UNTIL THE 22^nd OF SEPTEMBER 2024, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London’s South Kensington is hosting an exhibition called “Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Independence”. It focuses on two countries: Ghana and India. It was the exhibits relating to India that interested me most, although those connected with Ghana were also intriguing.

The Royal Institute of British Architects describes Modernism as follows:

“Rejecting ornament and embracing minimalism, Modernism became the single most important new style or philosophy of architecture and design of the 20th century. It was associated with an analytical approach to the function of buildings, a strictly rational use of (often new) materials, structural innovation and the elimination of ornament.” (www.architecture.com/explore-architecture/modernism).

Modernism began both in the USA and Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Its better-known pioneering exponents include Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Maxwell Fry, Louis Kahn, and Eero Saarinen. The Modernist architects, like the abstract painters of the early 20^th century, broke with traditional approaches to form and style.

On the 15^th of August 1947, India became independent. The country was no longer ruled by foreigners. Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) became India’s first Prime Minister, a position he retained until his death. His vision for India was for it to shake off the shackles of the past (both colonial and traditional) to become a modern state. This extended to architecture in his new India. He invited Modernist architects including Le Corbusier and his cousin Perre Jeanneret to design a new city in the Punjab (following the loss of Lahore to Pakistan): Chandigarh. This is illustrated well in the V&A exhibition. Le Corbusier wanted to create his ideal of a city, which included forbidding street markets and cows to wandering in its streets. His pupil and collaborator, Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi, who died in 2023, had a more human approach to architecture. Having seen some of his buildings, notably in Ahmedabad and Bangalore, I would say that Doshi developed an architectural opus, which might be loosely described as ‘user-friendly Corbusier’.  Incidentally, Doshi was also taught by Louis Kahn, who worked in India, notably in Ahmedabad.

A label in the exhibition noted that in 1959, at a conference about national identity in Indian architecture, Nehru urged Indian architects not to be “imprisoned by tradition”, but to experiment as had been done at Chandigarh (built between 1951 and 1956). Examples of this experimentation can be seen in the exhibition.

Naturally, since Nehru’s death, there have been many changes in India. I notice new changes every time we make our annual trips to the country. Nehru’s vision of a secular India has been replaced by a different vision in the minds of the leaders of the present Indian Government. Modernism’s internationalist aspects, which attracted Nehru and some of his successors, appear to have lost their appeal currently in India.

Immediately after gaining independence, both Ghana and India favoured Modernism in architecture. The exhibition at the V&A shows that even before independence, architects (almost all European) in Ghana had been building in the Modernist style, but specially adapted to cope with intense heat and high humidity. Ghana’s first leader, Kwame Nkrumah, encouraged the continuation of this architectural style. The exhibition includes a fascinating video about this. In India, Modernism seems to have been introduced post-independence. Both leaders wanted to project visions of a emerging modern countries, freed from the constraints of colonialism. Yet both promoted an architectural style developed largely by architects who came from countries that had had colonies in Asia and Africa.

Before ending this piece, I must not forget to mention two exhibits, which caricatured the great British colonial architect, Edwin Lutyens, who was certainly not a Modernist. One of them is a model of Lutyens’s head which has been combined with a model of one of his imperial buildings in New Delhi. The other, which is painted in the style of a Mughal miniature, shows Lutyens offering a model of the (British) Viceroy’s House (in New Delhi) to the Viceroy.

The exhibition was fascinating. Despite its rather obscure title, a good number of viewers were there during the Monday mid-afternoon when we visited it.