Visible Histories, Invisible Contestations: Narratives of ‘Pink’ in Jaipur

Abstract

By employing the political economic logic of aesthetic fashioning of urban spaces, I explain how Jaipur, an erstwhile princely city, came to be known as ‘the pink city’ since the nineteenth century. Naming this colour ‘pink’, its standardisation over time, and its mutation from an ingredient in the recipe for a fermented plaster to a superficial and reproducible chemical formula, makes it an interesting entry point into understanding shades of colonial and postcolonial politics and the role of visual elements in political economic processes. In the market, the colour is circulated as a commodity and valued on the basis of historical (mis)perceptions. I argue that political and economic considerations and practices created perceptions about ‘Jaipur Pink’.