The Indian Express | 1 week ago | 18-03-2023 | 11:45 am
Monuments are memories etched in stone. Post Independence, there was little effort to correct the mindset of those responsible for writing history books, who continued to think about monuments and archaeological sites in the British way and taught the history of our defeats and our enemies’ victories.It is only under the Modi government that the decolonisation drive began, bringing out the sagas of King Suheldev, Rani Durgavati and Lachit Barphukan. It has highlighted the story of the founder-king of Delhi, Anangpal Tomar, declaring the neglected Anang Tal as a monument of national importance. It held national and international events at the Sindhu-Saraswati site of Dholavira and unveiled a new Shivaji-era inspired naval insignia.This is just the beginning. With the painstakingly produced report by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister on Monuments of National Importance — authored by chairman Bibek Debroy and member Sanjeev Sanyal — there is hope that the remnants of the British slave mindset in the Archaeological Survey of India will change, giving way to rational thinking that reflects Bharat.This report is a big step in the right direction and may become the Bhagavad Gita guiding the direction in which the preservation and designation of monuments of national importance should go. All the recommendations made by the report can be implemented without amending the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act and needs only executive orders.As the chairman of the National Monuments Authority (NMA), I had the opportunity to flag some anomalies and suggest changes in the way we look at the preservation of monuments. The way in which we have created a list of 3,695 monuments of national importance has some interesting facets. The samadhi in Satara of Maratha queen Tarabai Bhonsle, who fought the Mughals and ruled for 30 years, is in ruins. No one thought that it deserves the honour of being declared a monument of national importance. There is not a single monument connected with the struggles of Dalits and B R Ambedkar’s life that has been declared as a national monument. No proposal to the effect has even been accepted. After a detailed site inspection by the NMA, the governor of Kerala recommended that the birthplace of Adi Sankara, Kalady, be declared a monument of national importance. The recommendation was not even responded to. The Mangarh hillock in Rajasthan was recommended by the NMA, along with the Minister of State for Culture, to be declared a Monument of National Importance. This was the site of the massacre of more than 1,500 Bhils by the British army on November 17, 1913. We are still waiting for action on it.There are more than a hundred monuments, like Tota-Maina ki Qabar and Dadi Poti ka Gumbad, which have absolutely no history. Nobody knows what they represent and whether they should be declared as Monuments of National Importance. Similarly, the designation of some as Monuments of National Importance defies logic, like Muhammad Ghori Ke Senapati Ki Chhatri. Who decided that monuments like this are of national importance and why has there been no review of these decisions till now?Not a single monument of national importance from Kashmir, like the Martand Sun Temple, Parihaspora and Harwan Monastery, was ever recommended to be declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and none has been given even a security guard like we see at other sites.I had recommended that there be a relook at the functioning and mandates of all the agencies working on monuments, along the lines of what the Modi government did to the Yojana Aayog (Planning Commission). They should be unshackled from the British slave mindset and given into the hands of those who know their subject. We need an Archaeological Foundation to preserve the civilisational and revolutionary monuments of India, and not become chowkidars to the kabristans (graveyards) of invaders. These may be given a district-level archaeological tag. One hopes that the Bibek Debroy-Sanjeev Sanyal report will bring a whiff of fresh thinking in this direction.The writer is a former Rajya Sabha MP from the BJP and former chairman of the National Monuments Authority
Share:
