The Colonial Face of Agra

I am taking a slight liberty here by referring to Agra’s European past as colonial. Agra, actually, has had residents and passers-through of extremely varied origins since well before the British took over, and many of them have left their mark on this historic city.

Agra has been, at least since medieval times, an important centre of industry, trade and commerce. It specialised in the production of luxury goods (such as sweetmeats, medicines, gold and silver embroidery, and inlay work), and carried on a flourishing trade in a vast number of other items. The Yamuna made it a focal point of riverine trade, and land routes connected it to the ultimate of trade routes, the Silk Route. As a result, Europeans—Florentines, Venetians, Genoese, Russians, Bavarians, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Portuguese and just about everybody else—with something to sell, something to buy, or just an itch to see (or in many cases, convert) the world washed up in Agra. Many, like the Englishman John Mildenhall (who left London in 1599) came all this way in order to be able to boast that he had spoken to the Great Mogul, the Emperor Akbar, himself. Others, like the Armenian bishop Zakur and his compatriot Khwaja Mortenepus, or the intriguing Dutch mathematician and friar, Henry Uwens (`the friend of [Prince] Dara Shikoh’), came to India with a view to converting the heathen masses to Christianity. Still others came, matchlocks primed and swords on the ready, to sell their skills to the highest bidder.

One of the earliest—if not the earliest—evidences of a European presence in Agra is the Roman Catholic Cemetery, where the oldest Armenian graves date back to 1550. Around the same time, the Emperor Akbar had welcomed the Jesuits into his court, and they had built a church in the northern part of the city. The church was destroyed during the reign of Akbar’s grandson Shahjahan, but one of Agra’s oldest churches arose in 1772, the building today known as Akbar’s Church, though Akbar had nothing to do with it.

The late 18th century was a time of turmoil for not just Agra, but northern India as a whole. The Mughal empire was declining swiftly and steadily, and in its stead, the Marathas were making their presence felt. Also, the British East India Company was making inroads, with decisive victories at the Battles of Buxar and Plassey. In the Doab area (the `land of the two rivers’—the Ganga and the Yamuna), the Scindia clan of the Marathas was dominant. They held sway over both Delhi as well as Agra, and a number of European mercenaries such as Hessing and Perron entered their service. Others, like the infamous Walter Reinhardt `Samru’, switched sides at the drop of a hat with apparently little or no compunctions.

1803 proved a decisive year for Agra and for the Doab as a whole. The British defeated the Marathas (and with them, their European generals, including Hessing and Perron) and took over. A Resident was stationed at Delhi, with the Mughal emperor being reduced to a mere figurehead. In Agra, a Lieutenant Governor’s post was established; Agra itself became part of what was named the United Provinces. Within just over two decades, hectic building activity had begun, and you can still see some fine examples of this across the city, especially in the Agra Cantonment and the Wazirpura and Civil Lines areas. In the cantonment, the neat-as-a-pin St George’s Cathedral was designed by the then 21-year old John Theophilus Boileau, the Garrison Engineer of the cantonment, in 1826.

Also in the mid-1800’s were constructed a number of other Agra’s other important buildings. In Wazirpura, the Roman Catholic Complex appeared, centred round the imposing baroque Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, which was built in 1848. Five years earlier—in 1843—St Patrick’s School had been built nearby (it is today separated from the cathedral churchyard by a wall painted over with instructions on how to perform various yogic asanas, along with accompanying illustrations and details on the illnesses they can help cure). If you go down the lane between the school and the church, you’ll come to yet another building from the 1840’s: St Peter’s College, a well-maintained and striking building in white and grey, with long arcades spreading out from an ornate central porch.

In 1856, the ruling dynasty of the Nawabs of Lucknow (the capital of Awadh) finally collapsed. The British took over, and made Awadh part of the same province as Agra, renaming it the United Provinces of Agra and Awadh. The turmoil of the Mutiny of 1857 and its aftermath had its impact on Agra, but by the early 1900’s, building work had once more begun in earnest. In 1914, Sir Swinton Jacob designed the part Gothic-part Rajput red sandstone pile known as St John’s College (the college itself had been established more than half a century earlier, in 1850). Some years later, the art deco building of the Post Office was constructed in the cantonment. It’s a well-kept structure, painted a crisp white, with a deep red trim that echoes the official colours of India Post. The large arched windows, the shallow dome on top, and the somewhat fussy pillars and niches and narrow windows that punctuate the facade are all quite quaint, and the fact that this is a public building means it’s accessible to all.

Near the Post Office is another building worth a look, if only for the history. This, just behind the Post Office, is St Mary’s Church, a Catholic church commissioned by the John family. The Johns were descended from a Greek diamond merchant named Joanides; the Johns themselves went on to become important industrialists in Agra, owning what came to be known as the John Mills along the bank of the Yamuna. St Mary’s Church isn’t as splendid as the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, but with its distinctly Italianate facade (topped by a crucifix and a six-pointed Star of David), in pale yellow and white, is attractive enough.

That, of course, isn’t all there is to see. Agra is chockfull of colonial buildings. The Sarojini Naidu Hospital (built in the 1850’s) on Hospital Road; the Balwant Rajput College (1890); the John Public Library (also named after the John family and built in 1925); and the Agra College (founded in 1823; the first buildings were designed by John Theophilus Boileau) are among the best-preserved and prominent examples of colonial architecture. Walk through the old city, and you’ll find mansions from the early 20th century, several of them deftly combining colonial elements—arches, balconies, shuttered windows—with indigenous features, especially fine stone carving.

Drive through the cantonment, and you’ll see plenty of private bungalows built in the early 1900’s, all with the low domes, the large semi-circular arches and the porches common to the era. One word of advice, though: don’t spend any time looking for the horrendous Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) Office. It’s a fine colonial building, but they’ve recently painted it—white, but with a very startling deep pink trim that looks truly awful. A disturbing reflection on what the ASI (which is responsible for maintaining most of India’s historic monuments) is capable of doing.

I can say, with all modesty, that I have seen quite a few very historic cemeteries in northern India, including some famous ones like Nicholson Cemetery in Delhi; the St John’s Cemetery in Meerut, and the Residency Cemetery in Lucknow. But this one—the Roman Catholic Cemetery in Agra—is sui generis. It’s the real McCoy.

My brother-in-law Gourab, who’s spent a lot of time touring the cathedrals and cemeteries of Britain (mainly in the wake of my sister Swapna, who’s an ardent historian) decided he’d had enough of the past. My niece and nephew, who’d been hauled out of bed at an unearthly hour to visit the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort, decided a siesta was in order. So it was Swapna, my husband Tarun, and I who eventually went exploring colonial Agra on our own—and ended up at the Roman Catholic Cemetery. The cemetery is just short of National Highway 2, the main road which links Agra to Delhi. A wall encloses the graveyard, but the red sandstone dome of one of the tombs inside the cemetery is a very visible landmark.

The cemetery is a protected site (the Archaeological Survey of India’s standard dark blue board stands outside). An ASI caretaker greeted us and was very keen on taking us around, though it later transpired he knew next to nothing.

The cemetery’s a relatively small one—not as huge as (for example) Meerut’s St John’s; but it has some amazingly historic graves. Just a few steps from the main gate is the highlight of the cemetery, the Tomb of Hessing (this is the one you can see from the road). Colonel John William Hessing was a Dutch mercenary who arrived in the Orient during the 1700’s, beginning his Eastern career in Ceylon. He moved his way up rapidly (literally up; he progressed north), taking up service with the Nizam of Hyderabad and later with the Maratha, Mahadaji Scindia. With the Scindia, he came to Agra, where he later died in 1803 (by which time Agra had fallen to the British).

Hessing’s Tomb is called the `miniature Taj Mahal’, and with good reason. Though this mausoleum is built completely of red sandstone, the basic architecture is decidedly Mughal: a domed, square-sided tomb on a high platform. Arched doorways lead out on all four sides, and arched niches decorate the exterior—which also has the requisite chhatris (domed pavilions) and small minaret-like guldastas. If it weren’t for the cross atop the dome, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a Muslim tomb. There’s plenty of carving too: check out the very intricate, chrysanthemum-like medallions carved on either side of the arches. The cenotaph inside has a long inscription describing Hessing’s life, but is otherwise relatively plain.

Across the path is another somewhat smaller tomb which at first glance looks just as Mughal as Hessing’s. This is the Tomb of Ellis, a Britisher who died during the 1800’s. His tomb is made of buff sandstone and is eight-sided, with pointed arches on all sides and a clumsy, nearly spherical dome on top. There’s a good bit of carving here too (look at the floral medallions, and the intricate floral patterns carved into the bases of the pillars), and the spindly guldastas are each topped with a cross. Ellis’s tombstone is a fairly plain one, and the ground beyond the tomb is studded with the gravestones of other members of his family. [Aside: The guidebook we used—Lucy Peck’s Agra: The Architectural Heritage—refers to this tomb as that of Walter Reinhardt, better known as Samru, a famous mercenary. Samru (the name is supposedly derived from `sombre’, a reflection on his dour, dark demeanour) married a dancing girl who converted to Christianity and became a familiar figure in the Delhi-Meerut area: Begum Samru’s palace in Delhi is today known as Bhagirath Palace in Chandni Chowk, and the huge church she built in Sardhana near Meerut is an important place of pilgrimage. Reinhardt himself is, according to the book, buried in this tomb, but we couldn’t see any signs of that—the only inscriptions around testified to Ellis being interred here.]

The Roman Catholic Cemetery is definitely Agra’s oldest cemetery, and one of the oldest in India, with the earliest graves here dating back to 1550. Led by the ASI caretaker, we waded through dusty, ankle-high tussocks of grass to make our way to some of the older graves, behind Hessing’s Tomb. These are mainly the graves of Italians who died in Agra in the early 1600’s. The interesting thing about the graves is the carving. Looking at it from afar, you’d think these were Muslim graves: the carving’s the repetitive arabesques common in Mughal decoration, and many of the graves are topped with the wedge-like kalam used in Islam to denote a man’s grave. But a closer look—from the top—and you’ll see a crucifix carved, with a Latin inscription. The Latin looks like it’s been scratched by a child: the local stonecarvers were obviously all at sea with this alien script.

Deeper into the cemetery are other interesting graves. One is the Grave of John Mildenhall, an Englishman "...who left London in 1599 and travelling to India through Persia reached Agra in 1603 and spoke with the emperor Akbar...". Mildenhall died at Ajmer in 1614 and was buried here, though the white marble slab on his grave is much newer.

Beyond Mildenhall’s grave rises a spire-like structure of buff sandstone, atop a square-sided base: the Tomb of Perron’s Children. Inscribed on this are a few sentences in French and English that four children of Perron are buried here. General Perron, by the way, was a very famous and much admired French adventurer who, like Hessing, made a name for himself in the service of one of the Scindias. His children died in 1793-4.

Further along is one of the other intriguing tombs of the cemetery: the Tomb of the Tantric Baba. This is an octagonal tomb, its walls plastered white (but now with large splotches of black). The dome is a hexagonal one tapering to a very Western lantern topped by a cross. Two windows with screens of carved red sandstone pierce the walls, and entwined in the carving of these screens, we saw little coloured strings, threads, and strips of cloth. These are typically votive offerings at shrines throughout India, and are common at Hindu temples or Muslim dargahs—but at a Christian tomb?

Inside, the Tomb of the Tantric Baba consists of a floor that’s just one inscribed slab after another. Two relatively modern plaques on the wall opposite list the men—French, Italian, Belgian, Portuguese, even a Bavarian—who are buried here; nearly all were monks or priests in the 1600’s. The plaque on the left provides more information: this was originally the Tomb of Khwaja Mortenepus, an Armenian merchant; also in the same tomb are the remains of the Armenian bishop, Zakur of Tabriz. The inside of the tomb has more coloured threads, along with burning incense, a few candles, and garlands of fresh marigolds. The caretaker, who’s tagged along, pointed to one of the graves and said, "That’s the Tantric Baba’s grave." A closer inspection provided a clue: along with the Armenian script and the crucifix carved on the grave is a large skull. And skulls are a common symbol in Tantricism, which is why the locals appear to revere this grave so much.

Just beyond the Tantric Baba’s tomb lies a group of graves that are the oldest in the cemetery: the Armenian graves. The Armenians came, mainly as merchants and sometimes as missionaries, to Agra in the mid-1500’s and several of them are buried here. Like the early 17th century Italian graves, these too exhibit an odd combination of east and west: the beautifully executed floral and geometrical carvings on the graves are distinctly indigenous, while the Armenian script is comparatively clumsy.

All in all, a very interesting place, and definitely not to be missed if you’re at all interested in Agra’s colonial history. There isn’t an entry fee, though the caretaker will (as he did with us) probably hang around expecting a tip: Rs 50 should suffice if he does take you around a bit.

This was the first church we visited on our colonial jaunt through Agra, and even though it was deserted—and locked, because of which we couldn’t enter—it was worth the trip.

St George’s was designed by Colonel John Theophilus Boileau, who, after a distinguished stint at the Addiscombe Military Seminary, had joined the Bengal Engineers in 1820. He came back to India (he had been born here, in Calcutta) in 1822, and was employed by the Public Works Department, the PWD, who thereafter refused to part with him. As a result, Boileau, though a military officer, never saw active service. But he did design some fine buildings, not just in Agra but also further afield—the fine Christ Church in Shimla is his creation. In 1826, Boileau was appointed the Garrison Engineer of Agra Cantonment, and proceeded to carry out repairs to the Taj Mahal and other historic monuments. He also designed and built a number of other structures: a college, a jail, the European barracks, and the cantonment church—St George’s. In fact, three years after St George’s was built—in 1829—Boileau himself got married to his fiancée, Ann, in the church he’d designed.

And the best part of it? Boileau was born in 1805, which means he was a mere 21 years old when he designed and built St George’s. Makes me feel more than a little worthless!

St George’s lies just after the Sadar Bazaar in the Agra Cantonment. It’s an Anglican church, a somewhat austere building in white and grey, obviously recently painted when we visited. The main body of the church is a single-storeyed cuboid, its length pierced by mesh doors. Each door has a little overhang above it—alternate doors have angular or arched overhangs, and above that is a small ventilator, a rectangle filled in with wire mesh. I counted seven doors down one side, with more doors at the shorter ends of the cuboid: which means the church has at least two dozen of these wire mesh doors: probably an effective system of cross-ventilation in an age when electrical fans or air conditioners didn’t exist.

At the near end of the church, just above the main entrance, is the church tower. This is a tapering spire which begins as a squat square structure, topped by a slightly taller but still square room. Atop that is the octagonal belfry, topped by a crucifix. The entire church is painted a clean, bright white, with trim—arches, doorframes, ventilator frames, parapet edges, decorative elements on the spire and so on—picked out in dark grey. Not pretty, but neat, and very historic.

It’s best to visit St George’s late on a Sunday morning, just after service, when you won’t be interrupting mass, but it won’t be late enough for the church to be locked. We went on a Sunday afternoon, when (presumably) the vicar had retired for the day and there wasn’t anybody around to even open the church for us to have a peek inside.

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception stands next to Akbar’s Church, dwarfing the latter. By the time we got to the cathedral, we’d already seen a couple of churches: the Anglican St George’s Church, and the Roman Catholic St Mary’s Church. We’d been expecting something a little restrained, and the unabashedly baroque architecture of the cathedral came as a surprise—a pleasant surprise, I may add.

The cathedral is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Agra, and dates back to 1848. It stands in a large churchyard, an imposing building in pale lemon-yellow trimmed in white. Three large semi-circular arches separated by Corinthian columns—embellished at the top with stylised acanthus leaves—form the facade. Between the pillars are two large arched niches that hold statues of saints, one holding a child (St Christopher, who carried Jesus across the river? I’m not sure). Above the pillars are three more arches, the central one (which is the largest) holding a statue of Christ, while the ones on either side house statues of saints. There are more Corinthian columns here, more curved edges and scrolls and a somewhat wide-eyed angel which reminded me of images I’ve seen in very early Russian icons. It’s all very ornate, but since it’s in white and pale yellow, it stops short of being oppressively so.

At either corner of the upper story of the facade are two more statues. The one on the right (if you’re standing facing the church) is of a robed, bearded man bearing a small cross (Peter?). The one on the left is a much more dramatic and interesting statue: a muscular angel clad in armour, using a lance to kill a demon underfoot. The Archangel Michael, I think.

Walking around the side of the church, we saw a series of semi-circular arches, all picked out in white, with fan lights in each and a circular window above (though, alas, no stained glass). At the far end, towards the back of the church, is the bell tower, a square-sided structure with a domed roof surmounted by a crucifix.

If you’re facing the cathedral, on your right is another historic building, the Cathedral House. A path to this leads from within the churchyard itself. The Cathedral House is the residence and the office of the Archbishop of Agra, and uses the same colours as the cathedral: pale yellow with white highlights. It has two wings separated by a semi-circular portico, with a large crucifix (complete with a statue of Christ and the words Christ the King below). Colonnades with semi-circular arches stretch on either side of the portico, forming the two wings of the building. The lane leading from the cathedral to the Cathedral House curves right and leads to the much smaller and older Akbar’s Church.

The cathedral certainly merits a visit, not just for itself (it’s a beautiful building), but also because, by stopping here, you can see not one, but three fine examples of colonial architecture. Much recommended.

Everybody around seems to think this church dates back to the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar—an enthusiastic caretaker at the neighbouring cathedral encouraged us to see it simply because "It was built in 1599"—but that isn’t quite true. Not only is there documented proof that the church is actually of much later provenance, there’s even a plaque at the front that clearly reads 1772. But, even though it’s close to 175 years younger than one’s been lead to believe, this is a church merits a visit.

Akbar’s Church lies next door to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, in the Roman Catholic Complex at Wazirpura. The entrance to Akbar’s Church is through the cathedral yard; if you’re facing the cathedral, walk down the driveway as it curves to the right, till you come to the Cathedral House. Just past this is the enclosure that contains Akbar’s Church.

It’s possible that this church derives its name from Akbar, because Akbar was the ruler who first welcomed the Jesuits to settle in Agra and build a church in the vicinity. That church was destroyed in the late 1600’s, but this one was built in 1772, and later extended. When we visited the church, it had been freshly painted and was a brilliant white in colour. The facade consists of a triangular wedge supported on six pillars. This is an extension to the original facade of the church, which had a more typically Latin look to it—curving lines and a baroque front with a cross on top. Even further beyond that is a dome with a lantern-like chhatri (a small domed pavilion) surmounted by a cross.

Stepping into Akbar’s Church between the pillars, the first thing to draw our attention was a Latin inscription which we were, between ourselves, able to decipher: it stated that the church had been repaired and extended in 1835. Beyond, the interior of the church is small and rather nondescript (no stunning rose windows or ornate altars!) except for the very unusual dados along the walls. These are made of red sandstone, carved in floral patterns that look replicas of what you’ll see at the Taj Mahal or the Agra Fort. Outside too, there are other signs of native architecture and decoration: one of the doors facing the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception has a doorway with a trim of red sandstone, again carved in a typically indigenous design, with little vase-like niches in it too.

Akbar’s Church lies within a neat enclosed garden. Behind the church is a very small churchyard with a few old graves. Of those we took the time to examine, none were older than the late 19th century, and all were badly neglected. But still, the church itself is an intriguing mix of Western and Indian architecture, and since it’s the oldest in Agra, definitely worth visiting. Go on a Sunday, when you can be sure it’ll be open—preferably in the afternoon, when you won’t interfere in mass.

St John’s College is a highly visible set of buildings, just off Mahatma Gandhi Road. If you’re entering Agra from National Highway 2 (which is the road linking the city to Mathura and Delhi), you’re bound to see this interesting sprawl of red sandstone just beside the road. You’re almost certainly also bound to think it’s a well-preserved specimen of Mughal architecture: the domed pavilions known as chhatris, with their dripstones and finials; the carving along the edges of the parapets and on the supports of the dripstones; even the tapering columns joined by arches—are all very Indian. This similarity to Mughal architecture once made St John’s a major attraction for unwitting (and ignorant) tourists. My father, who studied at the college in the last 1950’s, recalls that wily rickshaw-wallahs, asked to show tourists the sights of Agra, would often bring gullible visitors by St John’s, and point it out as a Mughal monument—even the usually well-known Sikandra, to those obviously not in the know.

But St John’s is emphatically not Mughal. The college was set up in 1850 by the Church Missionary Society; its first principal was the Rev. Thomas Valpy French, a fellow of University College, Oxford, and the first bishop of Lahore. The college building you see today dates back to 1914, when it was designed by Sir Swinton Jacob in the increasingly popular style that the British adopted in an attempt to show that they identified with India: a Gothic-Rajput hybrid style that didn’t always work. I came across a succinct and interesting description of this in a book called Stones of Empire: The Buildings of the Raj (by Jan Morris and Simon Winchester): "The obligatory quadrangle was there, without which no British college was really a college at all, but towering about it was a mighty edifice in Jacob’s favourite neo-Muslim, domes and pinnacles everywhere, which seemed deliberately to be recalling, in that ancient headquarters of the Moguls, the fervours of the Crusades: for besides looking partly like a Moorish castle, it flaunted its purpose with marvellous insouciance by surmounting the whole Islamesque pile of it with a gigantic Christian cross."

The cross is not that gigantic, but you can see it as the finial atop the large domed pavilion towards the centre of the building. Around it, on either side, stretch the corridors of the college, all with their own smaller pavilions, their balconies and dripstones. Some of the outlying buildings, like the college chapel, are more obviously colonial in style. Incidentally, the building was asymmetrical till well into the 1900’s, and acquired its present form only in the late 20th century. This came about as a result of the efforts of a principal who gathered funds (especially from alumni, including my father!) to build an additional wing.

We couldn’t enter the college since we visited on a Sunday. But barring weekends (and provided it isn’t during the summer of winter vacations), you can go and have a peek at St John’s during college hours.