INDO- SARACENIC

• The term 'Saracenic ' was given by the Greeks and Romans to the tribes west of the Euphrates. It was a term applied by Christians to the whole of the Islamic world and its architecture. Hence the reference to Islamic architecture in India as Indian Saracenic. The Indo-Saracenic should not, however, be confused with the Indian Saracenic.

• ndo-Saracenic style of architecture was developed by the British in British India in the late 19th century. This style of architecture was the combination of native Indo-Islamic architecture with the Gothic revival style of Victorian Britain.

• The buildings built in India by Indo- Saracenic style of architecture were built according to advanced British structural engineering standards of the 1800's including infrastructures of iron, steel and poured concrete. These type of buildings were employed withdomes, pointed arch, vaulted roofs, pinnacles, minarets, pierced open arcade and open pavilion

• Again, structures of this design sort, particularly those built in India and England, were built in conformance to advanced British structural engineering standards of the 1800s, which came to include infrastructures composed of iron, steel and poured concrete (the innovation of reinforced cement and pre-cast cement elements, set with iron and/or steel rods, developed much later); the same can be said for like structures built elsewhere, making use of the same design vocabulary, by local architects, that would come to be constructed in continental Europe and the Americas: Indo-Saracenic’s popularity flourished for a span of some 30-years.

The Beginning

• The Indo-Saracenic architectural movement began in the 1870s, although similar themes go back to the Chepauk Palace (1768) in Madras designed by an East India Company engineer and, later, moneylender, Paul Benfield. The palace was a mixture of tropical Gothic and Muslim precedents and has pejoratively been referred to as 'licentious eclectic'. Influences of the

• Indo-Saracenic wave can also be seen in Lutyens' design for the viceroy's residence (now Rashtrapati Bhavan) in New Delhi where also a combination of Mogul and European styles was employed - even if somewhat more restrained than many of the examples mentioned above.

• Features of the Confluence of Indian and Persian styles

• Indo-Saracenic architecture was an effort to provide a visible symbol of an aspect of British policy in India -to show a sense of belonging to India. It was also supposed to serve as an imperial gesture to revive Indian traditions; but with some exceptions, all the designs were done by British architects; the shilpins and mistris simply executed orders.

• The Indo-Saracenic also had political aspirations as a symbol of the power that had displaced the Mughals. It helped to obscure the exploitive nature of British imperialism. While the impact of architecture on life should not be considered to be deterministic, the Indo-Saracenic tended to blind both British and Indian people to social and political realities. Its practitioners were, nevertheless, studious scholars of Indian, particularly, Mughal architecture.

• The six volumes of Portfolio contained over six hundred drawings of elements -copings, plinths, jali -of North Indian buildings -mosques, tombs, forts, temples and palaces -dating from the twelfth century to eighteenth. It focuses on the elements of the façades of buildings.

• The Indo-Saracenic, like Mughal architecture, is indeed a mixture of Indian and Islamic architecture but it remained basically British in siting, spatial organization and composition. It is really very different from the Mughal in concept because it was not an evolutionary synthesis but done self- consciously. It did, however, evolve over time and its examples are considerably varied in degree of complexity, degree of homogeneity of a design idea, and consistency in the manner of their borrowing from Indian prototypes.

• The architects of the Indo-Saracenic failed to consider the full range of qualities of Indian architectural traditions. The whole process of designing buildings had, however, become different from that in the past. The traditional process whereby members of a craft guild designed and executed buildings on site (according to paradigms inculcated in their minds and hands through the master-apprenticeship system) was replaced by a professional dictating the design and others constructing it.

• In Indo-Saracenic architecture, the craftsmen were employed as skilled workers. They executed designs familiar to them but the choice of what to do was not made by them; it was made by the architect.

• The Indo-Saracenic was apparently accepted by many of the Indian elite, either because they had a genuine respect for it, or to please the authorities.

• Structures built in Indo-Saracenic style in India were mainly grand public buildings like clock towers, courthouses, colleges, town halls, offices, railway stations. Few of the current examples of the buildings in the Indo-Saracenic style are Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and Gateway of India in Mumbai, Mysore Palace in Karnataka, Rambagh Palace in Jaipur, Khalsa College in Amritsar, Daly College in Indore and Madras Museum in Chennai.