9 Origin of urban planning in India

Binti Singh

1 Introduction

The origins of urban planning in India can be traced to the planned towns of Mohenjodaro and Harappa belonging to the Indus Valley Civilisation as early as 2500 BC(Ramachandran 1989). Cities and towns werealso built around forts and centres of trade and commerceat various periods in the history of India. More broadly, over the longer historical span, scholars argue that India witnessed very little in situ urbanisation. Historically, urban centres have grown up due to concerted investment in certain areas by state governments or through administrative mechanisms such as transplanting district and sub-district (tehsil) headquarters and municipal apparatus (Bhagat2005).Pre-colonial rulers built up prominent towns and cities mainly for political and strategic reasons. One can find many such cities that were built during medieval times. FatehpurSikri andSikandra, in Uttar Pradesh, Murshidabad in West Bengal, Sindhudurg in Maharashtra, Chittorgarh, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Mewar and Udaipur in Rajasthan,Ahmedabad in Gujrat, Hyderabad in Andhra Pradeshand Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh are some of the prominent towns and cities developed during medieval times under various rulers and dynasties.

This module presents the origins of urban planning in India, especially focusing on the planning philosophy and ideas introduced by British colonial administrators in planning and designing cantonment towns, administrative capitals, civil areas, railway colonies, settlements around tea and coffee plantations, industrial townships and hill stations.The rest of the module is divided into seven sections. Section 2 discusses city development in ancient and medieval India. Section 3 discusses urban planning under the British rule in India. Sections 4 to 8address themes that shaped urban planning in British India. These include public health and sanitation, spatial and social segregation, colonial dominance, administrative and institutional edifice and the knowledge edifice. The finalsection summarises and concludes.

Section 2: City Development in Ancient and Medieval India

Scholars such as Ramachandran (1989: 24) divide urbanisation and city development in pre-colonial India into three time periods:

·       The pre-historic (2350 to 1800 BC)

·       Early historical period (600 BC to 500 AD)

·       Medieval period (600 AD to 1800 AD)

Cities of the Indus Valley civilisation, such as Harappa, Mohenjodaroand Lothal followed a system of town planning with similarities in their layouts on a rectilinear basis of main east-west routes directed to the citadels and north-south cross routes (Morris 1979). These cities were also the earliest instances of gridiron town planning. The city proper consisted of two components– a citadel, built on high ground and a lower city where the majority of the population lived (Ramachandran 1989: 30). The citadel consisted of a large number of structures with large halls and palaces and was fortified with walls. The lower city was built on a gridiron pattern with a hierarchy of streets-large, small and smallest. An elaborate drainage system, storm water drainage system, water supply in brick lined wells, houses of different sizes and sites like the granary and public bath were some of the prominent features of the cities under the Indus Valley Civilisation.

The earliest city developments in the second phase of urbanisation around 600 BC took place in and around the Indus valley and adjoining parts of Rajasthan, Punjab and parts of western Uttar Pradesh and also in the Deccan and southern parts of India. These cities were Nalanda, Taxashila, Vijayanagar, Pataliputra, Kancheepuram, Madurai, Varanasi and Delhi.It was during this period that towns like Varanasi and Pataliputra in the North  and Kancheepuram and Madurai in South gained prominence and became the centres of India’s earliest urban history (Ramachandran 1989). The use of iron helped clear forests and facilitated human settlements, triggering the emergence of these cities. During the Mauryan period,a complex town planning pattern developed and the janapadas (politico-administrative units ruled by local kings) and later mahajanapadas (larger kingdoms) came into being. Texts like Kautilya’sArthashastra and the travelogues of Fa Hsien and Megasthenesalso suggest that cities also increased in size and number (Ramachandran 1989). Taxashila, Mathura, Kausambi, Pataliputra and Sravasthi were important cities of the Mauryan period. The decline of these cities in the post-Mauryan period could be attributed to factors like recurrence of natural calamities, the decline of well-administered empires and foreign invasions. The major cities in South during this period were Puhar (the port of the Chola kings), Madurai, Kanchi, Karur and Korkai(Ramachandra 1989).

Around the fifth century AD, during the rules of the Gupta kings,there was a revival.Again there were revivals at the time of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals. Delhi became the capital city of the slave dynasty and later the Khiljis, Tughlaqs and Lodhis. Two leading cities from around this time were Delhi and Agra. Others like Mathura, Allahabad, Varanasi, Thaneshwar, Gwalior, Ujjain, Somnath, Meerut, Panipat, Baroda and Srinagar also developed.

During the Mughal period (1526-1800 AD) the growth of capital cities, building of forts, large residences and buildings, palaces and mosques became essential features of cities like Agra, Delhi, Sikandra, Shahjahanabad in the north and Hyderabad and Ahmedabad furtherSouth. For instance,Shahjahanabad was a planned city with a central avenue leading to the main gate of the Red Fort. Chandni Chowk housed the market; on one side of the avenue was the Jama Masjid and on the other the residence of the nobles. Commoners usually lived outside the fort area in mohallas with narrow streets. (Ramachandra 1989: 54)

Section 3: Urban Planning under British Rule in India

During the colonial era, up to the early 20th century, cities were consciously laid out for military and political dominance.The concerns of public health and sanitation, spatial and social segregation, colonial dominance, and control were the underlying ideas of colonial planning in India. The establishment of town planning institutions and a knowledge edifice complete with the establishment of civil works departments and engineering colleges and the use of statistics, census and surveys institutionalised the planning process in colonial India. The underlying philosophy that cities are important centres of economic productivity informed the colonial urban planning process.

Public Health and Sanitation

The rise of urban planning in Europe and America was driven by the search for a rational city -–the idea of a city as a perfectly disciplined spatial order (Boyer1983). The question underlying the need for planning was essentially how the rules for efficient capital expansion and circulation could be internalised in the fabric and form of the city. Early urban planning was essentially concerned with the factors responsible for urban disorder and disease. The history of urban planning in colonial India was also informed by the concerns of health and sanitation.

McFarlane (2008) examines the logic of sanitation in colonial Bombay’s sanitary history. Nineteenth century Bombay was visualised as a “contaminated city”, understood through the notion of miasma(bad air in Greek).According to ideas of disease propagation popular in Britain at the time, such miasma or exposure to “offensive” odours through sources such as pools of sewage, animal carcasses, decaying vegetation, and poor ventilation would result in sickness, like cholera, plague and others. In 1877, famines across western India led to migration into Bombay. Low income migrants lived in localities such as KharaTalao and Kumbharwada in central Bombay, which lacked sewer connections. The contaminated city could be a threat to economic productivity.

Concerns over sanitation thus encompassed not just fear over illness, polluting bodies or social unrest, but the production of Bombay as a capitalist city. These early interventions in urban planning happened through the introduction of sanitation facilities and drainage. Higher caste groups resented such intervention and argued that caste system provided a traditional mode of sanitation. Protests also came from landlords and private reclamation companies for whom drainage schemes would mean greater taxes and adversely hit their holdings and local land prices.

  In another study,Kidambi (2007) noted that at the end of the 19th century, the city and island of Bombay was faced with the dreaded bubonic plague that caused death, fear and resentment.The origins of the disease were traced to the localised conditions of filth, lack of ventilation and general “sanitary disorder” and the high incidence of mortality in the native quarters, especially in the slums (Kidambi 2007: 49-71). In 1902, Bombay’s health officer seemed convinced that the plague was “a disease of locality and does not occur in epidemics by being introduced from without and spreading only by personal contact or by means of affected material into unaffected localities” (Kidambi 2007: 56).

Thus, the existing discourse of differencebetween the British ruling class and nativeIndians was rigidly maintained as it seemed coherent and provided “a readymade and common-sensical explanation for why the poorer quarters of the city suffered more of the ravages of the plague” (Kidambi 2007: 56). Tracing plague to native areas fitted well into the already entrenched framework of difference of the dual city. In other words,spatial and social segregation, discussed in detail in the next section, underlined the urban planning philosophy in British India. The government’s corrective and preventive measures were resultantly based on the belief that if the insanitary housing and living conditions of the natives were “improved”,the city could be saved from any future recurrence of disease(Parpiani 2012). The Bombay City Improvement Trust (BCIT) was created in 1898 for the purpose of eliminating overcrowded insanitary living conditions in the city. The main agenda of the BCIT was to provide housing for the poorer and working classes of the city. A 10-year agenda was announced to provide sanitary accommodation for 50,000 individuals (Kidambi2001: 67).

Section 4: Spatial and Social Segregation

Segregation was the basis of urban planning in colonial India. The native town where the indigenous population resided was clearly demarcated from the areas inhabited by the European population (also see Spodek 2012). The British modified the urban landscape of earlier times substantially with the introduction of what were known as civil lines and cantonments, both of which existed “as adjuncts to the native city to accommodate the British civilian and military personnel” (Ramachandran 1989:65). The civil lines housed the administrative offices, courts and residences of British officers, clearly demarcated from the native town where Indians lived. The latter were invariably overcrowded andlacked civic amenities. Cantonments were often built around large cities, originally for housing British officers and armed personnel. Indian soldiers resided in separate quarters within the cantonment. Spatial segregation in the cantonments was strictly maintained by hierarchy and rank, both within the British and Indian barracks. Ramachandran(1989) notes that unlike civil lines, cantonments were fewer and there were 114 cantonments in total during the late 19th and early 20th century, concentrated mainly in the plains of Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh.

Civil lines and cantonments, unlike the rest of the native town were distinguished by large open spaces, planned roads, and administrative buildings located at the centre. The health and security of British elites were prime concerns. The residential spaces of the British (for the officials living in civil lines, army officers living in cantonment areas, administrative staff and engineers living in railway colonies, managers living in tea plantations) were designed accordingly. The residential spaces of Europeans expatriates were typically large housing plots with lavish recreation facilities and low densities, complete with the availability of motorised transport, telephone connections and cheap native labour(King 1990).

Colonial planning was inspired by British planning ideas that dominated in early 20th century, namely the garden city movement. Garden city ideas were in turn a reaction to the 19th century industrial city and its pathologies(Hall1988). The pathologies included congestion, pollution, crowded spaces, crime and illness. The techniques and goals of planning underlying the garden city principles were therefore orderly development, easing traffic flows, promoting healthy environments, reduced densities, planned residential areas, zoning of industrial and residential units, and segregation of populations.

All early colonial towns like Bombay, Calcutta and Madras developed on these lines. Scholars have argued that colonial duality in the urban context is expressed in the black town/fort dichotomous model, wherein the city appears to be divided into two separate quarters. For instance, in colonial Bombay, the segregationist lines are believed to lie where the erstwhile “fort” existed, the areas to its south characterised as a European town, whereas the congestion of the northern areas named the native town. Mariam Dossal in Bissell 2011 describes these distinct quarters as representing “spatially a highly unequal division of power, of dominant-dependent relationships that existed between coloniser and colonised, between the British and Indians” (Bissell 2011: 210).

Since the health and well-being of British officials were of great concern, the British also developed hill stations in an attempt to replicate the British countryside complete with schools, hospitals, clubs and hotels. Access to these spaces was restricted to the British elites. Thus segregation was as much social as it was spatial.The hill stations catered exclusively to the needs of Europeans and helped them recuperate from the heat of the plains during summers. The first hill stations were established in 1815, and by 1870, there were over 80 hill stations in and around the four metropolitan cities of Calcutta, Madras, Delhi and Bombay. These were: Simla-Mussourie-Nainital near Delhi, Darjeeling-Shillong near Calcutta, Mahabaleshwar near Bombay and the NilgiriKodaikanal area in Tamil Nadu(Ramachandran 1989: 64).The national capital was shifted from Delhi to Shimla for six months of the year to avoid the soaring temperatures of the plains in summers.

Section5: Colonial Dominance

Scholars have argued that the creation of dual cities on the basis of racial segregation of the natives from the Europeans is most often regarded as a prime example of the use of urban planning as a medium of asserting colonial domination (Parpiani, 2012). Scholars also explain that the Industrial Revolution that originated in England in the latter half of the 18th century took a full 100 years to reach India(Ramachandra1989:67). Colonial cities in India like Bombay and Calcutta, and elsewhere like Lagos and Colombo, developed as “hybrid cities” conceived in part through comparison with the “metropole”. They embodied European discourses of planning and improvement subsumed within the existing power structure(King1990).

Urban planning ideas and forms reproduced the assumptions of the colonial core generated through the processes of capitalistic industrialisation. Planning based on knowledge systems imported from the metropole were evident in the development of colonial towns like Bombay in the 1860s (Dossal 1991) and Lucknow (Oldenburg, 1984). For instance,Bombay, Calcutta and Madras were “entrepot ports”, oriented to the metropolitan economy and became important commercial centres. Bombay, which was obtained by Britain from the Portuguese in 1665, was handed to the East India Company in 1666. Parpiani(2012) explains that it was only in the late 18th century that its value as a port was recognised, leading to extensive reclamations and provision of infrastructure.

    Most industries were also located in and around the metropolitan cities of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. The early industries were the cotton textile industry in Bombay and Ahmedabad, jute industry in Calcutta,coal mining in the Damodar basin, leather and woollen textile industries in Kanpur and the iron and steel industry in Jamshedpur.

On the other hand, New Delhi developed as a capital city to concentrate political and administrative purposes with little attempt at industrial development (Ramachandran 1989). In 1911, the capital of the Britishempire was shifted from Calcutta to New Delhi.Completed in 1935,New Delhi was designed by the architect Edwin Lutyens. It was an imposing city symbolic of British colonial dominance. The design was complete with modern buildings, a magnificent administrative complex, bungalowswith large compounds, wide streets lined with trees, reminiscent of British landscape. New Delhi was a sharp contrast to its older counterpart, the dilapidated and overcrowded Shahjahanabad that was built by the Mughals.Colonial dominance was also asserted with the construction of military cantonments that provided sanctions for the use of force over the colonised that lived in civilian areas.

Section 6: Institutional and Administrative Edifices

During the British colonial rule, urban areas were defined as including every municipality, every cantonment, all civil lines (residential areas of officials) not included in municipal limits; and every collection of houses permanently inhabited by not less than 5,000 persons and of an urban character, though not under municipal government (Census of India 1911:15). This definition, which continued until 1951, left scope for state census superintendents to apply their judgments in declaring settlements as urban. Colonial urbanisation unfolded through

·      The development of three metropolitan port cities — Madras, Calcutta and Bombay

·      Hill stations in and around these metropolitan cities and in the foothills of the Himalayas and in South India

·      Settlements around tea and coffee plantations like Guwahati in Assam and Darjeeling in West Bengal

·       Introduction of civil lines and cantonment areas

·       Industrial towns like Jamshedpur and Asansol

·      Settlements or railway colonies in and around major railway stationslike Bareilly and

Meerut in Uttar Pradesh (Ramachandran 1989)

An institutional edifice comprising legislations and municipal controls, police, judiciary, army, informal, para-judicial policing, was developed to give shape to urban planning. State regulation through bylaw planning, building regulation, sanitary inspection, centralised control by British administration was put in place. Piped water supply, street lighting, sewerage, modern shopping areas like the Hogue market in Calcutta and the Crawford market in Bombay, parks and playgrounds were established in the major metropolitan cities and in the civil and cantonment areas, industrial towns and hill stations. Municipalities were concerned with collection of local taxes, maintenance of roads, removal of garbage, and primary health and education.Conscious efforts of conservation or “preservation” of places of historical significance were part and parcel of city building. British officials in India contributed a great deal in building museums, libraries and town halls.

The administrative centres of cities like the Dalhousie Square in Calcutta and the Fort St George in Madras were European in their design and layout. The metropolitan cities of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay were also leading administrative and commercial centres. European style buildings, housing, major banks and headquarters of commercial and industrial houses, numerous streets and bylanes, chief commercial areas, markets, tram cars and buses accorded a new character to the cities,in contrast to their traditional form.The colonial cities were also the centres of western culture spread through spaces of leisure, education and learning like clubs, schools, colleges, universities, restaurants and libraries. These spaces created a new urban elite comprising Europeans and wealthy Indians.

Section 7: Knowledge Edifice

An attendant knowledge edifice was also created to support and implement urban planning principles. A new class of military engineers were educated at Royal Military Academy Woolwich and Chatham, and in India, atThomason Engineering College(later University of Roorkee, and now the Indian Institute of Technology at Roorkee), among others. Public works department (PWD) surveyors and civil engineers began to be attached to municipalities.

   Early urban planners and officials in colonial India, including Patrick Geddes, Lutyens, Herbert Baker, and HV Lanchester used data collection techniques like the census. The use of statistics and systems of inspection was established (King 1990:61). Modern sewage systems replaced older arrangements. “Experts” were brought in from England to take up official positions for town planners and provide the much needed channel through which urban planning was going to be effectively directed. It was believed that the systematic application of the techniques of the town planning would result in development. Parpiani(2012:65) alludes to the text of a 1914public address by H V Lanchester, the official town planner of the Madras Presidency that provides a classic example of the absolute faith in this philosophy:

The science of city planning has, as we may claim, now reached a stage that should disarm any distrust as to the possibility of forecasting on general lines the best form of development in any particular case. …it may be accepted that if the right type of body is charged with the determination of the structural lines of a developing city, the results arrived at will be immeasurably superior, from both the economic and social points of view, to the usual haphazard results of a ‘laissez faire’ policy.

In Bombay, for instance, an “an expert surveyor” M J Mead was called from London in 1909and entrusted with the responsibility of drawing up a report “on the possibilities of the development of Salsette as a residential area”. (Salsette, which adjoins Bombay, now houses Thane and other large urban settlements, making it one of the most densely populated islands in the world.) Following the report of a committee on “scientific” urban planning of the area, A E Miriamswas made the consulting surveyor to the Government of India and he recommended the passing of a Town Planning Act to take up the development of the area(Parpiani 2012).

In Brief

This module discusses the origins of urban planning in India tracing the urban history of India from the prehistoric period(2350 to 1800 BC), early historical period (600 BC to 500 AD) and medieval period (600 AD to 1800 AD). The origins of the first kind of urban planning in India can be traced to the planned towns of Mohenjodaro and Harappa as early as 2500 BC.In the second phase of urbanisation around 600 BC, towns like Varanasi and Pataliputra in the North and Kancheepuram and Madurai gained prominence. Other Mauryan era cities declined in the post-Mauryan period, and were revived only during the rule of the Delhi Sultanate and later the Mughals. The Mughal period (1526-1800) witnessed the growth of capital cities, building of forts, large residences and buildings, palaces and mosques and growth of cities like Agra, Delhi, Sikandra, Shahjahanabad in the North and Hyderabad and Ahmedabad in the South.

The main focus of this module was to trace the trajectory of modern urban planning in India with special reference to planning ideas during British rule. The institutionalisation of planning through the establishment of town planning institutions and a knowledge edifice complete with the establishment of civil works departments and engineering colleges and the use of statistics, census and surveys were indeed the legacy of the British. However one cannot ignore the fact that the rationale behind colonial planning essentially came from the fears of disease, social disorder and crime that the colonial city posed. The concerns of public health, sanitation, segregation and discipline and the underlying understanding of cities as important centres of economic productivity informed colonial urban planning in India.

References

• Bhagat, B Ram (2005): “Rural-Urban Classification and Municipal Governance in India”,Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 26(1): 61-73.
• Bissell, William Cunningham (2011): Urban Designs, Chaos and Colonial Power inZanzibar (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).
• Boyer, Christine. (1983):The Rise of the Planning Mentality: Dreaming the Rational
• City(Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press), pp 59-82.
• Census of India (1911): Volume 1, India, Part II-Tables, by E.A. Gait, Superintendent of Census Operations, Calcutta, 1913, repr. 1987( New Delhi: Usha).
• Dossal, Mariam(1991):Imperial Designs and Indian Realities: The Planning of Bombay  City, 1845-1875 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press).
• Hall, Peter (1988):Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History Of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century(New York: Blackwell).
• Kidambi, Prashant (2001): “Housing the Poor in a Colonial City: The Bombay Improvement Trust 1898-1918”, Studies in History, 17(1): 17:57.
• Kidambi, Prashant (2007): The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay 1890-1920 (Aldershot: Ashgate).
• King, Anthony (1990):Urbanism, Colonialism, and the World Economy, Cultural and Spatial Foundations of the World Urban System.(London,New York:Routledge).
• Parpiani,Maansi(2012):“Urban Planning in Bombay (1898-1928) Ambivalences, Inconsistencies and Struggles of the Colonial State”, Economic and Political Weekly, 57(28): 64
• 70McFarlane, Colin(2008):“Governing the Contaminated City: Infrastructure and Sanitation in Colonial and Post-Colonial Bombay”,International Journal of Urban and Regional Research32 (2): 415-35.

• Morris, AEJ (1979):History of Urban Form before the Industrial Revolutions(London: George Godwin).
• Oldenburg, VeenaTalwar(1984):The Making of Colonial Lucknow, 1856-1887(Princeton: Princeton University Press).
• Ramachandran, R (1989):Urbanization and Urban Systems in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press).
• Spodek, H (2013):“City Planning in India under British Rule”, Economic and Political Weekly, 47(4), 53-61.

Learn more

• Colonial architecture and city building in colonial India:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q3_EMKIVtY
• This is a slide show discussing in detail the planning and design of New Delhi by British architect Lutyen:
• http://www.slideshare.net/VedikaAgrawal/planning-of-lutyens-delhi