The man who changed Taj Mahal forever was none other than lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India between 1899 and 1905. Before him the Taj was surrounded by tall green trees. Utpal Kumar tells this and other stories of the Raj’s obsession with gardens
Recently, I visited Agra. Standing along the Taj Mahal, I realised why it could evoke such extreme emotions among visitors. Everyone looked for a picture-perfect moment. The main draw, of course, was the white marble structure (a bit yellowish now), which Mughal emperor Shah Jahan had built in memory of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal who died at a relatively young age. No one cared about anything else. Some were sitting in front of the Taj instructing photographers to catch the glory of the structure behind. A few others tried to create the impression of having the monument in their palms. But many just sat on the floor wondering how the Mughals could get it so right with the Taj.
Far from the centre of the frenzied action, a photo gallery was on along the periphery of the Taj compound. It was displaying rare photographs of the monument, showcasing how it changed over the years. One photograph of 1862 was particularly interesting. Here the marble structure was hardly the centre of attraction; instead, a thickly grown garden in front of the Taj was grabbing eyeballs.
The man — villain or hero depending on one’s preference for wide open spaces or green trees — who changed the Taj forever was none other than lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India between 1899 and 1905. Before him the Taj was surrounded by tall green trees. Considering them “overgrown”, Curzon ordered to clear them out, thus opening the view of the marble structure.
But why did Curzon go for wide open spaces in front of the TajIJ Eugenia W Herbert, in her recent book Flora’s Empire, believes Curzon couldn’t comprehend the subtle nuances of Mughal gardening. For the Viceroy, the Taj garden should be flat, formal and paving the way to the great building. It’s position was, thus, made subsidiary to the marble structure, which was not the case when the monument was first conceived. In the Mughal scheme of things, both the building and the garden were equally significant.
Herbert, however, believes it would be wrong to question Curzon’s intention. For, she says, the Viceroy was in love with the Taj ever since his days as a young traveller when he “devoted no less than 14 pages of his diary to it, viewing the monument in the early morning light, in the waning gleam of evening, and under the full effulgence of the moon”. In Curzon’s defence, it could be said that he did what he thought was right. In fact, he once confessed that he wanted “to restore nothing that had not already existed, and to put up nothing absolutely new”. And yet post-Curzon, the Taj hardly remained the same. For, he thought “the removal of the flowers and the substitution of simple grass in the plots bordering the water channel in the Taj is an improvement”.
Also, Curzon made the mistake of dismissing the Taj Ganj, the entryway to the Taj Mahal, “as little more than an Augean stable to be cleared as quickly as possible”. This way he, even though unintentionally, detached the Taj from its original milieu. He failed to realise that the chaos of the Taj Ganj was consciously made to ensure that the visitor entered the sanctity of the garden tomb from the untidy and frenzied marketplace; the two symbolised the Quranic concept of the Paradise and the chaotic world existing side by side — one leading to another. Insists William Dalrymple in the book City of Djinns, “Outside the garden, all is delightful chaos; inside, reflecting the central concept of Islam, spontaneity is crushed by submission to a higher order.”
Herbert believes that the sudden — and relatively early — death of Mumtaz Mahal might have helped imbibe uniqueness to the Taj. “Rulers and notables often designed their tombs during their lifetimes, enjoying the pleasures of the gardens while they lived. Then after their death, a mausoleum replaced the pavilion at the centre of the garden. The suddenness of Mumtaz Mahal’s death made this sequence impossible; her funerary garden was thus intended less to evoke the delights of this life than of the one to come,” says she. Since Mumtaz died suddenly, it helped the architects introduce a drastic change: Her mausoleum was set not in the middle of the garden, but at the far end. “The positioning of the tomb at the end of the garden emphases the garden in all its 42 acre majesty, not just the setting for the tomb,” says Herbert.
So, it was Curzon’s failure to understand Mughal gardens that changed the Taj forever. He couldn’t realise that Mughal gardens appealed to all senses, whereas their English counterparts concentrated on sight alone. Thus, what he regarded as excessive was actually a deliberate attempt to provide more texture and odour to the Taj. Also, maybe Curzon was still under the spell of the 18th century English design which emphasised the need for a vast stretch of lawn dotted with a few beautiful trees — all set up to bring out the house in full bloom. The role of the garden, thus, was subsidiary in the entire scheme of things. Curzon himself was raised at one such house, and perhaps he saw it as a model!
Unfortunately, the ‘restoration’ of the Taj set the pattern for landscaping other monuments in the country. Delhi, too, witnessed the change. Here the actors changed (from Curzon to lutyens), but the story remained the same.
And the story goes like this: After Edwin lutyens was chosen as New Delhi’s architect, lord Hardinge, the then Viceroy, sent him to see major Indian monuments at Agra, Indore, Mandu and Sarnath. He hoped that lutyens would be inspired to create an architectural synthesis of East and West. These tours, however, did nothing to change his belief that India “had no architecture and nothing is built to last, not even the Taj”. Is it, therefore, any surprise that Herbert finds the creation of New Delhi “a staggering demonstration of cultural hubris in imposing the alien aesthetics of English garden city on India”IJ
Interestingly, of the eight kinds of trees originally selected for the roads of New Delhi, none was native to the region. Popular north Indian trees like mangoes and shisham were conspicuous by their absence. When one examines the species planted in the new capital city, the jamun is probably the most commonly available, followed by the neem, which can be easily found on prominent thoroughfares like Safdarjang Road, Ashok Road, etc. The other significant trees are arjun, imli, sausage tree and baheda which, together with jamun and neem, account for about 85 per cent of the avenue trees in lutyens’ Delhi.
What Herbert doesn’t mention is that in selecting trees for New Delhi, two factors often cropped up. First, the makers of the city didn’t want a species that would shed its leaves. They, thus, opted for evergreen trees. Another aspect that sealed the fate of many north Indian trees was the fact that they were seen to be too commonly available. Thus, mango got ignored for being “too common”. The planners were too eager to ensure the capital city looked ‘different’ from other cities in the country.
This obsession with greenness — along with the desire of being different — ensured Delhi got trees that were completely alien to the region and its ecosystem. Traditionally, the city’s native trees have been deciduous, but the new city makers, led by lutyens, went for evergreen trees. They failed to realise that deciduous tress suited the climate of Delhi as the region witnessed no or very little rainfall for up to nine months a year. Also, most of these trees are leafy and green in summer and monsoon, and just when we need some warmth in winter, they drop their leaves to help us get sunshine.
What made the lutyens and Company despise deciduous treesIJ Maybe it has something to do with the difficulty of keeping streets clean. Or, was it the result of prejudice of those who were used to snowy winters with trees bare and lifelessIJ Or, maybe they thought a tropical country like India should have evergreen trees!
But then something happened which the city makers could not forecast. In the dry Delhi climate, even the evergreen trees began acting like deciduous trees — a tactic, one would say, that helped them survive the prolonged drought year after year. So the very raison d’être of importing trees from other regions failed, demonstrating how important it is to plant trees in conformity with native ecology, rather than not in defiance of it.
This brings us to the third issue: Why were the British so keen to build English gardens in IndiaIJ Herbert answers this through “garden imperialism”. For her, India’s many conquerors, through gardens of their imaginations, attempted to tame the land that seemed alien and hostile at the same time. Also, just as it was with Babur, gardens helped the British come over their homesickness. Herbert, however, believes that the British created gardens in India not just out of homesickness, but also as a mark of civilising an alien, inhospitable land. They wanted to set an example of ‘civilised’ life for their subjects.
The British desire to create mini-England in India also helped emerge hill stations like Simla, Dehra Dun, Darjeeling, Ooty, etc. These places became “little islands of Englishness” where the British could look forward to ‘comforts’ of home. Interestingly, in the British summer capital of Simla, altitude determined the social status — quite literally. Thus, the Viceroy occupied the tallest spot in Simla, followed by others. Of all the hill stations, Kodaikanal, founded by American missionaries in the mid-1840s, alone could boost of a comparatively egalitarian social order.
During their rule in India, the British founded great cities like Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, and transformed the body and the soul of a few others, such as Delhi and lucknow. They also put their stamp on the country’s historical, priceless monuments. No doubt they saved many of them from going into oblivion. But the jury will be out as to how the Taj would have fared without the Curzonian vision. Or Delhi without lutyens’ ideas!