By Maganlal Vakhatchand
‘Amdavad no Itihas’ was written by Maganlal Vakhatchand in 1850. His essay on Ahmadabad was selected by jury of Gujarat Vernacular Society (GVS) in the competition of writing a history of Ahmadabad. He was historian and so the text is different than an architect’s history text. His text is a history of rulers, architectural monuments and stories of Ahmadabad city in form of literature and photographs.
Prior to his essay, Dalpatram Dahyabhai and Alexander Kinloch Forbes were working for local literature of Gujarat and for that they traveled to different parts of Gujarat. They compiled manuscripts and transcribed folk songs and literature of Charan, Bhat from villages. Dalpatram was poet and knew Gujarati, Sanskrit and Vrajbhasha. Forbes was assistant judge colonial administrator in Ahmadabad of Bombay Province. He promoted the literary education and established Gujarat Vernacular Society (GVS).[1]
Dalpatram and Maganlal both wrote the history Ahmadabad but their sources were different so the history was different. Dalpatram focused more on Hindu stories and contemporary cultural issues where Maganlal being a progressive philosopher wrote about rulers, architecture and lifestyle of the people from all religions. This text was one of the first attempts of writing history, literature and contemporary social issues along with “Vartmaan”-the news paper, Bhootnibandh (later translated in English and named “Lakshmi Natak”) and Buddhiprakash by Dalpatram etc. These texts were the significant writings of the late nineteenth century.
James Burgess wrote a book[2] about Islamic architecture in 1896. He was archeologist, Head of the Archaeological Survey, Western India, 1873. His description about monuments of Islamic architecture were based on terminology for elements, spaces and typology such as “clear storey”, “porch” etc. He described the entrance from where to enter, the dimensions of the space etc. The terminology associated with churches was also the same so the experiential meaning of these Islamic monuments could not be conveyed through this text.
Where Maganlal described his experience and meaning of the names of the monuments e.g. meaning of Jami (big) and Jumma (Friday) while describing about Jami mosque. The height of minarets was described as the top floor is accessed through spiral staircase and distance of 12 villages is visible from the top. So no stylistic or architectural description is explained in the text but the lifestyle, experience and local facts, believes are written. This is the other way to look at the history of Ahmadabad. May be local and common people would be intended readers of the text and not the scholars from architecture.
History has many truths and not just one. Such as, James Burgess focused on Islamic monuments and architecture where as Maganlal focused on Pol, facts and believes about pols, ideologies of rulers how they ruled/ administered Ahmadabad, stories of conflicts or politics among the rulers as history, contemporary economics and industrial production as sociology derived and verified from different sources. He covered prachin (Mirate A Ahmadi), arvachin (talks from maratha people) and haalni vyavastha (administration of now) in his text. Not inclined to any religious prejudice and as being one of the locals Mahganlal Vakhatchand has covered various facts in the text. And so this text has left a remarkable legacy in the historiography of Ahmadabad.
references:
[1] Yagnik, Achyut, Sheth, Suchitra, “Ahmedabad from royal city to megacity”, New Delhi Penguin Books 2011
[2] James Burgess, “On The Muhammadan Architecture Of Bharoch, Cambay, Dholka, Champanir, And Mahmudabad In Gujarat”, W. Griggs & sons, limited, 1896