Our society has an ambivalent attitude towards the protection of architectural heritage

Our society has an ambivalent attitude towards the protection of architectural heritage. On the one hand we are justifiably proud of the diverse and abundant evidence of our ancient civilisation, on the other we often prevaricate unjustifiably when it comes to protecting it. The most common rationalisation against conservation pits the imperatives of development against those of conservation, but there are other, more insidious, prejudices rooted in majoritarian political or cultural ideologies that determine which buildings should be protected. Of course, one could argue that in an economically developing and culturally transforming society such contestations are to be expected, but in the last year in particular, the anti-conservation attitudes have hardened and government policies have become a veritable assault on architectural heritage. Given our past commitment to conserving our historic monuments and the plural nature of what was conserved, this was hardly expected.

In May 2015, the Central government summarily withdrew, without consulting the project proponents, the government of Delhi, the application it had submitted to nominate Delhi to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Cities. The state government had viewed the nomination as a strategy to boost tourism and strengthen the economic base of Delhi while simultaneously enhancing its image as the iconic capital of India. The newly elected Central government, however, viewed it, naively, as anti-development.  ... 

Since the withdrawal of the nomination, the Central government has reinforced its opposition to the significance of architectural heritage of the city by introducing three policy initiatives in the guise of promoting “development”.

First, it instructed the Delhi Urban Art Commission (DUAC) to review the protection mechanism of the erstwhile imperial city, the so-called Lutyens Bungalow Zone (LBZ) and propose fresh guidelines for its re-development. This initiative catered to the sentiments of both the anti-colonial and the pro-development lobbies to justify what would otherwise be considered an act of vandalism ... 

Second, the Central government has become adamant in wanting to demolish the Hall of Nations in Pragati Maidan to build a “world-class” convention centre. The Hall of Nations is internationally recognised as an extraordinary example of modern Indian architecture. It is among the buildings that the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) has proposed to the DUAC and the Heritage Conservation Committee (HCC) for recognition as the modern architectural heritage of Delhi. ...

Third, the Central government now proposes to bypass all existing processes and civil society actors who are involved in conserving the architectural heritage of Delhi by empowering the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), an institution unambiguously controlled by the Central government, to take charge. ...

Independently, each policy initiative does not appear threatening, but seen together a pattern emerges that is an assault on the architectural heritage of Delhi. Perhaps in the context of the many other important issues confronting the city and civil society, this assault does not grab the attention of the media or the stakeholders, but the point I would like to highlight is it is symptomatic of the larger absence of public discourse in the formulation of public policy that has become worrisome. And as far as architectural heritage is concerned it makes official our society’s incipient ambivalence towards its protection.