Nothing has come of the proposals to prepare a register to keep a record of the sites.
You cannot do much about anything unless you have the right numbers in your hand. That’s where the problem starts if the issue at hand were to be of Bangalore’s heritage sites.
There are reports indicating that the city has seen more than one-third of its estimated 1,500 heritage sites crumbling away, but these are only estimates. It has been roughly 475 years since the city of Bangalore came into existence and 150 years since the first city corporation was formed, yet no one has a clue as to how many heritage buildings or structures have existed.
Not many care
Proposals to prepare a heritage register that will keep a record of the heritage sites have been made on three occasions—in an amendment proposed to the Town and Country Planning Act about a year and a half ago; as part of the Bangalore Metropolitan Regional Governance Bill (2010); and in the much talked about Bengaluru Master Plan 2020 by the Agenda for Bengaluru Infrastructure and Development (ABIDe).
The tall promises made in reaction to these proposals sound like idle talk today. None of them made any headway. Just as heritage structures disintegrate into history, the documentation proposals too have met similar, unnoticed deaths.
“If there has to be any effort to preserve our heritage, it has to begin with a heritage register,” asserts Sathya Prakash Varanashi, co-convener, Bangalore chapter of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage.
A heritage register for Bangalore will be an inventory of the heritage sites in the city. Essentially, it will identify heritage sites based on age, importance to the identity of the city, the number of such sites remaining, and so on. “It would be a documentation of the heritage that our city has,” Varanashi adds.
According to the draft demonstration report of ABIDe Heritage Group, buildings, precincts, natural and cultural sites having special architectural or historic interest are to be included in the list.
The report recommends that the criteria for listing include social value, age and rarity, architectural interest, historical interest, close historic association and state or national interests.
Sanjay Sridhar, head, ABIDe Heritage Group, and urban development specialist, points out that heritage sites are not just locations where there are historic monuments, but also include buildings, open spaces, general (plant species exotic or endemic to an area) and heritage vegetation (significant because of their historical or cultural influences), cultural heritage such as crafts, festival, rituals, as well as social heritage such as languages, among others.
“It is only after the heritage sites have been listed in all their details and documented, that we can go about preserving them, after identifying what steps are required for their preservation,” says Varanashi.
“The fact that we are yet to even begin efforts to have a heritage register is simply a sign of the (lack of) will to preserve our heritage sites,” he laments.
“It is not their (lawmakers’) priority, and in the meantime, our heritage dies in front of our eyes and we do not even know it.”
The problem, in other words, lies with the beginning itself.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}