Many of the categories through which we study South Asia's architecture and the built environment took shape as part of Britain's "imperial vision." (T. Metcalf, 1989) Through the isolation of buildings as monuments, the development of the professional architect and planner, and the emphasis on particular kinds of administrative communities such as the municipality and cultural identities like the territorialized civilization, the British controlled both India's image as a colony and their own image as an imperial power. These concepts - architect, monument, city, and civilization - still provide important anchors for the study of India's architecture and keep it closely tied to the priorities of colonial governance. This panel presents brings research on architectural patronage to "re-vision" the political priorities we associate with these conceptual categories. In order to show how Indian patrons embraced new developments in architecture as tools to ground visions quite independent of the imperial mission, we use four historical studies that bring into high relief the ways that groups of powerful Indian patrons reshaped the definition of old civilizations, created cultural geographies independent of colonial India's political spaces, and projected the cultural identities of traditional and modern toward new ends. Our papers intentionally link to current issues, from the donations of bricks for the Rama temple at Ayodhya by a worldwide Hindu diaspora, to urban slums, whose simple structures provide counterpoints to the visions of renowned architects. We seek a substantial cross-disciplinary discussion about struggles over civilization and mobility, cultural innovation and social dynamism, local environments and global visions.
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