A Pritzker for India

Many think it's too late. Many also feel that the committee almost missed the opportunity of felicitating Charles Correa. And given the fact that both these architects - Charles Correa and B V Doshi have served the Pritzker committee for much time, it's hardly possible that they are unaware of their works, or their contribution. Much of the West, especially America remains obvilious of the architects from the South Asian subcontinent. When I was studying at Yale, many of my colleagues or professors had never heard of Charles Correa (who has his buildings in MIT campus in Boston, as well as in the city of New York). I wouldn't expect them to even know of B V Doshi either. India has, after all, never remained an interesting place to study contemporary architecture for the West. Rather, unfortunately, it still remains the land of the exotica - of "maharajas, elephants and snake-charmers" - as they popularly say. The West has always valued India merely for its rich past. My essay has this binary in the head, because it is indeed the way in which the West has categorically overlooked South Asia in both -  historical or modern architectural scholarship.

I have plenty of anecdotes to prove the above slippage. I rather not get into it. Meanwhile, we all in India (must) agree that the Pritzker came to Doshi rather late. He's almost 90 years old, has not been actively building over the last decade, and has contributed significantly to the architectural discourse of India over the last 50 years. How do we reconcile this delay then? Doshi, as much as Correa, has always been a revered architect in India, and it would be incorrect to consider the Pritzker as a validation of his contribution. Infact, architects from the eastern "developing" countries have become Pritzker winners only in the recent past. Wang Shu was the first architect from China in the East to win a Pritzker in 2012, and now Doshi. For long, it has been the Aga Khan award that has held high regard in this region, one whose winners have maintained a low key, sustainable, egalitarian and humane architecture rather than the flamboyant, formalistic and high tech approach to buildings. It has been observed rightly, somewhere, that we see a trend in the Pritzker awards towards valuing a more humane Architecture in recent past. But is this "human" turn a mere tactic in foraying a more subtextual geopolitical move?

Let us consider; if we may; the possibility of Doshi designing buildings outside India after his Pritzker status. Will the coming home of Pritzker bring Indian architects any desirability or attention in contributing to the world Architecture scene? At the most, like my colleague Prasad (Shetty) said over a conversation, an Indian Architect would be invited merely to build an Indian or Indian-looking building (embassies, Indian international centres, etc.) outside India. Never shall Indian architects have as much value as our longing for other Pritzker winners like Maki or Zaha (or even starchitects like Holl) would, to come and design for us. Largely, we have still remained underconfident and direction-seeking followers of the West. Our craving for validation from the West is undeniable. Yet, I don't disregard their superiority, for they have invested infrastructures and systems towards architectural scholarship and research. But how can we claim these for ourselves? In much regard, Doshi's constant recollection of Corbusier and the rhetoric of the "Indian" in his post-Pritzker acknowledgements almost works against claiming confidence in our contemporary modes of thought. We have forever been stuck in the identity question, to an extent that we seem to imagine ourselves incapable of articulating a world outside our own. 

But supposedly, these are "Indian" values - precisely those that make us exotic and traditional. We can continue to celebrate these as the Pritzker finds place within India. The ideas of "modern", "Contemporary", "traditional" and so on require new articulation in our part of the world, specifically if we must come to value the architecture we produce. Such a revised framework for above terms is essential because we have not invested in institutions like museums or archives through which we can really assert a progression in thought. It is true that much of what we produce today is borrowed from floating imagery. But could we perhaps initiate a dialogue on the productive process (and even the creative effort) of constant hybridization that we constantly demonstrate in our built environment? Where else would you find so much experimentation? My claim may sound a bit shallow, but we do hope that in his acceptance speech, Mr. Doshi will lead us into a world where we come to sharply interrogate the existing notions of the above instrumental terms such as the "contemporary" or the "traditional" - amply explicated in his own work. It is thus, we may begin to claim some world architectural ground for ourselves.