The Lucknow Forum

For a long time now, I had been perplexed by the question, of why the West so successfully claimed the heritage of Greco-Roman civilization, while India had not. After all, Alexander the Great came knocking on India’s door much before the Romans expanded their empire up to Scotland’s southern border, let alone when the West discovered India and the “New World”. Even after Alexander was forced to turn around as a victim of his own success, his descendants hung out in Bactria at India’s border and occasionally forayed deep into the Indian territory. Indeed they left behind sculptures and coins with distinct Greek imagery for Indian archaeology.

But still, it was the West that asserted the legitimacy of Greco-Roman ideas in political and scientific discourse. This is true irrespective of the fact that during almost five hundred years after the collapse of the Roman civilization in the West, the discourse of the Greco-Roman knowledge in the West went dormant if not backward, while the rest of the world continued to thrive on those ideas. It was the synthesis of the ideas of the outside world including the Greco-Roman knowledge that rekindled the imagination of the West.

My interest in the Greco-Roman political and scientific ideas as the root of the progress of human knowledge perhaps lies in my learned beliefs that democracy is the most efficient and fair political system and that it stems from the Greek words of people (demos) and rule (Kratos), notwithstanding the fact limited democratic systems existed in other parts of the world, including India.

I also hold the learned belief that it is the Greek Corinthian columns supporting Greek Parthenon and Roman Pantheon, that best represent the Greco-Roman political democratic ideals. After all, in my adopted city of Washington DC, far away from the Greco-Roman geographic world, almost all political monuments and buildings are adorned with the edifice of Corinthian columns.

Perhaps just like my inclination to ignore the dark ages gap in Greco-Roman knowledge in the West for the self-serving purpose of establishing western legacy to the Greco-Roman world, I may also be willing to ignore the horrendous difficulty of counting Roman numerals written on the lintels supported by those Corinthian columns, let alone having any other practical use of the Roman numerals in the advancement of knowledge, for this purpose.

In the same vein, I ignore the pain I had to endure in having to use Greek alphabets in the summation and integration equations for efficiency in structural strength required for support by such columns, in my engineering study. But, I must admit that this pain had a lot more to do with the gap between the sophistication required to comprehend the maths and my capability, and little to do with the Greek alphabets representing summation, integration, and efficiency in those equations.

It’s not that there are no Corinthian column edifices anywhere to be found in India. The Asiatic Society in my birth city Mumbai has a Parthenon-style building with Doric columns, similar to the Corinthian columns. But it’s built during the British Raj era and therefore, I cannot count it as having the direct Greco-Roman influence over the Indian culture for my taste.

Low and behold, my search for the answer to my question however finally came to end when I physically encountered what I call the Lucknow Forum. There it was, in the outskirts of the city of Nawabs, just like what the Roman forum would have looked like in its heyday.

Lucknow city has been known for its legacy of Nawabs, the Indianized version of the Mamluk and Turkic-slave dynasties. Imambara in the Indo-Islamic style dominated the reputation of the architecture style of the city. But now with bold confidence, the forum has short-circuited all that two thousand years of subsequent history by clearly establishing the direct Indian cultural linkage with the Greco-Roman legacy.

To be fair, what I call the Lucknow forum is actually officially named after the architect of the liberal democratic constitution of the independent Indian Republic. The Indian Constitution borrows from the British Magna Carta and the American constitution, where the later in turn are linked to the Greco-Roman ideas, thanks to the already established western legitimacy. But the Indian Constitution architect’s own legacy is also claimed by the subsequent leadership directly thru self-representation of numerous Roman-style statues all along the forum. Nothing else perhaps can then claim bigger vanity of Indian connection to the Greco-Roman ideals.

Now that my quest for the Eastern spread to the Greco-Roman ideas is strangely satisfied, I should feel exhilarated. Alas, I have the similar feeling you get when you realize that the destination you had in mind when you started the journey has already moved, when you arrived. Corinthian columns no longer are able to bear the weight of lintels of democracies all over the world. Like those at the Greek Parthenon, the lintels have either fallen off on to the ground or been removed and taken to museums such as the British Museum. My learned beliefs on the democratic ideals are shattering just like those lintels.

So now what could I look forward to as the best representation of enduring and fair political order? One obvious candidate is the interlocking beams of the forbidden palace of the Middle Kingdom. After all, they seemed to have survived in the geographical zone of sudden earthquakes for awhile. They represent the political order based on peace and harmony with interlocking relationships under the watchful eye of the Hans dynasty at the center. It’s portrayed not as an alternative to democracy, but as a more authentic democracy.

So, am I to relearn my structural engineering and get into a new political order orbit now?