Town Planning in Ancient India c6.41

c6.41

Finally, it is in the fitness of things that something should be said about the importance of a town-planner being conversant with the history of his town. I have to observe elsewhere that, as a preliminary to the planning of a town, the master-builder must take a historical and sociological survey of the site. It would be sheer iconoclasm if a civic architect did not respect the ancient historical relics of the place, if he pulled down and demolished everything that stood in the way of successful execution of his fanciful scheme, to advertise his own originality, and left no trace of the past with which were interwoven the traditions and sanctity of the place. It is not right and proper that the new city should be cut off from its ancient moorings, because for a healthy civic life and for the traditional sanctity of the city these historical reminiscences are essential and indispensable. It is a truism to say that the city reacted upon the life of its citizens in the same way as their culture gave the form and tone to the city. The city and citizens are indissolubly linked together. The influence of the one wove into the life and evolution of the other. Hence there must be a continuity in the growth of cities, which, in India, was from within. Put in the words of that gifted lady, Sister Nivedita, “The key to new conquests lies always in taking up rightly our connection with the past. The man who has no inheritance has no future (p. 67)……..In the making of history it is the guiding ideas which are more important than the massing of correct details. We shall become great historians, great singers of a people’s evolution, not merely in proportion as we are competent to adjudicate correctly the date of a king or battle, but rather as we are able to reveal the essential features of the past and gather from them the prophecy of the future. All historians, whether of communities or periods, have their central laws, without the recognition of which they are chaotic. Here we seek the story of the municipal ideal. Again we sit at the feet of a slowly evolving church” (p. 24).¹