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India's 'barefoot' architects bare their
souls
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW
DELHI - It is strange that a voluntary organization
working in a remote village in India's desert-stricken
western Rajasthan state would return a prestigious award
for architecture from a prestigious Aga Khan institute.
But the Barefoot College (founded in 1972 as the Social
Work and Research Center) at Tilonia village, 100
kilometers from the state's capital of Jaipur, has a
reputation to keep as an institution that promotes
reliance on traditional skills and genius in overcoming
developmental problems.
So when the Aga Khan
Foundation included Neehar Raina, a young, well-shod
architect, in the group of "barefoot architects" honored
for building 250 homes and 250 rainwater harvesting
structures at the Barefoot College, its founder Sanjit
Bunker Roy saw red.
Last week Roy did something
about it. He returned the Aga Khan Award for
Architecture, given to the Barefoot College, along with
a US$50,000 prize. It had been one of nine winners of
this year's cycle of the triennial awards, which began
in 1977. Other recipients included the Nubian Museum at
Aswan in Egypt, the SOS Children's Village at Aqaba in
Jordan and the Center for Intellectual Development of
Children and Young Adults transformed from the historic
Vazir Bathhouse at Isfahan in Iran.
The Aga Khan
is regarded as the 49th hereditary imam or the spiritual
leader after the Prophet Mohammad by the Ismaili Shi'ite
sect of Muslims, who are spread across the world but are
largely concentrated in India and Pakistan. The Aga Khan
awards "seek to identify and encourage building concepts
that successfully address the needs and aspirations of
societies in which Muslims have a significant presence".
Tilonia is situated in Rajasthan's Ajmer
district, famed in the Islamic world for the
dargah or final resting place of Khwaja Moinuddin
Chishti, a Sufi saint who died in 1235 and is venerated
by Hindus and Muslims alike for miracles that have
included the grant of a male heir to the Mughal Emperor
Akbar.
Roy said returning the award was a
"painful decision" for him and his co-workers at the
Barefoot College, but "our integrity is more important
to us than any honor".
The Barefoot College,
which drew inspiration from well-known movements of the
1960s that involved the service of non-professionals
such as Mao Zedong's "barefoot doctors" and John F
Kennedy's US Peace Corps, is no ordinary NGO.
Its founder, Roy, gave up a career in India's
elite administrative service to start it. His equally
well-known wife Aruna Roy runs the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti
Sangathan (MKSS), a voluntary organization of peasants
and workers, and and in 2000 won the Ramon Magsaysay
award, Asia's version of the Nobel prizer, for community
leadership and international understanding, with J
Arputham of the National Slumdwellers' Federation.
But in spite of the impeccable reputation gained
by the Roys through decades of voluntary work, the
decision to return the Aga Khan award has been greeted
by anger, especially from architects who think an
injustice has been done not only to Raina but to their
profession as well.
"Where is the need to reject
the award when the foundation has, after due process,
found it appropriate to honor Raina?" said S K Das, a
leading member of the Delhi-based Council of Architects
who has been associated with nominations for the award
in past years.
The Aha Khan award for
architecture's redrafted citation said that based "upon
the recommendation of the master jury," Raina was being
honored "for the college campus design for rainwater
harvesting, homes for the homeless and the Barefoot
College" and described his work as "an outstanding
contribution to architecture for Muslims".
Apparently, what annoyed Roy was the inclusion
of Raina's name after the architect complained directly
to the foundation that his contribution had been ignored
and that the term "barefoot" was in fact a misnomer. In
his complaint to a member of the foundation, Raina said
that the barefoot college was in fact designed by him -
and that Roy had "made a mockery of not only the
architectural profession but of the prestigious Aga Khan
Award for Architecture".
Raina then provided
evidence of his role to senior architect Romi Khosla,
who had been deputed by the Council of Architects and
the foundation, whose steering committee and judging
panel included globally known names in architecture such
as Frank Gehry, Kenneth Frampton, Zaha Hadid and Glenn
Murcutt.
"A young architect, Neehar Raina,
prepared the architectural layout and an illiterate
farmer from Tilonia along with 12 other barefoot
architects, constructed the buildings," the revised
citation said, bringing Roy into conflict with the
foundation. "There was no question of accepting Mr Raina
as the architect since he was a beginner and still
learning from the elders in the village," Roy said.
Raina and his colleagues at the Council of
Architects responded by calling a press conference on
Friday at the prestigious School of Planning
Architecture, where Raina graduated from, denouncing Roy
for trying to deny a qualified architect his due just
because it did not suit the image that the Barefoot
College was promoting for itself as a grassroots group.
Says Gita Dewa Varma, an architect and Raina's
former college mate, "Roy would like the world to
believe that schools of architecture produce architects
far removed from traditional architecture which grows
only in fields nurtured by NGOs such as the one he
runs."
For Raina, the project, executed on the
eight-acre campus of the Barefoot College and involving
such concepts as Buckminister Fuller's famous geodesic
dome, was like any other in which a qualified architect
prepared designs according to the needs of his clients
and then handed them over.
Manjari Sharma, who
teaches at the school of architecture, said that by
rejecting the Aga Khan award, Roy was sending the wrong
signals to young professionals who might like to work in
neglected rural areas. "What kind of incentives are we
giving to young people when we deny credit for
professional services rendered especially to rural
communities?" She added that the right of Roy to refuse
an award which might have benefited the impoverished
people of Tilonia immensely was questionable.
The Barefoot College holds much clout not only
in Tilonia, but also in some 100 villages that surround
it. It has succeeded in breaking traditional barriers
and perceptions about social and gender roles in a
largely feudal state where women customarily cover their
heads and faces in public.
Visitors to the
village are surprised by the ability of ordinary women
to handle computers, repair hand pumps, install solar
lights and construct rainwater harvesting tanks, often
more competently than men. Many are impressed by night
schools that provide education to more than 3,000
children.
Indeed, the Aga Khan Foundation itself
said in the citation that the Barefoot College had
succeeded in "lifting the surrounding population out of
the vicious circle of poverty and helplessness" and
"facilitated a revival of traditional technologies and
applied them on a wider scale to solve the problems that
have baffled, scientists, engineers, environmentalists
and politicians for years."
(Inter Press
Service)
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