ABSTRACT
Highlighting spectacles and contestations, the chapter discusses the ways in which nawabi spaces and architecture contested the colonial gaze, colonial rules and formality, colonial oppression, and the colonial imposition of a Eurocentric worldview. Examples such as the Aina Khana are discussed to illustrate how the nawabs challenged the colonial gaze. In discussing gardens of social and gendered tensions, the chapter builds upon queer studies to discuss that social and gendered tensions are a condition for queerscapes to emerge. Drawing upon Wajid’s highly descriptive Parikhana, the chapter shows how the zenana at Qaiserbagh harem spaces offered sites of sisterhood, support, and mutual cooperation while sustaining political ambitions and a constant turf war for proximity to the monarch. In discussing sites of erasure, the chapter illustrates the events and forms of British destruction of the Machhi Bhavan and Qaiserbagh, arguing that this was a form of violence inflicted on the queer body of nawabi buildings. The chapter undertakes a queer reading of British maps produced after 1857 for military purposes and for administering new control over the city. The maps help understand the extent and nature of damage to nawabi sites which led to their subsequent obscuration from public memory.
