Hyderabad :

The International Council on Monuments & Sites (ICOMOS) adopted ‘Heritage of Commemoration’ as the theme for this year’s World Heritage Day celebrations. Celebrated globally on the 18th of April, the event aims at promoting the concept of heritage being a shared asset of mankind. The theme this year highlights the inherent desire in humans ‘to remember and transmit their memory to others’. Architecture being the most immediately apparent manifestation of the past, successive generations have added commemorative markers to record and transmit their history. The choice of theme is said to have been influenced by the fact that 2014 marks the centenary of commencement of hostilities in that dreadful international conflict known in history as the Great War of 1914-1918 or World War I.

The Hyderabad Chapter of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) organizes an annual awards function as part of its Heritage Awareness Program in which select heritages of the city are acknowledged. Through sustained efforts over the past two decades, the program has succeeded in highlighting numerous unique examples of the city’s cultural assets which, though known to a majority of the public, had been relegated to some deep recess of the mind. Taking inspiration from the ICOMOS theme, the focus of the selection process this year was on cultural assets which have strong linkages with personalities, events and movements from our past. Though the concept of recognition based on associational value is not new for the awards program and quite a few examples of commemorative heritage having been recognized in earlier years, the criteria took center stage this year. The change from an evaluation primarily based on typology, architectural merits and state of preservation was also motivated by the fact that INTACH’s own office at Hyderabad is housed in one such edifice. A rather nondescript structure with no architectural merits whatsoever, the Ronald Ross Building assumes great importance solely due to its association with Nobel laureate Sir Ronal Ross and his landmark discovery regarding the malarial parasite.

It is said a nation is merely the custodian of inherited heritage and as such charged with the responsibility of protecting and preserving what it has received so as to hand it over intact to the succeeding generations. In the process people of a particular time in history have the unique opportunity to add, with reasonable justification, all that they consider as being representative of their own times. Unfortunately, if the present apathy of the government continues unchecked, Hyderabad will soon be bereft of any vestiges of the past and the present generation would be blamed for erasing the past and leaving nothing for posterity except the monstrosity called Metro Rail to commemorate its existence.

At Hyderabad, the World Heritage Day is no longer an occasion for the celebration of shared heritage and has instead, unfortunately been transformed into an annual ritual of collective lamentation. The dirge has as yet failed to draw any sympathy from a state which refuses to honour international commitments made by the nation, assuring the protection and preservation of cultural assets. The indifference is amply manifest in the callousness of the government which has failed to reconstitute the Heritage Conservation Committee even though the last one having expired long ago. All attempts at reasoning with the authorities regarding heritages of the city have proved futile and the rampage continues unchecked.

With constitution of the HCC in a limbo, heritage violators can now wreck destruction with impunity. Playing out a charade which is said to have been originally conceived by mandarins of the secretariat, miscreants apply for permission to the GHMC and their applications are dutifully referred for clearance by the non-existing HCC. With no action forthcoming, a claim inordinate delay helps perpetrators in obtaining orders from the court directing speedy disposal. With no possible change in status, the ‘aggrieved’ party files for contempt and gets away with murder! In Hyderabadi lingo, the playing out such a sham is aptly put in the idiom “main maare jaisa kartaon, tu roye jaisa kar” (I will feign a punch, you pretend to cry). The ruse worked perfectly in the case of Victoria Maternity Hospital a few years back. Alain de Botton, author of The Architecture of Happiness claims “It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.” Unfortunately our own dialogue with pain has not attained that requisite threshold of grief essential for architectural appreciation. If the present trend continues, we may end up commemorating heritage rather than appreciating the heritage of commemoration.

(The writer is a well known heritage activist)

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Hyderabad / by Sajjad Shahid, TNN / April 20th, 2014