Red Fort Adoption Flashcards
The government’s “Adopt a Heritage” policy, which allows private organizations to patronize a monument and manage its peripheral facilities (i.e., bathrooms, cafes, ticketing, crowd-management and marketing) is actually a great idea, provided enough safeguards are built in. There are global parallels too: In Italy, luxury brands such as Tod’s financed the restoration of the Colosseum in Rome, while Bulgari paid the bills for the Spanish Steps.
The Instinctive resistance to the idea of big-bucks corporations taking control of India’s heritage sites is understandable. But if we examine our own attitudes, we will come up short on reason and high on hypocrisy.
*** Cash from the private sector bankrolls our newspapers, our television channels, university chairs and sometimes entire chains of colleges. It funds our health care, roadways, human-rights groups and nonprofit organizations. Yet we balk at the thought of private money in culture and heritage?
**So far, 33 agencies have shown interest in adopting close to 100 of India’s monuments. This includes the Taj Mahal, the UNESCO world heritage site globally known for being a testimony to love.
**Several monuments have been lovingly protected, but successive governments have failed to professionalize the management of these sites. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the administrative guardian to more than 3,000 monuments across the country, is cash-starved and overworked. It is also enmeshed (entangled) in a morass (quagmire/swamp)of bureaucracy and inertia ( inactivity).
We should look at the reality here:
- Not one monument or site in India is visitable.
* **They are stinking dirty.
***Even at the Taj Mahal, where the monument itself is fine, the area around it is a terrible mess.”
He is right. There is no defensible reason India should receive only 10 million foreign tourists a year, given our attractions. Compare this to the 82 million tourists received by Spain — a country roughly seven times smaller than India in size — and you have a sense of how underwhelming the performance is.
New Delhi recently unveiled the newly restored Humayan’s Tomb and the 90 acres of gardens surrounding it, with 20,000 saplings and a breathtakingly landscaped green space — a veritable oxygen mask to the capital city’s polluted lungs. The restoration was entirely done by the Aga Khan Foundation, and was initiated during the previous government led by the Indian National Congress. The current ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is correct in asking liberals why that was lauded while its move to do something similar is being slammed.
The answer could lie in the gladiatorial collision between the right and the left over India’s history.
**The left has long accused the right — often with good reason — of rewriting history, and of entirely disowning some historical figures while culturally appropriating others.
**As governments change in India, so do school textbooks to reflect these alternations. At the heart of liberal apprehensions is the fear of right-wing prejudice and the rewriting of the content at museums and heritage sites.
**A BJP legislator in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, for instance, did not spare the Taj Mahal when he used the fact that it was built by a Mughal emperor as context for making anti-Muslim statements.
But these worries can be put to rest :
the tourism minister has gone on record to underline that new foster parents to heritage sites will have
1. no “access to the main monument and no power to restore or repair.”
- The power to interpret history, too, remains solely with the ASI and “not a comma can be changed without its consent.”
- Private players will be required to ensure that the public space of the heritage sites remain accessible and affordable for everyone.
- The government guarantees any commercial fees — whether they are for sandwiches or trinkets — will be subject to ministerial approval.
So, yes, India’s moneybags might be seeking free advertising, great branding and tax benefits as their heritage grants come from corporate social-responsibility funds. But as the situation stands, private players are needed to make our rich history accessible and protect it from the vagaries of time.
