IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE: THE CULTURAL TURN, 1980s-1990s

In 1984 the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) celebrated its 150th
anniversary. This time it decided to award its most prestigious honour to a colonial,
Charles Correa. It marked a watershed in the history of modern architecture in India.
His work was admired as a possible middle path between rationalism and inspiration
from local culture. In this sense RIBA event was truly a crossing of paths between the
increasingly old fashioned concept of the ‘East’ and the ‘West’. These developments
reflected a variety of other concerns within India and its wider ‘developing’ region
through the early 1980s.

Already by the late 1970s conviction had been growing, from Africa and the Middle
East to Southeast Asia, against modern western cities because of mindless imitation.
Moral leadership and actual support to allowing a different way of thinking about
‘difference’ in the modernizing world came. Launched in 1977, the Aga Khan Award
for Architecture(AKAA) initiate by Prince Karim Aga Khan IV. It had a aim to identify
architectural concepts that successfully addressed the needs and dreams of current
Islamic societies. Initiatives such as these gave new critical beliefs to concepts of
regionally and culturally specific approaches to modernity.

While the influential Greek internationalist architect and planner Constantinos

Doxiadis was actively developing and expanding his social-scientific theory of human
settlements, Ekistics, in 1950 and 60s. The Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy was
working under Doxiadis’s organization at that time. His genealogy of thought and
practice had already re merged regional into the practices of modern architecture and
planning among others. This served to clear the case for a possible contemporary
traditionalism.

In 1970s and the mid-1980s, the regionalist shift in the focus of work and debate
within the architectural field, in the same period issues of regional identity becoming
an integral part of the internal political evolution of India. The return of Indira Gandhi
in 1980 after the fall of Janata Party saw her maintain her forceful consolidation of
power in the centre and continue with her previous agenda. By the beginning of 1983
Indira Gandhi’s government was already facing strong opposition in Assam and
Punjab. In Punjab there was mounting religious friction between Sikhs and Hindus
which later on led to Indira Gandhi’s assassination. All these motivate the government
to formulate a unique programme of cultural diplomacy, the so-called Festivals of
India aim to raise an international image for India.

In 1984, winning the eighth general election for the Congress party, Rajiv Gandhi had
his prime-ministerial authority confirmed. His government was leading the political
and economic changes in the region that influenced the development of post colonial
nations worldwide. In 1985, the establishment of the National Commission on
Urbanization, this ambitious new central body made design and planning
recommendations for no fewer than 329 towns and cities. 1970s was a period of
significant rise in international tourism in India. He also started to restore the cultural
diplomacy programme developed during his mother’s reign. Pupul Jayakar continued
to play a pivotal role in developing the new address of Indianness. On the occasion of
Indira Gandhi’s second birthday, Rajiv Gandhi officially launched the new institution
and simultaneously announced a major international architectural competition to
build a corresponding campus for the IGNCA in the very heart of Lutyen’s New Delhi.
It was already a massive event for architecture in India with 684 registered
competitors from across the globe. B.V. Doshi, Achyut Kanvinde and Habib Rahman-
who were easily removed from the competition, opening the field for the up and
coming Indian architects.