The need to preserve the archaeological and historical relics of India...

Professor Nayanjot Lahiri at the Global Education Summit at Presidency University, January 2017.



Professor Nayanjot Lahiri began by stating that she was very happy to be part of this global summit where experts from a variety of disciplines and from within and without India, had gathered to reflect on the challenges to higher education, today. She said that she had always worked with the ‘material relics’ of  India’s heritage and it gave her deep pleasure to speak  about this at Presidency which was itself a heritage institution. Professor Lahiri said that her lecture would not be on the teaching and research of the ‘material relics’ of India, which had been her academic focus for the last thirty five years. Rather she would speak on questions of how and why this heritage needed to be preserved and the role higher education could play in this...

It was Professor Lahiri’s opinion that as the U.G.C. had mandated that Environmental Education be made compulsory at both school and college levels, awareness of India’s heritage and the need to preserve it, should be advocated to students from the very beginning. Unless this was done we would only have a ‘present’ and a ‘future’ but no meaningful ‘past’,  In England, in parts of Europe, in Canada, in Australia, she said, building awareness of one’s heritage was part of the public education policy. She felt that heritage issues needed to come out of its confinement in governmental and bureaucratic circles and reach the public domain, involve the public in significant ways and achieve levels of effective advocacy through circles of higher education.  

Professor Lahiri said that as 1947 was a political watershed involving some of the worst ‘blood baths’ that History had witnessed,  it was also a watershed moment for the future of India’s ‘material relics’ or heritage in stone, architecture and other antiquities.    At the time of partition concerned authorities had to deal with a number of  the issues related not only to the partitioning of the treasures of the past, but also how traces/remains of the past, its historic sites and venues would be portrayed in a nation that just come out of the shadows of colonialism.

She raised the issue of the site of the Battle of Plassey (1757) first and the controversy over the representation of the site in post-independence India, as either one of victory for the British or one in which the British exploitative move of colonialism first registered itself in a definitive way.  Professor Lahiri said that the battle itself had been an insignificant one, but the British military success ensured that the British presence in Bengal henceforth was the most important one. As opinion against representing the site as one of victory for the British built up, the plaques commemorating the site as one were removed. Hence as it becomes obvious from Professor Lahiri’s lecture, as new models of historiography came up, and the history of the nation was rewritten at the junctures of colonialism and post colonialism, the narratives around historic sites and their official representation, underwent changes and modifications.

Another instance of significant change in how ‘relic’ landscapes were reordered and rearranged post Partition revolves around the maintenance of British graveyards in India. Through a 1949 legislation the British Parliament decided that henceforth it would only maintain those graveyards in India, which were most significant. The others should ‘revert to nature’ in a ‘dignified and decent manner’. Therefore, as in this instance, British ‘fiscal logic’ determined the face of India’s heritage maintenance. Professor Lahiri pointed out that of a certain British cemetery on the University of Delhi campus, only a gate remains. 

Yet another instance of the rewriting of heritage landscapes and profiles in India,  is the 1960’s Government of India decision to remove the statues of British viceroys near  India Gate in Delhi. In like manner, a statue of King George V was henceforth relegated to Coronation Park where there were other statues of eminent British personalities who had lived in India.   

Islamic heritage sites were also deeply affected, particularly in North India, details of which are to be obtained in the Archaeological Survey of India files. The Moti Masjid of Mehrauli and its marble minars were torn down and later reconstructed. Shah Alam’s grave and the sandstone jalis on it were also damaged.

Museum collections were also deeply impacted but due to a certain mutual respect and consideration that prevailed during these prolonged negotiations, a great measure of fairness and propriety was maintained. This is why Professor Lahiri maintained, why Delhi Museum had such a rich collection. However this process of museum partitioning no matter how well intentioned, had ironic and paradoxical pitfalls. The committee that was set up for this task was headed by Sir Mortimer Wheeler. A study of the correspondence during this time reveals anxiety that the arithmetic of the division be properly adhered to.  Yet, this adherence to arithmetic sometimes compromised the ‘integrity of the object’ under consideration. A case in point is a magnificent Mohenjo-Daro necklace made up of jade beads, gold disks and semi-precious stones were divided down the middle. Hence, Pakistan has one half and India, the other. The same is true of a copper and carnelian girdle. Professor Lahiri stated that she would be interested to find out how students hearing about this so many years after Independence, would respond.

However, India government policies regarding such issues eventually changed. In the 1960’s there was some talk of removing the inscriptions on the Mutiny Memorial which had been erected by the British to commemorate the recapture of Delhi during the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. This memorial spoke in great detail about the mutiny and referred to the Indians who had resisted the British as ‘the enemy’.   A petition was sent up by the Delhi Metropolitan Council which advocated changing or removing such inscriptions in which Indians were referred to as ‘the enemy’. This appeal somehow reached the desk of the Prime Minister and she wrote back to the Metropolitan Council saying,

‘I have seen pictures of the Memorial as well as of the texts. I feel they should be left as it is’.

She further added that this would tell the world how ‘hard and long the battle for independence had been’. She advised the Committee that alternative inscriptions should be written which would tell the story from the Indian point of view. Hence this is a memorial which has twin narratives where the story is told from a dual point of view. Indira Gandhi’s attitude was thus a well thought out way of dealing with the issue of colonialism and the restructuring India’s colonial past and history.

Providing a full context to government policies regarding  India’s ‘material relics’ in the  post Partition period,  Nayanjot Lahiri  went on to say that in 1959  protectionist laws were created due to Jawaharlal Nehru’s own commitment to preserving this heritage.   The laws provided for a ‘security net’ around heritage monuments and sites, whereby 100 metres was ‘prohibited zone’ and 200 metres was treated as the ‘regulatory zone’.

As considerations for development were uppermost in the most immediate decades following independence, heritage issues were compromised when the conflict centered on promoting economic development versus the protection of sites. A case in point was the building of a massive dam over the Krishna River in 1959. The building of this dam entailed that a large part of ancient Nagarjunkonda would be permanently lost.  Nehru’s dilemma is reflected in the following words that he wrote at that time where he says that the fact that Nagarjunkonda would be ‘lost for ever’ under ‘the new lake’ had ‘distressed’ him a ‘great deal’.  

A parallel instance mentioned by Professor Lahiri later on in her talk was the case of the Mathura Oil Refinery versus the Taj Mahal, which surfaced during Indira Gandhi’s first tenure as Prime Minister. In 1968 it was decided that an oil refinery would be set up in Mathura since there was a demand for petrol in the North West. No consideration was made for the fact that Agra was 40 kilometres away and Bharatpur, 60 kilometres. Indira Gandhi was deeply sensitive to global environmental issues being one of the few political leaders who attended the Stockholm United Nations Conference (1972) on global environmental issues. This conference had given her a prestige as a leader who was committed to the environment. However as an instance of how economic development took greater priority is her approval of the Mathura Refinery Plan.  In 1973, Indira Gandhi gave this proposal her approval.

A huge pollution outcry gradually broke out. The Archaeological Survey of India had expressed concern as early as 1974. It eventually reached an international platform. She set up a committee to come up with recommendations so that the Taj would not be impacted by the refinery. However sulphur dioxide and other pollutants from the refinery started affecting the Taj. In 1984 a public petition was made leading to a celebrated environmental jurisprudence case and the 1996 historic Supreme Court judgment through which the Refinery had to be shut down. This was an iconic moment and Mrs Gandhi must have known the implications of the Mathura Refinery’s presence so close to the Taj, yet, in the tussle between economic development and preservation of the environment or heritage, it is ‘economic development’ that had won.

A case where Indira Gandhi had however effectively intervened for a heritage site was also in 1974, when she visited the Elephanta Caves in Maharashtra. She noticed empty coconut shells lying around, broken toilet seats and flushes that did not work in the toilets. She wrote to the Maharashtra government that rather than keep the Caves open to tourist traffic they should be ‘closed down’ if they could not be maintained properly because they would leave a poor impression in the minds of the tourists.

Professor Lahiri said that dirtiness at historic sites was due to a lack of a ‘watch and ward’ policy. She had noticed similar squalor and neglect at the Pancheshwar Caves in the Junagadh district of Gujarat, which was ostensibly protected by the State Department of Archaeology. The caves had been transformed to rubbish dumps due to a lack of attention.

That an artefact or a site or a building is declared ‘heritage’ does not in any way ensure its life in India, she said.  For instance, during the Pitripaksha festival of the Vishnupada temple at Gaya, security forces hang their clothes on rare artefacts that are housed in Gaya Museum.

Professor Lahiri then mentioned another case where the Chief Minister of Haryana had tried to get the historic site of Kokhrakot, which had been identified by the ASI as having an ‘antiquity that went back to Harappan times and continued to medieval times’, denotified at the time when Manmohan Singh had been Prime Minister of India. Despite the fact that it was a ‘protected site’ many buildings had sprung up in the area and demolition notices that had been sent to building owners had been ignored. The Chief Minister then wrote to the Ministry of Culture asking for their intervention in favour of de-notification.  Manmohan Singh was also Minster of Cultural Affairs at this time. He wrote to the Chief Minister saying that Kokhrakot had ‘great historical importance’ and that the ‘site had been mentioned in the in the Mahabharata’. Hence it would ‘not be proper to denotify’.

Professor Lahiri told the audience that the Comptroller and Auditor General Reports reflected concern for India’s heritage and the Report of 2011 had recorded that a batch of oil paintings at the Asiatic Society had been left unattended for 18 years.  The Report of 2013 was very exhaustive in outlining ‘heritage’ sites in India. In Bengal these sites included the Hazar Duari Palace Museum, the Asiatic Society, the National Library, the Victoria Memorial Hall and the Calcutta Museum. However, information in these reports hardly reached the public domain and therefore remained unused. She asserted that the Centre for Science and Environment regularly publishes a ‘state of environment’ Report. Nayanjot Lahiri’s recommendation was that there should also be a ‘State of Heritage’ Report. The central government gives a lot of money for reports—hence this money should be used. These reports help to frame policies. Hence they are important. However Professor Lahiri said that even Centres of Policy Research did not evince much interest in heritage reports or have much to say about them.

The next point that was emphasized by Nayanjot Lahiri was that in terms of attention paid to natural heritage and monument heritage, it was natural heritage that gained a lot more attention. This was due to groundswell emphasis and also due to N.G.O. culture. In this arena issues did not go uncontested. This is what led to the 1991 Supreme Court judgment that Environmental Education had to be made compulsory in both Secondary and Higher Secondary Education. The Court said,

In a democratic polity dissemination of information is the foundation of the system

Hence the U.G.C. mandated Environmental education at both the school and college levels.  It was hoped that through this education would learn about what was at stake in terms of the world’s natural heritage.

Professor Lahiri stated as was mentioned in the early part of this report that England had taken a very proactive role in integrating Heritage Studies within public education curricula. Such integrated approaches to learning vis a vis heritage was also actively present in Bulgaria, Australia, Canada and Africa. With the emphasis on active and integrated learning in modern education theory, awareness of heritage could easily be part of this ‘integrated’ learning because this is where attitudes get ‘modified’. Hence a student who develops awareness of heritage may one day be able to make a difference when she/he goes into Public service. She felt that communities needed to be involved, whether urban or rural, district level repositories be created of heritage artefacts,  and that state and community liaisons would make a difference of the future of India’s ‘material relics’. Nayanjot Lahiri mentioned how Yaseen Pathan, a retired clerk from a school, made a signal contribution in rescuing terracotta temples in Patra. The ‘Save Bombay Committee’ formed in 1970, also played a very significant role in saving buildings of India’s colonial heritage.

In the question answer session an Assistant Professor from Physics mentioned whether some difference may not be achieved by increasing the entrance fees at many of these historic sites. Milind Banerjee of History mentioned that in field work at Coochbehar and Tripura he had seen that community level participation worked very well in the preservation of heritage. Dr Salim Javed of History said that the A.S.I itself made inexcusable errors in placards that were placed in front of tombs. At Mehrauli he said, in a particular tomb Mohammed Quli was identified as Agam Khan’s son, when in actuality he had been his servant. Dr. Shomshankar Roy asked whether historians and teachers of history could not make a difference in bringing about a higher level of awareness among the general populace. A student from Sociology asked what needed to be  done when a site held contentious implications.

To these questions and observations Nayanjot Lahiri replied that one should immediately write to the A.S.I. when errors of a glaring nature were detected. She said that we should have reached that level of confidence in our democracy where we could talk openly about sites that could awaken controversy. She mentioned that in England historians wrote both for academia and also for a general reading public who were very interested in heritage issues.

 

The pressure on heritage remains. That a site or an arefact is declared ‘heritage’ does not in any way guarantee its safety or security. An example cited by Professor Lahiri is the case of Gaya Museum where during the Pitripaksha festival of the Vishnupada temple, secyrtug firces hang uptheir clothes on important relics. Professor lahiri reinforced her point with a slide.

After a visit to the elephanta caves in 1974, Indira Gandhi was very displeased to see the sad state of dirtiness and disarray in the temple areas. In a letter she wrote the Maharashtra government after this visit she spoke of the ‘coconut shells’ , ‘dirty toilets’ with ‘broken seats’ and advised that unless such sites were properly looked after, they should be closed down. She pointed out that all this would create a very poor impression in the minds of the tourists’. She felt it was better to ‘close them down’.