Bombay High Court's New Design Reeks of Macaulay Hangover & Bureaucratic Opacity

For a project that's a public building of national significance, information should ideally be in the public domain.

The Steering Committee of the Bombay High Court has just decided that its new building shall be built in Greco-Roman style, replete with a very English Chippendale pediment.

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while delivering the recent Sixth Ramnath Goenka Lecture in New Delhi, reiterated his concerns about breaking the shackles of colonialism. He spoke of the British policy promulgated through the British historian Thomas Babington Macaulay’s education system to undermine Indian pride in intrinsic culture and language. The Prime Minister has since outlined a 10-year period to eradicate the colonial mindset that the British so deviously inculcated in generations of Indians.

Meanwhile, the Steering Committee of the Bombay High Court has just decided that its new building shall be built in Greco-Roman style, replete with a very English Chippendale pediment. If the Steering Committee are seeking to build a civic structure that replicates the colonial mindset, they could not have made a better choice.

Old vs New 

There is no question that a new court complex is needed. The existing courthouse, a Gothic structure designed by the British architect, Colonel James Fuller and built in 1878 in the Fort area of Mumbai, has ceased to be viable. Over the past century and a half, the business of the court has outgrown the provided space and amenities.

Originally designed for fifteen judges to be seated, the Bombay High Court now has a sanctioned capacity of ninety-four judges.

The situation was so dire that it reached the Supreme Court of India and in 2024, the erstwhile Chief Justice of India ordered that a proposal to erect new facilities be considered with urgency.

Accordingly, the Public Works Department of Maharashtra submitted a design proposal which wasn’t acceptable to the Steering Committee. It was then decided to host a limited design competition and select firms were invited to submit proposals for a new courthouse spread over thirty acres in the Bandra East area of Mumbai, of which four acres were to be allotted to residential facilities for the judges. Amongst the proposals submitted for the project, the winning entry was that of Architect Hafeez Contractor, a Mumbai based firm.

Apparently, there was no attempt to invite firms from outside Mumbai or firms that had courthouse designs to their credit. One of the listed firms is a conservation architecture consultancy with scarce architectural designs to their credit.

This firm has served as a consultant to the heritage structure of the existing courthouse. Another specialises in interior design. In such event, the priorities while shortlisting the invited firms is difficult to comprehend.

This lack of transparency extended to the sequence of events subsequent to the announcement of the winning entry. An exhibition of all the submitted designs scheduled at the Nehru Centre in Mumbai in early October was abruptly cancelled. Atop that, the competing firms have been apparently bound by a Non-Disclosure Agreement which has severely limited sharing of their involvement in the project on social media and professional fora. A presentation of the competing entries is now scheduled for later this year.

Opaque Architecture & Processes

For a project that is a public building of national significance, related information should ideally be in the public domain. Holding open competitions ensures a healthy discussion around the brief and a fountainhead of ideas pertaining to the solution. While foreign firms may have been excluded from the reckoning because the project is a building is national stature, limiting participation to a select few within Mumbai has deprived the project of a wider spectrum of available talent. This manner of secrecy around the process has also made it vulnerable to insinuation.

Architect Hafeez Contractor, the winning entry, is no stranger to controversy. This was amply reflected in the process of selection of the design for Amaravati, the proposed new capital of Andhra Pradesh.

The design competition was won by Maki Associates from Japan, headed by the internationally eminent architect Fumihiko Maki, and they were subsequently asked to team up with Architect Hafeez Contractor. When they did not comply with this instruction, the entire project was awarded to Architect Hafeez Contractor with Foster and Associates, a London headquartered architectural consultancy. Ironically, neither Contractor nor Foster had entered the design competition. Mr Maki’s subsequent letter to the Council of Architecture, venting his frustration about this situation was a justified defamation of the state of the profession in India.

The winning design in the case of the proposed Bombay High Court building is as controversial as the process of it’s selection.

Macaulay's Ghost

Hafeez Contractor’s ‘classical and neo-classical’ design is a point of discussion. Lauded by the Steering Committee that had selected it, the design has faced flak from members in the architectural fraternity for being regressive and sanctifying a colonial mindset even after almost eighty years of Independence. It has been described as ‘a farcical approach to a building of national significance’ in Architecture.Live and bemoaned for a lack of ‘swadeshi architecture’ in an ‘atmanirbhar Bharat’ in the The Indian Express.

The merit in this argument has mystifyingly eluded those involved in the selection process.

In a token gesture to ‘Indianness’, a replica of the Ashoka Pillar is planted towards the front of the Romanesque entrance porch. This convoluted irony could be accentuated if this colonial style building were to be named after a freedom fighter like Mahatma Gandhi or Lokmanya Tilak.

Like in education as pointed out by our Prime Minister, the British rulers cleverly used architecture as a strategic tool to reinforce hierarchy and subjugation for over a century. Initially largely in an unapologetic Classic style, public buildings built by the colonisers post-1857 increasingly incorporated Indian elements in a manner that popularly came to be known as the Indo-Saracenic style. This was intended to lend familiarisation with the subjects while reinforcing the authority of the Empire.

Post Independence, a nationalist pride led Indian architects to concern themselves with solutions that were specific to our culture and conditions. The depth of time and the range of thoughtful application in ancient, medieval and modern Indian architecture is tremendous.

Oblivious of any Indian bearings, the proposed Bombay High Court building is designed like structures were in eighteenth century Europe. The competition may as well have been confined to Western architects. After all, what better than tapping the source itself.

Through most of it’s years of Independence, India has been ruled without imagination. The selection of this architectural design for the proposed Bombay High Court building reveals a lack of intellect as well. In the words of Prime Minister Modi, Macaulay uprooted India from it’s cultural foundations. Generations of Indians thus existed bereft of an understanding of their civilisational offerings. Sadly, this proposed building of the Bombay High Court would have Macaulay smiling in his grave.

(Rajesh Luthra is an architect in independent practice. Having graduated from Columbia University in New York City, he designs, writes and teaches in New Delhi. This is an opinion piece and all views expressed are author's own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)