Any celebration of Ahmedabad’s heritage as an icon of peace and unity (of Hindu, Muslim and Jain traditions) must be understood in light of the city’s profound anti-Dalit and anti-Muslim violence.

In July 2017, in recognition of its ‘universal value’, Ahmedabad became the first Indian city to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage City. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani and citizens alike wasted no time in expressing their pride and joy. The mainstream media has echoed their justification of the syncretic Jain, Islamic and Hindu heritage of the pols (neighbourhoods) in the walled city, as well as the proximate connection to Gandhian politics as accounting for Ahmedabad’s universal value. Ahmedabad’s inclusion is part of UNESCO’s race to rectify its racism, since a vast majority of UNESCO heritage sites are in Europe. Indian pride might have to do with a patiently-waiting people winning a difficult race through which their history and culture is finally viewed as ‘universally valuable’. If this designation incites genuine political will in saving a rich and crumbling heritage, this is a moment to gloat for all those well-heeled Indians who have compared sites abroad to those at home and felt shame. But I want to encourage pause to consider the global, national and local implications of this designation for Ahmedabad.

When colonial capitalism meets heritage planning

I view the UNESCO designation as one outcome of an ordinary violence under way in Ahmedabad at least since the 1980s, culminating in the pogrom of 2002 and obscured in a variety of ways since. Let us consider Ahmedabad’s designation in the context of broader global creative economy planning discourses and politics, and understand how such a discourse gains traction in Ahmedabad. Interestingly, in 2016, Modi named Ahmedabad a ‘Smart City’ for its sustainability and inclusiveness. Although the heritage designation appears to celebrate the past and seems antithetical to the futurism of the Smart City discourse, both are a part of the broader creative economy planning discourse. When in 2006, Richard Florida wrote in the Times of India that “creativity, it seems, is in India’s DNA”, he contributed to popularising the fuzziness between planning heritage and planning futures. Florida is the Canada-based business school professor who initiated the deeply-flawed creative cities theory that corporates, planners and municipalities have adopted all over North America, the UK and Australia. Since 2008, when UN documents quoted Florida’s theories and named the creative economy sector a ‘feasible development option’, his already-discredited and now recanted theories began being enforced as a means of development. His theory claims that post-industrial cities could be regenerated by attracting the talented, tolerant and technologically-savvy. For Florida, there is no contradiction in noting that creativity is in the Indian DNA (ancient and genetic), and claiming that Indians have not harnessed it well. An age-old colonial relation is at work here: the underdeveloped have resources but they don’t understand its value or how to use it, so we will teach them (at a price) how to be the best stewards of their own resources.

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The ignored biases  

The compensatory optimism around creative livelihoods effectively suggests that impoverished municipalities and especially the migrant, Dalit and Muslim poor in cities can develop their tangible and intangible cultural heritage – monuments and cultural practices – in order to feed themselves. But this is like suggesting that the poor, who are hungry and lack jobs matched to present skills or capital, could instead become entrepreneurs in developing the creative economy sector, of which the heritage sector is a significant part in India. They are saying to the poor: eat heritage (or cake) if you don’t have bread. They claim that the creative economy sector saves the poor, because everyone is creative. For once, the means of production belongs to everyone. What’s not to like?

What this sentimental optimism about the creative sector hides from view is that not everyone gets to shape what counts as ‘creative’ or what counts as ‘heritage’. Indeed, as numerous anti-caste and Dalit scholars and activists from Gopal Guru to Sheetal Sathe have pointed out, canonical heritage, intellect and creativity has long been consolidated and controlled by ‘upper’ castes who variously prohibit, cleanse and deny the ever-present work of indigenous, Dalit and Muslim practices. Quite contrary to Florida then, creativity is apparently not in every Indian’s DNA. But perhaps it is not surprising that Florida’s characterisation resonates deeply with a casteist India that prefers an ahistorical view of its tolerance and creativity.

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Whose heritage counts

This reality should prompt us to ask: Whose heritage counts? Whose conservation work counts? Furthermore, any celebration of Ahmedabad’s heritage and its walled city as an icon of peace and unity (of Hindu, Muslim and Jain traditions) must be understood in light of this city as a profound site of anti-Dalit and anti-Muslim violence and exclusion made ordinary. Of the numerous waves of modernisation and beautification drives in this city’s history, the Vibrant Gujarat campaign launched in 2003 has specifically celebrated the heritage and culture of the city as an explicit means to invite capital investment for Gujarat’s corporate model of development. The government of Gujarat paid Rs 15 lakh per month for conducting the Vibrant Gujarat advertising campaign to the American public relations firm APCO, whilst relentlessly excluding Islamic culture in its representations. The modernising AMC has worked with architects like Debashish Nayak (director of the Centre for Heritage Management), Balkrishna Doshi and Bimal Patel. Plans have been put forward to construct a Cultural Mile Precinct on the west bank of the Sabarmati river while the displacement of working class populations living on the river banks continues apace.

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A real reconstruction of heritage 

Consider finally the case of the Chharas, who live in the vicinity of the former textile mills in Ahmedabad. The Chhara had lived and laboured in captivity under British rule until 1951, when Jawaharlal Nehru denotified the legal status of criminal tribes. The Chharas were granted land near their former settlement to build their residences, where present-day Chharanagar is located. Some worked in the textile mills. Meanwhile, the former settlement was turned into a beggar’s home. Following Indian Institute of Management professor Navdeep Mathur’s letter to UNESCO, UNESCO wrote to the AMC seeking inclusion of Chharanagar, (as well as Gulbai Tekra and Gujari Bazar) in Ahmedabad’s heritage city proposal. But this request didn’t gain traction with the AMC. Significantly, Reliance Industries also has its eyes on the former Chhara settlement since that land lies in close proximity to Naroda Industrial Area and significant state highways. Such are the politics of the Heritage City status. Celebrating cake while taking bread and land away. Heritage politics goes together with revaluing and raising real estate value. For the urban poor the world over, far too often, this revaluation spells gentrification and another rationale for displacement.

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