Mumbai Fables Page 10
Outraged, the British officials decided, foolishly, to prosecute Nariman for defamation. To be sure, they were exceedingly aggrieved. Had they not undertaken the reclamation with the loftiest of motives? Lord Lloyd, in his appearance before the committee, had reiterated that it was the scarcity of affordable and hygienic housing that had been uppermost in his mind. Admittedly, there had been mistakes. But the person to blame for the most consequential ones was Sir George Buchanan. After all, he was the expert on whose advice they had depended. As for other mistakes, they were trifling. In any case, who was this upstart Nariman?
A few days after Nariman’s testimony, Sir Hopkinson, the committee member, felt so stung by the charges leveled against his compatriots that he used Hepper’s appearance before the committee to bring down the nationalist. “Is Mr. Nariman what is known here as a pleader?” he asked Hepper. Unstated in the question was that Nariman was no barrister, but only a lowly pleader. Having established this fact, he proceeded to ask: “As such is it partly his professional business to defend criminals in the Police Court?” When Hepper answered that it was, he gleefully flung some mud on Nariman: “Some of his charges are so extraordinary that I venture to suggest that possibly his point of view is somewhat clouded by his professional activities, particularly criminal.”25 If Nariman had accused the government officials of corruption, the Hopkinson-Hepper masquerade at the inquiry concluded, it must surely be because graft was rife in the circles in which he moved.
On November 6, 1926, the Chronicle announced in bold headlines that the government of India, with the strong recommendation of the Bombay government, had sanctioned the prosecution of Nariman for defamation. The permission to prosecute was requested by Thomas Harvey, a superintending engineer in the Development Department, who claimed that Nariman’s testimony before the Backbay Enquiry Committee had defamed him.26 Three days later, Nariman was decisively reelected to the Legislative Council, topping the polls.27 The government’s decision had turned Nariman into a martyr.
Nariman played the martyr with consummate skill when the trial opened on December 4, 1926. He used the proceedings in the Police Court, which lasted all of the next year, to stage himself as a fearless citizen determined to expose the Backbay scheme as a scandal. Acting as his own defense lawyer, he sparred with, tormented, and ridiculed the prosecution’s witnesses and solicitors. Relishing his role as a muckraker, he dramatically repeated his allegations, accused the prosecution of suppressing documents, and charged the government with trying to silence criticism. The pages of the Bombay Chronicle presented the proceedings as gripping drama. Its reports frequently began with a description of the courtroom swarming with lawyers and laymen eager to see the show. In bold headlines, it announced fresh revelations of bogus payments, secret commissions, collusion between administrators and contractors, and official misconduct.28 In the courtroom, Nariman seized on the admission of every minor mistake and every misstatement by the government and prosecution witnesses to paint a dark picture of official wrongdoing and deceit. The Chronicle followed suit.
Nariman’s successful self-staging as an intrepid critic of the government in the courtroom and the press reached its climax on January 27, 1928. On that day, the presidency magistrate’s exhaustive judgment cleared him of libel charges. Nariman was judged to have made his allegations of “ugly rumours” in good faith and not personally against the complainant. The government stood humbled. The Chronicle proclaimed in big bold letters: “Nariman Triumphant.”29 He had challenged the British and won. A “monster” public meeting on Chowpatty, attended by a thoroughly “cosmopolitan” crowd that included women, feted him.30 The Chronicle printed letters celebrating his victory, and Nariman’s supporters published a book that chronicled the origin of the libel case and its prosecution, with all the relevant documents, including the sixty-page judgment.31 Nariman was declared a hero.
But besides the encomiums to Nariman, the whole episode inaugurated a vigorous public discussion. To be sure, the “public” was restricted to the Western-educated elites conversant in English. Still, there is no denying the importance of the circulation of those “ugly rumours” in the press. Nariman’s dramatic recitation of rumors and allegations before the inquiry committee and the Police Court, prominently published by the Bombay Chronicle, showcased the reclamation as an issue of public interest. It did not matter that nationalists and disgruntled merchants and landlords had orchestrated the press coverage and public meetings; the result was to establish the idea that the city was an object of public interest. The government could not fail to take notice of this development and prosecuted Nariman precisely for this reason, though it ended up enhancing his reputation.
The government had painted the reclamation as a bold attempt to solve the problem of the housing shortage. Deeply convinced of its own role as a guarantor of the public interest, it had shut out public scrutiny to realize the dream of a neatly organized complex of public buildings, private residences, and gardens on the western foreshore. The government assumed that everyone would be dazzled by the mesmerizing dreamscape. But Nariman had other ideas. He dug beneath the glossy image to unearth the truth in the detritus of its financial and administrative failures. He pried and picked through official documents and discovered the muck of colonial despotism. Nariman exposed official highhandedness and corruption only to place colonialism on trial. According to him, the underlying cause of graft and incompetence was the arbitrary exercise of British power. The real scandal, the muckraker charged, was colonialism.
Nariman battered the Backbay fantasy. Even the government had to admit that the dream had gone sour and curtailed the scale of the reclamation. Only two blocks each on the northern and southern ends were to be fully reclaimed; the middle portions were to be left for the future.32 The incompletion told the story of the flawed birth of the city on the sea, of its emergence as an expression of colonial fantasy.
FROM DUST TO DECO
But it would take more than the heroic efforts of Nariman to kill the fantasy. Once the dust had settled on the controversy and the land market had recovered from its slump in the early 1930s, the government was back to greedily eyeing the Backbay as a source of profits. As it set about leasing land, the desire for making the most of the opportunity induced a sudden amnesia about W. R. Davidge’s grand plan of parks, avenues, and public buildings. Even Claude Batley’s alternative plan, which proposed buildings around central gardens, did not meet with its approval; instead, the government opted to maximize its gains by dividing the land into small blocks, with narrow lanes running between them.33 Appropriately enough, Art Deco came along to sculpt the commercial motive with its design motifs. The second act in the staging of the Marine Drive myth commenced.
Art Deco was launched by the 1925 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels moderne in Paris. Following the Paris exhibition, this vibrant new style spread worldwide during the 1920s and the 1930s. The term Art Deco was not used then; it was only in the 1960s that the name began to be widely applied to label an eclectic range of designs in architecture, fine art, textiles, everyday objects, film, and photography inspired by this modern style. The “decorative” style varied greatly, yet underneath the heterogeneity, there was a common spirit.
Spurred by technological improvements in the production and utilization of electric power, transportation and communication, manufactures of new materials, and the application of new organizational forms, capitalism’s worldwide reach achieved an unprecedented breadth and depth during the interwar years. The invasion of capitalist social relations and mass-produced consumer goods in everyday life was accompanied by their aestheticization. Art Deco was an expression of this aesthetic turn of capitalism, playing a powerful role in binding commerce with design.34 Unlike avant-garde, or modernist, art, it was not utopian but pragmatic; it championed novelty without being radical. Nurtured by the interwar social and technological changes, it advanced capitalist modernity by adding a fashionable gloss to the
context and objects of everyday life.
Though rarely produced by machines, Art Deco admired the machine age. This was discernible in its incorporation of industrial symbolism in design—clean and simple shapes, the use of plastics and other man-made materials, the emphasis on surface effects, and the use of decorative motifs without being ornamental. Its pragmatic bent and the lack of a formal theory meant that it could accommodate motifs from exotic cultures and far-flung areas to expand and renew its decorative repertoire. Such a flexible mode of appropriating the old and the exotic into the new dovetailed perfectly with capitalism’s remorseless expansion and produced a rich design vocabulary. Buildings, furnishings, textiles, and items of everyday use designed in Art Deco style came to exude an aura of wealth and luxury, elegance and cosmopolitan sophistication. This was appealing to the aspirations of industrialists, businessmen, and the middle classes spawned by industrial capitalism.35
While mass production and the flush of commodities for mass consumption leveled society into a horizontal order of consumers, Art Deco projected capitalist modernity in the image of an elitist, fashionable lifestyle. With the dirt, grime, and exploitation tucked away from view, capitalism appeared in the surface glitter of Art Deco. The shimmering aesthetics of this new style contributed greatly to the exuberance of the Roaring Twenties in the United States. New York built the Chrysler and Empire State buildings under its influence, and Miami acquired its image as an affluent beach resort from its parade of Art Deco buildings on South Beach. This high-spirited style drew from a variety of sources—from Bauhaus to Cubism to Constructivism to Art Nouveau to Modernism to Futurism—and it swept through the world from Europe to Cuba to Latin America to Australia.
A center of trade and industry, Bombay was primed for an Art Deco makeover. The city was also the center of the architectural profession in India. Unlike other parts of the country, the government was not the only patron of architecture. The prosperous mercantile and upper classes offered architects the opportunity to design buildings suited to urban life—spacious homes and apartments, offices and shops, cinemas and commercial establishments. Many of the city’s British and Indian architects were trained in foreign institutions and were familiar with contemporary European and American idioms in architecture and design.36
Not surprisingly, then, the Indian Institute of Architects, founded in Bombay in 1929, played a prominent role in disseminating Art Deco. In November 1937 it organized the Ideal Home Exhibition in Bombay. Held over twelve days, the exhibit at the Town Hall attracted one hundred thousand visitors, leading the Journal of the Indian Institute of Architects (JIIA) to declare it a success. Outlining the goal of the exhibit, the president of the institute asked: “Have you noticed how annoying it is, if the ashtray is not placed within the comfortable reach of your hand as you sit well back in the deep armchair? How often have we all entered a dark room and fumbled despairing for a switch? Or stumbled unexpectedly upon a step that has absolutely no right to be there?”37 These are little things, he added, but when enlarged they become enormous blunders. To demonstrate how to avoid these blunders and offer efficient and well-thoughtout models, the exhibit displayed the ideal arrangements for a living room, bedroom, kitchen and pantry, bathroom, and office space. New building materials and methods, furniture, products of interior decoration, and appliances like radios and refrigerators were showcased (see fig. 3.5).38 The ideal home in modern life meant rational arrangements and beautiful objects. The future was here, and the exhibition promised to transport visitors to this beautifully lit and appointed world on the wings of technology.
3.5. Ideal Home Exhibition. Source: Journal of Indian Institute of Architects (January 1938).
Having grown and prospered with capitalist modernization, the architects were understandably fascinated with Art Deco’s fashionable rendering of industrial modernity. They heartily endorsed the reinforced concrete construction (RCC) that formed the material basis of Art Deco architecture. An unsigned article in JIIA lauded the artistic possibilities opened by Snowcrete white cement. Comparing concrete to sculptor’s clay, it extolled the “truly artistic and colourful manner” in which the architect was able to mold buildings to meet structural requirements, environmental needs, and “the artistic tastes of the most critical clients.”39 The trade journal of concrete manufacturers agreed. In an editorial, the journal championed RCC as a form with unlimited structural possibilities. “In steel and concrete we have the two greatest structural units the world has known—steel in tension, concrete in compression.” The combination of the two, it added, had revolutionized design. “Gone are the heavy and thick walls, piers and abutments—gone, in fact, are the construction principles of dead materials—stone, brick and mass concrete—their places being taken by small steel columns, beams and reinforced concrete—materials that never sleep nor rest, but enable us to span any reasonable distance or space and to support and transmit weights to positions as required.”40 The Indian Concrete Journal followed up this breathless prose in praise of RCC with advertisements for Snowcrete and Colorcrete in issue after issue. Art, commerce, and publicity came together to sell an aesthetic image of industrial modernity.
The projection of a stylish and technologically advanced life was addressed to the Westernized elites, whose tastes the architects were already transforming by the early 1930s. In Malabar and Cumbala Hills, they built attractive Art Deco homes for the rich. Other parts of the city, including the Fort, Apollo Bunder, Colaba, Dadar, and Mahim, also witnessed the erection of office buildings, homes, and apartment blocks built in the style.41 But the most concentrated cluster of Art Deco buildings came up on Marine Drive and the Oval Maidan. By the mid-1930s, water mains, sewage, and telephone and electrical lines were being laid; work had begun on building a forty-foot-wide road and a ten-foot-wide pavement on the splendid Marine Drive.42 As land prices rose and the government began selling plots on the Oval Maidan and the Backbay reclamation, there was a spurt in building construction.43 Special building regulations were issued to achieve uniformity of scale and spatial organization, giving the area a distinct look.
By 1940 the construction of Marine Drive was complete. It was, the Indian Concrete Journal proclaimed, the “finest promenade in the East, built in concrete.”44 Lining the drive were Art Deco apartment blocks, looking out to the Arabian Sea. Behind them, on Queens Road, were also modern buildings of steel and concrete, staring across the Oval Maidan at the medievalism of the Gothic Revival buildings. The new-built form represented an architectural shift from Victorianism to modernity. Made with reinforced concrete and brick-filled stucco facades, these buildings, unlike Victorian structures, did not erect columns or beams for decoration; instead, they used a smooth, unbroken, and continuous building surface to create a modern image.45 The repeated use of simple vertical and horizontal patterns and the uniform scale of windows and doors suggested industrial design. Unlike the monumentalism of the Gothic Revival, the curved and stamped form of Art Deco signified the dynamism and rationalism of industrial capitalism. This display of industrial symbolism by the sea, the juxtaposition of human artifice and nature, provided Marine Drive with its special appeal. Whereas the bungalows and villas on Cuffe Parade and the Art Deco mansions on Malabar and Cumbala hills exuded a sense of leisurely seaside life, the apartment blocks on the western foreshore drew nature and industry together in a compact to create Marine Drive’s enchantment.
3.6. Art Deco apartments on Marine Drive. Photo by A. L. Syed. Courtesy: Sharada Dwivedi and Rahul Mehrotra, Bombay: The Cities Within (Bombay: India Book House, 1995).
As important as the stylistic shift was the change in the living pattern that apartment complexes represented. Unlike the traditional joint-family homes, apartments signaled single-unit households. For the JIIA, this was part of a general modernization of life. Raised with an international outlook, the newspapers, automobiles, and cinema, the young, according to the JIIA, were no longer satisfied with the slow pace of acquiring a traditiona
l family household; they wanted a home, and they wanted it now.46 The apartment blocks were not lifeless buildings but projections of desire—a desire for a bourgeois life. They envisioned single-unit families—relieved of the burden of the traditional household and its retinue of servants—living independently and freely. Technology made this social imaginary possible. Reinforced concrete construction permitted the building of multistory residential blocks at relatively low cost. Electric fans allowed the ceiling height to be lowered, since the punkah operated by a servant was no longer required. The availability of refrigerators, modern cooking appliances, and other household gadgets meant that the number of servants could be reduced. Art Deco orchestrated these technological developments into a style that put a luster on the social form of apartment living produced by industrial modernity.