COMMENTARY
specific design of imperial polity that
From Calcutta to Ieper
Two Buildings with a Shared History
Rahela Khorakiwala
The Calcutta High Court building
is based on the design of the
Cloth Hall building in the Belgian
town of Ieper. However, there is
a belief that the court’s design
plans were used to rebuild the
Cloth Hall building in Belgium
after it was destroyed in World
War I. This is a myth and shows
how history and memory are
often reconfigured to materialise
specific pride and prestige.
Through this myth, we are
invited to revisit the colonial past
of the high court and the notion
of “gifting” back to the Belgians
their past through our present.
Rahela Khorakiwala (rahela.k@gmail.com)
is a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck
Institute, Frankfurt, Germany.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW OCTOBER 27, 2018
F
ollowing the revolt of 1857, one of
the major changes introduced was
in the administration of justice
wherein the British introduced a colonial
legal system. For this they established
high courts in the three presidency towns
of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. The
design of the oldest high court in India,
the Calcutta High Court (henceforth,
the CHC) is based on that of the Cloth
Hall located in the Belgian town of
Ieper. Till date, the CHC functions out of
the original building that was built for it
by the British and the construction of
which commenced in 1864 and was
completed in 1872. It was designed by
Walter L B Granville who was a consult-
ing architect to the Government of India
at that time.
Ian Baucom (1999) notes that in the
post-1857 era (after the revolt of 1857),
vast sums of money were spent on build-
ing projects as it was believed that
“the identity of the empire’s subjects
was to a significant degree a product of
the objects and structures which they
beheld and inhabited.” Baucom argues
that the belief at the time was that there
was an “analogous relationship between
architecture and the arts of imperial rule”
and therefore, the British used architec-
ture, not only as a symbol of empire,
but also as an “implement of imperial
governance.” For the British then, this
became a means of disciplining the colony
by changing the framework of the colonial
space and also by adding the required
elements of “English morals” in order to
dominate the native Indian.
The entire notion of creating these
buildings was to maintain the British
ideals at the most important sites of the
colony. The courts of law were part of
this identity that the empire wanted to
create. The way in which these high
courts have been structured represents a
feature of colonial governance wherein
they controlled the colonies through a
vol lIiI no 43
has continued in their postcolonial form.
It is in this context that the construction
and postcolonial narrative of the CHC
building stands. Almost all persons I
spoke to during the fieldwork I conduct-
ed in the CHC pointed out the fact very
categorically that its building was mod-
elled on the Cloth Hall in the Belgian
town of Ieper. Not only were they aware
of the name of the town but also corrected
the pronunciation if said with an error
(because the British spell Ieper as Ypres).
The unique relationship that the CHC
shares with the Cloth Hall in Ieper talks
to the way history and memory reconfig-
ure themselves in ways that materialise
the pride and prestige of an institution.
The Cloth Hall was a large, medieval
commercial building, which was the main
market and warehouse for the city of
Ieper as explained by Jonathan Glancey
(2006). Leslie Coate (1995) writes that
the Cloth Hall is significant and impor-
tant to the history of Ieper and Belgium
because it was the centre for the flourish-
ing Flanders cloth trade in the middle
ages. The building was well-known for
being a “secular” one and has been de-
scribed by Glancey as “the most impres-
sive” and “overwhelming” building in
this framework. The style of architecture
of the Ieper Cloth Hall was the florid
Gothic style which existed in France
till the architecture there became of
the renaissance style. Sondwip Mukherjee
(2012) from the CHC compares the tall
belfry of the Ieper Cloth Hall to the 180-
foot tower of the high court building
that is capped by four turrets and a spire.
While the original Cloth Hall building
was a 13th-century construction, it was
heavily damaged during World War I by
artillery firing from the Germans. In
1918, once the war ended, the town of
Ieper had been reduced to rubble due to
the continuous heavy bombardment on
it over the course of four years. All that
was left of the Cloth Hall was the stump
of the belfry—an image that has been
well-documented by two photographers
from that time and recorded by Coate
(1995) in his work.
Dominiek Dendooven (2003) writes
about the debate that occurred after
World War I with regard to whether the
23
COMMENTARY
town of Ieper should be rebuilt; and if
yes, how. There were three schools of
thought as to this proposition. One sug-
gestion was to rebuild the city in a mod-
ern style, the second group suggested
that the ruins of the town should be
preserved and kept as they were in or-
der to create an open memorial of the
war; and the last proposition was that
the town should be rebuilt as an exact
replica and reconstruction of the town
of Ieper as it existed before the war.
The third suggestion was adopted and
therefore, right after the war, the pro-
cess of reconstructing Ieper in its old
glory began. In keeping with this tradi-
tion, the Cloth Hall building was also
reconstructed to resemble its earlier 13th
century design. Therefore, the Cloth Hall
building as it stands today is a replica of
the old Cloth Hall that was destroyed in
the war. The reconstruction began in the
1930s and was completed in parts until
1967. Today, it houses the In Flanders
Fields Museum.
In terms of the CHC, a lot of folklore is
attached to the incident of the destruc-
tion and reconstruction of the Cloth Hall
of Ieper. Several persons I spoke to be-
lieved that when the Cloth Hall building
was thus damaged, the CHC authorities
were approached to facilitate its recon-
struction. They said that the building
plans of the court were used to rebuild
the destroyed structure of the Cloth Hall.
Not only was this a part of the oral
memory of the court but it is found in
the written memories of the court’s his-
tory as well. In 1962, on the occasion of
the centenary celebrations of the CHC,
the sheriff of Calcutta wrote for the
souvenir published on the occasion, “it
is interesting to know that after the
destruction of the Ypres Town Hall in
the 1914–18 World War, Belgian archi-
tects were reportedly sent to Calcutta to
copy the design of the High Court for
the purpose of rebuilding their Town
Hall” (Chowdhury and Roy 1962). In the
2012 publication of the Indian Law Insti-
tute recollecting 150 years of the CHC,
Mukherjee (2012) footnotes that, “the
original structure [of the Cloth Hall] was
ruined in World [War] I. It was rebuilt
between 1933 and 1967 relying largely
on the plans of the Calcutta High Court.”
24
The court also published its own souvenir had been reconstructed based on the
on the occasion of its sesquicentenary blueprint of another building, this fact
celebrations. Two articles therein record would have been well-known and docu-
that, “when the original Stadt-Haus mented as is the case with all informa-
burnt down during the First World War, tion related to the reconstruction of not
a blueprint of Granville’s Calcutta High only the Cloth Hall, but the entire town
Court had to be consulted before re- of Ieper post World War I. So integral
building it” and “when Belgium was was the debate on the reconstruction of
devastated by bombing, an architect Ieper that it is a part of its present as
had come down to Calcutta to create much as of its past. While this argument
a replica of the High Court building” is persuasive, there is additional evidence
(Das 2012). Along with the knowledge that the Cloth Hall was reconstructed on
that the CHC was modelled on the Cloth its very own building plans.
Hall of Ieper, this information has also If one looks at the images of the Cloth
become a part of the archived memory Hall just before it was destroyed, you
of the court. can see the scaffolding that was already
in place on top of the belfry. The reason
A ‘Return Gift’? for this is that there was restoration and
Based on the documented evidence and major renovation work already planned
my conversations with a few persons for the Cloth Hall building before it was
in Ieper, it is clear that this belief is in- destroyed. The engineer architect Jules
correct. Most people in Belgium and in Coomans had been appointed as the
Ieper itself are unaware that there is a town architect for Ieper in 1895 and he
building in India that is modelled on its was given the primary task of restoring
Cloth Hall. It can be argued that if this Ieper’s heritage during this time. As noted
important epicentre of the town of Ieper by Dendooven and Dewilde (1999), he
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OCTOBER 27, 2018 vol lIiI no 43 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

had almost completed this task by 1914.
In order to carry out the restoration
work on the Cloth Hall, Coomans had to
create his own drawings and the neces-
sary blueprints. During the war Coomans
was able to move most of the documents
related to this restoration work to the
town of Wimereux, where he lived.
Therefore, at the time that the Cloth
Hall was destroyed, all the necessary
documents were kept safe. After the war
was over, when the decision was taken
to reconstruct an exact replica of the old
Cloth Hall, the original plans for recon-
struction were thus ready and available.
The design layouts of the two build-
ings are also different. While the CHC is
a rectangular building, the Ipres building
narrows in the centre and then expands
out again making it structurally different.
On the question of why Granville
might have chosen the Cloth Hall of
Ieper as a design model for the CHC, it
may be argued that the structure and
design of the Cloth Hall building was a
model design for European architectural
styles. Karen Burns (2016) writes, “From
the middle of the nineteenth century
Gothic Revival architecture became a
global style as it travelled from the
northern hemisphere to the south.” Burns
argues that this spread was carried out
by colonial governments who “stamped
their Gothic buildings on provincial and
metropolitan cities.” An important form
of transporting this was done through
drawings and models. Burns emphati-
cally states that the “culture of copying
was central to nineteenth-century Gothic
architecture” and that more often than
not, decorative and iconographic works
combined, “regional, national and global
referents to produce original copies
rather than faithful replicas of a distant
medieval English past.”
This idea of producing “original copies”
applies to the case of the CHC designed
on the Cloth Hall of Ieper. Confirming
this debate is the fact that the court
building was not the only one modelled
on the Ieper one. There were several
other buildings that were also designed
in the same style, because the architec-
ture of the Cloth Hall established a,
“repetitive, rhythmic regularity that gives
the building an astonishing sense of
Economic & Political Weekly EPW OCTOBER 27, 2018
assurance and certainty” as documented
by Glancey (2006). Not only was the
model building imitated in Europe, but
copies are found in the United States as
well. The State University Plaza in Albany,
New York, constructed between 1914 and
1918, is based on the design of the Cloth
Hall in Ieper, Belgium. The university
website mentions that the Albany archi-
tect Marcus Reynolds modelled his plans
on the Cloth Hall as he had studied the
building when he was in Europe. Other
buildings in England modelled on the
Cloth Hall of Ieper include the 1869 con-
structed Chester Town Hall in Chester
and the 1878 building of the Holloway
Sanatorium in Surrey, amongst others.
Therefore, it is possible to surmise that
the Ieper Cloth Hall building was an often-
used model design, which was also con-
sidered in the construction of the CHC.
Reconfiguring History
The evidence of this reality about the
existing myth in the CHC directs one to
think of how history and memory are of-
ten reconfigured to materialise a specific
pride and prestige. In this case, the myth
that the Cloth Hall of Ieper had to use
the building plans of the CHC to be re-
built allows for an architectural history
to mobilise a form of pride associated with
the history of the high court. Through
this myth, we are invited to revisit the
colonial past of the high court and the
notion of “gifting” back to the Belgians
their past through our present. This idea
has been nurtured and inflected by the
colonial idea of the rule of law as a gift
to civilise the natives. This returning of a
gift by a former colony then also carries
elements of reasserting the dignity of
the colonised, if not its superiority mak-
ing a postcolonial circumstance.
This narrative of history is not an
archival or chronological notion of his-
tory, if one were to note that the CHC as
an institution did not feel the require-
ment to verify these facts with its Belgian
counterpart. Rather, this notion is embed-
ded in a specific imagination of histori-
cal time—a time that is not calibrated
through archives, dates or documents
but more though the idea of a pride mate-
rialised in a different imagination of his-
tory. When I spoke to Dendooven, who
vol lIiI no 43
COMMENTARY
researches the history of Ieper, he plots
an alternative way of materialising this
pride. His narrative reconfigures the CHC
as one of the oldest buildings in the
world with this architectural style, stand-
ing in the unique position of being older
than the building it was modelled on.
This offers an invitation to memorialise
the connection with Ieper and Belgium
in an alternative way. The presence of
this apocryphal myth highlights the
connection between two important
buildings located in Calcutta and Ieper,
and the link that has till date been
understood differently.
References
Baucom, Ian (1999): Out of Place: Englishness, Empire,
and the Locations of Identity, Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Burns, Karen (2016): “Global Gothic,” A W N Pugin’s
Global Influence: Gothic Revival Worldwide,
Timothy Brittain-Catlin, Jan De Maeyer and
Martin Bressani (eds), Leuven: Leuven Univer-
sity Press, pp 130–41.
Chaudhury, Sushil (2012): “The Calcutta High Court:
A Historical Perspective,” Sesquicentenary Cele-
bration of the High Court at Calcutta (1862–2012),
Souvenir Committee, Kolkata: Saraswaty Press
Limited (Government of West Bengal Enter-
prise), pp 91–103.
Chowdhury, Raja and B N Roy (1962): “The Sheriff
of Calcutta,” The High Court at Calcutta: Cente-
nary Souvenir, 1862–1962, Calcutta: Saraswaty
Press Ltd (Govt of W B Enterprise), pp 101–10.
Coate, Leslie (1995): Ypres 1914–1918: A Study in
History Around Us, Sussex: L D C Publications.
Das, Soumitra (2012): “Embodiment of the Law,”
Sesquicentenary Celebration of the High Court
at Calcutta (1862–2012), Souvenir Committee,
Kolkata: Saraswaty Press Limited (Govern-
ment of West Bengal Enterprise), pp 111–13.
Dendooven, Dominiek (2003): Ypres as Holy Ground:
Menin Gate and Last Post, 2nd, Trans by Ian
Connerty, Koksijde: De Klaproos Editions.
Dendooven, Dominiek and Jan Dewilde (1999):
The Reconstruction of Ieper: A Walk through
History, Ieper: Openbaar Kunstbezit in Vlaan-
deren in co-operation with the In Flanders
Fields Museum.
Glancey, Jonathan (2006): Eyewitness Companions:
Architecture, London: DK: Dorling Kindersley.
John G Waite Associates (nd): “State University
Plaza, Albany, NY,” John G Waite Associates,
Architects, http://www.jgwaarchitects.com/
portfolio/public-buildings/state-university-
plaza/state-university-plaza.htm, viewed on 21
October 2018.
Mukherjee, Sondwip (2012): “3 Esplanade Row
(West),” The High Court at Calcutta—150
Years: An Overview, Chittatosh Mookerjee,
S B Mookherjee, Saktinath Mukhopadhyay,
Surendra Kumar Kapur, Bhaskar P Gupta,
Samaraditya Pal, Amit Roy and Sondwip
Mukherjee (eds), Indian Law Institute, Kolkata
(West Bengal State Unit), pp 27–38.
Mookerjee, Chittatosh, S B Mookherjee, Saktinath
Mukhopadhyay, Surendra Kumar Kapur, Bhaskar
P Gupta, Samaraditya Pal, Amit Roy and Sondwip
Mukherjee (eds) (2012): The High Court at
Calcutta—150 Years: An Overview, Indian Law
Institute, Kolkata (West Bengal State Unit).
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 COMMENTARY

Image 1: The Calcutta High Court, Circa 1900 Image 2: The Calcutta High Court

Source: Rahela Khorakiwala.

Source: Mookerjee et al (2012).

Image 3: The Cloth Hall in Ieper, Belgium, Circa 1845 Image 4: The Cloth Hall After being Bombed

Source: Beatrijs Deconinck.

Source: Beatrijs Deconinck.

Image 5: The Reconstructed Cloth Hall Image 6: Scaffoldings on the Belfry of the Cloth Hall

Source: Rahela Khorakiwala.

Source: Beatrijs Deconinck.

Economic & Political Weekly EPW OCTOBER 27, 2018 vol lIiI no 43 1