Gol Ghar & Colonial Discourse

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Pan's Golghar and the Transformations of Colonial DiscourseAuthor(s): Rebecca M. BrownSource: Archives of Asian Art, Vol. 55 (2005), pp. 53-63Published by: University of Hawai'i Pressfor the Asia SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20111328.

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Patna's Golghar and the Transformationsof Colonial DiscourseRebecca M. BrownRoyal Ontario Museum and Pennsylvania State University

ithin architectural history the study of colonial rule inIndia has focused primarily on the major centers of colonial power: Madras (Chennai), Calcutta (Kolkata), Bombay(Mumbai), and New Delhi.1 The historical narrative hasthus explored both large-scale commissions such as theGovernment House in Calcutta (1799?1803) and, morerecently, domestic architecture in both the British sectorsof these cities and in the so-called Black Towns of majorcolonial sites.2 These architectural studies track the maneuvers of the merchant-governors of the East India Companyas their position in India shifted to post-1858 imperialpower,3 while explorations of domestic and smaller-scaleworks allow us to investigate the day-to-day negotiationsof colonial power inside these major cities.4 For these cities,then, colonial monumental and domestic architecture,alongside colonial urban space, form the foundation forcolonial architectural histories.The present study adds twonew dimensions to this scholarly literature: first, it examines a location outside of the major colonial sites: theprovincial center of Patn?, in Bihar; second, it centers ona monument of civic architecture: a granary.

Patn? is connected to Calcutta by the Ganges and its tributaries but is nonetheless provincial.5 The granary at Patn?,called the Golghar, serves an important role in a region thatwas not otherwise marked by colonial architectural monuments in the late eighteenth century. This paper traces the

W narratives about the Golghar from its construction in 1786through nineteenth-century commentaries upon it.Thesenarratives, alongside the structure itself, demonstrate thatthe Golghar illustrates the power of the British in the lateeighteenth century, a time when they sorely needed toconsolidate that power. As it aged, narratives about thestructure demonstrate the flexibility of colonial discourseas it reframed earlier statements about the Golghar intoa narrative that made sense in a changed colonial context.The Golghar s continued importance for Patn? moves itsstory into the contemporary, post-Independence context,and situates it as both amarker of Patn? s colonial historyand center for Patn? s current community. In the end, thispiece of civic architecture in a provincial town illustratesthe malleability of colonial discourse, and the ability of theBritish tomaintain their power not through building effective civic monuments but through reinvigorating the narratives surrounding those monuments?working them intothe changing discourses of colonialism.

FAMINE AND GRAINPatn? sGolghar, a large, egg-shaped granary built in 1786by John Garstin (1756-1820), stands on the western end ofhistorical Patn?,6 next to what later became the RaceCourse, and is now called Gandhi Maidan (Figs. 1, 2)?

Fig. i. Map of Patn? in 1812.Based on map in FrancisHamilton's Journal kept during

the survey of the districts of Patnaand Gaya in 1811-1812. Editedby V H.Jackson. Patn?:Government Printing, 1925.

Source: ournal fFrancis uchananAmasLibraryf SouthAsia,Minneapolis,N Patna, early 19th c.53

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Fig. 2. John Garstin (1756-1820).Golghar. 1786. h. 29 m.Bankipur, Patn?, Bih?r, India.Photograph by author.

Garstin was an architect and engineer for the East IndiaCompany; he built the Town Hall in Calcutta (1813), androse to the position of Surveyor General and Chief Engineerof Bengal.8 His early effort in Patn? was ordered byWarrenHastings, then governor-general of India.These orders stemmed from a series of events beginningwith the 1770 Bengal famine. In that year both the falland summer rains had failed to materialize, precipitatingone of the worst famines in colonial history, which left anestimated ten million people (approximately thirty percentof the population) dead.9 This famine aroused majorconcern within the East India Company, both for itsdevastation of the population of northeastern India and forits potential impact on Company revenues, and thus the

1770 famine became a reference point for many futureCompany policies.10 A much less severe drought andfamine in Bih?r during the 1783 season rekindled theissue, and then-President of the Committee of Revenue,

John Shore, was sent to the area to recommend appropriate actions. Shore took a variety of approaches to theproblem, including removing transit duties on grain, liftinglocal bans on the movement of grain from other districtsto the Patn? district, and proposing that a granary be builtin Patn?. In January of 1784 Shore's recommendation tobuild a granary was approved.11

Despite this seemingly straightforward decision, the1780s saw a great deal of discussion within the East IndiaCompany regarding the relationship between droughtand famine, a discussion which coincided with an upsurgein scientific botanical interests on the part of manydoctors and Orientalists of the time. Thus, the idea that

a granary might provide famine relief was soon counteredby other suggestions from a number of quarters. As laterresearchers on famine prevention have argued, granariesand storehouses rarely ameliorate these catastrophes,

making other methods more advisable.12 In the lateeighteenth century the search for alternative options wasalready underway, focusing on the development ofdrought-resistant crops in order to facilitate food production during climatic cycles when the monsoon did notarrive. Even as the Golghar was under construction in1786, then-Captain Robert Kyd argued vociferously forthe development of a botanical garden in Calcutta wheresuch crops might be researched, citing recent famines,including both the Bengal famine of 1770 and the morerecent scarcity in Bih?r as support for his project.13 In

making his argument to the Board, Kyd pointed to thebuilding of the Golghar as both an insufficient response tofamine and yet, in his mind, one of the only instances ofdecisive government action to prevent famine. Indeed,Kyd s allegation of administrative negligence was echoedby many petitioners to the Company in the documentation of famine amelioration programs.14 Thus, evenwithin the same year that the Golghar was erected, itsability to accomplish its mission was in question, andthose within the Company were seeking other means offamine relief.15

Nonetheless, the Board under Hastings had followedJohn Shore's recommendation and commissioned Garstinto construct the Golghar at Patn?. Although later Britishpolicy toward famine relief turned away from this solution,the Golghar has remained, as Kyd hoped, a monument

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Fig. 4. John Garstin (1756-1820). Golghar. 1786. Plan. British Library,Map Collection, King's Topographical Collection CXV 48e.Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

a network of similar architectural developments, one findsthat the structure cannot be made to fit: it iswithout anyprecedents. An obvious cognate form in the Indiancontext, the Buddhist st?pa, resonates positively with

many contemporary viewers, particularly those well versedin Indian architecture. The mound-like shape of the building, coupled with the two staircases winding around its

parabolic form, certainly echoes the main st?pa at Sand,hundreds of miles to the southwest.18 Sand, however, wasnot reconstructed in its current form until the end of thenineteenth century. Photographs from just before itsreconstruction show its present shape (a hemispherical

mound), but the railings were not complete and manydetails were not extant.19 Indeed, the ArchaeologicalSurvey of India did not begin to excavate and rebuild anymonuments until well into the nineteenth century. Withthe Golghar dating from the late eighteenth century, thesediscoveries and reconstructions would not have affectedthe final form of the building. Moreover, collections of

images from the late eighteenth century by Thomas andWilliam Daniell do not include st?pa architecture, but doinclude various other monuments throughout the subcontinent, indicating that even the ruined st?pa remains fromthe area were not of great interest to contemporaneousviewers.20 Hence the st?pa form likely did not play a largerole in the Golghar's shape.Nor did domes over Islamic buildings in the area.

Generally, these exhibit a different, more bulbous silhouette and they do not rest directly on the ground as doesthe Golghar. Moreover, in scale the Golghar far exceedsthe domes on Islamic structures in and around Patn?;several historically important mosques would have beenavailable asmodels in the late eighteenth century, but noneuses a single large dome.21Other cognates exist in the patterns of European architectural design in the eighteenth century, an arena oftenreferenced in colonial architecture of India. Calcutta's

Government House, for example, built between 1799 and1803, drew directly on the eighteenth-century countryestate of Lord Scarsdale in Derbyshire Kensington.22 In

France experimentations with the ideal forms of thehemisphere and the circle were beginning to take hold inthe architectural practice of the eighteenth century. Infunerary architecture Pierre Fontaine produced a plan ofa centralized, hemispherical domed cemetery for theGrand Prix competition of 1785.23 This form parallelsGarstin s design, especially the ground plans of the twostructures. Garstin's dome is not hemispherical (a slightlypointed dome is easier to build), but his project echoesthe sublimity of Fontaine's design in its perfect symmetryand in the smooth contours of the steps rising up theGolghar s flank. Indeed, both buildings are marked by theabsence of exterior decoration aside from the staircases.The penchant for this type of architectural design existedacross the Channel as well; British interest in classical,symmetrical buildings dates well before the Golghar.

Nonetheless, modern attempts to connect contemporaryhigh French architecture and a civic structure halfwayaround the world in provincial India are weak at best, andso we must turn to other arenas for convincing visualcognates.One additional interpretation looks to similar forms invernacular Indian agriculture. Sten Nilsson, in his typological study of colonial architecture on the subcontinent,suggests that the form of the structure stems not from

Europe or ?ndhra-period India but from contemporaryIndian granary forms. These structures were cylindricaland could be quite large (although not as big as the

Golghar).24 But the Golghar s exterior shape ismost certainly not cylindrical, rather it is domical. Indeed, a surveyof common vernacular granary forms in both eighteenthcentury England and India do not point toward a visualcognate.25 Thus a new explanation is needed for the form

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of the Golghar, one that looks to a broader context for thereasons behind its form and the fact that itwas never usedas a storehouse.

HAVEYOU SEEN THE GOLGHAR?26As the frustrated search for an antecedent shows, theGolghar's form?the smooth, plain sides and the symmetrical staircases wrapped around its flanks?mark it assomething out of the ordinary, distinct from its mundaneintended function as a storage unit. This lack of functionality is echoed in the position of the structure in relationshipto the nearest population center: Patn?'s walled city. Overfour miles from the city walls, the Golghar was less thanconvenient for most Patn? residents. The Golghar s distancing from the walled city parallels the newly distant positionthe British had recently adopted, politically and geographically, vis-?-vis the local population. By moving away fromthe city center and reestablishing themselves in a newsettlement, the Company servants residing in the greaterPatn? area articulated their relationship to the local population through a reconfiguring of urban space.27In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries

Europeans trading in Patn? lived and set up their warehouses within the city walls. Just a few years prior to theconstruction of the Golghar, the European residents ofPatn? moved from the walled city to the area knownlater as Bankipur, several miles to the west along theGanges and adjacent to the site of the Golghar.28 Themove was precipitated by the battles of 1763-1764 andthe Patn? Massacre of 1763, in which approximatelyforty Company officers were killed by agents of thenaw?b.29 Built only twenty years later, the Golgharserved to reinforce that separation, both in its placementand in its unique, unprecedented form. By the 1780s theBritish presence in the subcontinent, although stilltenuous, was stabilizing. An answer to the famines of the1770s, the Golghar serves as a counterpoint to the

upheaval of the previous two decades. The Golghar, builttwenty-nine years after the Battle of Plassey, can thusbe read as a point of closure to the wars that had takenplace in the interim; the monument serves as a symbol ofthe colonizers' new, stable space for themselves on the

western side of Patn?.The Golghar s scale further highlights the message of

separation and adds to it an element of domination overthe landscape. Its twenty-nine?meter height and the commanding

view from its peak give thestructure

purviewover the most important body of water for culture andcommerce in India?the Ganges. Moving downstreampast Patn? from west to east, the Golghar would appearfirst,marking the entry into town and serving as a prominent landmark on the relatively flat land. The Golghar sprominence on the flat landscape created a new anchor for

the city of Patn?, rivalling the height of the seventeenthcentury bastions of Patn? fort and the natural bluff onwhich the walled city sits.All of this ignores the purported function of the structure: to house grain. It is not an accident of history that the

Golghar has never served that particular function, for itsposition, size, and form all suggest that grain storage wasvery low on the list of possible uses for this building. Farfrom town and thus not easily accessible by the population, its function as a grain depot was undermined by itslocation.30 The excess of architectural form to accomplishits function meant that a substantial portion of its interiorspace was not devoted to storage. Finally, though large, itwas not sufficient for the grain needs of the province. The

Golghar fittingly anchors the British presence in Patn?:a rhetorical gesture of a colonial government, less aboutthe substance of the grain itself than about a strong statement of presence and domination over the landscape.This structure reads less as a civic building intended tohelp the regional population than as a building for theBritish, reassuring the colonizer of the newly permanentpresence in India while proclaiming that presence loudlyfor the Indian residents of Patn?. Wealthy Islamic merchants also owned large estates in the Bankipur area; this

message would not have been lost on them. The need fora monument as opposed to merely a grain storage space wasmet through the form and location of the structure.

THEWRITING ON THEWALLIn addition to speaking through its form, the Golghar communicates through its inscriptions. An English and a Persianinscription adorn the building just above eye level, and readas follows:

[in English] In part of the general Plan/Ordered by the GovernorGeneral and the Council/for the perpetual prevention of Faminein these Provinces/THIS GRANARY/was erected by CaptainJohn Garstin Engineer/Compleated on the 20 of July, 1786/FirstFilled and publickly closed by_. (Fig. 5)

[in Persian] In agreement with order of the Governor Generaland Council in order to insure the benefits of overcoming theyearly drought in these provinces. On the 26th of Safar, thevictorious month, in the year 1198 of the Hijraic calendarcorresponding to the 20th of January 1784 of the Christiancalendar the building was inaugurated. And this storehouse wasfirst constructed by John Garstin Engineer and he finished it on

July 20, 1786 of the Christian calendar. And he left the granary,clearly departing into history. Dated, Sealed, and PubliclyDeclared.31 (Fig. 6)

Several issues arise from these inscriptions independentlyand in comparison with one another. In the English textthe blankness at the end of the inscription is only the mostobvious problem, and adds to the questions raised by theform of the structure. The incomplete inscription indicates

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Fig. 5. John Garstin (1756-1820).Golghar. Detail: Englishinscription, 1786. Bankipur,

Patn?, Bih?r, India.Photograph by author.

that the granary was never closed; indeed, through at leastthe last decade of the twentieth century, no grain was everstored inside this structure.32 Several amendments to theinscriptions occurred aswell?each addition or change tothe writing on the side of the Golghar attempts to accountfor the fundamental shortfall of the structure as a granary.

On the other hand, each additional inscription adds tothe structure's message, in that it repositions the buildingwithin the conflictual web of colonial discourse at the endof the eighteenth century.The negotiations begin with the start of the inscription.The first line, In part of the general Plan has been squeezedinto the space at the top of the plaque, indicating that itwasa later addition. Likewise, the phrase No. i above the main

plaque was clearly inserted as an afterthought, to indicate thatthis structure was planned as one of many. But due to shiftsin the strategy for combating famine, as discussed above, noother granaries were built in this model. The writing onthe monument thus operates to make the structure potentially even bigger than it is: if the physical form is in excessof its potential use, then the inscription echoes that excesswith a bit of swaggering about the numbers of granaries tobe built in the future and a General Plan that was neverimplemented.The Persian inscription adds new wrinkles to thistextual layer of the Golghar's message. The choice oflanguage makes sense in the context of an early Britishcolonial presence marking its takeover from Mughal rule;

Fig. 6. John Garstin (i756-1820).Golghar. Detail: Persianinscription, 1786.

Bankipur, Patn?, Bih?r, India.Photograph by author.

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the language of the Mughal court was Persian, and thusthis dual inscription speaks in both the language of thenew ruler and that of the old one. Because a strongMuslim elite with ties to the Mughal court resided inPatn?, the suggestion that the British were heirs to the

Mughals would have been clear to the local population.33By adding Persian to the inscriptional program of theGolghar, the British suggested that their presence emulated aMughal imperial presence in the region, quite astatement for a group of Company officers who had onlyrecently received diwani status.34One expects the Persian to be a translation of theEnglish inscription, but the two differ sufficiently that oneis at best a loose translation of the other. They may in facthave been composed separately, with attention in each tothe inscriptional norms of their respective languages.35 Forexample, the flourishes at the end of each inscription(however incomplete) stem from established patterns ofepigraphical closure rather than from a specific translationof the English into the Persian. This is indicated by thedifferent finishing element missing in both inscriptions: inthe English we wait for a person to close the granary,in the Persian we wait for a date to be indicated for saidclosure. Moreover, the difference in content, with thecommencement of construction indicated in the Persianbut not in the English, indicates two inscriptions composed somewhat separately to appeal to their respectiveaudiences.

As two separate inscriptions, they indicate that themonument?even at its founding, when its potential for grainstorage was still an open question?was intended tomeandifferent things to the two groups of elite in Patn?. Thisduality underscores the placement of the Golghar far fromthe walled city. The late eighteenth century marked thebeginning of physical separation of the British from Patn?,and these two inscriptions thus echo that separation.36One difference between the two inscriptions supports thisseparation even further. The Persian inscription lacks thedesignation No. i which appears above the Englishinscription. It also lacks the inserted text In Part of theGeneral Plan or any similar phrase. This supports the notionthat those two elements were added later to the Englishinscription. The addition on the English side alone indicatesthat the changes were solely for a British audience, thusemphasizing that the British and Indian populations weredistinct for the Company in the region. Although it isunclear when these additions were made, they indicate a shiftin emphasis after the Golghar was completed: themonumentwas never actually used as the primary or sole repository ofgrain for the province, and the additions attempt to clarify orjustify its role as part of a larger project. Thus, these additionson the English side engage with the changing British narratives around themonument. The two phrases foreshadow thelater transformation of colonial discourse from a rhetoric of

benevolent ruler building a piece of public works to one ofcriticism of earlier colonial decision-making.NARRATIVES OF FAILURE/SIGNSOF SUCCESS

Nonetheless, despite this subtext proclaiming colonial presence, the Golghar's inability to fulfill its ostensible missionof feeding the hungry in times of famine became a sourceof discussion for later colonizers. For the nineteenth-centuryviewer, this structure physically embodied a gap in earlycolonial knowledge about the subcontinent and what kindsof responses to famines actually work. The building ofknowledge about the subcontinent, while it began in theeighteenth century (and even earlier), did not hit its fullstride until the early nineteenth century. Patn? was not thesubject of a survey until 1811-1812.37 The nineteenthcentury saw an upsurge in the amount of informationgathered about India: knowing the subcontinent became theproject to insure colonialism's success.38 In the late eighteenth century, when the Golghar was built, this was notthe focus?the early monuments of colonialism were, likethe Golghar, reassurances of the presence of the new rulersin the region. By the nineteenth century colonialism'smodus operandi had shifted to one of knowing. Ironically,it iswith this shift that the absence of grain in the Golgharbecame an issue. The putative granary transformed fromamarker of British colonial presence in Patn? to a site uponwhich nineteenth-century viewers challenged earlier colonial efforts at civic action.

Various explanations for the Golghar's inadequacy werepresented by travelers to Patn?. Indeed, as it shifted froma monument securing colonialism to a granary withoutgrain, it allowed nineteenth-century commentators to focuson its failure, and to differentiate their colonialism from thatof two generations earlier. Bishop Reginald Heber, a famedcommentator on early nineteenth-century India, left thefollowing discussion in his Narrative.

. . .We passed a high building shaped something like a glasshouse, with a stair winding round its outside up to the top, likethe old prints of the Tower of Babel. Itwas built as a granary forthe district, in pursuance of a plan adopted about 25 years ago by

Government, after a great famine, as ameans of keeping down theprice of grain, but abandoned on a supposed discovery of its inefficacy, since no means in their hands, nor any buildings which theycould construct, without laying on fresh taxes, would have beensufficient to collect or contain more than one day's provision forthe vast population of their territories . . .. . .The building ... is said to have many imperfections, which

made it very unfit for its destination. The idea itself, which is topour the corn in at the top, and take it through a small door at thebottom, I think a good one. But it is said to be ill-built, and by fartoo weak to support the weight of its intended contents, while bya refinement in absurdity, the door at the bottom ismade to openinwards, and consequently when the granary was full, could never

have been opened at all. It is now occasionally used as a powder

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magazine, but is at this moment quite empty, and only visitedsometimes for the sake of its echo, which is very favourable to

performances on the flute or bugle.39

Hebers description elaborates what was by this time a failurein the eyes of many visitors. Not only had the inside of thestructure never seen grain, but the reasons for its emptinesswent beyond the mere fact that the building would notsuffice to hold the region's reserves. In reading Hebers commentary now, one wonders whether the door could have

simply been rehung. But for Heber the physical problemsof this particular structure were really not the issue. His primary concern was the lack of knowledge on the part of theearly colonizers: not until after building the Golghar didthey discover that its capacity was insufficient. Thenarrative of discovery is important here, for it echoes thenarrative of colonial exploration and knowledge-gatheringabout the subcontinent. Facts are always there, they just needto be discovered by an intelligent ruler.

By the time Heber visited Patn? in 1824, the Golghar'snotorious emptiness was well known; it had becomea curiosity, and visitors came to hear the echo and to notethe fact that this early colonial monument had notfulfilled its mission. Its downfall, in Heber's text and others, became its story. Once the presence of the British wasa given on the subcontinent, the Golghar's receptionshifted from reassurance of that presence into a reminderof the shortcomings of early colonial actions that confirmed by contrast the experienced knowledge of thenineteenth-century colonizers.Heber's text is not unique in its description of theGolghar (although its length, depth, and panache are).

Many travellers' tales from the early nineteenth centuryreinforce the touristic role of the Golghar for Patn?. FrancisEgerton, who spent a day in Patn? in the mid-nineteenthcentury, repeats most of the common descriptive patternsassociated with the Golghar. He relates that a pony hadbeen ridden up to the top of the structure, and that

The feat was celebrated . . .and must have been a difficult one forthe pony, for it is a huge dome rising from the ground, andascended by a steep winding staircase. ... It was built in 1786, asa granary to prevent famine in the district, and proved entirelyuseless. There is a singular echo in the building.40

This echo and the climb to the top remain today the tworeasons for visiting the structure. The curiosity value ofthe building serves as its primary draw for visitors;ponies climb the steps (as in Egerton's story), and peanutvendors sell snacks at the top. The interior echo and theview from the peak, which encompasses Patn? and theGanges River, comprise its two main attractions fortourists. Visitors also come to the Golghar because of thestories told about the building, including those related byHeber above. It seems that the ridiculous failure of theearly colonial governing body to erect a structure that

served its intended purpose drew (and continues to draw)people to the edifice.

Today, along with a certain amount of disbelief that thebuilding was completed at all, one wonders why theinscriptions remain, when by the nineteenth century itmust have been clear that the general plan did not materialize and there was no No. 2 granary nearby. As hewrote to the Board in 1786, Kyd's felt that the monumentshould remain for the honor of Hastings.

In justice to the late Governor-General [Warren Hastings] itmust indeed be allowed this important aspect [famine] did notescape his foresight and the public granary, which had beenerected in the province of Bihar by his direction, it is to be

wished for, may remain forever a durable monument to the honour of his administration, and the Glory of our nation whichprides itself in acts of popular humanity and maintaining therights of all subject nations.41

Thirty-five years later, in his survey of Patn? ini8n-i8i2,Francis Buchanan-Hamilton mirrors Kyd's positive sentiment with a somewhat negative reinterpretation of whatshould be done:

For the sake of the great man by whose orders this building waserected, the inscriptions should be removed, were they not abeacon to warn governors of the necessity of studying politicaleconomy, and were it not of use to mankind to know even the

weaknesses of Mr. Hastings.42

Whereas Kyd's statement in 1786 focused on the Golghar'sdemonstration of the benevolence of British rule in India,Buchanan's later statement refocuses the debate on the

knowing : the inscriptions should be torn down, but theyserve to support the pursuit of more knowledge about thesubcontinent, including the mistakes of early colonial governors such as Hastings.43 Thus,

as a monument to failure,the Golghar in fact serves to legitimize colonial presence inthe subcontinent: the collection and spread of knowledgeabout India is deemed necessary to successful rule, and thismonument is held up as proof. For late eighteenth-centurycolonials building the Golghar was amatter of British pridein their treatment of subject nations. For nineteenthcentury colonials the Golghar illustrated the dangers ofbuilding before you measure, or ruling without knowledge,and as such its inscriptions were extremely important incommunicating that danger.Its interest for travellers and visitors to Patn? cannot bedisputed: the number of commentaries alone, alongsidenumerous images of the structure reproduced in textsduring the nineteenth century, indicate its centrality to afull experience of Patn?.44 Its strange form?difficult todescribe (glass house, tower of Babel)?reinforces its initial status as amonument to British presence. Taking theeighteenth-century failure to construct a usable granary asa foil, the Golghar in the nineteenth century marks the

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new thrust of colonial discourse as knowledge-gathering.Colonial discourse resignifies the Golghar and thus maintains its importance for the continuation of colonialism; asBuchanan-Hamilton states, the inscription should be torndown, but it helps to reinforce and justify colonialism inthe early nineteenth century.

THE ELASTICITY OF COLONIAL DISCOURSEThe relationship between knowing India and ruling Indiahas been well rehearsed in scholarship on colonialism.45What has not been as well investigated are the ways inwhich monuments to that knowledge have reinforced andreshaped the way knowledge is deployed in order to control the subcontinent. In the major colonial cities?Madras,

Calcutta, and Bombay?monuments speak more clearly thana civic building constructed by an engineer in suburbanPatn?. The Golghar thus offers a reading of early colonialdiscourse unavailable in larger-scale, high-profile settings.The lacunae within the Golghar's inscription and thebiting comments on the structure's failure to functionpointed to

a shortfall of British knowledge about theregion?its population, what kinds of granaries might beneeded and how many, and what form might be mostsuitable for that purpose. Later commentators who calledfor the inscriptions to be torn down or who remarkedon the Golghar's embarrassing emptiness prop up theircontemporaneous colonial hegemony even as they critique earlier colonialism. The Golghar's emptiness, then,and its use as a tourists' echo chamber and viewing towerillustrate the importance of knowledge gathering fornineteenth-century colonialism and the ways in whichearlier colonialism was made to serve as a foil for thewisdom of the nineteenth century.

Thus, the relationship of hegemony and knowledge,combined with a critical differentiation from earlier colonialisms, allows for an elasticity of colonial discourse.Examination of the narratives surrounding the Golghar

elicits an understanding of the monument as an activeparticipant in the transformation of colonialism from thelate eighteenth century even into the twentieth. Indeed,the Golghar's monumentality boasts an odd longevitypartly accounted for by the continual negotiations madewithin colonial discourse. Even today the Golghar is seeing a rejuvenation?as a community park and civic centerplanned by local architects Lall & Associates (Fig. 7)A6

Having lost its functions of asserting British presence anddifferentiating the late eighteenth century from the earlynineteenth, the Golghar retains its touristic elements?theview and the echo?and serves Patn? as a new statementof colonialism-as-history, firmly putting British presencein the past.

Fig. 7. Lall and Associates' plan for the Golghar park,Patn?. From

Project News: Golghar Complex, Patna, Architecture + Design 8(September-October 1996), p. 19.Reproduced by permission of

media transasia, publisher o? Architecture + Design.

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24- Nilsson, European Architecture in India, p. 99. See Benoy Ghose,Primitive Indian Architecture (Calcutta: Firma KL Mukhopadhay, 1953),p. 25, for a brief discussion of these granaries.

25. Paul Oliver, ed., Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of theWorld(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1997). Neither this text nor othersreproduces a granary form that resembles this shape.

26. This was the question most asked of me while I lived in Patn?,once I explained that Iwas researching colonial architecture in the city.It articulates the importance of the Golghar for the city as awhole andits continued connection with the colonial period. Seeing the Golghar,climbing to the top, and experiencing that part of Patn? is even todayintimately connected with the British space of the city.

27. See Brown, The Cemeteries and the Suburbs.28. This move had been building since the Battle of Plassey in 1757,

long considered the turning point in British East India Company rule onthe subcontinent. While itself a fairly minor battle, the manner of British

victory (under the leadership of Robert Clive), heightened its importance: a dispossessed relative of the naw?b (regional governor) joined with

Clive to defeat the armies gathered by the Mughal governors of theregion. See Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India (Oxford: Oxford Univ.Pr., 1989), p. 180. Many smaller battles took place in subsequent years inBengal and Bih?r as the governor and agents of theMughal emperor triedto hold the region against the economic and military incursions of theBritish. By the mid-1760s these battles had largely ended, and in 1765the Diwan of Bengal was given to the East India Company, entitling it tocollect taxes for the entire

region.With this new official

responsibility,the

East India Company sought to consolidate its holdings in the region,and this period saw the British settlement at Bankipur take shape in thesuburbs of Patn?. Yang, Bazaar India, pp. 103-11.

29. Several sources in the early nineteenth century narrate this move,including Francis Buchanan, An Account of the Districts of Bihar and

Patna in 1811-12 (Patn?: Bih?r and Orissa Research Society, 1920s [noprecise date given]), pp. 59-60. See also Francis Hamilton, Journalkept during the survey of the districts of Patna and Goya in 1811-1812,ed. V H. Jackson, (Patn?: Government Printing, 1925), and Emma

Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics of Hindost?n, with Sketches of AngloIndian Society (London: Wm. H. Allen & Co., 1835), vol. 1, p. 171.

30. The Council documents suggest that the granary should house afood source, but it is not clear whether the intent was for seed grain orgrain for consumption. In either case, this location is closest to theBritish area of town, and although accessible to some farmers, was notclose to the populated region of Patn?.

31. Many thanks to my colleagues Jon Armajani, Fozia Qazi, andDeborah Hutton for this translation.

32.1 was told by a long-time resident of Patn? that grain sacks werestored in the Golghar at one time in the last quarter of the twentiethcentury. No evidence of this remained during my research in 1996. Onenineteenth-century source indicated that the space had been used as agunpowder magazine. See quote below from Reginald Heber, Narrativeof aJourney through the Upper Provinces of India (Delhi: B. R. Publishing

Corp., 1985 [1827]), pp. 117-20.33. See Kumkum Chatterjee, Merchants, Politics and Society in Early

Modern India, Bihar: 1733?1820 (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1996), and Frederick

Lehman, The Eighteenth Century Transition in India: Responses ofSome Bihar Intellectuals (PhD diss., Univ. ofWisconsin, 1967). Laterdevelopments in Patn? include the founding of the Khuda Bakhsh

Oriental Public Library, amajor repository of Persian texts, in 1890. SeeN. Kumar, ed., Patna: Bihar District Gazeteers (Patn?: Secretariat Pr.,

1970), p. 51534. In 1765 the East India Company was given the title of Diwan of

Bengal, entitling it to collect taxes in the region. See n. 28 above. EarlierBritish inscriptions in the city, including the major inscription on the

1763 Massacre Memorial, are in English (with an occasional Latinphrase).

35. This differentiation is not unusual in the Indian context, occurring between Persian and Sanskrit dual inscriptions on earlier buildings,

most notably Raja Man Singh's dual inscription on Rothas fort. SeeAsher, Architecture of Mughal India, pp. 70-71, and her article, TheArchitecture of Raja Man Singh: A Study of Sub-Imperial Patronage,

in The Powers ofArt: Patronage in Indian Culture, ed. Barbara Stoler Miller(Delhi: Oxford Univ. Pr., 1992), pp. 183-201.

36. This separation was not entirely complete, as seen by the placement of the primary British graveyard in the center of the walled city.See Brown, The Cemeteries and the Suburbs.

37. Francis Buchanan-Hamilton's recording of the area is the firstto go into this level of detail. See Hamilton, Journal. James Rennell'searlier survey was designed to map the rivers, not the land, and thusthe region figures in it but not in as much detail as in Buchanan

Hamilton. See James Rennell, A Bengal Atlas (London: James Rennell,1780) and Andrew S. Cook, Major James Rennell and A Bengal

Atlas, in India Office Library and Records, Report for the year 1976(London: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 1978), pp. 5-42.

Matthew H. Edney addresses this as well in his Mapping an Empire(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1997).

38. See Bernard Cohn, The Command of Language and theLanguage of Command, in Subaltern Studies IV, ed. Ranajit Guha(Delhi: Oxford Univ. Pr., 1994 [1985]), pp. 276-329.

39. Reginald Heber, Narrative of aJourney through the Upper Provincesof India, pp. 117-20.

40. Francis Egerton, Journal of aWinters Tour in India with A Visit tothe Court ofNepaul (London: John Murray, 1852), vol. 1, p. 166.

41. Kyd to Board, Fort William, 15 April 1786.42. Hamilton, Journal, p. 180.43. Warren Hastings was forced into bitter retirement in 1785.

Buchanan-Hamilton's reasons why the Golghar should remain standingecho common wisdom regarding a science experiment: a bad resultcontributes to the scientific pursuit of knowledge even though it is

incorrect.44. In addition to Egerton, Buchanan-Hamilton, and Heber listed

above, Thomas Twining mentions the Golghar in his Travels in IndiaA Hundred Years Ago (London: Osgood, Mcllvaine & Co., 1893),p. 138.

45. Bernard Cohn swork here is central (Colonialism and its Forms ofKnowledge [Princeton: Princeton Univ. Pr., 1996]).

46. Project News: Golghar Complex, Patna, Architecture + Design 8(September-October 1996), p. 19.

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Gol Ghar & Colonial Discourse

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