Is Shimla’s landscape a churchscape?

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'A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now’

T.S. Eliot

I was listening today to a speech by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, delivered at Lincoln Cathedral. In this speech he suggested that the church building is a witness of dependability: a place that speaks of a longer time scale and vision than most people work with. Given the way my mind works this of course set me thinking about Shimla and the way that the churches there create a sense of continuity with the past. In my previous post we discussed the way that interactions with heritage buildings give people a sense of rootedness and some of the problems with modernist architecture. It seems to me that the churches are particularly good at this form of Witness even though many of those most involved with them are unaware of this.

In thinking about such things I am reminded of Greenage’s book New Jersey Churchscape, in which he argues that New Jersey (known as the garden city) should really be known as a Churchscape, because the most iconic and eye catching feature of the landscape is the churches. Now, in Shimla as well the churches form a key aspect of the heritage landscape. Christ Church can be seen from virtually every angle on the mall and people are drawn to it.



But it also stands in dialogue with St Andrew’s, the former Scottish Church, which is today the Himachal Pradesh University's centre for evening studies. St Andrew’s Eastern alignment has been cleverly manipulated, by moving the tower to the side, which furthers the sense that the two churches are talking to each other across the expanse of the ridge.



St Michael’s by contrast is more tucked away at Ripon place, yet it is on a key route to the mall from the buss stand and along the mall from IIAS, as such it is something that you stumble upon through the trees, on your way to and from the mall like a hidden gem.



Is Shimla then also a city of Churchscapes? When people walk along the mall are they more drawn to secular buildings, such as Gaity theatre? Or is it the mass of Jakhoo hill, with the unseen presence of the temple atop, that calls to them? Or, are people drawn to the timeless mountains, snow-capped in winter, that tower above Shimla from afar?

If the continuing growth of modern architecture threatens to ruin the landscape of Shimla, is it the old Colonial architecture that makes it? Or, is this also something that intrudes on the true beauty of Shimla, which is the Himalayan peaks and forests?

Give and take

Anthropologists are often criticized for taking from the field the data they need ,yet not giving anything substantial back to the people they work with. I hope that my study in general will be of use to the people of Shimla, both Christians and none Christians; however, as a way of helping in the short term I have also agreed to make some brochures for the two main churches, which draw upon the archival resources that I have accessed to highlight key architectural features of the buildings. As Father Xavier is away at the moment St Michael's brochure is on hold, but I have today completed a first draft of a brochure for Christ Church, which seems to have been initially well received.

This is the first chance I have had to write from the field proper  despite being in India for nearly 2 weeks and in the field site for nearly 4 days. I shall try and be more regular from now on with these online posts and it is hoped that they will become increasingly interactive. Once I have set up a proper internet connection then this should become much easier. Anyway so far there i nothing too exciting to report and (as is normal) much of the time so far has been taken up with practicalities of the sort that are interesting for a certain kind of very reflexive anthropology, but I think not so interesting to me or my project. The first week in Delhi was  in truth not so much fieldwork as a conference, although time there served as an acclimatiser ahead of the fieldwork - that said the plains are not the hills. 

The conference was perhaps the most passionate I have attended and there is much in my field journal that I will not reproduce here. For this is not my field journal more an alternative more public, chatty and interactive thing. In particular I take from the conference a renewed interest in Vibha Arora’s (IIT Delhi) work on sacred landscape in Sikkim. This basically presented a contrast between the governmental role in wrestling power from a Buddhist theocratic minority into the hands of a Hindu majority at the same time as promoting Sikkim as a sacred Buddhist landscape. Other interesting papers included Sipra Mukherjee’s (West Bengal State University) paper on Conversion in Bengal. Here she highlighted what I think Carrithers would call a pollytropic tendency to be able to absorb ideas from other faiths without needing formal conversion. The term used for this kind of phenomenon was Piety rather than religion. A similar phenomenon in the Punjab was noted by Navtej Purewal (University of Manchester) who also highlighted that the official line of Pakistan is often not followed at the vernacular level of Muslim practice in the Punjab. The distinction between official religion (in this case Vedanta) and vernacular religion was also highlighted by Tartu’s Ulo Valk who talked about the difference between Vedanta conceptions of Karma and the conception of Karma expressed in folk tales he has collected in Tamil Nadu: the main difference seems to be that Karma in Tamil Nadu is collective and familiar rather than individual. In later talks he also mentioned some very interesting research he is doing on Magic in the North East.  The rest of the conference was characterised by explosive and often emotional discussions about the role of Religion and Secularism in the formation of the modern Indian state.

The rest of Delhi involved organising a prop jet to fly to Shimla and meeting with ex-Shimlites who helped to foreground the experience and gave handy tips on practicalities, which is of course where my last post left off.

We landed in Shimla in glorious sunshine and to rather warmer weather than expected and wound our way from the air strip to the central mall, where we checked into one of the many guest houses for a few days while finding accommodation.  Shimla mall is a pedestrianised area that winds down the hill side, lined with Tudor looking buildings from which people operate in a distinctly Indian way.  Any hope of finding accommodation in these places soon evaporated as it became clear that we would have to stay off the mall and travel in.  Finding accommodation in Shimla today is as difficult as in the times of the Raj or the 1980s, when Ursula Sharma devoted a chapter of her ethnography to it. I do not intend to replicate Sharma’s practice but suffice to say that as in the past it is today largely a case of going through a network of contacts rather than formal estate agents. Some estate agents do exist but they are so treacherous and unreliable as to be more a hindrance than a help. Fortunately through my wife’s extended family and web of contacts we were able to find some people here willing to rent us a room in their properties; but the prices seem rather inflated.  Ironically the first place shown us was owned by a Sood who offered us the property for around twice the going rate in Tallinn. This is not a surprise as the Soods have been fleecing the British (and to some extent the Bengalis) for property since Shimla began.  The other two were down at the historic Annandale, this is a flat clearing in the forest down in a valet bellow Shimla proper. In the British era it was famous for its picnics parties and theatre displays. Today it is a contested zone with a running battle between various groups for control, the army want it for a helipad, some locals want it for a golf course, others for a cricket pitch and still others for a general green space that locals can freely enjoy.

Contacts have also been made with HP university and they have confirmed that I will be offered an honorary fellowship there in their flagship Integrated Institute for Himalayan studies, as well as talking with the Director of this institute and the Dean for studies I was also able to make contact with other researchers there who are working on some interesting projects regarding both environment and spirituality amongst the tribals of rural Himachal Pradesh. Pleasingly Sukanya has also been offered a part time teaching position in English Literature at the University. Summer Hill is about an hours walk from the mall along a pleasant path but I will certainly loose my Christmas stomach’s swell if I am to do the walk regularly. I have also been to the Kali Bari temple for puja and found peace in this ritual but as often is the case little community.

Today was in a way the first real taste of fieldwork as I attended the morning mass as St Michael's. It is the close season at the moment for the schools and universities, which are on Winter Break until February and this affected the congregation and worship in an unseen way. It seems that a large proportion of the usual congregation are drawn from these institutions and so the congregation was thinner. They also make up the choir and so the service proceeded without a choir. It still fascinatingly alternates English and Hindi in the liturgy as observed last time and still has the wonderful practice of post worship adoration of Mary, that I will write more about again. . This afternoon  I intend to climb Jakhoo hill to the Hanuman temple.

Pictures of everything will follow soon