Frederic Salmon Growse

“ In the first place, I would do away with the present system of Government inspection and put the primary schools of every district under the absolute control of the local committee, at the same time increasing the staff of the Deputy Inspectors, who would then be Deputies no longer—and the Sub-Inspectors. Not only, as has often been pointed out, are the Inspectors much too highly cultivated for the drudgery that devolves upon them, but in every country Government inspection has the inevitable result of raising the standard, which in primary schools is exactly what is not wanted. ”

“ We exhaust the resources of Government in making a free gift of professional training to people who are quite able to provide it for themselves, instead of applying all our means to the diffusion of a simple vernacular education, far more important in its effects on national progress, but less productive of immediate individual advancement, and therefore at once more deserving of, and more dependent on, State patronage. ”

“ In working out their own conceptions, or repeating the familiar types of local tradition, both mind and hand will act more freely than when they are set to copy forms and mouldings, which they have never practised and do not understand. The carpenters and bricklayers whom I have employed at Bulandshahr are, for the most part, the very same men who raised the bare walls, and set up the tasteless door frames that distinguish the older public buildings of the town. ”

“ It was not thus that the Muhammadans, the earlier conquerors of India, achieved those architectural triumphs in mosque and palace, which we now conscientiously restore with many expressions of idle admiration, but apparently without gathering much practical instruction from the method they inculcate. Their accurate reproduction is undoubtedly in itself an excellent undertaking and one that reflects the highest credit on the Government, but the functions of design are not vitally stimulated, nor is art adequately encouraged by an exclusive devotion to the past. ”

“ It is still almost as true as when Ruskin framed the indictment twenty years ago, that all the pleasure, which the people of the nineteenth century take in art, is in pictures, sculpture, minor objects of virtu, or mediæval architecture, which we enjoy under the term picturesque: no pleasure is taken anywhere in modern buildings; the reason being that modern European architecture, working as it does on known rules and from given models, is not aṇ art, but a manufacture. ”

“ In his devotion to the perfect rendering of each separate detail, as it comes under his hand, he too little considers the ultimate destination of the whole; while any faculty for reproducing the beauty of the human or other animate form has been completely destroyed by ages of desuetude. He is thus content to repeat the archaic rudeness of his temple-gods, in which the discouragement of Muhammadan rule has so long forbidden improvement, that the eye has at last learnt to acquiesce in their familiar uncouthness. ”

“ It is no matter for surprise that the people themselves, if questioned as to the existence and prospects of indigenous art, entirely fail to comprehend the purport of the enquiry; for, in any community, the masses are habitually as unconscious of the progress of national sentiment, as a man is of his own growth in stature. ”

“ It is one of the most convincing proofs of the general incapacity for self-government, that in many towns and villages, accumulated funds are often left unutilized, and local improvements—that every one desires—are unexecuted, simply on account of jealousy and a want of mutual confidence. If the district officer will take upon himself the responsibility of administration, the community is only too glad to place the money at his disposal and to supplement it by further subscriptions. They will not trust it to any one of themselves ”

“ The native community, as has been already allowed, are not conscious of the artistic vitality that still animates their handicraftsmen, while many of the buildings that the latter erect are conspicuous examples of the very worst taste. But the mason who executes the work has seldom prepared the design; or, if he has done so, he has been hampered by the necessity of subordinating his own ideas to those of his employer. In every age and in every country, the upper and moneyed classes are too materialized to have any intelligent appreciation of art. ”

“ So long as a committee has no definite sources of income and no independent control over them, it is an abuse of language to speak of self-government at all. What is further required is less technicality in returns and closer inspection of results. If a committee were fully trusted with the expenditure of its funds, and at the end of each year received praise for success and censure for failure, it would soon take interest in the performance of its duties. ”

“ If there is really a desire to revive oriental art, I believe it can be done without the fussy agency of a department and without any expense to the State, simply by allowing municipal committees to erect their own buildings, to make each Town Hall an emporium of local industry, and generally to develope indigenous talent by the exercise of judicious patronage. In technical as well as in the higher literary education, I believe that a healthy influence can be exerted by Government only from the outside, by removing artificial restrictions and encouraging spontaneous action. ”

“ When a Collector is simply a bird of passage, six months here and six months there, and with no special interests any where, beneficial action on his part is simply impossible, and without his initiation nothing will be done; an Indian district—like the whole of the great Oriental world—is absolutely incapable of making progress by itself. ”

“ Such a Board is simply a screen for the most exaggerated form of centralization. The system is wasteful, demoralizing and inefficient. On the other hand, fiscal and administrative economy would be secured, the character of the people would be elevated, and material progress advanced, if every district had the management of its own funds, acting under the guidance of its natural leaders, unhampered by departmental interference, forming its own projects and employing its own agency. ”

“ Instead of money being hoarded for special occasions, and then squandered in thankless and unprofitable profusion, it would be distributed with judicious economy over the whole area of domestic requirements. Food, clothing, shelter and education are comparatively so cheap, that all but the very poorest could rear a family in a decent and respectable manner, if it were not for the extravagant outlay on marriages. The various attempts that have been made to enforce the reduction of such expenses are well-meaning, but have not achieved much success, nor do I think they are ever likely to do so. ”

“ In India, almost the only class in the native community that still encourages indigenous art, is the much abused trader and money-lender. Not that he is moved to do so by any artistic bias, but simply by force of habit. If he decides upon building a new porch to his house, he calls in the mason of most repute in the neighbourhood, shows him the site and explains what is wanted. Perhaps the materials in whole or in part are also supplied, but the workman is then left to his own devices, on the presumption that he best understands his own business ”

“ It may, therefore, be considered as established by a recent and crucial test, that the district is practically secure against any ordinary calamity. But to map out the entire area—as has been proposed—in deeper and lighter shades of color according to a nice calculation of possibilities, and to determine, once for all, that such and such tracts will be entitled to relief in time of drought, and that others can always do without it, seems as unpractical a project as an attempt to construct a permanent chart of the clouds in the sky. ”

“ The tyranny of departmentalism, and the servitude of the individual as now practised, are not only unnecessary in the interests either of the Government or the people, but are positively injurious to both. The remedy for present evils lies in local self-Government, which—rightly understood—is the greatest blessing that could be conferred on the country. ”

“ These are the solitary defect in the design, and fortunately it is one which admits of an easy remedy. The combination of depth and solidity in the mass with lightness of touch in the ornamental details indicates a true artistic faculty of conception, and the idea has been carried out with much technical skill.
Our engineers' buildings, as a rule, have the one merit of simplicity. They make no pretence of pleasing the eye, but neither do they often wilfully offend it by an obtrusive display of misplaced architectural embellishment. ”

“ The disbandment of the whole corps of executive and assistant engineers would not only be the greatest possible boon to the districts, but would even be welcomed by themselves, if due regard were had to vested interests and appointments of equal emolument found for them in a more appropriate sphere. The officers of the Roads and Building Department are the one body of Government servants in the country who notoriously have no heart in their work. It is impossible that they should have. ”

“ When I further object that his façade is incorrect even from the European point of view he cannot understand how that is possible. In the same way as Christianity is popularly identified with any denial of religious obligation, so the essence of European architecture is supposed to consist in a reckless disregard of all recognized canons of ornament and proportion. Any outcast is dubbed a Christian, and any ugliness in a building is accounted European. ”

“ In all such works as these, the majority of the people concerned are always ready to co-operate, and even the obstructive minority will in the end be gratified by the result. Instead of the impracticable dream of purely native self-government, if only a modest scheme of decentralization were introduced, every District Committee, without the worry and delay of repeated references for sanction to higher authority, would have certain limited funds of its own to lay out in the furtherance of local projects and the encouragement of native enterprise. ”

“ Aching in every limb from the jolting of the springless cart and the cramped position into which they have been squeezed, choked with dust, dizzy from the glare of the sun and want of sufficient food—for they purposely starve themselves in order to do more justice to the feast—they at last arrive at their journey's end. ”

“ The idea has been so successfully accomplished, that every European visitor at once concludes it to be a methodist place of worship, and enquires to what particular denomination it belongs. The style of architecture may be readily imagined without further illustration. But, as it is a Government building, it sets the fashion, and, not long ago, the native gentleman of highest rank in the district, intimated to me that he wished to add a clock-tower to his country house, and that he proposed to make it a fac simile of this delightful structure at Bulandshahr. ”

“ I have already alluded to the decay of native arts and manufactures, for which our faulty system of education is partly responsible. Something is being done towards their revival by Schools of Design, as at Lahor, Bombay and elsewhere, and by local Exhibitions. But, so long as the dreadful upas tree of the Public Works Department is allowed to overshadow the country, sporadic efforts like these can have no perceptible effect on popular culture. Architecture is the first of all the decorative arts, and its degradation paralyses them all. ”

“ The doors, which are entirely the work of local carpenters, are of remarkably handsome design and careful execution. Being greatly admired by visitors, they have had an important effect in stimulating the revival of a decaying art, and now the traders in the principal bazar are vying with one another in the excellence of the carved arcades with which they are ornamenting their shop fronts, and which promise to render the street one of the most picturesque in the district. ”

“ For a man with the slightest element of humanity and good taste in his composition, it must be unspeakable misery to superintend the construction of edifices which will not only cause daily discomfort to the unfortunate officials who are doomed to use them, but will also permanently disfigure the landscape and pervert the indigenous sentiment of architectural propriety. ”

“ Baran is certainly not the Sanskrit word varna, 'colour,' but varana, ‘a hill-fort or enclosure;' and, Ahi-baran would thus mean 'snake-fort' or 'Nága fort,' in the same way as Ahi-kshetra means 'Snake-land.' No Rája Ahi-baran, I should conjecture, ever existed, though there may well have been an Ahibaran Rája, the town being so called because it was a stronghold of the Nága tribe. Nor is it impossible that the epithet 'Nága,' like the English 'reptile,' may have been attached to a Buddhist community by their Brahmanical neighbours by way of reproach. ”