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THE
ARTS: CHITRA
Urban
Line Scapes
Rare maps
and drawings of 18th century India will be on display for the first time
By
Namita
Bhandare
Ever
wondered what happened to the garden Aurangzeb made within Delhi's Red
Fort for his wives-or even know that one existed? Or what Mumbai-then
Bombay-looked like in 1777?
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| The
palace of Nizam Ul-Mulk in Delhi |
For the first
time, a collection of rare maps and drawings of Indian cities and monuments
will be on public display. Dating back to the 18th century, these drawings
are so fragile that they will, in fact, not even be leaving Delhi and
will be on display for only a month to commemorate 50 years of the National
Museum.
What makes
Chitra, the forthcoming exhibition from December 18 to January 21, more
poignant is the fact that the maps and drawings don't belong to India.
The bulk of the drawings-some 42 of them-come from the Centre des Archives
D'Outre-Mer (archives of overseas territories) in France. These were realised
in the 18th century by French cartographers and provide valuable insights
to Indian cities and monuments of that period, many of which have since
disappeared.
At a time
when globalisation is a fashionable term, it is easy to forget that the
first globalisation of the world took place in the 18th century, points
out Jean-Marie Lafont, an eminent Indo-French historian who along with
French cultural attache Laurent de Gaulle has curated this exhibition.
One tends to overlook the influence of the French in India as it was the
British who eventually established hegemony here. This exhibition, which
is a documentation of cities that were once (some still are) at the pinnacle
of political and commercial life in India, serves as a reminder to that
legacy.
The drawings
include a 1758 plan of the city of Surat, then the largest trading port,
two early (1777) maps of Bombay that show extensive marsh land and a 1690
map of Madraspatan, one of the earliest and most well-preserved maps of
the city now known as Chennai. Also laid bare will be maps and views of
the great southern cultural centres, Trichinopoly and Tanjore. Plans of
Pondicherry will be displayed too, along with lesser known French settlements,
Mahe on the Malabar coast and Kasimbazar in Bengal.
Five drawings
from the French national library, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France,
will also be on view. They are part of the collection of a French officer
who served in India, first with the nawab of Bengal and later with a wazir
of the Mughal dynasty. The officer, Gentil, was a great collector who
commissioned several drawings of 18th century India and took them back
to Europe.
Gentil's
drawings include the residence of Shuja-ud-Daula at Faizabad and a palace
built in Old Delhi by Salim Shah. They also include a drawing of Mahtab
Bagh, Aurangzeb's garden, which by 1857 had disappeared, making way for
British army barracks.
A joint
effort between the embassy of France, the National Museum, the National
Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, and the Alliance Francaise in Delhi, this
exhibition is part of an Indo-France cultural exchange, perhaps the most
significant one since the French festival in India in 1989.
This exchange
includes a recently concluded exhibition on the craft of making musical
instruments held from December 1 to 6 at the capital's Crafts Museum and
an exhibition of photographs by French photographer Alain Willaume at
Vis a Vis gallery.
Chitra is
undoubtedly the jewel in the (French) crown. Those who can't make it to
the National Museum can take comfort in a book by Lafont on the maps,
to be released during the exhibition. But perhaps a personal visit would
be well worth the effort. Who knows, it might inspire someone to get those
ugly British barracks demolished and restore Aurangzeb's Mahtab garden
at the Red Fort.
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