KARACHI: Prof Naman Ahuja gave a fascinating talk titled `The Politics of Interior Design` at the Mohatta Palace museum on Monday evening on the genius of British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens and how the Viceroy`s House that he designed in Delhi saw many a change once it became the Rashtrapati Bhavan (presidential residence) after India`s independence.

Prof Ahuja, who teaches at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, has put together a volume on the artworks and interior of the Rashtrapati Bhavan at the request of the President`s Secretariat in Delhi. He said it was an interesting challenge to see how the nation chose to Indianize the building.

Prof Ahuja first talked at length about Lutyens (1869-1944) who won the commission for making Viceroy`s House. Although he was inspired by art deco, he was equally taken with the Palladian classics. He could be called the last great classist. He was also a pioneering modernist because he imbibed the (architectural) orders. Viceroy`s House had disparate influences, including those of the very fashionable art deco, innovation of ideas that allowed Lutyens to conceive `movement`in the building.

There was a certain degree of racism in which the building worked. There were marked quarters for Indian staff and separate quarters for the `angrez` staff; separate areas for Indiancooks and separate areas for `angrez` cooks.

Movement led to theatrics because the architect did tricks like foreshortening, creating colonnades. It prompted Pamela Hicks to say `You need a bicycle to get to dinner`.

Prof Ahuja said what loomed large in the writings about Lutyens was the racism. His letters written to his wife had been read again and again to discern disparaging comments about Indians, for example questioning Qutub Minar as a work of architecture. What had actually happened was that his wife had become a vegetarian and refused to let him in the kitchen, which became a bit of bugbear between husband and wife. His letters were a result of the fact that he was irritated by his wife.

Prof Ahuja said Lutyens was under pressure to design a building which had a colonial impact and at the same time should be something that the diverse people of India could be able to associate with. So he used a variety of symbols, drawing from many influences.

Prof Ahuja said before Lutyens` prominence the arts and crafts schools had come up and the demands of the arts and crafts schools were pitted against the politics of colonialism.

Referring to the research that had gone into his book, Prof Ahuja said that af ter Partition the house (building) became a source of embarrassment for the early presidents of India, so they tried to change its look and functions. In the 1970s there were rumours that pilfering were taking place in the house, so the militaryattaches took the house over and it became like an army mess. In the mid-1990s liberalisation happened and it was no longer an embarrassment as foreign designers were asked to display their creativity in the building.

Prof Ahuja showed through a series of slides the grand structural makeup of the building with many rooms, large basements, courtyards, bathrooms, the Mughal gardens and the amazing furniture that the British architect himself designed.

Focusing on interior design, he spoke on the peculiar seating arrangements in the huge rooms, and how the light came into the building.

Lutyens, he claimed, was an architect who made sure that you`re grounded in the time of day, in the sensibility of the light at that time. This was the aesthetic that was completely lost on the people who used the buildings now.

The latter part of Prof Ahuja`s presentation was about how things changed over different phases in the post-independence era as attempts were made to Indianize the building, and how Nehru used Buddhist symbols because it had few subscribers and did not represent any major religions in India. Till 1953, the Union Jack would be unfurled with the Indian tricolor, which was questioned in parliament as a result of which it put an end to it.

Prof Ahuja showed some images in which alterations were made. For instance, there was a picture where the original light-fittings had an addition to them of the four-headed lion, anIndian emblem. He also showed artworks made by Samuel Fyzee Rahimin which could be seen in the north block of the building.

Concluding his talk, Prof Ahuja said much had changed in the style of the interior design of the Rashtrapati Bhavan, but the impact on thevisitors` mood probably remained the same as the architect had imagined.

The event was organised by the Mohatta Palace museum, the Institute of Architects of Pakistan (Karachi chapter) and the NED University of Engineering (heritage cell).