1 - Imperial Gothic and Racial Anxieties in Victorian Delhi

In a city as full of bricolage and pastiche as Delhi, architectural oddities do not provoke the curiosity which they do elsewhere. Dating from the mid-nineteenth century, these remnants of the Victorians who were amongst the first British to rule Delhi before and after the rupture of 1857 still exercise some power over the city’s landscape—and land use—by virtue of the laws with which they are safely ensconced as monumental legacies of a past we would rather not dwell on. Taking this embedded discourse of architectural preservation as my entry point, we propose to cast a retrospective glance in this paper upon the affective underpinnings of this jumble of Gothic vestiges of Victorian Delhi. While Mughal Delhi was a land of awe and wonder for that generation of Company pioneers who were assigned the relatively easy task of governing it, this comfort and racial camaraderie ossified overnight into anxious and watchful dislike in the wake of the Mutiny of 1857. From Flagstaff Tower (1828) to the Mutiny Memorial (1863) and St. Stephen’s Church (1862) and culminating in Northbrook Tower (1870), this transition is apparent in the progressive reification of Gothicism in key public installations erected throughout this period. Relying upon administrative notings, epistolary records, and tour books from this eventful mid-Victorian epoch against the backdrop of High Church revivalism and a buoyant British nationalism, we will decode the evolving affective experience of Delhi’s urbanscape as reflected in the range and depth of the British involvement with the Gothic.

Co-Author 1
Deepanwita Dey
Doctoral Scholar, Department of Liberal Arts, IIT Bhilai