Monumental meanings
Saleema Waraich (Gary Gold photo)
When Pakistan and India were partitioned in 1947, the goal was to create a Muslim-majority nation on one side of the line and a Hindu-majority one on the other. But what would become of the Mughal heritage they had shared for centuries? That question fascinates Skidmore art historian Saleema Waraich.
Waraich loved the Mughal monuments she visited as a child, and in graduate school she began designing a project on the Lahore Fort in Pakistan and its sibling site, the Red or Delhi Fort in India. That project has now grown into her book in progress, Memory, Monuments, and the Mughal Empire in South Asia.
The Lahore and Delhi forts, dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, were originally part of a network of administrative and residential strongholds for the Mughal emperors. After they lost power, the Lahore Fort was inhabited by Sikh rulers, and later both were taken over under the British Raj. But Waraich is equally interested in what happened after that: “With partition, the shared history of what is considered the apex of Muslim rule on the subcontinent was now contested and interpreted in different ways, according to the needs of these two modern nation-states.”
The Mughals, Muslims of mixed Central Asian ancestry, prided themselves on their cosmopolitan identity, reflected in an architectural aesthetic that was an amalgam of Islamic and West and South Asian cultural references. Early forts are massive sandstone compounds, but later alterations incorporated elegant pavilions in white marble (think Taj Mahal). Like many others, the Lahore and Delhi forts have suffered the ravages of time. Both are now under UNESCO preservation guidelines, but national and local government attitudes toward them are always shifting.
Waraich says, “The initial assumption was that with Pakistan as a Muslim-majority nation, the Lahore Fort would thrive, but it would be questionable what would happen to Mughal sites in Hindu-majority India.” In fact, the Delhi Fort has been a far more visible national symbol since Indian independence, though it’s still a subject of debate in terms of India’s relationship to the Muslim past. And Pakistan’s Lahore Fort, though not quite as central or well-maintained as a historic site, does remain popular. But it’s complicated, Waraich notes, because “it evokes Muslim despair brought about by memories of their oppression under non-Muslim (including Sikh and British) rule, as well as the instability that marks the situation in Pakistan today.” As Pakistan’s political crisis has escalated with the “war on terror” and an influx of Afghanis, Waraich says the Lahore Fort, in all its faded grandeur, remains an important symbol, “a way for people to articulate their dissatisfaction with current political powers and to talk about the anxieties that exist in Pakistan around ideas of cultural identity.”
“I am interested in those larger discussions that the sites intersect with, the layers of history, the ways in which the past is invoked in debates about the present, and the way the present informs the way we talk about the past,” Waraich explains.
As she explores visual representations of these sites—from paintings to lithographs, photos to postcards—she asks, “What does each work tell us about a particular moment? And how do different media shape our collective and personal memories as we move through time?” One thing is sure, she observes: “Memories and meanings are never fixed. They are constantly being reworked to adapt to the needs of the present.” And that means the great Mughal forts that endure on both sides of the partition will continue to evolve in the minds of citizens, tourists, and scholars.