Heritage Conservation in Postcolonial India

Approaches and Challenges

Manish Chalana, Ashima Krishna, Manish Chalana, Ashima Krishna

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000296365
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arquitectura
• Subtopic: Preservación histórica en la arquitectura

Heritage Conservation in Postcolonial India seeks to position the conservation profession within historical, theoretical, and methodological frames to demonstrate how the field has evolved in the postcolonial decades and follow its various trajectories in research, education, advocacy, and practice.

Split into four sections, this book covers important themes of institutional and programmatic developments in the field of conservation; critical and contemporary challenges facing the profession; emerging trends in practice that seek to address contemporary challenges; and sustainable solutions to conservation issues.

The cases featured within the book elucidate the evolution of the heritage conservation profession, clarifying the role of key players at the central, state, and local level, and considering intangible, minority, colonial, modern, and vernacular heritages among others.

This book also showcases unique strands of conservation practice in the postcolonial decades to demonstrate the range, scope, and multiple avenues of development in the last seven decades. An ideal read for those interested in architecture, planning, historic preservation, urban studies, and South Asian studies.

Part I

Developments in heritage conservation: Institutions and programs

1 The evolving role of India’s foremost heritage custodian

The Archaeological Survey of India

Saptarshi Sanyal

Introduction

Both students and independent practitioners of heritage conservation in India have, for long, viewed the policies and/or actions of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) rather cautiously. This stemmed from a general rhetoric in Indian professional circles about the agency being intellectually and administratively ill-equipped to carry out appropriate conservation practices. Public opinion about the organisation’s high-handedness and resistance to change also prevailed. Coming from a background in conservation training, this outlook persisted in the initial phase of my tenure at the ASI as an in-house conservation architect from 2010 until 2013. In this chapter I draw on my experience of working within the ASI and how some of the negative perceptions about the agency were consequently challenged. Through the forthcoming discussions, I demonstrate how the ASI has the capacity to evolve its professional practices by recognising the value of a protracted engagement with archaeological sites and structures over time.

The ASI has had separate organisational wings for archaeology and conservation – a legacy of the British era where the latter field was dealt in a technocratic manner. Consequently, history and scholarship about material remains (archaeology) and their physical conservation were seen as unrelated endeavours. Even today, conservation work is entrusted to a separate section under ‘engineering’. This organisational structure has a negative impact on conservation sites, as on-site investigations and technical intervention tend to be divided by rubrics of the humanities and applied sciences. In this work I demonstrate how integration of research and on-site interventions can transform practice and challenge certain stereotypes about the ASI. I also argue that the agency is capable of carrying out conservation of sites internally in a cost-effective manner without having to rely on private consultants.

Legacy and evolution of the ASI

Established in 1861 in British India, the ASI is one of the oldest technical arms of the present Government of India. It has a legacy of over a century and half of exploration, identification, and notification of heritage sites in the country. A substantial portion of India’s material heritage has therefore historically been synonymous with the ASI. With the Constitution of India recognising built heritage as a significant public good (Ministry of Law and Justice 2015, 24; 325–328)¹ , the ASI was considered instrumental in implementing this national responsibility. Consequently, in independent India, it was formally elevated to the status of a premier organisation under the Ministry of Culture. Protection, management, conservation, and maintenance of built heritage have been among the ASI’s prime concerns, besides regulation of archaeological activities and antiquities. As of 2020, the organisation protects and maintains more than 3500 sites in the country (ASI 2011). It is also the nodal agency and custodian of 26 of India’s 30 (cultural)² World Heritage Sites (WHC 2020). In addition, it carries out ‘deposit works’³ for heritage properties under other institutions, both within and outside the country (ASI 2006).

In the post-colonial context, the ASI has been extensively, and legitimately so, critiqued for perpetuating outdated ‘colonial’ paradigms in many areas. The criticisms pertain to ad hoc problem-solving and approaches to repair and maintenance, often uninformed by research and by previous interventions, which could lead to misguided efforts. The ASI’s legal protection framework and approaches to conservation have also been discussed critically both nationally and internationally (Allchin 1978, 747–752). This is primarily with regard to the mode in which monuments or sites are maintained as ‘artefacts’, often disconnected from their living contexts while alienating local populations: a major social concern. The agency is also criticised in the public eye for outsourcing work to private consultants, which raises questions about long-term accountability, sustainability, and monitoring of actions on sites (Anand 2015; Casey 1995).

It is in this context that an approach of critical and continuous engagement with sites within the ASI constitutes an important methodological departure. This is presented in further detail in the sections that follow, through two distinct cases. It may be noted that such a shift is not unprecedented. The Integrated Management Plan for the Hampi World Heritage Site is a relevant recent example, which endeavoured to bring several public and private sector agencies together under a joint long-term programme for spatial heritage management within a legal framework (Thakur 2007, 32–36). The ASI was a major stakeholder in this effort, which highlighted a significant step towards an emerging conservation paradigm in post-colonial India. Such a paradigm, however, is not without challenges in the ASI’s resource-starved bureaucratic context. The problems of not fully assessing a site’s values, attributes and condition has undermined the potential of the ASI’s work for decades. Many sites lack comprehensive documentation and current scholarly perspectives are not engaged. As a result, actions that are detrimental to a site’s history and continuity inform interventions. Therefore, use of historical and contemporary research sources to inform appropriate on-site intervention strategies is critical. First, it adds to extant knowledge about the site. Second, it generates a continuous record of historic and recent interventions to guide future action, completing a ‘feedback loop’ on the performance of conservation action, as well as the future monitoring of the sites and structures.

The Sun Temple at Konarak

Located in close proximity to the shores of the Bay of Bengal, the Sun Temple falls within the historic Kalinga region, which now roughly constitutes the eastern state of Odisha (formerly Orissa) in India. The site represents a culmination of several centuries of temple building in the region (Donaldson 2005; Starza-Majeswski 1971, 135). It is one of the largest and most elaborate building projects among contemporary temples under the Ganga rulers demonstrating both continuity and innovation within canonical traditions (Behera 1996, 128). It is also one of the earliest World Heritage Sites to be inscribed from India, in 1984, based on three of the six cultural criteria of UNESCO. These include criterion I: representation of a unique artistic achievement; criterion III: outstanding testimony to the thirteenth-century kingdom of Odisha; criterion VI: link in the diffusion of the Tantric cult of Surya (Sun) worship (WHC 2018).

The site was in partial ruin even at the time of the UNESCO inscription. Its structures include an audience hall (or jagamohana), the base of the main sanctuary and the roofless dance hall (or natmandir) along with remains of two older temples within its walled premises. Along with its architectural form and scale, criterion I is also justified by all structures exhibiting some of the most outstanding examples of sculptural art in India (ICOMOS 1984) (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Remains of sanctuary and audience hall (jagmohana) of the Temple from the west, showing the form and scale of the structure (left); view of the Dance Hall from the east (right). Source: Author, 2010

This broad knowledge on what survives at the site was complemented by the work of the ASI team from 2010–12. The team, including the author, comprising archaeologists, conservators, and engineers, focused their work on the structural and fabric assessment for potential conservation interventions in the audience hall. In this case, a detailed current examination of the structure was compared with relevant historical evidence. These records included a palm leaf manuscript, Madala Panji, and the book of accounts, Byaya Chakada, which described the materials, construction process, and the structure’s physical state over time, respectively. (Local historians contributed in the process by examining the indigenous cultural records.) The team also critically looked into the authenticity of these records, which has been questioned by some historians (Behera 1996, 178–180).⁴ This helped to isolate the credible sources for understanding the physical state of the structure over time. Important information about the site chronicled by Emperor Akbar’s historian, Abu-al-Fazl, whose sixteenth-century account describes with dimensions, the whole temple, was especially relevant (Jarrett and Sarkar 1949, 140–141). Its various states of disrepair were described by the Marathas’ Baba Brahmachari in 1759; British explorer Andrew Sterling in 1825; and engineer Bishan Swarup in 1910 (Sharma and Sanyal 2010, 15–18). Swarup was incidentally involved in the largest and most lasting intervention in the audience hall, the filling of its interior; his drawings of civil works greatly informed specific approaches within the project.

In addition to these texts, images of the site from the nineteenth century, held in the British Library’s India Office Collection provided significant evidence on the past conditions of the site. Apart from the exterior views painted by the East India Company’s artists in 1809 and 1820, and James Fergusson’s detailed lithograph of 1837, William George Stephen’s 1812 painting comprised key sources for the studies (Bose 1926, 150–152). Stephen’s painting is, until today, the only available visual representation of the interior of the audience hall’s structure.

These visuals were also corroborated by two important publications that provided detailed overviews of interventions carried out by both the British government’s District Commissioner in Puri, and, subsequently, the ASI in independent India (Mitra 1968, 13–23; Chauley 1997). For a deeper appreciation of technical issues, various experts’ recommendations over time were consulted. Some important ones included Sir Bernard Feilden’s (1987) and Prof. Giorgio Croci’s (1995) observations about the structural condition of the site. In addition, the ASI’s Science Branch reports (2010) explained the structure and materials’ physical and chemical properties. Apart from this scientific information, early twentieth-century images, from both the Asiatic Society and National Library Archives in Kolkata (Fergusson 1860; Mukherjee 1910), helped to corroborate the various states of conservation of the fabric and structure. All this information, collectively, supplied invaluable data for the project.

The project’s approach combined several methods: physical examination, critical review of sources of documentation, and previous research and site inspections. The team took into account relevant evidence, instead of purely aiming for cosmetic repairs of the ‘visible’. This process of research also developed a shared understanding of conservation priorities within the organisation. It brought about an informed approach that helped to delineate focussed goals for the site’s conservation.

Ahom monuments at Sivasagar

Within the wide river valley landscape of Dikhow and its tributary stream, Namdang, Sivasagar’s architectural and archaeological remains are a lasting legacy of its Ahom rulers. Located in the upper Assam region in northeast India, Sivasagar is now a district that borders the present state of Nagaland. Historians trace the origins of the Ahoms to travelling clans from geographical areas east of the Brahmaputra Valley, narrating their political control over much of the northeastern region of India for nearly six hundred years, beginning in 1228 CE (Gait 1906, 67–229). The region is significant for retaining a large variety of building types from different time periods, embodying a variety of building traditions in brick, stone, and lime (Phukan 1973, 131–133). Both continuities and mutations of these building traditions also comprise an important testimony to the various cultural exchanges that the Ahoms partook in since the sixteenth century with Brahmanical as well as Indo-Islamic ideologies (Gogoi 2011, 207).

Representing the ASI’s Regional Directorate (East), and supported by its Guwahati Circle’s conservation personnel, photographers, and archaeologists, the author carried out a literature survey and preliminary reconnaissance at Sivasagar. There was a large gap between existing cultural histories for Sivasagar and available site specific information. Gai...