Architecture, it may well be argued, isn't merely symptomatic of the state of aesthetics, but is also indicative of national identity. In India, the past few years have witnessed a revival of interest in the architecture of the Raj. Decried in the immediate post-Independence years as an alien grafting and subjected to modernist vandalism, colonial architecture has made a serious comeback in recent years-a consequence of India's growing self-confidence and faith in itself. Preservation and restoration of public buildings constructed in the high noon of Empire are now regarded as a legitimate activity. In the official value system of the Republic, Le Corbusier remains the politically-correct presiding deity. In the world of an India hesitantly chalking up a new imperial role, he has been subsumed by Edwin Lutyens.

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Tragically, the understated transition has been incomplete. Lutyens' greatest work, the Viceroy's House or Rashtrapati Bhavan as it is now called, may have been celebrated in India through two official publications in a decade, but there is a great deal of ignorance surrounding the architect whose creation symbolises the modern Indian state. Even his latter-day admirers are inclined to separate the artist and the man.

The artist is deified for his "Wrenaissance" but the man has been glossed over in embarrassed silence for his imperial arrogance. "I cannot," Lutyens had once written, "allow the superiority of the eastern over the western mind." To him, the Indian style was invariably "less intellectual".

THE ARCHITECT AND HIS WIFE: A LIFE OF EDWIN LUTYENS By Jane Ridley Chatto & Windus Price: Rs 1,193 Pages: 484

This biography of Lutyens by his great granddaughter Jane Ridley helps to set the balance right. Meticulously researched, it is both a sympathetic and an unflinching study of the architect and his hideously complex wife Emily. It does not try to gloss over the comic pompousness of Lutyens, his clumsy fractiousness and his tortured personal life. In the best traditions of British biographies, it merely puts it in a context, even an Indian context.

Lutyens' encounter with India was not confined to the building of the new imperial capital in Delhi. India, in a sense, haunted Lutyens through much of his married life, courtesy Emily's bizarre dalliance with Annie Besant and her Theosophical Society. It is this story of Emily's obsessive involvement in the wacky cult centred on perverse mysticism-Francis Younghusband once described the Theosophists as a haven for "neurotic and partially educated ladies"-that makes this book enthralling.

Emily's infatuation with the young J. Krishnamurti-flaunted as a divine reincarnation-and his brother Nitya, her relations with the domineering Besant and the pathetic manner in which the whole group kowtowed before a disoriented teenager who ended up renouncing the whole faith, are vividly described with a touch of wry humour. They provide the backdrop and an explanation for the tortured soul who took refuge in architecture to escape the madness in his personal life. Lutyens was endearingly referred to as Vishvakarman by Besant. To Lutyens, it was a compliment he could well have done without. Following his personal experiences, India, to him, seemed a place where the sun had undoubtedly taken its toll.

LUTYENS' MASTERPIECE: Rashtrapati Bhavan

One way, apart from his unrelenting devotion to work, Lutyens sought to escape the insanity of his family life was in keeping alive his sense of humour. A fellow Englishman once described him as a "divine imp, sillier than anything I have dreamed of". It summed up his infuriating penchant for puns-"India expects every man to do his dhoti" and "They want me to do Hindu. Hindon't I say," are two of the worst examples.

Simultaneously, Lutyens was not an easy man to get along with. A public man with a high social standing-he was elected president of the British Academy-he was involved in umpteen controversies, most of which stemmed from his utter inability to handle officialdom and tolerate departures from classicism. The most publicised was his battle with Herbert Baker over the gradient of Raisina Hill. He lost that battle and remained bitter till the end of his life. In 1931, he challenged Baker to give a public explanation for the gradient, otherwise "his record in the archives of posterity will not be an enviable one". As Ridley writes, "He had lost his artist's control; and the iron ate into his soul."

Fortunately, bitterness never impaired his architecture. When Lutyens rode into the sunset in 1944, he had made his mark as England's greatest architect of the century-a man who shaped English sensibilities but whose greatest creation was in India.