Anish Kapoor Slams India’s Prime Minister and His ‘Fascist Government’ for Planning to ‘Destroy’ Delhi’s Historic Parliament Building

British Indian artist Anish Kapoor is accusing Indian Prime
Minister Narendra Modi of taking advantage of the global health
crisis to push through controversial plans to redevelop the
historic buildings of Dehli’s Central Vista, including the city’s
Parliament House.

The project, overseen by India’s public works department, is
earmarked to cost 200 billion rupees ($2.64 billion), which some
say would be better spent fighting the outbreak of COVID-19.

Completed by British architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert
Baker in 1931, the Central Vista is the city’s main administrative
district.

The overall geometric design of its expansive boulevard is
inspired by similar boulevards in cities such as Paris, but the
buildings in the area are distinctly Indian, with architectural
features drawn from Hindu temples, Buddhist and Jain buildings, and
red-stoned Mughal palaces, such as the city’s famed Red Fort.

“Love it or hate it, it is a grand vision of governmental power
and the so called will of the people,” Kapoor wrote in a polemical
op-ed for the Guardian. “In my view [they are] perhaps the grandest government buildings in the world.”

“The destruction of Lutyens’s Delhi is deeply misguided and
comes out of Modi’s political fanaticism,” Kapoor adds. “This is
not the redesign of buildings, it is instead Modi’s way of placing
himself at the center and cementing his legacy as the maker of a
new Hindu India.”

Kapoor also accuses the project’s architect, Bimal Patel of HCP
Design, with having already destroyed the Indian city of Ahmedabad
in a previous project.

Kapoor is not alone in opposing the redevelopment, which was
faced challenges in court. Historians, architects, and urban
planners have also pushed back on the plans, noting the site’s
cultural importance.

“The historical significance of the Central Vista lies in its
architecture, town planning, and politics,” Swapna Liddle, a
historian at the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural
Heritage and an opponent of the redevelopment, told Scroll. “Its history is
the history of India.”

But those in favor of the redesign say it serves a practical
purpose.

“From the day after independence, parliament was too small,
because the existing building was the council house for the British
raj,” Bobby Desai, director of design at HCP told the Guardian. “It
was certainly never designed to be a parliament building for a
country of 1.4 billion people.”

The post Anish Kapoor Slams India’s Prime Minister and His
‘Fascist Government’ for Planning to ‘Destroy’ Delhi’s Historic
Parliament Building appeared first on artnet News.