In my essay published in The Indian Express on the 3rd of June 2018 (http://indianexpress.com/article/express-sunday-eye/whose-fort-is-it-anyway-red-fort-controversy-5200389/), I had underlined
‘the need to remind ourselves about the pertinence of the question: “Whose Fort
is it, anyway”?’ And the necessity to take the ‘opportunity to own our right
and our responsibility for the custody of our heritage.’
I had also written that:
‘So far, we have interpreted
‘custody’—whose dictionary meanings are both ‘protective care’ and
‘imprisonment’—within meanings that see people as interlopers. We need to now
see custodianship as protective care, both for the monuments we profess to
conserve, and the people whom we ostensibly conserve them for.’
Almost exactly a week after the piece
was published, I received a letter by post, from a resident of Pune. She
introduced herself as someone who had been born and brought up in Agra, and
wrote about the affinity she and other locals felt for the Mughal monuments
there. She wrote of memories of picnics spent in their grounds. And owned unequivocally
the familial bond they all felt for these buildings and their makers, as strong
as if these buildings were their parents. She went on to write:
‘You can consider this letter an answer to your
question “Whose Fort is it Anyway”. Not only this fort, but all monuments are
mine. They now belong to me as a citizen of India’.
This was the prelude to her telling me
in great detail about Burhanpur. About its history and architecture; its
palaces and serais, its qila and its hammams, its mosques and its gateways. She
told me about how local residents, hotel owners and historians, had taken her
around the city to reveal these to her, on her visit to Burhanpur. Of their concern
for the well-being of these buildings, and their efforts to catalyse government
officials. Of the threat to them from new construction, neglect and vandalism. She
requested me to use my ‘authority to help restore Burhanpur to its original
glory’.
This letter from a lady in Pune, who had
grown up in Agra, impelled by her great concern for the heritage of the city of
Burhanpur, is a powerful validation of the belief articulated in my essay that:
‘This is true not just for the Fort. Other, less complex sites, which have seen
less transformation, will also have many stories, individual and unique to them…They
will also need to be interpreted and integrated with people around them.’
In the letter that I wrote back to
her, I had to inform her that I do not have any authority as an individual to
do what she asked. What I did suggest as a way forward, was that local
residents take ownership of their heritage, of which monuments are an important
part.
How?
One
possible answer lies in an experiment done as part of a working group called the Friends of ASI (FrASI). The idea of the group
was a brainchild of Professor Narayani Gupta, and was
set up as a 150th
anniversary present to the Archaeological
Survey of India. The main reason for such a designated group, was the gap between
the ASI as official custodians of much of our tangible history, and the rest of
us; as well as a need to re-evaluate what should
be the role of the ASI as official custodians. As one member of the group put it, ‘as
friends we needed to bring out the strengths of the ASI anchored to their core
objectives for the benefit of the public at large and for the future
generations of this country’, and ‘move away from a ‘UNESCO-centric’ view of
heritage’ to preserve our diverse cultural wealth in the light of our own
distinct cultural values.[1]
We felt that the trust-building had to be a
two-way process, and just as it was important to highlight what the ASI did
‘well’, it was equally important to have a channel where people’s opinions of what
they did not manage to do so well, could be communicated directly to the ASI.
Also, rather than just have reactionary responses—such as providing feedback on
what the ASI has done, well or otherwise—the FrASI hoped to ensure more participation so
that communities and members of society could know beforehand what was planned for their city’s monuments and they
could have a say in the direction and intent of such planning. We thus, envisaged
the FrASI to be an initiative of civil society supporting and supported by the ASI.[2]
We planned to do
this in the historic area of Begumpur
and Bijay Mandal[3] primarily through dissemination of information: researched and culled from ASI
sources and from the inhabitants at site, two different sorts of histories. And involvement
at site: through planned activities where the local residents, the ASI, and visitors get
to know and understand each other as well as the site better; and consequently
work at improving the site and their relation with it.
The FrASI
managed to do some of this, over the span of one year, entirely through voluntary
efforts by different members, both within and outside the ASI. (https://friendsofasi.wordpress.com/2017/06/25/whose-site-is-it-anyway-the-question-of-custodianship/)
This shows that it is possible to work
towards integrating the needs of the inhabitants and the monuments. The main
reason why the experiment lapsed was that
we could not catalyse
lasting communication between the villagers, other local residents and
stakeholders and the ASI staff deputed at the site, and increase the band of Friends
at the local level. Some of us, key members of the initiative, lived 40 kms
away from the site.
For the
same reason, an initiative for the conservation of Burhanpur can only
be successful if its local residents and the local ASI jointly work as its
custodians. If the people who are closest to a
monument, are kept away from it by expending great effort in creating a lakshman rekha, and are deemed untrustworthy,
unfit, and unaware of the correct etiquette about how to behave in a monument, no
lasting conservation is possible. We should also remember that the very fact of
the existence of our unparalleled built heritage even before the formation of a
formal agency such as the ASI, shows that local people had responsibilities
that they lived up to—in their care for such heritage. All this implies that responsible local responses are the
only valid answer to the question of appropriate custodianship. And that the official
custodians of our monuments recognise this aspect, and give credence to it.
[2] A core team of the following members: B.M.Pande, Narayani Gupta, Janwhij
Sharma, B.R.Mani, Sohail Hashmi, Vivek Jindgar, Robinson, and Anisha Shekhar
Mukherji, was allocated the task of taking these suggestions forward, with help
from Shilpi Rajpal and Jennifer Chowdhary. Anisha was asked to serve as the
node for coordinating activities, and to summarize the way forward reached at
the end of the discussions of the First meeting to be shared with the rest of
the core team. Dr. B.M.Pande, ex DG ASI, Dr Narayani Gupta, Dr. Gautam
Sengupta, the then DG ASI, were seen as senior advisors to this group.
[3] Following from
the 21 May 2012 Site Visit
to Begumpur and Bijay Mandal, and the follow-up meetings/ email correspondence between various members)
