|
Magazine
Tunnel vision in Agra
ANIL DHARKER
AP
Beauty at dusk ... the Taj Mahal under a threat.
SO Mayawati isn't going to get her mall after all. Yet, from all accounts, she (or her advisors) came pretty close to erecting a large shopping complex which would have become a rather incongruous backdrop to the Taj Mahal. It took the intervention of the media, and the consequent uproar to stop what would have been a truly monumental blunder.
It's difficult to believe this, but the intention behind the mall idea was actually honourable. Anyone who has been to the Taj recently will know that our best known monument is really well looked after; without doubt better looked after than any other heritage site in the country. This is as it should be.
What shouldn't is the approach to the Taj. As is the case with any place which is a tourist attraction, a whole service industry grows up around it, starting with shops selling cheap replicas and other souvenirs, stalls providing food and drink to tourists, guide and ticketing services, hotel accommodation and the like. But it doesn't stop there; pretty soon, untrammeled growth results in everything being sold there, from sandalwood to suitcases. Municipal authorities do nothing to check this proliferating entrepreneurship and pretty soon every street gets blocked and the tourists for whom this glut of services is being provided, cannot get through to see the monument for which they have come in the first place! The Taj Mahal, in spite of its pre-eminent position in our heritage hierarchy, has not escaped this fate either.
That was the reason that the Uttar Pradesh Government decided to construct a Taj Heritage Corridor, which would link Agra's important monuments — The Taj Mahal, the Agra Fort, Ram Bagh, Etmatuddula and Chinni-ka-Roza — and allow tourists to visit them without entering the city itself. Complementing this was an attempt to garner additional revenue for the State by construction of the shopping mall and similar other attractions.
Hell, as someone once said, is paved with good intentions and this couldn't be truer in this case: the corridor entailed changing the course of the Yamuna river just behind the Taj which environmentalists say would have disastrous results, whereas the shopping mall as a backdrop to the world's greatest monument to love, would have been a travesty.
Terrible though all this sounds, it isn't the first time that a major monument has been under threat. Very often, these threats come from intentions of popularising the site and increasing its tourism potential. These dangers are posed by the "visions" of politicians, of course, but not just of politicians. They also come from senior civil servants, from people and bodies assigned to protect heritage and even from a body like the Archeological Survey of India (ASI), the organisation which is supposed to be the guardian of our important heritage sites. For example, two years ago, the ASI took on the work of restoring the 200-year-old Sulthan Batheri. Built by Tipu Sultan, the Sulthan Batheri was a garrison fort built to stop Portuguese invaders.
Apparently the work was assigned to contract labourers without supervision. They, according to a news report of that time, "first filled the breaches with cement and then the steps leading to the top with concrete. The embankment on the top of the monument and side walls of the staircase were coated with concrete". There was much more of this: metal pipes fixed where canons had been, batch plastering and cement coating everywhere ... When a public outcry ensued, even the ASI had to admit its mistake. The cost of the "renovation"? Rs. 60,000. The cost of undoing the "renovation"? Rs. 10 lakhs! At least we can be grateful that the damage was not permanent.
If even the experts of the ASI slip up so badly, can you blame the average civil servant or the average politician for making blunders like the Taj Heritage Corridor idea? As it happens, heritage is a pretty tricky subject. Here's one example from Mumbai, where the "other" Taj Mahal (the hotel) exists next to the Gateway of India. This Taj and the Gateway, are obviously heritage buildings. But so, according to experts, are the Bombay Improvement Trust (BIT) chawls! These chawls (chawls being tenements of a kind unique to the city) would be dismissed by most people as an eyesore, fit only to be pulled down. But according to a recent book they are "an early application of the 19th Century concerns for public health and sanitation. They reveal the successful adaptation of local conditions, both climatic and social, in Mumbai". More recently, architects and conservationists have enlarged the definition of heritage from specific historic buildings, to include heritage precincts, community-specific settlements and so on. For example, a group of experts recently recommended that a whole area of Mumbai near the central area of Dadar, from Khodad Circle to King's Circle be declared a heritage precinct, with five residential sub-precincts including Hindu Colony and Parsi Colony and five urban spaces including Five Gardens and Maheshwari Udyan. The scenario, you will agree, gets a bit complicated for the layman and when the layman is in a position of power, there is the very real possibility of a head-on clash between those who know, and those who think that danger is avoided if the powerful are willing to listen to (and be guided by) the experts. It becomes unavoidable when the powerful want to assert themselves and have their own personal "vision" of what's to be done to prevail. We can be saved a lot of trauma if we could educate these visionaries. But which of us rats can bell these obstreperous cats?
Anil Dharker is a journalist, media critic and writer.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
|
