Call a dog mad and kill it. Brand a landmark heritage building unfit for human occupation and pull it down. That seems to be the credo of a section of the government officials.
Quite surprising for a government that owns up the Nizam and has assumed power on the plank of safeguarding Telangana’s culture and the rich built heritage.
The otherwise culturally hyper sensitive Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao left both heritage aficionados and true Hyderabadis outraged by his recent statement that the domed iconic Musi river-front building of Osmania General Hospital in Hyderabad would be razed to make way for a new multi-storeyed building.
Half-baked reportMr. Rao cannot be blamed for he was merely going by a half-baked report of Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University and improper advice of group of doctors who seemed to be totally unaware of the historicity of the place.
Apart from serving lakhs of patients over the years not just from united Andhra Pradesh, but from Karnataka and Maharashtra, VIPs that included Governors and Chief Ministers till late 1970s, it was in this very precincts where Afzalgunj Hospital once stood, a knotty medical issue relating to use and effect of Chloroform as anaesthetic was resolved by the hospital’s illustrious Resident Superintendent, Edward Lawrie in 1890.
It was one of the two important world famous medical events to happen in Hyderabad, the other one being the Nobel Prize winning discovery of malarial parasite in a mosquito by Sir Ronald Ross.
Signature domesThe Osmania General Hospital with its signature domes rising into the sky was built in 1920s by the seventh Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan after a part of Afzalgunj Hospital was destroyed in Great Musi floods of 1908.
Internal courtyards, wide spacious arched wards and windows overlooking a sprawling garden and the Musi river were the features that many old timers believe, helped in better healing and speedy recovery of patients.
Mr. Rao’s concern for safety of patients is understandable, but he should be wary of the recommendations of government-appointed expert committees which for some reason seem to be allergic to heritage buildings in the city.
If one were to go by their reports submitted in the past, none of the government owned heritage buildings should exist and these include the royal Raj Bhavan, hill-top Erram Manzil, majestic G Block in the Secretariat, a palace away from madding crowd (in those days) Irrum Numa (Chest Hospital at Erragadda) and Government Nizamia Tibbi Unani Hospital near Charminar to name a few.
The trigger is always a plaster peeling off the roof or from a wall that can be easily repaired that happens again because of government’s negligence. That is enough for the official panel to certify them unsafe and bulldoze them.
Mercifully, all of them have survived as these reports were overruled thanks to intervention of courts, heritage activists, Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and media campaign. Structurally strong Osmania Hospital’s case looks no different.
If Mr. Rao goes by such a report for Osmania that looks likely, de-list and demolish it, he will be setting a bad precedent for as many as 62 listed buildings that are owned by the government in the city.
The government will then lose the moral authority to ask private owners to conserve the other 90-odd listed buildings.
Besides Raj Bhavan which was restored after a similar panic reaction of a panel, Hyderabad fortunately has other fine examples of restoration and conservation, Chow Mohalla palace complex having buildings from 1750 to 1850 and the Falaknuma, the fairytale opulent scorpion shaped hill-top palace built in 1880s.
The Chow Mohalla, which was in a run down condition, has been restored by Mumbai’s famous conservation architect and urbanist, Rahul Mehrotra, and is a must see for thousands of tourists now, while Falaknuma is a star hotel managed by Taj.
Not faraway from Osmania, Unani Hospital has been recently restored by city architect, Suryanarayana Murthy. When there are so many examples of conservation and restoration, there is no reason why Osmania should be brought down. It requires curative treatment not mercy killing.
The key to maintenance of old palaces and buildings is re-adapt and re-use and not knocking them down or keeping them idle and it does not cost much for a government that boasts of surplus revenue, much of it from Hyderabad.
