British colonial architecture

While British supremacy did not change the fact that India was becoming rapidly urbanised, it did lead to new alignments and priorities, since the controlling power was now different. A number of new towns and new suburbs were built to house the British, and the pattern of new town planning changed. India was still divided into administrative districts as under the Mughals, and the towns which functioned as district headquarters were the ones where most of the new architecture was built.

The planning and urban design policies of the British followed certain principles – a. their perceptions of the nature of the Indian city, b. the fear of further revolts along the lines of the Mutiny of 1857, c. Haussmann’s plan for Paris which had become so popular in Europe and which advocated cutting through and demolishing old city centres to make space for new construction and boulevards, and d. planning techniques already in use for Britain’s industrial cities.

In the main the effort was to physically and socially separate the Europeans from the indigenous populace – the so-called ‘White’ and ‘Black’ towns of Madras being an example. This being done an effort, though sometimes belated, was also made to enforce sanitary and developmental guidelines on the old towns, though these had little effect as in the main they failed to take into account traditional ways of community life. In some cases new urban design smacked of retribution – Delhi and Lucknow in particular, being the centres of the Mutiny of 1857, lost large parts of their historic areas to new British planning and city-core demolitions.

The economic boom of the later half of the 19^th century translated into frenetic building activity in British India. The application of urban design guidelines resulted in the unified character that old British settlements in India still possess. These urban design projects could not fail to be influenced by precedents in Britain: the Royal Crescent at Bath by John Wood, and the Quadrant in Regent’s Park, London by John Nash were particularly influential, translating into Elphinstone Circle (now Horniman Circle >>>) in Bombay. As pressure on space grew, British architecture progressed from single buildings set in open surrounding to more densely packed urban schemes, as in the cities of Calcutta and Bombay.

In addition to major urban design schemes, it was the civil lines and the cantonments which remain today a major evidence of 19^th century British presence, and which in turn have influenced much middle-class housing development in modern India. This stems from their perception as the colonies of the elite. The cantonments and civil lines both were generally laid out as gridiron planned communities with central thoroughfares (the famous ‘Mall Roads’), with tree-lined streets, regularly divided building plots and bungalows as the main housing type. Churches and cemeteries, clubs, race and golf courses, and other trappings of an easy civil life were soon to follow.

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