Ahmedabad as World Heritage Site: Do we really care about our inheritance?
Last week gave heritage lovers reason to rejoice. Ahmedabad became the first Indian city to be declared a World Heritage Site (WHS) chosen along with the cities of Asmara in Eritrea (Africa) and Yazd in Iran.
UNESCO in its 41st session of the World Heritage Committee, held in the beautiful city of Krakow in Poland, inscribed 21 new sites on their WHS register.
Ahmedabad, a well-deserved selection, beat Delhi and Varanasi to the finishing line. It now stands among the prestigious heritage cities of Edinburgh, Dubrovnik, Luxembourg, Bath, Berne, Vatican and the like.
Chandigarh, the only other city from India in the UNESCO list, is part of the architectural work of Le Corbusier, as the Compelxe du Capitole, a 17 site transnational serial property including Le Corbusier’s works from as far as Japan and Argentina.
While celebrations are mandatory, we must also reaffirm that the UNESCO tag does not come with a lifetime guarantee. It comes with riders, it in fact adds more responsibility to preserve and protect the heritage.
A reason why a number of countries refrain from putting certain heritage on the UNESCO list or some others like the Dresden Elbe Valley in Germany that pulled out due to compulsions of development.
As Germany stood steadfast on its decision to build a four-lane bridge in the heart of the Valley, UNESCO delisted the site. A similar decision that it took when Oman decided to substantially reduce the protected area of the Arabian Oryx Sanctuary, which was home to the rare antelope.
From time to time, UNESCO puts certain listed properties on the Danger list when it sees a threat to them from development or natural disasters. The only site that came close enough in India was Hampi when two bridges were to be built across the Tungabhadara River.
So while getting the site listed is an extremely difficult and laborious task, what is more important and difficult is to maintain these sites as well. A city as large as Ahmedabad would therefore need to work even harder to ensure that the properties are maintained and preserved being a mix of government, institutional and private properties. The people would have to be made to feel as much a part of the heritage, to own it and save it.
Recent events in the North East have raised the relevance of such heritage properties for common people. The Darjeeling Himalayan Railways (DHR), which was listed as a WHS in 1999, was vandalised by agitators as part of the ongoing agitation for Gorkhaland in West Bengal.
DHR, opened in 1881, is an outstanding example of a hill passenger railway built by the British and operational till date, thanks to the Indian Railways. Subsequently, with the addition of the Nilgiri Mountain Railway in 2005 and the Kalka-Shimla Railway in 2008, the listing came to be known as the Mountain Railways of India.
The recent agitations saw the burning down of DHR railway stations and this is not the first time that agitators have vandalised the heritage site. Agitators, whom we presume are local people who should be proud of their heritage, targeted their own property. If we are so proud of these mountain railways then why did the agitators burn the station of this heritage site? Do the locals not see it as their heritage?
We know of the dynamiting of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban as they did not see it as their culture, we know of the destruction of the Mostar Bridge by the Croats as they saw it as a symbol of Bosnian identity. But how come locals from West Bengal are burning their own heritage? Did they not see it as their identity?
To get an administration or government to pay heed to your demands is one thing; but for that do you burn your own house? Agitators usually burn and ransack other people’s property or public property, as they don’t see it as theirs.
If that is the case, then perhaps the agitators saw the heritage property as somebody else’s and not their own. They perhaps do not see it as a symbol of their identity or part of their heritage.
This is also observed when locals go to tourist sites and either they don't hesitate to dirty the place or leave ugly graffiti behind. It’s because they see the heritage property as something that belongs to the government and not as part of their own heritage.
Have we then failed to evoke a sense of pride and a sense of belonging in people? What the government proposes as places of value for Indian heritage and culture are perhaps being seen as government buildings under protection. There is possibly no sense of community heritage in these sites for the locals.
If people of one state valued the trees and stood embracing them as part of the Chipko movement because they valued it, why won’t people stand up against vandalisation of heritage? Is it because we don’t identify with it or share its heritage value? Do we still view it as fragmented heritage, or that belonging to certain kings or rulers and not of the common man?
If in 70 years of our independence we have not managed to evoke a sense of value among people, then will we be able to protect the other heritage, which we so proudly keep listing on international registers?
What guarantee do we have that UNESCO will not want to review the DHR and put it on the danger list? What guarantee do we have that locals won’t go about vandalising heritage cities? What guarantee do we have that these listings will instill a sense of history and heritage among the local community?
Should we then not be investing energy to understand what people value as their heritage and what they would want listed and preserved? Should we not have a dialogue to share why these heritage properties belong to the people and tell a history about them to the world?
Because if we don’t form a common thread now, then we’ll continue to burn down our own heritage and soon, we’ll have no heritage left to see, list or preserve!
Also read: Why doesn't Modi government want Delhi to be a World Heritage City?