Minto Hall sits on the shore of Lower Lake, facing the skyline of Old Bhopal. The city has an extraordinary past: it was ruled by four successive generations of women, referred to as Nawab Begums. The last of the four, Sultan Jahan, built Minto Hall in 1909 as a retreat for her guests. Now, it serves as an international convention centre with a stylish rooftop bar and restaurant. The city has moved on like all cities do, but Minto Hall keeps the memory of the Begums alive – in its name, in its nawabi architecture and in the echoes of namaz that fill the sky as the sun sets over the lake.But this too is changing. Three months ago, the building was renamed Kushabhau Thakre Bhawan by Madhya Pradesh’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government to honour their party’s former national president. The decision came just two weeks after Habibganj Railway Station, a major landmark in the city, was renamed after Rani Kamlapati, whom chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan hailed as “the last Hindu queen of Bhopal”.Explaining the name change during a state executive committee meeting, Chauhan announced, “Minto Hall was built on our land. The soil is ours, the stone is ours, the labour is ours, then why should its name be Minto?”The making of Minto HallSultan Jahan Begum named Minto Hall after Lord Minto, the then viceroy of India, to felicitate him during his visit to the Muslim princely state of Bhopal. A viceroy’s visit was a matter of honour for the princes of protected states in British India; it promoted friendly relations between them and the British crown, and produced advantageous results for both parties. But the Begum felt a greater need to honour Lord Minto. His visit coincided with the centenary of a treaty that his great-great-grandfather had advocated to bring Bhopal under British protection when it was under attack by the combined forces of Gwalior and the Bhonsle Raja in the early 19th century.The Begum wished to give Lord Minto the grandest of welcomes, but she also wanted to turn the occasion to practical account. “I grudge spending money on extravagant displays of grandeur and hold that the permanent improvement of a town is a far greater compliment to a visitor than temporary adornment,” she wrote in her autobiography, An Account of My Life: Akhtar Iqbal. And while the city of Bhopal was decorated with garlands and displays of paan and attar to welcome Lord Minto, Sultan Jahan felt that the most fitting gift was the conception of a memorial in his name.“Acts of renaming places and buildings are oftentimes ways of singularising memory,” says Venugopal Maddipati, an architectural historian at B.R. Ambedkar University in Delhi. They are geared towards impacting how communities remember. Renaming can be detrimental if it is too rigid, because what is lost is a plurality of memories.Also read: BJP’s Push to Rename Hyderabad: Does ‘Bhagyanagar’ Stand a Chance?“The most distinguishing aspect of Indian architectural history is the way it narrates how diverse and divergent buildings were conceived and coexisted without being overwhelmed by any one story,” Maddipati explains. “So what we stand to lose is precisely what makes us unique.”Bhopal’s first three begums built several Indo-Islamic structures during their reigns, including Gohar Mahal, Shaukat Mahal, Moti Masjid and Taj-ul-Masajid (the largest mosque in Asia), which still adorn the alleyways of Old Bhopal. Sultan Jahan continued their architectural legacy with her own buildings, such as Qaser-e-Sultani, Rahat Manzil and Noor-us-Sabah Palace, which is now a heritage hotel.But Minto Hall was her “grandest project”, says Manjusha Patnaik, a conservation architect who was the lead consultant on the revitalisation of Minto Hall as the City Trade and Convention Centre in 2008.A year after Minto Hall’s construction began, the Begum was invited to attend the coronation of King George V in London. This was her first trip to Europe and she avidly travelled across Germany, France, Geneva, Turkey and Budapest. Her firsthand exposure to the western arts and architecture is exemplified in the architecture of Minto Hall.“She combined the design of ballrooms and mansions of the West with the Nawabi interior embellishments of Bhopal to create a unique architectural style of her own,” says Patnaik. “And as a symbol of loyalty to the British monarchy, she made the elevation of Minto Hall resemble the imperial crown of King George V.”The politics of changeIqbalur Rehman, head of the political science department at Aligarh Muslim University, views renaming incidents as part of the BJP’s larger saffronisation campaign.“They wish to redraft anything that doesn’t conform to their ideals and the Muslim community is a target,” he says. “This monolithic narrative creates an environment that fosters communal polarisation and hatred.”Over the last year, the Madhya Pradesh government has renamed several bus stops, railway stations, universities and districts –Hoshangabad became Narmadapuram and Nasrullahganj became Bhairunda. Most of the name changes were from Islamic to Hindu. Meanwhile, the state’s Malwa region, which includes cities like Indore and Ujjain, reported as many as 12 cases of communal tension between September 2020 and August 2021.Also read: Is BJP’s Decision to Change Jhansi Railway Station’s Name Backfiring?In Bhopal too, where 26.28% of the population is Muslim, demands for name changes are rampant. BJP leaders of the state, including Uma Bharti and Pragya Thakur, have been pushing to rename neighbourhoods like Islam Nagar, Idgah Hills and Lalghati, and the city itself.Rehman sees these attempts as a means to reclaim the past. “The RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and BJP want to ingrain in the sub-consciousness of the masses that they are restoring the country to its original glory,” he says. “They have fabricated an imagined past, where Bharat was a sone ki chidiya that was destroyed by invaders, first the Muslims, and then the British.”Under the rule of Sultan Jahan, Bhopal was moulded into a centre of pragmatic reforms. The Begum was the first chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University and at the forefront of an India-wide movement in the early 20th century to transform the status of women. She established girls’ schools, ladies’ organisations and professional courses in nursing and midwifery and paved the way for women to join them through outspoken campaigns, grants and negotiations with Islamic and colonial leaders, writes Siobhan Lambert-Hurley in her book Muslim Women, Reform and Princely Patronage: Nawab Sultan Jahan Begam of Bhopal.The Begum was also a patron of the traditional crafts of Bhopal and encouraged embroidery, ornamented batuas (purses) and carpet weaving, so much so that the state’s artisan industry thrived despite the introduction of European goods.“Her artistic taste is reflected in the walls and the ceilings of Minto Hall, which are adorned with patterns similar to those found in carpets and embroidery of Bhopal,” says Patnaik.Sultan Jahan did not live to see her building completed. During the 24 years of its construction, Hamidullah Khan, the Begum’s son, had ascended to the throne and the Indian independence movement had gained strength.Minto Hall never served its intended purpose as a state guesthouse. Instead, it was used as the army headquarters, a financial advisory office and Hamidia College. But the building received its due glory in 1956 when it became the Vidhan Sabha (Legislative Assembly) of Madhya Pradesh in the newly independent India. It continued to function as the state’s political powerhouse till 1996.In his address about the renaming of Minto Hall, CM Chauhan’s explanation continued: “Several BJP stalwarts had reached the assembly (Minto Hall) with Kushabhau Thakre’s contributions. Thakre ji empowered the party in Madhya Pradesh, and so, Minto Hall will now be called Kushabhau Thakre Bhawan.”According to Patnaik, the many names and roles given to Minto Hall in the past reinforced its significance.“It served as Hamidia College and Vidhan Sabha and later, City Trade And Convention Centre. None of these functions challenged its cultural identity,” she says. “But Kushabhau Thakre Bhawan neither serves a function nor does it resonate with the political, social and cultural context from which the building emerged.”Women have played an instrumental role in Indian architectural history, but it has largely been limited to that of a muse. Yet, in rare cases such as that of Minto Hall, their ability to establish a legacy on their own terms shines through.“These architectural nuggets must be celebrated and cherished,” says Patnaik. “Throwing a new name on top of Minto Hall does justice neither to the Begum, nor to its new namesake.”
