny Trav eds., Cultures of Mass Tourism: Doing the Mediterranean in the Age of Banal Mobilities (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009), 21–52. 44. The Maharaja kept a diary to record among other things his travel experiences. Written in French the diaries provide an insight to his personality. His diary for the year 1922 records his visit to Morocco. The translation has been provided by Brigadier (Retired) Sukhjit Singh. 45. Singh, ‘Speech’. 46. The Great Mosque of Paris was built between 1922 and 1926 to commemorate the World War I martyred Muslim soldiers in the French army. It was designed by a team of architects, Robert Fournez, Charles Heubès and Maurice Mantout, who based their design on plans prepared by the Chief of the Beaux-Arts Service in Morocco. For more information on the Paris mosque, see Archnet online database on Mosquée de Paris, accessed April 14, 2012, http://archnet.org/library/sites/one-site. jsp?site_id=8601. 47. Singh, ‘Speech’.

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48. It is rather tempting to infer that Maurice Mantout, one of the architects of the Paris mosque is being referred to as Monsieur Monteaux, the architect of the Kapurthala mosque, the name Mantout having mutated to Monteaux perhaps on account of translation. This could, however not be confirmed with certainty. 49. King Hassan II ascended to the throne in 1961 and commissioned the mosque that was to serve as a landmark in Casablanca. The mosque, envisaged on a grand scale and built on a lavish budget with contemporary technology by way of a retractable roof over the courtyard was consecrated in 1993 in a spectacular ceremony and is among the biggest congregational mosques in the world. For a more detailed description of Hassan II Mosque, see Renata Holod and Hasan-Uddin Khan, The Mosque and the Modern World (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997), 56–61. 50. Singh, ‘Speech’. 51. Sir G.G. Scott, one of the most prolific architects in Victorian Britain, designed the Convocation Hall and Library of Bombay University with its lofty clock tower in the prevalent Victorian Gothic manner. Scott never visited Bombay and his design was executed on site by engineers. For an account, see Philip Davies, Splendours of the Raj – British Architecture in India, 1660–1947 (London: Penguin Books, reprint, 1988), 160–64. 52. Singh, ‘Speech’. 53. Singh, ‘Speech’. 54. Personal communication with Brigadier (Retired) Sukhjit Singh, December 5, 2011. 55. Data drawn from a commemorative plaque fixed on the Jami Mosque’s entrance portal and from an examination of contemporary photographs taken to capture the inaugural ceremony for posterity. 56. Singh, ‘Speech’. 57. Personal communication with Brigadier (Retired) Sukhjit Singh, April 8, 2011. 58. The following description of the site is drawn on fieldwork undertaken by the author in 2002–03 to explore Kapurthala’s built heritage. While the Jami Mosque most certainly showed signs of aging, its physical fabric remained intact thereby enabling the author to carry out an assessment of its architectural character. 59. The Mayo School of Art was established in Lahore in 1874 and was one among the four state-run schools of art in the subcontinent, set up with

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the intention of improving the aesthetic taste of the indigenes. Named in the memory of Viceroy Mayo, it was younger than the other colonial art schools at Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, the first of its kind in Punjab and went on to organize and provide colonial exhibitions. 60. The Punjab government commissioned a non-government organization, the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), in 2006 to prepare a conservation plan for the wall paintings of the sanctuary following a detailed condition appraisal undertaken by a team of conservation architects and art conservators. 61. Among the vast corpus of mosques that exists across the Islamic world, examples of mosques that did not subscribe to the traditional paradigm are very few and far between. One notable example is the Mosque of the Grand National Assembly, Ankara, Turkey that reinterpreted traditional design elements, making them almost unrecognizable hence imparting the mosque a contemporary architectural character. The mosque was the recipient of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1995.

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