Words by Vaani Bhala
Field Notes from India
ong before globalisation became a buzzword, India was already global. Traders arrived here not because they were curious, but because they had to. Spices, textiles, precious stones, indigo, cotton, and craft knowledge flowed out of the subcontinent in volumes that shaped economies elsewhere. What followed was inevitable. If you want access to wealth, you follow it. And the world followed India. The idea that India was once isolated and later “opened up” is one of the most persistent myths in modern history. The built environment tells a different story. Look closely at Indian architecture and you begin to see a country that absorbed influence constantly, not passively, but on its own terms.
"India did not become global because it was colonised. It was colonised because it was already global. "
The Portuguese were among the first Europeans to arrive by sea, but they were not pioneers in trade. Arab, Persian, and Central Asian traders had already been moving through Indian ports for centuries. The Silk Route was not a single road but a web, and India sat firmly at its centre. When the Portuguese built churches in Goa, they brought arches, facades, and symbols. What they could not bring was climate logic. Thick laterite walls, deep verandas, and shaded courtyards crept into their buildings. Imported forms were forced to behave like Indian ones. Architecture became the evidence of negotiation.
Every wave of influence that entered India left behind a structure that tells on itself.
Mughal architecture is often described as Indo Islamic, but that phrase hides a deeper truth. Persian planning met Indian craftsmanship. Islamic geometry met local stone carving. The result was not imitation but synthesis. The Mughal court did not copy India. It was transformed by it. Gardens, water systems, domes, and symmetry all adapted to Indian materials and climate.
Then came the British, armed with ideas of order, governance, and superiority. They arrived with neoclassical ambitions and discovered quickly that European buildings suffocated in Indian heat. Columns became verandas. Bungalows replaced terraces. High ceilings and cross ventilation entered colonial architecture not as aesthetic choices but as survival tactics.
What we now call colonial architecture is largely an admission of failure. European forms could not function here without borrowing Indian spatial intelligence.
Even the railway stations tell this story. Gothic arches sit beside chhatris. Iron and stone coexist with local ornament. These buildings were not expressions of British confidence. They were compromises.
India absorbed all of it. Portuguese, Mughal, British. And then folded it into something recognisably its own.
This is why Indian cities look the way they do today. They are not confused. They are layered. Each period assumed it was dominant. None managed to erase what came before.
The idea of India as a recipient of global influence collapses when you look at how much influence was actually negotiated, resisted, and rewritten. Trade brought people. People brought forms. Forms were forced to adapt.
This is what globalisation actually looks like. Not homogenisation, but friction.
What makes this uncomfortable is that much of the modern world still treats India as a supplier rather than a shaper. Yet the very idea of global taste was forged through Indian goods. European interiors were redesigned around Indian textiles. Clothing changed because cotton behaved differently. Colour palettes shifted because indigo existed.
India was never on the margins of the global economy. It was the reason one existed.
Architecture remains the most honest witness. It cannot lie politely. It shows us who came, who stayed, and who had to adjust.
The real question is not whether India was global. It is why we keep pretending it became global only recently.