The Mohan Segal-directed 1956 film New Delhi opens with a shot of the old Parliament House. This is remarkable since the Parliament building (now the Museum of Democracy) has had very little visual presence in Indian popular culture or imagination. Just as significant is how the camera moves from the Parliament complex — a space of state power — to other spaces in the city, ones where the everyday life of the city and its people are lived. The camera seems to be drawing a cinematic line between the spaces occupied by the state and those that are part of the lives of people. It links the state with the nation as if to suggest that the former is not — and must not be — a privileged island. The camera connects the place that represents sovereignty to the places from where sovereignty must derive legitimacy.
The start of another session of Parliament is a good time to think about the life of the institution — both as a space and process — in the recent history of the republic and its citizens. What is the life of the state in the lives of the people? At the end of colonial rule, it was proper that the old Parliament house — which served as the seat of imperial rule for 20 years — be symbolically wrenched from its imperial context and turned into a symbol of an independent nation-state. Sovereignty is expressed as much through processes as through spectacles of governance. The spectacle of a formerly subjugated people occupying the space that was instrumental in its subjugation — and formulating a Constitution for self-governance within its walls — was more than just a matter of architectural convenience. It narrated a powerful tale of taking over the house of the master — one who justified his superiority by characterising the subjugated as incapable of self-rule.
It would not have been enough to construct another building as the Parliament of the independent nation-state. That would not have communicated, as powerfully, the message of overthrowing an oppressive order by demonstrating the capacity to occupy the old regime’s citadels. Parliament as a space, and the processes of ruling and governing contained within it, are inextricably linked. Without its expression in physical spaces, modern-day sovereignty is almost impossible to sustain. Yet, oddly enough, in the 75-odd years since Independence, the relationship between Parliament as a building and the processes and the people it meant to represent has hardly fulfilled the promise of the early years of the post-colonial period.
Apart from the pages of political science textbooks and stultifying television coverage through channels devoted to it, Parliament has almost had no presence in the lives of people. The seat of the United States Congress — the Capitol building — is a recognisable symbol of American built-landscape in a way that the old Parliament building never was. This is an irony for a nation-state that would like to claim the title of “the world’s largest democracy”.
In the Indian case, the diminished presence of Parliament in the lives of the people is largely due to the erosion of the meaning once attached to the left-hand side of the hyphen in the “nation-state” — a message that committed the latter to serve the former. The sequestering of an artefact of the imperial state was intended to suggest that the post-Independence state — the political and bureaucratic apparatus of governance — must always remember its purpose: To serve the nation, the people. And further, that the lives of the people were not identical to that of the state. Over the years, however, it is the state that has become the nation and we have increasingly come to believe whatever the state says and does must be in the interest of the people.
The promise of a people-driven democracy has increasingly given way to a state-driven one and, with this, Parliament continues to be a citadel, largely unconnected to the society it is meant to represent — sitting on top, rather than alongside it. It has become a gated community. The new Parliament House has only accelerated this trend, ironically (or perhaps purposely) producing a vision of governance where the state exists as a massive monument apart from the people.
There is a point of view that suggests that this is inevitable and effective governance requires symbols of state to have an aura that differentiates them from broader society. And, that respect for the state can only be secured through architectural shock-and-awe that, symbolically and actually, separates those in charge of decision-making from those affected by them. Yet, there is no connection between effective governance and the idea that the state must be seen to be apart from the people. That is just a deliberate strategy. Take the case of the new Australian parliament house. Inaugurated in 1988, the key aspect of the external design of the building lies in the idea of access by the general public rather than monumentalism designed to inspire awe. The building — where the roof is grass-covered — rises out of the ground, symbolising the democratic aspiration to be part of all that exists around it, rather than sit on top of its surroundings. In this instance, the aura of the state lies in being enmeshed with the society it governs, rather than being distanced from it and presenting this distance as a virtue.
If the symbolism of spaces reflects the ways in which we think, the colonial-era imagination that inspired the design of New Delhi — with its strict hierarchies between rulers and subjects — continues to be with us. If a new Parliament house had indeed to be built, it may have been an opportunity to speak in another language, that of democratic symbolism, one that seems to have inspired the opening shot of New Delhi. The necessary entanglement of the spaces of governance with those of the governed is an important aspect of expressions of democratic aspirations. Monumentalism of architecture also betrays the desire for a separation between those who occupy monuments and those on the ground.
The writer is British Academy Global Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS University of London
