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565
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
Vol. , No. , • ./X- • © by Duke University Press
Raw Materials as Archives of Improvement
On Jan u ary 20, 1864, the Punjab Exhibition of Arts and Industry opened in a rap idly constructed sin gle-story
ga ble-roof wooden build ing in the neigh bor hood of Anarkali in Lahore. Beneath its ceil ing of wooden
trusses and ra er beams, the ex hi bi tion halls contained an im pres sive pre sen ta tion of lo cal prod ucts
ac quired from di er ent dis tricts of the Punjab. Although it was o cially called the Punjab Exhibition of Arts and
Industry, along side its dis play of cras, manufactured prod ucts, and ma chin ery was a wide se lec tion of raw ma te ri-
als in clud ing met als, min er als, wool, silks, as well as “prod ucts of the veg e ta ble king dom” such as tea, spices, me dic-
i nal plants, grains, and spec i mens of fruit and veg e ta bles. Some had been gath ered from Pun jabi farm ers and mer-
chants, oth ers sent by Eu ro pean cul ti va tors, am a teur gar den ers, and bot a nists from across In dia. Besides enlisting
these ma te ri als into the grow ing re pos i tory of o cial knowl edge about In dia, the cu ra tors un der stood their work as
part of the state’s agenda to bring Punjab—still the new prov ince of Britain’s em pire in In dia, de spite hav ing come
un der com pany rule in 1849—into the fold of the cen tral ad min is tra tion. In searching out, clas si fy ing, and sys tem-
at i cally displaying these spec i mens gath ered from around the prov ince, the ex hi bi tion aimed to pro vide “a great
stim u lus” for lo cal farm ers and to help drive e orts to im prove the re gion’s re sources. Improvement, in this con-
text, built on a lon ger his tory of reorganizing and revaluing land and re sources through the en clo sure of agrar ian
spaces and ag ri cul tural de vel op ment, bo tan i cal re search, and ur ban and san i tary re form—weav ing to gether eco-
nomic and po lit i cal mo ti va tions with moral and aes thetic tropes of fe cun di and abun dance, as well as de ciency
and de cay. However, this elite-di rected spec ta cle in Anarkali also car ried out the im por tant la tent task of gath er ing
a set of an i mate and in an i mate rem nants of the lives and la bor of its par tic i pants—mak ing an ar chive through its
cat a logue of plants, seeds, and soils.
This ar ti cle ex plores how these raw ma te ri als op er ated as aes thet i cally dis tinct, trace able ob jects and thus as
ar chi val agents, within the socio-en vi ron men tal trans for ma tions in Punjab and its cap i tal ci dur ing the nal quar-
ter of the nineteenth cen tu ry. In this sense, re cov er ing ma te rial agency as a his tor i cal le ver means mov ing be yond
a read ing of co lo nial gar dens as re pos i to ries and sym bols of im pe rial pow er, to con sider how ma te rial ac tors not
only shape the built en vi ron ment, but also pro duce knowl edge about it in ways that may a rm but also com pli cate
o cial nar ra tives. It ar gues that, within e orts to de velop bo tan i cal knowl edge and en hance re gional ag ri cul tural
pro duc tiv i , these ma te rial agents helped trans form the built land scape, achiev ing long-last ing legibili in Lahore.
It fol lows the work of the Agri-Horticultural Socie of Punjab, established in Lahore in 1851 to spur ag ri cul tural
pro duc tion in the newly col o nized re gion soon a er the an nex a tion of Punjab by the East In dia Company. The
ar ti cle asks how ma te rial ac tors, along with the lo cal ized spaces and prac tices for mak ing them cul ti va ble and pro-
duc tive, were en rolled in transforming des erts into gar dens—terms framed by co lo nial dis course. Specically, it
Primary Materials
Reading Lahore’s Disobedient Landscape
Nida Rehman
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566 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 40.3 • 2020
in ves ti gates the de vel op ment of the ur ban gar dens of
the so ci e in Lahore, dem on strat ing how plants, seeds,
soils, and other non hu man ac tors helped shape them as
a model for the re gional land scape, a test bed for hor-
ticultural practice, and an or na ment for the grow ing
pro vin cial cap i tal, cap tur ing through their form, struc-
ture, and growth a mem ory of a wider re gional and
global his to ry. Approaching raw ma te ri als—in deed quite
mun dane and o en un ruly plants, seeds, and soils—as
ar chi val ac tors, pro vi des an al ter nate his to rio graph i-
cal route to co lo nial gar dens—which sees them not as
mod els of re gional im prove ment or sta ble sym bols of
co lo nial rule and pow er, but as dis obe di ent land scapes.
Reading the ar chi tec ture of land scape through the pri-
mary ma te ri als that com pose and re sist de sign o ers a
path to his to ry—as suested in Anooradha Siddiqi’s
in tro duc tion to this spe cial sec tion—which in sists on
the par tial per spec tives and reorientations o ered by
stay ing close to the ground. In turn, fol low ing ground-
level ma te ri als, whose aes thetic traces re main spec tac-
u larly and de scrip tively em bed ded in pri mary sources,
sparks new his tor i cal un der stand ings and nar ra tives.
This ar ti cle fore grounds cer tain un likely his tor i cal
ac tors, which g ure the ma te ri al, aes thet ic, and rhe tor-
ical ed i ce of im prove ment; the dis sem i na tion of lo cal
gar den ing cul tures; and the de sign of im pe rial gar den
land scapes by bring ing a more-than-hu man per spec tive
to bear on the his tory of land scape and im prove ment in
co lo nial In dia. Soils, seeds, and plants—work ing with the
un ex pected con di tions of weath er, pes ti lence, an imals,
sea sonal ooding, stag nant wa ter, and e orescence—
did not al ways up hold the mo ti va tions and ob jec tives
of the so ci e , which were underpinned by the ideo-
log i cal ethos of im prove ment and a be lief in the mal-
lea bil i of na ture and so ci e . By trac ing the e orts to
plan and plant the so ci e ’s gar dens in early co lo nial
Lahore—a brack eted his to ric i within the ci’s lon-
ger interconnected tra jec tory of gar dens that spans
Mu ghal, Sikh, co lo nial, and post co lo nial his to ries—the
ar ti cle ex plores these ma te ri als not only as dis cur sive
ar te facts, deployed by agents of his to ry, but in their
agentive ca pac i as an ar chive of im prove ment—as pri-
ma ry ma te ri als. While the his to ri og ra phy of co lo nial
gar dens and land scaped spaces in In dia widely at tends
to as pects of spa tial de sign and sym bol ism, as discussed
be low, there is lit tle at ten tion to how ma te rial ac tors—
plants them selves—shaped these de signs. Following
an thro pol o gists Sa rah Besky and Jon a than Padwe that
“as a site of more-than-hu man ter ri to ri al i ... gar-
dens are both ruled and al ways at risk of be com ing
un ruly,” this ar ti cle ex plores how plants and other ma te-
rial ac tors worked within the so ci e ’s do main of prac-
tice to in form—and de form—the aes thet ic, spa tial, and
ter ri to rial co her ence of im prove ment.
The ar ti cle pos its and draws from an ar chive of var-
ie gated ma te ri al i ties, ecol o gies, and in ter con nec tions.
This includes cir cu lat ing cor re spon dence, sci en tic
pa pers, and news pa per ar ti cles, but also plant ma te ri als
that are sown, grown, prop a gat ed, displayed, and trans-
ported. Rather than rely solely on tra di tional tex tual
sources such as plan ning and bu reau cratic doc u ments
or by approaching existing designed spaces as phys i cal
ar chives of im prove ment, it probes ev ery day ac counts
and re cords of prac tice, par tic u larly through gar den
re ports and cor re spon dence by the so ci e ’s mem-
bers and gar den man ag ers. Through these ac counts
of ex pe ri ence and prac tice, plants, seeds, and soils are
reframed as key his tor i cal and ar chi val ac tors, and as
agents of spa tial change. Foregrounding ev ery day prac-
tices of build ing and maintaining gar dens as con tin gent
in ter ven tions into and along side the dy namic ecol o-
gies of earth, weath er, wa ter, and veg e ta tion, the ar ti-
cle asks how im prove ment, in its aes thet ic, spa tial, and
sci en tic reg is ters, is shaped on the ground, in col lab o-
ra tion, and con fron ta tion, with ma te rial ecol o gies and
non hu man ac tors, o en in un ex pected ways. Attention
to these lo cal ized and mun dane in ter ac tions be tween
prac ti tion ers and ma te rial ecol o gies re veals their col lec-
tive role in as sem bling ur ban land scapes and cul ti va tion
prac tices, as well as in con tin u ally reconguring the
mo ti va tions and prac tices of im prove ment and relocat-
ing some of its his tor i cal e ects from the re gional to the
ur ban con text. As an ar chive, plants, seeds, and soils are
not only cru cial in shap ing the ar chi tec tures and spaces
of im prove ment, but also in si mul ta neously re ify ing
and un set tling its his to ries.
More Than Humans in the Archive,
Nonhumans as Architecture
Putting plants, seeds, and soils into the ser vice of state-
cra is a messy a air, one where pests, weeds, roots,
wa ter, and the weather also en ter the frame works and
his to ries of co lo nial ism. When Joseph Paxton, the
Vic to rian gar den er-ar chi tect ex traor di naire, ap pears
mo men tar ily as the “mud dy-booted fore man of the
Horticultural Socie” in Richard Drayton’s ex am i na-
tion of Britain’s col o ni za tion and ex ploi ta tion of nat u-
ral en vi ron ments across the world, it is a re minder of
how mar ginal ac tual ma te ri als and ev ery day prac tices
are in many his tor i cal ac counts. Recent schol ar ship has
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Nida Rehman • Primary Materials • Architecture as a Form of Knowledge
in di cated the need for more situated un der stand ings of
con cepts such as ter ri to ry, de vel op ment, im prove ment,
and waste. These nor ma tive terms and the mono lithic
de ni tions they pro duce may ex clude or oc clude more
het ero ge neous, com plex, and contested re al i ties and
re la tion ships, as well as the ways in which the en tan gle-
ments of hu mans and non hu mans com pli cate e orts to
de mar cate, or der, and con trol land scapes. These stud-
ies build on new ma te ri al ist and more-than-hu man
per spec tives, which have sought to decenter an thro po-
cen tric ontologies in fa vor of re la tion al, dis trib ut ed, or
as sem bled con cep tions of agen cy, and which high light
the com pli cated pol i tics of mul ti spe cies en tan gle ments;
the role of non hu man ac tors as po lit i cal sub jects, col lab-
o ra tors, or knowl edge pro duc ers; and the more-than-
hu man con struc tion of cap i tal ist and im pe rial pro jects.
While stud ies of ar chi tec ture and designed land-
scapes o en fore ground the role of plants as sig ni ers
of ter ri to rial and spa tial pow er, a more-than-hu man
ap proach to gar dens can re veal not only how plants and
other non hu mans are en rolled in or re in force the mak-
ing and mark ing of spa tial and ter ri to rial claims, but
also how the wider eco log i cal re la tion ships of plants,
an i mals, cli ma te, and soil con di tions might start to dis-
turb or chal lenge the sta bil i of Ar ca dian vi sions and
im pe rial pros pects. Attention to the ma te ri al i ties and
eco log i cal dy nam ics, and in deed the ter ri to rial ac tions,
of plants can thus nu ance fram ings of how power oper-
ates spa tial ly. Moreover, shiing away from the dis ci-
plin ary scope of ar chi tec ture in the form of authored
and au thor i ta tive struc tures and spaces to ward a con-
cept of ma te ri als such as plants, seeds, and soils them-
selves as ar chi tec ture, we may ac knowl edge and read
designed land scapes as al ways con tin gent, ephem er al,
and un sta ble.
Recovering the re la tional and more-than-hu-
man as pects of agency through tex tual and au tho rial
sources, with the rep re sen ta tions of hu man ac tors as
pri mary me di a tors, pres ents cru cial meth od o log i cal
chal lenges. While the “im bri ca tions of the hu man and
non-hu man are o en so mun dane as to be be neath
no tice” in his tor i cal ac counts, non hu mans lurk in the
mar gins of the ar chive, par tic u larly in the ac counts of
peo ple whose own work de pends on these mun dane
ex changes. In this sense, schol ars have pointed to the
need to at tend to as pects of prac tice and hab it. Anthro-
pologist Anna Tsing su ests that “work places peo ple
in the so cial world of other liv ing things,” and thus mov-
ing past the lim i ta tions of rep re sen ta tion ne ces si tates
at ten tion to the “prac ti cal ar range ments” or “work ing
en gage ments” that link hu mans and non hu mans. In
this re spect, the an nual gar den re ports authored by the
su per in ten dent of the Agri-Horticultural Socie’s gar-
dens, their cor re spon dence with their coun ter parts at
the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, and reg u larly pub-
lished ar ti cles about the so ci e ’s work in lo cal news pa-
pers in Lahore at test to the dis trib uted and in cre men tal,
and in deed un cer tain, na ture of knowl edge and ex per-
tise, and to the di verse forms of agency at work in the
gar dens and within the ur ban land scape.
Material ecol o gies and situated prac tices are o en
downplayed in dis cur sive read ings of categories such
as im prove ment, land scape, and ar chi tec ture. Yet they
not only are con stit u ent el e ments and forms within
designed spaces but, in de mand ing con stant at ten-
tion through prac ti cal work, also con tin u ally shape
and un set tle the as pi ra tions for and the legibili of the
built land scape. That is, they pro duce knowl edge and
shape prac tice. Focusing on how “ideas get (re)con sti-
tuted in ac tion” ne ces si tates at ten tion to the in cre men-
tal and un ex pected ways in which un der stand ings of
hu man ex per tise, knowl edge, and plan ning, as well as
a range of sci en tic and cul tural categories, are as sem-
bled. Foregrounding im pro vi sa tion, spon ta ne i , and
the col lec tive agency of hu man and non hu man ac tors,
bio phys i cal pro cess es, and un in tended ma te rial e ects
along side po lit i cal de ci sions and de sign frame works
thus re veals the con tin gent as sem blage, rather than
predetermined con struc tion, of dis cur sive frame works,
spa tial prac tices, and designed land scapes.
The next sec tion pro vi des an in tro duc tion to the
Agri-Horticultural Socie of Punjab and its work in the
con text of co lo nial as pi ra tions for im prove ment. The
three sec tions that fol low ex plore ma te rial sub strates
and prac tices of land scape—the forms of knowl edge
emerg ing from the so ci e ’s work—through three dif-
fer ent as pects: (1) mod el ing, or the so ci e ’s at tempts
to con g ure the ur ban con text as a ma te rial pro to pe
for re gional ag ri cul tural and bo tan i cal im prove ment;
(2) ex per i men ta tion, or how gar den ers’ e orts to ac cli-
ma tize imported seeds, sap lings, and crop spe cies and
man age the un pre dict able e ects of weather and plants
shape per cep tions and modes of prac tice; and (3) or na-
men ta tion, or how the spa tial de sign of the gar den (and
its role as an or na ment for the ci) emerges through
the in ter ac tions with un ruly soils, wa ter, and veg e ta-
tion, rather than as a preconceived aes thetic or cul tural
di a gram. Each case dem on strates how em bod ied prac-
tices and ma te rial ecol o gies are not only conscripted
into the pro ject of co lo nial and cap i tal ist im prove ment,
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568 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 40.3 • 2020
but also how they si mul ta neously un set tle per cep tions
and pre scrip tions for the aes thetic and eco log i cal trans-
for ma tion of land scape. The Agri-Horticultural Socie
itself failed in its overt aims of impacting a sig ni cant
change in cul ti va tion prac tices and in establishing par-
tic u lar high value crops in Punjab, but its work—and
crucially that of plants, seeds, and soils—helped shape
an en dur ing leg acy of ur ban gar dens and land scape
in Lahore. Yet, while read ing ma te rial ecol o gies and
em bod ied prac tices as an ar chive cap tures the par tial-
i and indeterminacies of ter ri to rial and spa tial pro-
jects, such an ar chive is itself un sta ble. As I su est at
the end of this ar ti cle, the ephem er al i of plant ma te-
ri als means that their role as ar chi val agents re cedes in
the his to ri og ra phy of co lo nial ur ban and ar chi tec tural
spaces, while the spa tial mean ings they help gen er ate
are trans posed to the more du ra ble forms of co lo nial
gar dens and ur ban land scapes.
Landscapes of Improvement in Punjab
The prac ti cal e orts of the Agri-Horticultural Socie of
Punjab, circumscribed by the co lo nial state’s as pi ra tions
for re gional im prove ment, were pre mised on the en roll-
ment of plants, soils, and seeds as its de sired driv ers.
Yet these non hu man ac tors took on roles quite di er-
ent from those ar tic u lated in the dis cur sive frame works
of im prove ment. Their be hav ior con tin u ally shied the
scales, scope, and man dates of the so ci e , in this way
dis obe di ently con g ur ing elds of ac tion as well as of
knowl edge.
In Feb ru ary 1851, soon a er the an nex a tion of
Punjab, the gov er nor gen eral of In dia, Lord Dalhousie,
issued a mem o ran dum decrying the se vere deciencies
of the re gion’s for ests and veg e ta tion. Having trav eled
through “the plains of the Punjab from North to South
and from East to West,” he high lighted a par tic u lar
“source of con stantly re cur ring re gret” for any one in ter-
ested in the “wants and ad van tages” of the re gion:
I re fer to the al most to tal ab sence of for est trees and
even of fruit trees, and of bushes; leav ing the whole ter ri-
tory one con tin u ous stretch of un re lieved plain, nei ther
adorned by the fo liage which is its nat u ral or na ment, nor
stocked with the tim ber req ui site for a thou sand pur-
poses in the ev ery-day life of the peo ple who dwell in
it.... This is man i fest, and will be shortly felt to be an
in creas ing evil, un less some mea sures are taken to pro-
vide at pres ent a rem edy for the fu ture.
The land was nei ther “adorned” nor “stocked.” In call-
ing out the lack of beau as well as pro duc tiv i , Dal-
housie’s words ex em plify a par tic u lar ten dency within
the ideology of im prove ment. His la ment about Pun-
jab’s tree less, “un re lieved plains,” for in stance, drew on
the well-established his tor i cal trope of a de cient or
waste land scape. Waste forms an im por tant dis cur sive
in stru ment within the tech ni cal-aes thetic par a digm of
im prove ment. As an en demic pres ence in the ar chive of
co lo nial ag ri cul tur al, ir ri ga tion, en gi neer ing, and ur ban
pol i cy, waste g ures var i ously as un cul ti vated or com-
monly held land and un- or underutilized wa ter, such as
the seep ages of ca nals and wa ter courses, linking de -
ciency with ma te rial ex cess and un re al ized po ten tial.
The in vo ca tion of arid des erts, jun gle wildernesses, and
waste lands pro vided co lo nial ad min is tra tors pow er ful
rhe tor i cal sanc tion for fu ture im prove ments through
dis pos ses sion, en clo sure, and land resettlement—or
to erase “other his to ries ly ing scattered and gath ered
up in mounds.” It is not in sig ni cant that co lo nial
dis course o en at trib uted the deciencies of Punjab’s
en vi ron ment not to the “nat u ral un t ness of the soil,”
but to the pre sumed cus tom ary lack of knowl edge or
im proper cul ti va tion meth ods. Linking de ciency to
cul tural prac tice, rather than ma te rial prop er ties, this
dis course val i dated claims for socio-spa tial in ter ven-
tions, as ev i dent in Dalhousie’s claim that “the soil, with
a lit tle care, is a grate ful one.” Thus, at the out set, non-
hu man ma te ri als such as soils and plants were en rolled
as suit able and grate ful part ners within the dis cur sive
frame works and po lit i cal econ o mies of im prove ment.
The idea that Punjab was ripe for “rem e dy ” preg-
ured a broad set of eco nom ic, en vi ron men tal, and so cial
changes in the de cades to come. The well-stud ied his-
tory of these trans for ma tions is cen tered on the de vel-
op ment of pe ren nial ir ri ga tion and ag ri cul ture across
the so-called un re lieved plains of the prov ince. While
in un da tion ag ri cul ture had been prac ticed for cen tu ries
in the fer tile al lu vial plains along Punjab’s riv ers, the
semi-arid in ter u vial ar eas, or doabs, had been sparsely
cul ti vated and were home to a cat tle-graz ing, pas to-
ral pop u la tion. The Bari Doab Canal, ini ti ated in 1860,
was the rst of a se ries of pe ren nial ca nal pro jects built
across Punjab un der Brit ish rule. By the end of the cen-
tu ry, the re gion had un der gone sig ni cant eco nom ic,
infrastructural, and so ci e tal change, no ta bly the build-
ing of a vast net work of ir ri ga tion ca nals, the ex pan sion
of ag ri cul ture, and the trans for ma tion of so cial struc-
tures through the resettlement of peo ple in newly built
ca nal col o nies. However, in the early de cades a er
the con quest of Punjab in 1849 and the In dian War of
Independence in 1857, Brit ish pol icy was char ac ter ized
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Nida Rehman • Primary Materials • Architecture as a Form of Knowledge
by a ten sion be tween the util i tar ian drive for “trans for-
ma tion” and a grow ing con ser va tive move to ward pre-
serv ing “or der.” Economic pol icy in Punjab proceeded
in cre men tally and on an ex per i men tal foot ing.
It was dur ing this time, two years a er the con-
quest of Punjab, that mem bers of Lahore’s Eu ro pean
com mu ni gath ered in the home of Sir Henry Law-
rence, the pres i dent of the Punjab Board of Adminis-
tration, to form the Punjab Agri-Horticultural Socie.
Modeled on sim i lar so ci e ties across In dia, no ta bly the
Agri-Horticultural Socie of In dia, established in 1820
in Calcutta, the Punjab so ci e aimed to in tro duce and
de velop ag ri cul ture, hor ti cul ture, and ar bor i cul ture “at
this ex trem i of the Em pire.” In his de tailed study
of the its for ma tion, and sub se quent fail ures, Ian Kerr
char ac ter izes the so ci e as an in stru ment of co lo nial
rule. Similarly, Jagjeet Lally notes that it acted as a de
facto “ve hi cle” of the non in ter ven tion ist state.
The work of the Punjab so ci e was spatialized
across di er ent ter ri to rial scales and con texts. As one
of its pri mary ob jec tives was to im port and ac cli ma tize
var i ous plant and crop spe cies for the lo cal cli ma te, the
so ci e en gaged in the ex change of bo tan i cal knowl-
edge and plant ma te ri als be tween places as far ung as
Calcutta, Melbourne, Singapore, and Philadelphia. The
su per in ten dent of the so ci e ’s gar den, o en some one
trained at Kew, would main tain ac tive cor re spon dence
with other gar dens and in sti tu tions, and es pe cially
the Royal Botanic Gardens, and would re ceive con-
sign ments of plants or seeds from some of the ma jor
gar dens and for ward lo cal spe cies in return. This cor-
re spon dence contained in for ma tion about requested
or ex changed plant ma te ri al, de tails of their on go ing
plans for (and chal lenges with) plant ac cli ma ti za tion,
and ad vice for mem bers of the so ci e . The ex change
of ex per tise also in clud ed, at times, vis its from su per-
in ten dents from some of the ma jor gar dens in In dia,
in clud ing those in Calcutta and Saharanpur. Like other
such or ga ni za tions in In dia, the Punjab Agri-Horticul-
tural Socie thus formed a node within the wider net-
work of peo ple, plants, and ideas.
With re spect to the In dian state’s eco nomic agen da,
the so ci e formed its own re gional net work across
Punjab. When it was established, the gov er nor gen eral
pledged nan cial sup port from the cen tral gov ern-
ment in the form of a monthly grant. However, this was
pred i cated on “the un der stand ing that the views of the
Socie ex tend over the whole Punjab.” To full this
re gional man date, the so ci e would form nurs er ies and
gar dens across the prov ince, dis trib ute plants and seeds
to cul ti va tors in the dis tricts, con duct ex per i ments on
imported spe cies, test for soil and cli mate suit abil i ,
cor re spond reg u larly with farm ers across Punjab to dis-
sem i nate in for ma tion about ex per i ments, and su est
new and im proved meth ods of cul ti va tion. For ex am-
ple, high light ing a dearth of “su cient in for ma tion as
to the mode of prac tice in com mon use in this coun try”
and a need to un der stand lo cal con di tions and prac-
tices, one of the rst ac tiv i ties of the so ci e , or ga nized
by George Tremenheere, the superintending en gi neer
of Punjab, was the dis tri bu tion of a sur vey of ag ri cul-
ture prac tices and chal lenges across the prov ince. The
sur vey was di rected to gov ern ment o cers within dif-
fer ent dis tricts, fa cil i tated by the so ci e ’s re la tion ship
to the pro vin cial gov ern ment. It in cluded de tailed ques-
tions about pes of sea sonal crops, meth ods of cul ti va-
tion and hus band ry, cus tom ary soil clas si ca tions and
prob lems with “ste ril i ,” sys tems of crop ro ta tion and
fallowing, the pes and con sti tu tion of ma nure used,
rea sons for lim ited pro duc tion of “valu able crops,” and
ir ri ga tion prac tices and needs. Notwithstanding the
overt ob jec tive of un der stand ing the lo cal con text, and
an ac knowl edg ment that “the Natives may be far bet-
ter farm ers than we give them credit for,” the so ci e
aimed to per suade Indian cul ti va tors to change their
existing prac tices along more “sci en ti c” lines. Mate-
rials re ceived from dis tant gar dens and com pa nies were
redistributed across the var i ous dis tricts of the prov-
ince, along with spe cies ac cli ma tized in the Lahore
gar den. Each year thou sands of cut tings, plants, and
pack ets of seeds were sent out, ac com pa nied by no ti-
ca tions for lo cal farm ers about the best prac tices for
seeding par tic u lar spe cies or ideal con di tions for ger mi-
na tion. In turn, mem bers from di er ent dis tricts would
send news on the re sults of their tri als on par tic u lar
crops, some times along with seeds and cut tings to test
in Lahore. At times the so ci e or ga nized ex per i ments
on a sys tem atic ba sis across the prov ince for par tic u lar
crops. The su per in ten dent would then centrally col lect,
tab u late, and re-dis sem i nate this in for ma tion in the
an nual gar den re port.
Despite the trans na tional and re gional net works in
which the so ci e op er at ed, cir cu lat ing both plant and
tex tual ma te ri als, it was in the lo cal con text of Lahore
where much of this work and its more en dur ing e ects
came to be cen tered. As the cap i tal ci of In dia’s new-
est prov ince, Lahore was ex pe ri enc ing rapid changes in
its spa tial struc ture and cul tural life dur ing this pe ri od,
with ur ban de vel op ment to ac com mo date a grow ing
pop u la tion and new gov ern ment func tions. During this
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570 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 40.3 • 2020
pe ri od, the ci grew in a south east ern di rec tion, with
the build ing of a civil sta tion with new mon u men tal
ar chi tec ture and wide av e nues, res i den tial ar eas, and
a can ton ment for mil i tary o cers. Landscape fea tures
were prominent in these new de vel op ments, in clud ing
lawns of the free stand ing, walled bun ga lows (to house
Brit ish o cers and, lat er, the In dian up per and mid dle
clas ses); the large gar dens be long ing to gov ern ment
build ings and in sti tu tions, or rec re a tional parks mainly
for the co lo nial elite; and the me tic u lously maintained
land scap ing along the broad tree-lined av e nues of the
civil sta tion and can ton ment. These de vel op ments—
spur ring an en dur ing ur ban imag i nary of Lahore as a
ci of gar dens—aligned with the in tel lec tual and prac-
ti cal en deav ors of the so ci e .
Many of the so ci e ’s sub scrib ers were based in
Lahore and took an ac tive in ter est in hor ti cul tural pur-
suits and or na men tal gar den ing. These in cluded pri-
vate in di vid u als—both Eu ro pean and In di an—as well
as var i ous gov ern ment and mu nic i pal in sti tu tions. The
so ci e ’s gar dens lo cated in Lahore were key sites not
only for ex per i men ta tion and ac cli ma ti za tion of plant
spe cies and a dis sem i na tion point for seeds and sap-
lings, but also gath er ing spaces for Lahore’s res i dents,
where plant, veg e ta ble, and ower shows; nurs er ies; and
di dac tic dis plays pro vided both plants as well as knowl-
edge to var i ous pub lic and pri vate gar dens in the ci.
These ur ban gar dens represented for the so ci e a spa-
tial form—as well as a ma te rial pal ette—to re al ize its
am bi tions for im prov ing cul ti va tion in Punjab. The fol-
low ing sec tions an a lyze the pro cesses and prac tices of
build ing and maintaining the gar dens, par tic u larly the
gar den built by the so ci e in Lahore’s civil sta tion, as a
model of re gional im prove ment, a test bed for bring ing
new plant spe cies into cul ti va tion, and an or na ment for
the ci. Focusing on the un pre dict able and con tin gent
ar chi tec ture of the gar den—the bio phys i cal ecol o gies
of plants and soils, and the ev ery day mak ing and main-
te nance—rather than the gar den as a co he sive spa tial
unit or designed ar ti fact brings it into view as a more-
than-hu man source for his tor i cal knowl edge.
Materials for Modeling Improvement
Members of the Punjab Agri-Horticultural Socie o en
ar tic u lated their work in dis tinctly prac ti cal terms—
as “dem on stra tors, not the o rists,” who would im pact
a change in lo cal prac tices not through “rea son ing,”
but by ac tively mod el ing the sci en tic tech niques and
de sired e ects of im prove ment. Yet be yond the use of
di dac tic gar den dis plays, plant shows, and ex hi bi tions
to “dem on strate en light ened rule of Eu ro pean co lo nial
pow ers over na ture,” e orts to model im prove ment
took on a par tic u larly spa tial and ma te rial mean ing in
the so ci e ’s prax is. The ur ban space of Lahore and the
ma te ri al i of its soils were to gether seen as a model for
the re gional land scape, en cour ag ing im prove ment, yet
also disrupting it.
When the so ci e was founded, Henry Cope, its
founding sec re tary wrote to the gov er nor gen eral to
pe ti tion for nan cial sup port, ask ing for the use of
three di er ent gar dens in Lahore to con duct ex per i-
ments, ac cli ma tize new spe cies, es tab lish a nurs ery,
and hold gar den shows. The rst was the his toric Bad-
ami Bagh (Badamee Bagh), built in the early nineteenth
cen tury un der Maharaja Ranjeet Singh, just north of
Lahore’s an cient Walled Ci, where most of the ci’s
In dian pop u la tion con tin ued to re side. The sec ond
was a sol diers’ gar den in the neigh bor hood of Anarkali
(Anarkalee), the for mer can ton ment where many ci vil-
ian and mil i tary o cers were based at the time and
which was lo cated along the west ern edge of the fast
de vel op ing civil sta tion. The third was a gar den in Mian
Mir (Meean Meer), about ve miles south east of the ci,
where con struc tion of a new can ton ment was un der-
way. On one hand, these lo ca tions su est an in ter est
in establishing the so ci e ’s pur view across the ge og ra-
phy of the grow ing ci. On the other hand, the pri mary
in ter est in selecting these gar dens was not spa tial, but
ma te ri al. Crucially, as Cope not ed, these sites would
en able the so ci e to “se cure a va ri e of soil.” Speaking
spe ci cally on the rst and third op tions, he elab o rated
that “the Badamee Garden is situated in the low lands
oc ca sion ally ooded by the river and con se quently has
a great pre pon der ance of sand... and the Meean Meer
Garden would rep re sent the sti clay that abounds so
much in the Upper Doabs of the Punjab.” Thus two
of the three lo ca tions were ex plic itly cho sen be cause
they represented the en vi ron men tal con di tions of what
co lo nial o cials saw as the “two di vi sions of the land”
in the Punjab. The soils of the Badami Bagh, lo cated
in the River Ravi’s ood plain in the north of the ci,
were seen to be anal o gous to the fer tile al lu vial tracts
of Punjabwhere sea sonal in un da tion had en abled cul-
ti va tion for cen tu ries. Conversely, the in land site of
Mian Mir was com pared to the semi-arid doabs, where
ag ri cul tural pro duc tion through ir ri ga tion de vel op-
ment was most ur gently sought by the gov ern ment.
In ref er enc ing these con di tions, the ur ban space of
Lahore could pro vide a model for re gional im prove-
ment (g. 1).
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Nida Rehman • Primary Materials • Architecture as a Form of Knowledge
As schol ars of co lo nial ar chi tec ture and land scape
have not ed, ob ject les sons and mod els are part of a
util i tar ian “ma te ri al ist ped a go gy” for so cial and spa tial
change. In his work on co lo nial Punjab, William Glover
discusses how this ap proach was founded in the be lief
that in di vid u als’ lo ca tion with in, and con tem pla tion
of, par tic u lar ma te rial ob jects and en vi ron men tal set-
tings shaped their moral and be hav ioral at tri butes.
Social re form through ma te rial trans for ma tion was
the ba sis of new de vel op ments such as model vil lages,
crim i nal tribes set tle ments, and ca nal col o nies across
co lo nial Punjab, as well as more targeted in ter ven-
tions in ur ban ar eas intended to serve as “mod els” for
fu ture changes. Yet while Glover’s read ing fo cuses
on the de ploy ment of spa tial lay outs and ar chi tec tural
sles to en hance or der, sur veil lance, and san i tary con-
di tions, as tech nol o gies of gov ern ment for “ed u cat ing
In dian sen ti ment” and as set tings for his tor i cal events,
it is less at ten tive to how ma te rial or bio phys i cal prop-
er ties not only were en rolled in, but also up set, such
re form e orts.
As it hap pened, the cen tral gov ern ment granted the
so ci e the Anarkali and Badami Bagh gar dens, but not
the Mian Mir site. Soon a er ward, Anarkali—a neigh-
bor hood as so ci ated with mi as mas and fre quent out-
breaks of chol era—“lost its spe cial ... and ceased in
con se quence to be of much use” as troops were relocated
to the pre sum ably health ier en vi ron ment of the newly
built can ton ment in Mian Mir. The Agri-Horticultural
Socie retained the gar den in Anarkali un til the early
1860s, but the for -eight-acre Badami Bagh be came its
pri mary gar den for some time. Yet, al though the “great
pro duc tive pow ers” of its rich al lu vial soils allowed for
plants to grow with “re mark able lux u ri ance,” the site of
the Badami Bagh also proved to be un ex pect edly chal-
leng ing. Seasonal ooding from the Ravi ne ces si tated
the con struc tion of em bank ments. Over time these
be came in creas ingly di cult to main tain and re pair as
Figure 1. Garden sites proposed by the Agri-Horticultural Society of Punjab in 1851. Line drawing by the author.
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572 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 40.3 • 2020
they were undermined not only by oods but al so, as
reported in 1863, by gnawing rats. The com pro mised
bunds allowed wa ter to en ter and soak sev eral feet deep
into the soil, prov ing es pe cially dev as tat ing for del i-
cate and young plants. Thus a com bi na tion of ma te rial
and eco log i cal pro cess es—dis ease, ooding, an i mals,
and fail ing plants—to gether with the grow ing ur ban
struc ture of Lahore nally com pelled the so ci e to con-
sider a new lo ca tion: “a new gar den on a suit able piece
of ground, in the vi cin i of the Lieutenant Governor’s
resi dence.”
In 1860, the so ci e sold the gar den in Anarkali
and a por tion of the Badami Bagh and used the funds
to pur chase a new prop er in the fast expanding civil
sta tion—an area with an ex ten sive gar den pro gram
com pris ing the lawns of co lo nial bun ga lows, parks and
open spaces, and broad tree-lined av e nues—along the
route to the new can ton ment at Mian Mir. The so ci-
e reported, “The greater part of [the new site] was at
the time waste, but... contained some plots of good
soil.” Not un like the doab ar eas of Punjab, this was
an area ready to be im proved. The new gar den’s lo ca-
tion also crucially en abled wa ter ac cess from the newly
constructed Bari Doab Canal, whose main branch had
just come into op er a tion and passed be tween the civil
sta tion and the Mian Mir can ton ment. Water from the
ca nal was diverted into a se ries of chan nels or wa ter-
courses to ir ri gate the new gar den (as well as other gar-
den sites around the ci). Located in the heart of the
new civil sta tion, the new gar den in cluded a nurs ery,
a botanic gar den, a zoo, and even tu ally a large pub lic
plea sure ground (g. 2).
By the mid-1860s this was a fa vor ite gath er ing
space for the elite res i dents of the civil sta tion and can-
ton ment. The cen tral i of this gar den (later known
as the Lawrence Gardens) and its con ve nience for the
res i dents of the civil sta tion and can ton ment, which
in cluded gov ern ment o cials, civil ser vants, and mil i-
tary o cers and sol diers, was o en cited as the rea son
for its pop u lar i among the ci’s Eu ro pean and In dian
elite. Managed by an En glish su per in ten dent, the new
gar den treated vis i tors to sea sonal blooms of lo cal and
imported owering plants, bi weekly per for mances at
its band stand drew large crowds, and the Lawrence and
Montgomery Halls built on the grounds housed en ter-
tain ment and ban quet fa cil i ties for the co lo nial and
na tive elite (g. 3). With me tic u lously la beled dis plays
of imported and lo cal spe cies; well-attended and reg u-
lar fruit, veg e ta ble, and ower shows; and ac tive nurs-
er ies, it pro vided seeds and plants, as well as prac ti cal
knowl edge and en cour age ment to Lahore’s am a teur
horticulturalists and lo cal malis (gar den ers). Indeed,
the gar den be came, and re mains, one of the ci’s most
well-attended and pop u lar pub lic parks. Yet trac ing its
de vel op ment with a view to the his tor i cal agency of
non hu man ac tors re veals how the gar den’s sta tus as an
ur ban land mark and as a space for so cial re form was
in trin si cally connected to the ways in which eco log i-
cal pro cesses and ma te rial con di tions undermined the
so ci e ’s de sired at tempts to model im prove ment for
the Pun jabi coun try side.
Assembling Practice in a Test-Bed Garden
The Punjab Agri-Horticultural Socie’s dis course was
pre mised on a be lief in the abil i to con trol and ma nip-
u late na ture: that bet ter tech niques and meth ods would
coax the soils into greater pro duc tiv i and en able the
in tro duc tion of new plant spe cies. In par tic u lar, the
es tab lish ment of its new gar den in the civil sta tion was
seen as a means to re al ize these as pi ra tions. However,
ma te ri al, eco log i cal, and cli matic con di tions chal lenged
and mod u lated the so ci e ’s main func tions to test and
ac cli ma tize new and imported spe cies, and to dis sem i-
nate knowl edge, ma te ri als, and tech niques to dis ci pline
a nat u ral world that it ini tially imag ined as de cient,
but largely ame na ble. The ac tions of plants and seeds
were thus cen tral to how the so ci e , via its gar den man-
ag ers, con tin u ally reconceptualized its own role and
ob jec tives.
Reports and cor re spon dence through out the 1860s
and 1870s ex press ten sions, as gar den ers’ as sess ments
about the abil i of imported plants to adapt and our-
ish in Punjab os cil lated be tween con dence and frus-
tra tion. One early sub scriber to the so ci e suested
that al though “am a teur gar den ers” had long de nounced
the use of En glish seeds be cause of a pre sumed in com-
pat i bil i with the lo cal cli ma te, he blamed their fail ure
in stead on the poor meth ods for seed trans mis sion.
Similarly, in a let ter to Kew in 1858, Dr. E. Burton Brown,
a pro fes sor of bot any and chem is try in Lahore Medical
School who had been charged with over see ing the es tab-
lish ment of the new gar den, chided his cor re spon dent
for de clin ing to send seeds on the as sump tion that they
would not work in Lahore’s cli mate and claimed that
“plum, peach, ap ple, pear, quince, (etc) our ish here as
well as in England and there is lit tle doubt but that when
we get good seed we shall be able to grow many other
plants which grow in England al so.” This early con -
dence that it was not the cli mate or en vi ron men tal con-
di tions but proper meth ods that en sured pro duc tiv i
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573
Nida Rehman • Primary Materials • Architecture as a Form of Knowledge
ech oed Dalhousie’s claims that de ciency rested in cul-
tural prac tice rather than the qual i of soils.
In sub se quent cor re spon dence, while Brown report-
ed “con sid er able prog ress,” he also tem pered his faith
about the pros pects for ac cli ma ti za tion, suesting in
1861 that the site was “not very favourable for Botani-
cal researches.” The ar ea’s sa line soils and poor drain-
age formed pri mary causes for con cern. In 1862, Brown
wrote to Joseph Hooker at the Royal Botanic Gardens
in Kew, seek ing his opin ion on the on go ing e orts to
“avoid the ill e ects of the e o res cence of the Punjab
soil, which is com posed prin ci pally of sul phate and car-
bon ate of so da.” Despite these chal lenges, the on go-
ing e orts to tackle un pre dict able e ects of weath er,
soils, and plants, at times reinforced the idea that the
ac cli ma ti za tion of non na tive spe cies and over com-
ing of the prob lems with weath er, soils, and wa ter was
in deed a mat ter of per se ver ance, proper tech nique, and
the ap pli ca tion of good, sci en tic prac tice. Despite his
res er va tions about the soil con di tions, in 1867 Burton
Brown con tin ued to em pha size the im por tance of good
prac tice by not ing, “It ap pears that many pe ren ni als
from cold cli ma tes if well watered and shaded from the
di rect rays of the sun suc ceed in the Punjab.” However,
this con dence was short-lived as the soil con tin ued to
prove less “grate ful” than orig i nally predicted.
Over a de cade lat er, in May 1875, a young gar-
dener named Ed gar Spooner, who had worked for two
years at the Royal Botanic Gardens him self, ar rived in
Lahore to take up the post of the gar den su per in ten-
dent. Soon a er ward he also wrote to Hooker with a
dis mal ac count about the state and po ten tial of the gar-
den. In a let ter also men tion ing the ear ly-on set sum mer
heat that year, he expressed con cern about the poor
soil, which com prised a sub stra tum of cal car e ous kan-
kar, as well as the “as tound ing” pace of weed growth,
and the poor con di tion of ferns and or chids (g. 4).
Spooner’s me tic u lously led an nual gar den re ports
Figure 2. Site of the new garden of the Agri-Horticultural Society of Punjab acquired in 1860. Line drawing by the author.
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574 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 40.3 • 2020
Figure 3. The Lawrence and Montgomery Halls in the Punjab Agri-Horticultural Society (Lawrence) Garden. Photograph by George
Craddock, 1870. © British Library Board, Photo 50/1(100).
Figure 4. Excerpt from Edgar Spooner’s “Letter to Dr. Hooker,” dated May 3, 1875, discussing the poor quality of the soil and the presence
of “a great deal of Kankar” in new garden. From the Directors’ Correspondence Indian Letters—Bengal, Assam, Burma, 1863–1900:
DC/154/363-364. Image reproduced with the kind permission of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
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Nida Rehman • Primary Materials • Architecture as a Form of Knowledge
de tailed e orts to deal with the site’s e o res cent soils
and un even ter rain, as well as con se quent poor drain-
age and decaying plants. He later reported plants
be ing ruined when ca nal wa ter was shut o, at times
for weeks on end. Lahore’s ex treme tem per a tures and
weather con di tions, es pe cially in the sum mer and mon-
soon months, were an other vex ing is sue and prompted
fre quent mod i ca tions to plant ing tech niques. While
Brown had expressed in ten tions to ex pand the gar den
be fore leav ing his po si tion, Spooner thought that these
plans were un fea si ble given the ma te rial chal lenges of
his new work site, par tic u larly the di cul of keep ing
it “clear of weeds.”
The chal lenges in the Lahore gar den also ech oed
the e orts and con cerns of cul ti va tors and the so ci e-
’s mem bers across Punjab. The so ci e reg u larly con-
ducted re gion-wide ex per i ments on new crop spe cies,
collecting and tab u lat ing data to in form fu ture prac tice.
But these e orts to sys tem a tize cul ti va tion were not
al ways sat is fac to ry. For in stance, in a state ment from
1877 tab u lat ing the re sults of the ex per i men tal cul ti va-
tion of white French gram, an imported va ri e , in di er-
ent dis tricts, quan ti ta tive in for ma tion was only sparsely
pro vid ed, but a lit any of com plaints against blight, seed
fail ure, ex ces sive or not enough rain, pesky cat er pil lars,
and plant tu mors spilled over in the re marks col umn.
Despite the orig i nal man date of “im prove ment
by all means... and the in tro duc tion of new plants
for cul ture,” by the mid-1860s the so ci e had al ready
en tered a pe riod of de cline and scaled back some of its
am bi tions as at least some mem bers be gan to reevaluate
the so ci e ’s role. In 1866 George Henderson, the hon-
or ary sec re tary at the time, wrote, “The proper work of
this Socie is to in di cate what ex per i ments of this sort
are likely to be suc cess ful. The real work of ac cli ma tiz-
ing, which at home is car ried out by pri vate en ter prise
and pri vate cap i tal... must be done by Government if
it is done at all .” Thus over the course of the 1860s and
1870s, ideas about the so ci e ’s role and the lim its and
am bi tions of im prove ment hinged sig ni cantly on the
va ga ries of cli ma te, wa ter, soils, and plants, as well as
e orts to work with them.
Brown’s and Spooner’s con cerns are foreshad-
owed in de scrip tions of the area from as early as 1849,
when John Lawrence wrote of the “ex traor di nary plain”
out side Lahore’s walled ci, where “the soil is ster-
ile, and im preg nated with saltpetre, but the ground is
in ter spersed with rank veg e ta tion, and though gen-
er ally ar id, yet from its un du lat ing na ture, possesses
an un for tu nate ap ti tude for the ac cu mu la tion of stag-
nant wa ter.” Similar de scrip tions of the area abound
in co lo nial lit er a ture, de scribed else where as “ut terly
waste and des o late,” or sim ply a “waste land.” Thus
it was the ma te rial guises of waste—soil sa lin i and
e o res cence, un even ground, poor drain age, stag nant
wa ter, and plant de cay—that most per sis tently chal-
lenged ex pec ta tions about the scope of the so ci e ’s
work, “con found(ing) at tempts to dis ci pline and con-
tain life within the do main of util i and ac cu mu la-
tion.” Tracing these ac counts of prac tice re veals how
ma te rial ecol o gies of wa ter, soils, and seeds—or waste’s
work—come to con di tion, but also un set tle not just
the shape of trees and the growth of plants but also the
scope and ex pec ta tions about the so ci e ’s work.
Adorning Lahore
A third as pect of the so ci e ’s work mod u lated by non-
hu man ecol o gies was the aes thetic de vel op ment of
the gar den. In his study of the mod ern de vel op ment
of Lahore un der co lo nial rule and the emergence of a
“co lo nial spa tial imag i na tion,” William Glover notes
that the Lawrence Gardens were “con ceived as a ma jor
or na ment for the prov ince’s cap i tal ci.” This aligns
with other stud ies ex am in ing co lo nial gar dens as aes-
thetic em bodi ments and sym bols of im pe rial power and
governmentali. However, foregrounding the contin-
gencies of prac tice and more-than-hu man in ter ac tion
reorients these per spec tives on co lo nial gar dens and
their de signs to re veal the in cre men tal and at times ad
hoc emer gence of aes thetic de ci sions and spa tial char-
ac ter.
The land scape el e ments of co lo nial gar dens in
In dia, such as the choice of plant spe cies and spa tial
con g u ra tion of plants, trees, paths, build ings, wa ter
bod ies, and so on, not only circumscribed rules for the
be hav ior of the En glish and In dian elite but also but-
tressed rac ist the o ries of hy giene in en abling phys i cal
and con cep tual dis tance from na tive dwell ings and set-
tle ments. Imperial am bi tions to dem on strate the Raj’s
civ i liz ing e ects and its pa ter nal is tic cus to di an ship of
the sub con ti nent’s his tory are also ev i dent in e orts to
“re store” Mu ghal gar dens and mon u ments dur ing the
nineteenth cen tu ry, such as by substitut ing over grown
trees and plants (and in some cases the surrounding
ur ban fab ric) with ex panses of lawn. Certainly the
thickly planted groves, meander ing paths, manicured
lawns, di dac tic bo tan i cal and zoo log i cal dis plays, and
plant nurs er ies of the so ci e ’s new gar den in Lahore
speak to the aes thetic and biopolitical am bi tions of
im prove ment. B eyond its role as a di dac tic ob ject within
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576 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 40.3 • 2020
its lo cal ized set ting, this “or na ment” also res o nates
within the di er ent spa tial reg is ters that tie bo tan i-
cal knowl edge, ag ri cul tural pro duc tiv i , and aes thet-
ics of land scape to the state’s im per a tives for e ec tive
rule, eco nomic ex pan sion, and ter ri to rial con sol i da tion.
In an 1893 de scrip tion, for in stance, it was called “the
Kensington Gardens of Lahore” in ref er ence to one of
London’s most iconic Royal Parks.
Yet, ideas about the role of the so ci e with re spect
to or na men ta tion, and the ex tent to which its gar dens
needed to pro vide aes thet i cally pleas ing rec re a tion
spaces for res i dents of Lahore, de vel oped slowly and
changed over the course of de vel op ing and maintain-
ing gar den spaces. During the rst few years a er the
so ci e ’s es tab lish ment, its mem bers did not con sider
a regard for the or na men tal and pub lic func tions of
its gar dens as a dis trac tion from the eco nom ic, tech ni-
cal, and sci en tic man dates of the or ga ni za tion itself.
Early re ports of the gar den com mit tee dis cuss e orts
to clear and re or ga nize the old gar dens, par tic u larly
the Badami Bagh, to plant trees and shrubs as a way to
im prove spa tial ap pear ance, and by the early 1860s the
so ci e ac knowl edged that its new gar den was be com-
ing a “place for gen eral rec re a tion” with a por tion
“taste fully laid out as a ower gar den.” However, by
1864 the de bates within the cen tral mem ber ship re veal
ten sions about allowing the gar den to be used for rec-
re a tional pur poses, and an in creas ing sense of con ict
be tween sci en tic and or na men tal func tions. In that
year a com mit tee was formed to eval u ate the “pro pri e
of maintaining an or na men tal por tion” and spend ing
sub scriber funds for “the rec re a tion of the res i dents of
Lahore.” The mem bers of the com mit tee unan i mously
de cided that al though the re sources expended on the
or na men tal por tion were “tri ing,” maintaining a space
for pub lic rec re a tion contradicted the so ci e ’s prin ci-
ples, and there fore it should “con ne its op er a tions to
its le git i mate busi ness.” The fol low ing year the pub-
lic por tions of the gar den, in clud ing the or na men tal
ower gar den, were trans ferred from the so ci e to
a lo cal body, and according to a re port in the Lahore
Chronicle, thus en abled the so ci e to fo cus its “at ten tion
on its more im me di ate duties, that is to say, of collect-
ing in for ma tion on Agri-Horticultural sub jects, and the
Figure 5. Excerpt from the Punjab Agri-Horticultural Society’s Garden Report for 1877–78 discussing plans to clear and drain a part of the
garden with “rank vegetation” and “a very oensive smell.” Miscellaneous Report: Lahore; Agricultural-Horticultural Gardens Reports
1875–91 MR/169, folio 5. Image reproduced with the kind permission of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
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577
Nida Rehman • Primary Materials • Architecture as a Form of Knowledge
cul ti vat ing of trees and seeds for dis tri bu tion.” The
new gar den thus be gan to be seen by the so ci e more
as a tem plate for sci en tic and ag ri cul tural knowl edge
rather than as an or na men tal space.
Over the com ing years this po si tion was tem-
pered, not so much in words but on the ground, as
the aes thetic fea tures of the gar den took form in cre-
men tally in con ver sa tion—and con fron ta tion—with
over grown hedges, rank soils, and trespassing an i-
mals rather than through preconceived plans. Despite
the cen tral lo ca tion, and the con ve nience it o ered to
ci vil ian and mil i tary o cials and their fam i lies, the
site of the new gar den and its bio phys i cal fea tures
in voked a range of anx i eties among its care tak ers and
con se quently prompted con cerns about the ap pear-
ance of the gar dens. Spooner’s gar den re port from
1878, for in stance, de tails e orts to com bat poor drain-
age in a par tic u lar spot in the gar den, near an es cape
ca nal, where he de scribed “rank veg e ta tion” and “a
very o en sive smell” “ow ing to the num ber of dhobis
frequenting it.” He de tailed plans to have the ground
leveled and drained, and de velop a new pond in the
low est part fol low ing the nat u ral con tours of the land,
in or der to im prove drain age and cul ti vate ag ri cul tural
crops, which would lead to “a great im prove ment to
that quar ter of the gar den” (see g. 5). Describing
a sim i lar spot as a “waste land” and an “eye-sore,” in
1879 he reported e orts to level the ground and plant
new trees, shrubs, and creep ers to “greatly im prove the
ap p ear ance.”
At other times, cer tain plants them selves be came
un wieldy. Spooner’s re ports explained how par tic u lar
trees blocked the ow of air or cre ated un nec es sary
shade, caus ing soil deg ra da tion or the stunting and
de cay of other plants. He de tailed fre quent at tempts to
re place existing hedges and cut down par tic u lar trees.
A ve-year re port from 1878, looking back at prog ress
in the gar den, noted that “a good many of the more
com mon kinds of trees have been ei ther cut down or
ju di ciously thinned, with the view of im prov ing the
ap pear ance of and in creas ing ven ti la tion in those parts
where they were grow ing. Where nec es sary, other trees
and shrubs of a more or na men tal char ac ter have been
planted out, and will in a few years hence add con sid er-
ably to the em bel lish ment of the gar dens.” Likewise,
lime hedges were planted to cre ate a “sub stan tial fence”
against at tacks from “pass ing cat tle,” and or na men tal
shrubs and an nu als were planted to main tain an “un in-
ter rupted suc ces sion of bloom... through out the
year.”
Intermittent wa ter sup ply and sea sonal rains were
an other source of con cern. Plants had to be fre quently
re moved when they be came “un sight ly” a er heavy
mon soon rains. In one re port, contradicting the sen-
ti ment of the 1864–65 com mit tee’s de ci sion, Spooner
wrote that if it had not been for the “un usu ally small
and ir reg u lar sup ply of ca nal wa ter” dur ing the pre vi ous
year they would have had more la bor and e ort de voted
to im prov ing the gar den’s ap pear ance than in the more
rou tine tasks of watering and plant dis tri bu tion.
Lahore’s ex treme tem per a tures and weather con di tions,
es pe cially in the sum mer and mon soon months, were a
par tic u larly vex ing is sue and were con stantly prompt-
ing mod i ca tions of plant ing tech niques, but also the
gar den’s phys i cal ar range ments.
Thus the su per in ten dent and gar den ers’ e orts to
deal with the mun dane and per sis tent ma te rial chal-
lenges of tending the gar den were di rected not only
to ward the so ci e ’s “le git i mate busi ness” of ac cli ma-
ti za tion and dis tri bu tion but also to ward im proved
spa tial ap pear ance and the rec ti ca tion of “un sight ly”
con di tions. Unlike the equiv o cal and ab stract na ture of
the de bates in the 1850s concerning the so ci e ’s proper
role in regard to or na men ta tion, by the early 1880s the
aes thet ic, tech ni cal, and eco nomic func tions of the
so ci e were well rec on ciled. In 1882, a er a par tic u larly
di cult year when drain age run o from ad ja cent ar eas
in the ci had ooded the gar den and ruined a num ber
of plants, Baden Henry Baden-Powell, the so ci e ’s hon-
or ary sec re tary at the time, de clared that the gar den’s
nurs er ies “ought to be per fect shows; (where) the pub lic
would ex tend their walks of a morn ing and even ing to
see the va ri e ties of grapes and or anges, the treat ment
and prun ing of our peaches and plums, and would be
able to visit the ex per i men tal elds of for eign grains,
(etc). In this way or ders for plants would mul ti ply, and
a greater im pact in gar den ing pro cesses be ex cit ed.”
Thus soils and drain age, weather and wa ter sup ply, and
un co op er a tive plants acted as aes thetic part ners help-
ing to con g ure the gar den as an or na ment for the ci.
To read the his tory of a co lo nial gar den from the
ground is to re tell stories of designed spaces and their
wider ter ri to rial pro jects. Its ma te rial ac tors, such as
cal car e ous soils, stag nant wa ter, weeds, un even ter rain,
rats, un ruly plants, and un sta ble em bank ments, are the
his tor i cal agents and ar chi tec tures of knowl edge for
this nar ra tion. As we have seen, these spaces are never
fully the mod els, test beds, or or na ments their hu man
au thors in tend or their in ter loc u tors in ter pret. They are
al ways con tin gent and in com plete.
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578 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 40.3 • 2020
What Happened to the Materials?
Fourteen years a er the Punjab Exhibition of Arts and
Industry a sec ond ex hi bi tion was or ga nized in Lahore.
Unlike its pre de ces sor, The Punjab Exhibition of Arts
and Manufactures, which opened in 1881, did not
in clude raw ma te ri als and prod ucts, and was in stead
fo cused more squarely on de vel op ments in arts and
in dus try, par tic u larly the en cour age ment of na tive
ar ti sanal works. As its re port explained, the rea son for
the omis sion of raw ma te ri als was that pre vi ously (in
1864) the ob jec tive had been “to gain an in sight into the
re sources of the Punjab dis tricts gen er al ly, and see what
it was that both na ture and art could pro duce.” The
shi away from the need to un der stand the re gion’s nat-
u ral re sources dur ing the pe riod be tween these ex hi bi-
tions serves as an in dex for the wa ver ing am bi tions of
the Agri-Horticultural Socie of Punjab. The so ci e ’s
re ports from the 1880s su est for in stance that “most
of the plants are now well known, and pro pos als for
their uti li za tion have ei ther been re al ized or are known
to be fu tile.” In 1883, Baden-Powell and Major E. G.
Wace, the Punjab com mis sioner of set tle ment and ag ri-
cul ture, coauthored a re port sum ma riz ing the work of
the so ci e and its gar den. At the time, with the so ci e
in de cline, the gov ern ment was con sid er ing re duc ing its
grant, and the re port responded to ques tions about the
nan cial vi a bil i of the or ga ni za tion. While the au thors
con ceded the lim i ta tions of the so ci e in in duc ing
sub stan tial change in the prov ince, they none the less
praised the work done in the so ci e ’s gar den, not only
for plant and seed dis tri bu tion, ac cli ma ti za tion, and
knowl edge dis sem i na tion but also as an im por tant
or na men tal gar den for the res i dents of Lahore.
By this time, Lahore itself was a very di er ent ci
than it was three de cades pri or. By the end of the cen-
tury ear lier de scrip tions of Lahore’s en vi rons as a waste-
land were fre quently used in nar ra tives about the trans-
for ma tion of the ci into a ci of gar dens. Lahore’s
once decaying hin ter land was evoked to cel e brate the
emer gence of a new ci, where “met alled roads (had)
pierced the de bris of for mer days, and the bun ga lows
and gar dens (had) succeeded to ru ins and rough jun-
gle.” Through ex per i ments, dis sem i na tion e orts, and
pub lic shows, the so ci e ’s gar den had instrumental-
ized re gional man dates of im prove ment in the ur ban
set ting, and en abled new mean ings and ex pe ri ences of
na ture in the ci. As one ob server wrote in 1884,
My rst im pres sion of Lahore is one of lux u ri ant fo liage
and ow ers and cul ti va tion. I don’t feel that I have seen
any town, but we drove through gar dens and along roads
with dou ble av e nues of trees, and there were palms, and
nurs er ies of roses, and fer tile-looking elds.... I must
tell you that the roses at Lahore are things to rave about. I
never saw such a pro fu sion; one drives through hedges of
them, and there are great bushes, and arches, and trees
cov ered with them; it seems to me to be a real ci of gar-
dens.
While the e orts to en act im prove ment re gion ally were
them selves in com plete and con ict ed—sig naled by the
so ci e ’s fail ure to in tro duce high-value crops and ad e-
quately dis sem i nate new tech niques for cul ti va tion in
Punjab—the ur ban land scape of Lahore started to take
shape not so much as a model or a test bed, as orig i nally
intended, but as a sub sti tute for re gional im prove ment.
This is a halt ing tra jec tory of im prove ment, in which
un in tended non hu man ecol o gies shaped hu man am bi-
tions and prac tices to model a re gional land scape, test
plants, and cre ate an ur ban or na ment while shap ing,
but also at times un set tling, ideo log i cal ac counts of
co lo nial land scape. Plants, seeds, and soils thus form
an ar chi tec ture and an ar chive whose spa tial and epis-
te mo log i cal ac tions and e ects (re)ori ent us to ward a
grounded and con tin gent un der stand ing of ur ban land-
scape—one not al ways ame na ble to its own ma te rial
and dis cur sive shap ing. However, just as gar dens them-
selves, “contending with the va ga ries of soil, weath er,
and el e ments,” make un easy an a logues for ar chi val
re cords; the work of plants, seeds, and soils re cedes in
the his tor i cal re cord be hind more en dur ing con cep-
tu al i za tions of hu man (and gov ern men tal) am bi tion,
ex per tise, and achieve ment. Just like the dis ap pear-
ance of raw ma te ri als from the sec ond ex hi bi tion, the
ci’s ma te rial sub strates—con tin gent and in cre men tal
agents such as the un grate ful soils and re sis tant plants
that shaped its trans for ma tion—have been rel e gated to
his to rio graph i cal la cu nae.
In gar den mak ing, we start to see the work of plants
and other non hu man ma te ri als in as sem bling spa tial
prac tice and de sign and, per haps mo men tar i ly, destabi-
lizing the ad min is tra tive log ics and ter ri to rial co he sion
that his tor i cal ac counts rely on. In con sid er ing them as
his tor i cal ac tors and as ar chi tec tures of knowl edge, we
thus glimpse a dis obe di ent land scape. Yet this view is
also eet ing, and soon enough is succeeded by the uni-
ed and con trolled land scapes of a gar den ci and its
or na men tal gem.
Nida Rehman is an ur ban ge og ra pher and as sis tant
pro fes sor at Carnegie Mellon Universi. Her re search
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579
Nida Rehman • Primary Materials • Architecture as a Form of Knowledge
fo cuses on ur ban en vi ron men tal pol i tics, land scape,
and in fec tious dis ease in South Asia.
Notes
I am very grate ful to Anooradha Siddiqi, Ateya Khorakiwala,
Anthony Acciavatti, Dan iel Cardoso Llach, two anon y mous re view-
ers and the CSSAAME ed i to rial board for their in ci sive read ing of
var i ous dras, and Romita Ray for her guid ance in the ini tial stages
of the re search. Earlier ver sions of this ar ti cle were presented to
au di ences at the NYU Global South Asia con fer ence in 2016 and the
South Asia Center, Syracuse Universi, in 2015. The re search was
gen er ously funded by the Penn State, College of Fine Arts, Facul
Research Grant.
1. Baden-Powell, Hand-Book of the Economic Products of the Punjab, iv.
See also Noltie, “Botanical Group in Lahore, 1864.”
2. Baden-Powell, Hand-Book of the Economic Products of the Punjab,
255. The ex hi bi tion, and ag ri cul tural ex hi bi tions in gen er al, were
meant to dem on strate the “va ri e ” and “ex cel lence” of ag ri cul tural
prod ucts that the prov ince was “ca pa ble of pro duc ing,” and thus
the po ten tial eco nomic ben e ts of bet ter cul ti va tion prac tices, as a
means to com bat what co lo nial ac tors framed as the “in do lence” and
“con tent ed ness” of lo cal farm ers and ag ri cul tur al ists.
3. This in clud ed, most no ta bly, e orts to de ne prop er re la tions
and achieve ag ri cul tural pro duc tiv i , such as those cod i ed with
the Permanent Settlement of Bengal in 1793, un der the Brit ish East
In dia Company, where a sys tem of per ma nent tax a tion and pri vate
pro pri e tor ship aimed to cre ate po lit i cal and eco nomic in cen tives
for the land own ing class of za min dars to bring “waste lands” into
cul ti va tion through ir ri ga tion. See Guha, Rule of Property for Bengal;
Arnold, “Agriculture and ‘Improvement’ in Early Colonial In dia”;
and Hoop and Arora, “Material Meanings.” The op er a tional ter rain
of im prove ment also ex tended to the ris ing im pe rial im por tance
of eco nomic bot any through sci en tic ex per i men ta tion and state
pa tron age, which manifested in the nineteenth cen tury through a
global net work of botanic gar dens, hor ti cul tural so ci e ties, re search
in sti tu tions, pri vate com pa nies, mo bile bot a nists, and for est ers
forming a cru cial com po nent of the ad min is tra tive and ideo log-
i cal ap pa ra tus of the Brit ish Em pire. On the ideo log i cal foun da-
tions of im prove ment dis course rel a tive to eco nomic bot any in the
cen ter and pe riph er ies of the Brit ish Em pire, see Drayton, Nat ure’s
Government. For an ex am i na tion of the im pe rial net work of botanic
gar dens, see McCracken, Gardens of Em pire. Improvement was also
sought in ur ban set tings through san i tary re form, slum re mov al,
and in fra struc ture de vel op ment, as well as the tech ni cal and le gal
trans for ma tion of existing ecol o gies into new re gimes of ur ban land
and prop er . On im prove ment in In dian ur ban con texts, see, for
in stance, Hosagrahar, Indigenous Modernities; McFarlane, “Governing
the Contaminated Ci”; Ranganathan, “Rule by Dierence”; Bhat-
tacharyya, Em pire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta. Malini Rangana-
than discusses how the “co lo nial log ics of ‘im prove ment’” stemmed
from its foun da tional his tory in the en clo sure of the com mons and
re lated forms of dis pos ses sion in Europe, and reinforced class, caste,
eth ic, and ra cial hi er ar chies through land sei zure and other vi o lent
mea sures.
4. See Arnold, “Agriculture and ‘Improvement’ in Early Colonial
In dia.”
5. The met a phor of transforming des erts into gar dens was com-
monly in voked by co lo nial o cers to re fer to the re or ga ni za tion of
Punjab’s infrastructural and ag ri cul tural land scapes. See Rehman,
“Lahore Canal .”
6. On Lahore’s gar den his to ry, see, for in stance, Wescoat, “From the
Gardens of the Qur’an to the ‘Gardens’ of Lahore”; Wescoat, “Gar-
dens, Urbanization, and Urbanism in Mu ghal Lahore”; Rehman,
“Description, Display, and Distribution.”
7. Besky and Padwe, “Placing Plants in Territory,” 17.
8. Drayton, Nature’s Government, 140.
9. On re la tional ontologies of agen cy, see, for ex am ple, Whatmore,
Hybrid Geographies; Barad, “Posthumanist Performativi”; Haraway,
When Species Meet; Bennett, Vibrant Matter. On the pol i tics of mul-
ti spe cies re la tion ships, see Hinchlie etal., “Urban Wild Things”;
Kirksey and Helmreich, “Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography”;
Ogden, Swamplife; Tsing, “More-than-Human Sociali”; and Ginn,
Beisel, and Barua, “Flourishing with Awkward Creatures.” On more-
than-hu man con struc tion of cap i tal and em pire, see Mitchell, Rule
of Experts, chap. 1; Shukin, Animal Capital; and Roy, “Nonhuman
Em pires.” Roy’s ar gu ment about the pro duc tive over laps in Bruno
Latour’s (and sci ence stud ies’ more broad ly) con cep tu al i za tion of
dis persed agency and Gayatri Spivak’s (and sub al tern stud ies’ more
broad ly) cri tique of the Eu ro cen tric sub ject-agent and ar tic u la tion
of “sub ject-e ect,” is par tic u larly rel e vant in clar i fy ing how “non-hu-
mans deep ened the biopolitical foun da tions of em pire.”
10. In his ex am i na tion of the his tory of the Christchurch Botanic
Gardens, Franklin Ginn ex am ines how rather than as crib ing to
predetermined vi sions of im proved na ture, plants were “not sim-
ply pas sive ma te ri als awaiting cul tural in scrip tion, but more lively
and un sta ble ac tors” with dis eased trees, weedy growth, and un ruly
weather con di tions al ways threat en ing to send the gar dens “back to
‘a state of na ture.’ ” Ginn, “Colonial Transformations.”
11. Besky and Padwe, “Placing Plants in Territory.”
12. Dittmer, “Theorizing a More-than-Human Diplomacy,” 10.
13. Tsing, “More-than-Human Sociali,” 35. Tsing su ests that “hu-
man in volve ment in mul ti spe cies worlds is a place to be gin. Our
do ings are a way to trace the do ings of oth ers. This re quires fol low-
ing the prac ti cal ar range ments and dy namic in ter ac tions of other
spe cies along with hu man fum bling.” Accounts of gar den mak ing,
as ex plored in this ar ti cle, ev i dence this sort of fum bling and ex per-
i men ta tion. Tsing, “More-than-Human Sociali: A Call for Criti-
cal Description,” 34. On the im por tance of em bod ied prac tices for
new ma te ri al ist and more-than-hu man schol ar ship, see Whatmore,
“Materialist Returns”; Robbins, “Nature Talks Back”; Ingold, “Bind-
ings against Boundaries”; and Trentmann, “Materiali in the Future
of History.”
14. de Hoop and Arora, “Material Meanings,” 91. Evelien de Hoop and
Saurabh Arora dis cuss for in stance how socio-eco log i cal complexi-
ties are elided in dis cur sive cat e go ri za tions, and how an en gage ment
with waste and waste lands in In dia purely through such dis cur sive
read ings fails to con sider how they are con sti tuted var i ously and in
non lin ear ways in re la tion to “the ma te ri al i of the lands and the
be ings dwell ing in it” (91). Similarly Tim o thy Mitchell shows how
mean ings of agency (as ex per tise) are achieved (rather than prede-
termined) in re la tion to un fore seen cir cum stances and bio phys i cal
e ects dur ing the de sign and con struc tion of the Aswan High Dam.
Yet the knowl edge pro duced in the pro cess ret ro ac tively re in forces
a developmentalist view of the river as an en tirely “nat u ral” body
brought un der hu man con trol through en gi neer ing sci ence and
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580 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 40.3 • 2020
tech ni cal sys tems—“the e ect of a world di vided into hu man ex per-
tise on one side and na ture on the oth er.” Mitchell, Rule of Experts, 30.
15. On the so ci e ’s work and its fail ure to e ect lon ger-term change
in Punjab, see Kerr, “Agri-Horticultural Socie of the Punjab 1851–
71”; and Lal ly, “Trial, Error, and Economic Development in Colonial
Punjab.” See also Rehman, “Description, Display and Distribution”
on the ways in which the so ci e ’s cen tral i za tion in Lahore inter-
sected with and en abled a grow ing cul ture of ur ban gar den ing in
Lahore in the late nineteenth cen tu ry.
16. Letter from Sir Henry Elliot (Secretary with the Governor-Gen-
eral) to the Board, Feb ru ary 28, 1851, Brit ish Library: In dia Oce
Records and Private Papers, Home Miscellaneous Series 1600—1900
(here a er IOR/H) 761/639–48.
17. Tracing the con cept of waste to John Locke’s the ory of val ue, in
which the im prove ment of na ture through the ex er tion of la bor
un der cap i tal ist con di tions forms the fun da men tal req ui site for
en try into civil so ci e , Vinay Gidwani and Rajyashree Reddy note
that waste is deployed within a num ber of as pects of co lo nial rule,
in clud ing set tle ment, rev e nue gen er a tion, and ir ri ga tion sci ence. As
a place holder for a range of con di tions—com monly held and cul-
ti vated land, neglected land, lack or cul ti va tion or “un pro duc tive”
uses, land ly ing fal low, and so on—waste comes to re in force nar ra-
tives of la zi ness and sav age ry, de lin eate in di vid ual prop er rights,
and sanc tion en clo sure and dis pos ses sion. See Gidwani and Reddy,
“Aerlives of ‘Waste.’” Judy Whitehead ex am ines how the rhe tor i cal
us age of waste lands in Locke’s la bor the ory of prop er pa ves the way
for fu ture ap pro pri a tion, ter ri to ri al i za tion, and col o ni za tion. See
Whitehead, “John Locke and the Governance of In dia’s Landscape.”
For a dis cus sion of waste in re la tion to wa ter use in ir ri ga tion and
en gi neer ing prac tices, and par al lel con cep tu al i za tions of Pun jabi
com mu ni , see Gilmartin, Blood and Water, 80–103, and “Water and
Waste.”
18. Rizvi, “Masters Not Friends,” 39–40.
19. Elliot, Feb ru ary 28, 1851, IOR/H/761/639–48.
20. Elliot, Feb ru ary 28, 1851, IOR/H/761/639–48.
21. See Ali, Punjab un der Imperialism; Gilmartin, Blood and Water;
Bhattacharya, Great Agrarian Conquest.
22. See Tal bot, “Punjab un der Colonialism.”
23. The need for replenishing the war state’s co ers undergirded
ur gency about eco nomic re form and ag ri cul tural de vel op ment,
while the state’s laissez-faire stance prevented out right in ter ven-
tion. See Lal ly, “Trial, Error, and Economic Development in Colonial
Punjab.”
24. Marquess of Dalhousie, “Minute by the Governor General of
In dia,” May 29, 1851, Brit ish Library: In dia Oce Records and Private
Papers, Records of the Board of Commissioners for the Aairs of
In dia 1620—1859 (here a er IOR/F) 4 /2429/132616.
25. The Punjab Agri-Horticultural Socie was os ten si bly a pri vate
or ga ni za tion, nanced by mem ber sub scrip tions. However, its mem-
ber ship com prised al most en tirely of se nior o cers of the civil and
mil i tary ad min is tra tion in Punjab, with Lawrence appointed as its
rst pres i dent. Crucially, this close re la tion ship to the pro v in cial gov-
ern ment yielded not just mon e tar y sup port in the form of grants and
subsidies, but also hu man and ad min is tra tive re sources across the
prov ince, as well as a di rect chan nel to the cen tral gov ern ment. See
Kerr, “Agri-Horticultural Socie of the Punjab 1851–71,” 255–56; Lal ly,
“Trial, Error, and Economic Development in Colonial Punjab,” 7.
26. Marquess of Dalhousie, “Minute by the Governor General of
In dia,” IOR/F/4/2429/132616.
27. Select Papers of the Agri-Horticultural Society, 55–56.
28. Rehman, “Description, Display, and Distribution.”
29. Select Papers of the Agri-Horticultural Society, 53.
30. Ginn, “Colonial Transformations,” 36.
31. Letter from Henry Cope to Sir Henry Elliot (Secretary to the Gov-
ernor General), Lahore, May 19, 1851. Brit ish Library: In dia Oce
Records and Private Papers, Records of the Board of Commissioners
for the Aairs of In dia 1620–1859 (here a er IOR/F) 4/2429/132616.
32. Despite the het ero ge ne i of ac tual en vi ron men tal con di tions in
the Punjab, writ ings by co lo nial o cials fre quently ab stracted these
into two dis tinct con di tions. Thus, as Tremenheere wrote, “there are
two very marked fea t ures in the Punjab. It con tains sev eral ex ten sive
nar row strips of al lu vial land, which are highly fer tile. These are sep-
a rated from one an other by broad tracts of a higher and more arid
de scrip tion which form the chief sur face of the coun try. Through
the rst, six no ble riv ers take their course, whose val leys are from 6
to 12 miles broad, and have been for ages the re cep ta cle of com mi-
nuted mat ter of ev ery kind, veg e ta ble and min er al, de liv ered from
the great Himalayas; and are full of the n est mould .... The sec-
ond de scrip tion of land, com pris ing the in ter vals be tween the great
riv ers, has none of these ad van tages of re cent al lu vial de pos its, or of
pe ri od i cal in un da tions. The soil there is in its pri me val state, mod i-
ed only by the de cay and re pro duc tion of veg e ta ble and an i mal life
which it sup ports.” Select Papers of the Agri-Hoticultural Society, 56.
33. Glover, “Objects, Models, and Exemplary Works.”
34. Ironically, the new can ton ment was also over come with chol era
and malaria, and by the turn of the cen tury earned a rep u ta tion for
be ing “highly malarious.” See Stephens, “Discussion on the Prophy-
laxis of Malaria.”
35. Tremenheere noted the in ad e quacy of just one gar den for mod-
el ing im proved cul ti va tion meth ods for the en tire prov ince when
he wrote, “It will not be su cient to point to re sults obtained in the
so ci e ’s gar den, the soil of which in the Kadur or the val ley of the
Ravee, rep re sents only a small por tion of the sur face of the coun-
try. It ap pears de sir able to in sti tute ex per i ments in the cul ti va tion
of land in cen tral parts of each Doab.” Select Papers of the Agri-Horti-
cultural Society, 54.
36. “Report on the Working of the Agri-Horticultural Socie since
Its Formation,” Lahore Chronicle, Oc to ber 21, 1863.
37. “Report on the Working of the Agri-Horticultural Socie since
Its Formation,” Lahore Chronicle, Oc to ber 21, 1863.
38. “Report on the Working of the Agri-Horticultural Socie since
Its Formation,” Lahore Chronicle, Oc to ber 21, 1863.
39. In this ar ti cle, which cov ers the pe riod from the so ci e ’s in cep-
tion un til 1883, I re fer to the prop er that the so ci e ac quired in
1860 as its new gar den or as the Agri-Horticultural Socie gar den.
In 1883 when the so ci e was disbanded and its gar den op er a tions
taken over by the gov ern ment, the name was changed to the Govern-
ment Agri-Horticultural Gardens. The name Lawrence Gardens had
been in use to re fer to the civic park por tion of the grounds; how ever,
it is only in the last de cade of the nineteenth cen tury that that name
is more com monly ap pl ied in ref er ence to the en tire com plex. In dif-
fer ent sources, the two names, Agri-Horticultural Socie Garden(s)
and Lawrence Garden(s), are used in ter change ably. For the sake of
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Nida Rehman • Primary Materials • Architecture as a Form of Knowledge
clar i , I use the sin gu lar gar den in stead of gar dens (al though the lat-
ter is more com monly used).
40. Some sources place the con struc tion of the gar den a er the
build ings. William Glover, for ex am ple, de scribes the build ings as a
cat a lyst for the park and gar den. See Glover, Making Lahore Modern.
However, as evidenced in news pa per re ports from the time, the Pun-
jab Agri-Horticultural Socie pur chased and started work ing on the
land in 1860. They had al ready started set ting up the gar den when
the de ci sion to give some of the land for the two build ings was tak-
en. The civic park was an ex ten sion of the so ci e ’s bo tan i cal gar den.
In 1862, a reader wrote a let ter to the ed i tor of the Lahore Chronicle
re gard ing the com mence ment of the Lawrence Hall’s con struc tion,
not ing that “so im por tant a step as the erec tion of a pub lic as sem bly
room in the Botanical gar den, ought, in my opin ion, to have re ceived
the sanc tion of a gen eral meet ing of the Agri-Horticultural Socie.”
“The John Lawrence Hall.” Lahore Chronicle, May 3, 1862.
41. Proceedings of the Agri-Horticultural Society of the Punjab.
42. T. E. Burton Brown to Dr. Hooker, March 19, 1858, Library and
Archives at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Directors’ Correspondence
(here a er DC) 154.
43. Burton Brown to Dr. Hooker, Oc to ber 20, 1862, DC/154.
44. Burton Brown to Dr. Hooker, Oc to ber 20, 1862, DC/154.
45. Burton Brown to Dr. Hooker, June 1, 1867, DC/154.
46. Ed gar Spooner, “Letter to Dr. Hooker,” May 3, 1875, DC/154.
47. “Report of the Agri-Horticultural Socie,” Lahore Chronicle, Sep-
tem ber 21, 1864.
48. “Annual Report of the Punjab Agri-Horticultural Socie from
May 1865 to May 1866,” Lahore Chronicle, June 23, 1866.
49. Sir John Lawrence (1852), as quoted in Latif, Lahore, 251.
50. Kipling and Thornton, Lahore as It Is, 2; Walker, Gazetteer of the
Lahore District, 306.
51. Gidwani, “Six Theses on Waste, Value, and Commons,” 781–82.
52. Glover, Making Lahore Modern, 66. Citing its aes thet ic, func tion al,
and spa tial dis tance from the dense ur ban fab ric of the an cient
walled ci, Glover ar gues that the gar dens “formed a care fully iso-
lated space of con trolled cul tural in ter ac tion” be tween the En glish
and na tive elite of Lahore, and where “each el e ment work(ed) in
uni son with the oth ers to pro duce an in te grated pub lic land scape
geared to ward the cul ti va tion of gen til i ” (66).
53. Roberts, “En glish Gardens in In dia”; King, Colonial Urban Develop-
ment; Herbert, Flora’s Em pire.
54. King, Colonial Urban Development; Herbert, Flora’s Em pire.
55. Eugenia Herbert crit i cally ex am ines the “res to ra tion” of Mu ghal
Gardens by Brit ish rul ers as an im pe rial pro ject pre mised on how
“con trol of his tory (was) in some mea sure con trol of the pres ent.”
Herbert, “Taj and the Raj” 267.
56. Walker, Gazetteer of the Lahore District, 306
57. “Local Intelligence,” Lahore Chronicle, June 25, 1851; “Local Intel-
ligence,” Lahore Chronicle, July 12, 1851.
58. “Report on the Working of the Agri-Horticultural Socie since
Its Formation,” Lahore Chronicle, Oc to ber 21, 1863.
59. Lahore Chronicl e, March 30, 1864.
60. “The Agri-Horticultural Socie of Punjab,” Lahore Chronicle,
April 29, 1865.
61. Ed gar Spooner, “Agri-Horticultural Socie’s Garden Report for
1877–78,” 5, Library and Archives at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew,
Miscellaneous Reports (here a er MR) 169.
62. Ed gar Spooner, “Report on the Progress and Condition of the
Agri-Horticultural Socie’s Gardens’ Punjab, For the Year 1878–79,”
1, MR/169.
63. C. R. Lindsay and Ed gar Spooner, “Brief Report on the Operations
of the Agri-Horticultural Socie of the Punjab for the Five Years
Ending De cem ber 1878,” MR/169.
64. Ed gar Spooner, “Agri-Horticultural Socie’s Garden Report for
1877–78,” 4, MR/169.
65. Ed gar Spooner, “Report by the Superintendent of the Agri-Hor-
ticultural Socie’s Gardens, Panjab, for the Year Ending 31st March
1876”, MR/169.
66. Baden Henry Baden-Powell and Ed gar Spooner, “Report on the
Working of the Punjab Agri-Horticultural Socie, Lahore, for the
Year 1881–82,” MR/169.
67. Baden Henry Baden-Powell and Ed gar Spooner, “Report on the
Working of the Punjab Agri-Horticultural Socie, Lahore, for the
Year 1881–82,” 3.MR/169
68. Report on the Punjab Exhibition.
69. Baden Henry Baden-Powell and Ed gar Spooner, “Report on the
Working of the Punjab Agri-Horticultural Socie, Lahore, for the
Year 1881–82,” MR/169.
70. Shortly a er ward, the Punjab Agri-Horticultural Socie was
reconstituted as a wholly pub lic (rather than qua si-pri vate) body,
and the mu nic i pal gov ern ment took over its gar den op er a tions.
Baden Henry Baden-Powell and E. G. Wace, “Joint-Report on the
Lahore Agri-Horticultural Gardens, and Proposals for Re-Organiza-
tion,” MR/169.
71. Walker, Gazetteer of the Lahore District.
72. Duerin and Ava, Our Viceregal Life in In dia.
73. Harrison, Gardens, 39.
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