Cosmopolitan Crossings:

Abstract

Between 1805 and 1836, the wealthy dowager ruler Begum Samrū built two large mansions and a Catholic church in North India. In both the makeup of her court and the character of her architecture, the begum's choices reflected her cosmopolitanism. The bishop of her church was from Rome, her closest political allies were English, and her main advisers were Indian. Her architecture, similarly, combined neoclassical façades and Italianate porticoes with Islamic detailing such as muqarnas and Mughal pietra dura; Indian elements such as hammams (bathhouses) sat alongside European-style salons. In Cosmopolitan Crossings: The Architecture of Begum Samrū, Mrinalini Rajagopalan analyzes the begum's architecture as a form of strategic cosmopolitanism—a kind of sociopolitical cunning that allowed Begum Samrū to reimagine the dichotomies between masculine and feminine spaces, domestic and political realms, and European and Indian decor while combining local religiosity with global networks of piety. Indeed, architecture was a key mechanism through which the begum consolidated power in the fraught political climate of nineteenth-century India.