Center for South Asia Weekly Lecture Series: Ujaan Ghosh (PhD Student, Art History, UW-Madison)

This article interrogates the urbanization of Puri at the wake of the cholera epidemic in the latter half the nineteenth century. The colonial state took steps to reorder the urban landscape. However, in Puri the narrative of infrastructural development gets slightly complicated with the presence of the Temple of Jagannath which acted as an alternative public body. , I argue the urban landscape of Puri could only develop through an interaction and negotiation between temple and state.