This thesis critically surveys heritage management in present day India and the legislative apparatus that underpins it. Keeping within the Indian context, the research seeks to verify the suitability of the strategies that are upheld by the institutional and legislative setup of architectural conservation practices for present day India. This appraisal would be based on the premise that preservation, as it is currently understood in India, is a product of modernity and in India’s case the direct import of the Western construct of these disciplines during the colonial period. This is made evident from the history and origins of the interest in Indian antiquity as well as the development of the formalized discipline of archaeology and antiquity management.

Despite the fact that India has been independent from colonial British rule for sixty one years, the legislation that continue to underpin the heritage management policies of India have remained unrevised for fifty of those years with the exception of a few minor amendments. The current active piece of legislation is in fact a slight variation on the one laid down by the British more than a century ago. Consequently, India’s prevalent heritage management policies are not only outdated, but also contextually unsuitable since it originates from a non-indigenous and particularly colonial mode of thinking.

The research primarily focuses on the practices of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the formal institution concerned with upholding the legislation concerning heritage. Using case studies the contextual suitability of the prevalent preservation policies have been analyzed through the successes and failures of the ASI in the cases under consideration. The argument is extended to the conceptual notions of time and the past as signified by the current preservation laws and studying them in contrast with alternative approaches to those notions. It is concluded that present day heritage management practices in India have reinterpreted the past, removing it from active participation in the present and made it into the revered but uncomfortable ‘other’, always to be negotiated as opposed to being incorporated or appropriated.

In response to these findings, an alternative for this current structure of heritage management in India has been proposed as part of the conclusion. To supplement this proposal, recommendations have been made for administrative and legislative modifications that would take place through reorganization of the existing institutional infrastructure. Time lapse has been built into the proposal to incorporate the short term and long term goals. The goal for this thesis is that that it could be useful as a starting point for a more in-depth proposal that can be implemented and is not confined to being an academic exploration alone.