Hold on to the past and put it to good use

Ratish Nanda

INDIA takes pride in being an ancient culture. Yet, we protect less than 3,700 monuments of national importance. The states and municipalities together protect a similar number. By comparison, New York City has almost 30,000 heritage buildings protected by law. In the United Kingdom, close to 600,000 heritage buildings are recognized and protected.

Sadly, heritage in India is seen as a burden and not the economic asset that it can be. We at the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) have demonstrated through our work at Humayun’s Tomb and Sunder Nursery in Delhi and the Qutb Shahi Heritage Park in Hyderabad that national heritage can significantly improve the quality of life of urban populations.

The BJP manifesto for 2024 promised: “We will restore and preserve culturally important Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) monuments, re-igniting our rich heritage for the 21st century.” 

To ‘restore’ is to bring back the original condition and often requires multiple actions, including restoring of missing ornamentation and architectural elements. However, even 75 years after Independence, the  ASI continues to largely follow the colonial practice of ‘preservation’ — or minimum intervention even when some monuments have lost significant architectural elements. Even though restoration of ancient structures is not possible, I do hope the BJP manifesto does indeed aim to ‘restore’ a majority of our medieval national monuments.    

The following five actions would help realize this potential:

 

Choose major monuments in each of the ASI’s five regions and begin work

Conservation, even if only ‘preservation’ and not ‘restoration’, is needed across all of the 3,675 national monuments. However, if in the next five years pilot conservation/restoration projects can be undertaken at major monuments in each of the five ASI regions, that would revitalize both the ASI and the state departments of archaeology. These pilot projects at grand sites should focus on conservation but also include landscape and ecological restoration.

The AKTC’s conservation of more than 60 monuments in Delhi and more than 100 in Hyderabad required over 1.5 million man-days of work by master craftsmen. This job creation is a byproduct of conservation and could be funded by schemes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). 

 

Get companies into building tourism infrastructure

Despite 30 years of liberalization, the responsibility for national monuments has only been seen to devolve upon the Central government/ASI. The recently launched ‘Adopt  Heritage’ scheme allowing companies to use CSR funds to build tourism infrastructure — site museums, parking, toilets, signage, illumination — at national monuments is a step in the right direction. Already, IndiGo has demonstrated the value of the scheme at Rahim’s mausoleum in Delhi. However, the ASI must ensure that misguided companies do not use the scheme to compromise the significance of national monuments by reducing them to backdrops for corporate events or, worse, using CSR funds for activities they are not permitted — such as building fine dining restaurants atop the monuments, as has already been proposed! Such misuse will no doubt incite public fury and kill a well-intentioned scheme.

    

Safeguard monuments against encroachment

Almost all our national monuments suffer from encroachment, even Humayun’s Tomb, the Red Fort and the Qutb Minar — World Heritage Sites located in the national capital.

At Tughlaqabad Fort, the erstwhile chowkidar of the ASI encouraged encroachment and over 200,000 people today inhabit the fort. There are even more at Golconda!

The ASI monuments are also valuable land holdings for the Central government and it has to be a priority for the new government to secure our national heritage from encroachment. 

     

Use heritage to enhance the quality of life for local communities

Well-conserved/restored national heritage sites, through instilling a sense of pride as well as creating jobs and wealth, can also be used by local communities. In Nizamuddin, the AKTC’s conservation effort was coupled with significant effort to create health and education infrastructure, provide vocational training opportunities, instal public toilets for pilgrims, undertake urban and housing improvements, and do landscaping of public parks, amongst other benefits for residents.

If the ASI can partner with civil society organizations to provide similar benefits to needy communities living near monuments, then in future years our national built heritage will be seen for the national asset it is and, just like the environment, receive public support for conservation.   

 

Set up site museums to help people understand heritage

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has mandated that site museums be set up for all World Heritage Sites and Tentative World Heritage Sites, across the world. Conservation of model national sites should be followed by creation of site museums/interpretation centres to allow visitors/tourists to understand the cultural context in which the sites were built and the reason for their significance.

Site museums need to be innovative, use modern technology to appeal to a younger audience, inform and educate in a manner that generates additional interest in the site. In doing so, they can help build bridges between communities, generate significant tourism if well designed and serve as an important 21st century layer at historic sites.  

 

Ratish Nanda is CEO, Aga Khan Trust for Culture.