A G Krishna Menon - Government policies have become an assault on Delhi’s 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. Perhaps the withdrawal also addressed
other unstated political agendas like demonstrating the primacy of its
political powers to the provocative posturing of the state government while
appeasing its electoral constituency by overtly opposing the historic
significance of the two particular sites that were identified for nomination,
the Mughal city of Shahjahanabad and the colonial imperial city of New Delhi.
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 anywhere else in the
world. The new DUAC guidelines have been cleverly formulated with a nod to
legal procedure but following the ubiquitous bureaucratic traditions of opacity
in decision-making. These guidelines would effectively transform the architectural
heritage of the LBZ that professional bodies of architects, urban designers,
landscape architects and conservation architects had strongly petitioned the
DUAC to protect.
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. All over the world there is a realisation that if
significant examples of modern architecture are not protected then the modern
segment of the historical narrative of architectural development would be lost
to future generations.
In India, INTACH proposed that the important examples of
modern Indian architecture of Delhi should be protected, particularly because
Delhi has been a fertile site of post-Independence architectural development,
critically appreciated not only in India but internationally. Sixty-two
buildings, including Akbar Bhavan, Sri Ram Centre for Performing Arts, Crafts
Museum, Bahai Temple, Hall of Nations and Nehru Pavilion, were on the proposed
list. Both the DUAC and the HCC, who are answerable to the Central government,
are however dragging their feet, perhaps as a disingenuous strategy to enable
the development of the new convention centre at Pragati Maidan to become a fait
accompli.
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. The DDA issued a public
notice on March 30, 2016, in which it announced that it has set up the Delhi
Urban Heritage Foundation to “recommend for alteration, modification or relax
provision of existing regulations…” on matters related to Delhi’s architectural
heritage thus making it the final arbiter on the subject.
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.
