Bilkul Online
Ahmedabad | 24 Sept 2025
CEPT University will host the launch of Prof. Jaimini Mehta’s latest book, Sense of Itihasa, on September 28 at its campus. The event will be followed by a symposium featuring five distinguished architects and scholars from Nagpur, Ahmedabad, Delhi, and Bengaluru, who will present critiques and reflections on the book.
The discussion promises to be a rare platform for critical discourse in India, offering architects, designers, historians, and students of culture an intellectually stimulating evening.
About the Book :
Sense of Itihasa explores the unique modernity that defines Indian architecture post-independence. Prof. Mehta argues that civilisational memories—rooted in epic literature, folk traditions, art, and festivals—subconsciously shape contemporary architecture.
He distinguishes between “history” and the Sanskrit term “itihasa,” emphasizing that while history treats the past as something archived in museums and texts, itihasa implies continuity—where the past lives on in the present through cultural memory and artistic expression.
Mehta further categorises Indian modernity in architecture into two modes: the “Way of Tagore,” which embraces modernism tempered by tradition, and the “Way of Gandhi,” which foregrounds tradition while reimagining it in a modern context. Both approaches, he argues, reflect India’s distinctive negotiation between modernity and heritage.