Searching for a new approach to development, tourism, and local needs at the grand medieval city of Hampi - JOHN M. FRITZ and GEORGE MICHELL

John M. Fritz, an archaeologist and consulting scientist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, and architectural historian George Michell, professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne, studied the medieval city of Vijayanagara in southern India, also known as Hampi, for more than 20 years. Recently, the Archaeological Survey of India assumed control of Hampi village within the site, evicting the local community. Fritz and Michell reflect on their long history at Hampi and their ideas for managing “living heritage.”

When we first arrived at Hampi, in the state of Karnataka in southern India, in 1980, we encountered a landscape strewn with huge granite boulders and the scattered remnants of a once great city, known during its heyday from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries as Vijayanagara, the City of Victory. The ruins, rarely visited and picturesquely overgrown, consisted of fort walls and gateways, audience halls and pleasure pavilions, and numerous temples and shrines

Though many of the remains were under the protection of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the Karnataka Department of Archaeology and Museums (KDAM), there was a sense then that the place had hardly been touched since January 1565, when the city was sacked by the troops of the neighboring Deccan sultanates and then abandoned. It was like walking into an old engraving. We have, in the 30 years since then, seen many changes come to that landscape, but few as dramatic as what has happened to the site in just the last few years. 

Back in 1980, one small part of the site showed signs of life: The village of Hampi bustled in themiddle of what we came to call the Sacred Center of Vijayanagara. A few simple houses clustered around a walled temple consecrated to Virupaksha, a form of the Hindu god Shiva. The medieval temple was, and still is, a place of worship, with resident priests and regular pious visitors. Just in front of the temple’s 160-foot-tall gopuram, or lofty towered gateway, was a broad street that stretched almost half a mile. The street was lined with granite columns that had originally accommodated a market. Portuguese traders who visited in the early sixteenth century wrote that it was stocked with food of all kinds, birds and other animals, and even precious stones, including diamonds. By 1980, there was little besides the columns to recall those times of splendor. But the street was still a commercial center, however modest, known to locals as “Hampi Bazaar.” Between the columns nearest the temple were souvenir stalls; a simple “hotel” offering tea, coffee, and vegetarian meals and snacks;and a bank, presumably with the temple as its principal customer. Each year in March or April, the festival celebrating the marriage of Virupaksha returned to Hampi each winter, with teams of archaeology and architecture students from Indian and foreign universities, to map the medieval city and document its surviving art and architecture. Over those years, we saw the bazaar evolve in ways we never would have expected.1

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No archaeological remains are independent of their surrounding environment. In Hampi’s case some of these features were linked with traditions of the Ramayana, and its natural setting was important to reconstruct the evolution of Hampi as an archaeological site which was the centre of an empire. Moreover most of the people inhabiting Hampi bazaar are descendants of the original populace of the place. In the words of Fritz and Mitchell in a recent report against the bazaar demolition going on in Hampi by the authorities, “By 2002, when we wound up our project, Hampi had become world famous, with thousands of tourists arriving in vehicles ranging from three-wheeled auto-rickshaws to air-conditioned cars and buses. The local population had also grown dramatically, and the columns of the bazaar hosted a wide variety of shops and services, such as stores selling film, toys, guidebooks and maps, as well as restaurants with quasi-European menus, travel agencies, Internet cafes, and more. In contrast to the exposed ruins of much of Vijayanagara, Hampi Bazaar was a welcome respite where visitors could find shade and refreshment. Though these modern businesses were occupying the mediaeval site, they seemed perfectly appropriate — they recovered some of the original function and spirit of the bazaar.”

Hampi Bazaar grew, and the growth was seen by the authorities as a desecration of the natural archaeological heritage of the site. In 2003 the ASI commissioned an Integrated Management Plan for the entire Vijayanagara site which recognized the exceptional value of the Hampi Bazaar. But no immediate restrictions were put on the rapid constructions going on, which should and could have been done. By 2010 when the ASI assumed control of the Virupaksha Temple and Hampi Bazaar it declared all the population to be squatters without any rights and all their stalls, shops, restaurants, and dwellings were declared as illegal encroachments irrespective of tenure of occupancy. The district commissioner with the advice of the ASI ordered the bazaar and surrounding buildings be demolished. In July 2011 bulldozers came into Hampi “removing the shops ,stalls and hotels, and in some cases damaging the original mediaeval fabric of the bazaar” (Fritz & Mitchell). This was in contrariness to the Integrated Management Plan and UNESCO Listing which never envisioned the demolishment of the bazaar and removal of its population. Both had recognized the bazaar as integral to the site.

Naturally these matters resulted in a massive outcry by the local population which had been resident for several decades and contributed to the continuity of traditions at Hampi as a living heritage. Suddenly to be evicted and their businesses demolished was intolerable. I feel a larger lesson is to be had from the Hampi experiment by the authorities. India has thousands of similar sites which face similar problems. It is especially important to note that the nation is currently in a state of civil war in several provinces. Such matters only exacerbate local tensions and lead to no good – apart from archaeological purposes. Hampi is receiving much publicity and the government’s unsympathetic as well as insensitive approach to archaeological conditions expressed in destroying ”living cultural traditions” is incurring the wrath and criticism of international experts, none of which is good either for ourselves, the people or the sites concerned. I think restraint by the authorities is immediately called for We are aware also of the complete insensitivity to such sites and their importance by the Departments of Culture and Tourism as well as ASI in such matters. These kinds of developments put the sites directly at risk, not less by vandalism which finds a fertile soil in times of societal imbalance. No traditional people at a heritage site may be alienated without dire consequences to the site itself.2