The Art of Conserving Indian Cities

The earliest presence of humans on the Indian Subcontinent dates back 100,000 years, beginning at the World Heritage Site of the Bhimbetka cave dwellings whose real significance was discovered only in the 1970s. Several building manuals such as the Vastu-Sastras have existed on the art of building since ancient times. Medieval India saw subsequent centuries of demolition and material reuse for new construction. Additionally, patterns of assimilation, appropriation, adaptation, adoption and fusion have continued to shape the built environment through the subsequent Mughal and Colonial periods. Thus, comprehending Indian traditional architecture requires prismatic vision. The subcontinent is a memory bank interpreted dierently by voyagers, merchants, invaders and colonists. 

‘Preservation’ is a colonial construct embedded in the Archaeological Survey of India’s (ASI) stance with regards to the caretaking of monuments; the formation of States and the State archaeology departments came much later and may have inherited the list of monuments from ASI. However, more than six decades later, for each Indian city to retain its uniqueness remains a dream. This essay hopes to address the complexity and range of site-specific solutions and make a case for an urgent shift in the development model of our unique cities.

An Overview of Government Funding and Conservation

As a preface to the cases that follow, it is important to note that it was only as late as 2001 that a Heritage Component was constituted for urban conservation projects under the aegis of the Rajasthan Urban Infrastructure Development Project (RUIDP) supported by theAsian Development Bank (ADB).

Amber, the parent city of Jaipur, the only medieval city of India to have a rich, albeit decrypt built fabric and an immediate threat of mass encroachment, had been a concern for Jaipur Intach. They had thus invested in a feasibility study that became a valuable reference for the consultant team.

The selected sites were under the jurisdiction of the Rajasthan State Department of Archaeology and Museums (SDoA). However, no records were available. So while the team worked on conservation plans, they also had to initiate the process of determining the methodology of different traditional practices to conserve the sites.

This challenge was overcome by identifying a master craftsman to help with materiality and finishing issues. This collaboration of a conservation architect, civil engineer and master craftsman resulted in documenting specifications, methodology and rates of ‘Jaipur practice’ traditional works employing traditional materials such as lime, sand, surkhi and many additives in processing. It, however, took a year to negotiate the buy-in from the RUIDP civil engineers. Subsequently, the decision makers realised that none of the pre-qualification conditions for other infrastructure projects could meet the needs of a conservation project and were thus amended. It took determination and many negotiations and revisions to finalise the tender of the first conservation site.

Amber: Conservation Planning and Designing with Nature

In Amber, the concept of planning/designing with nature became tangible for me. Upper Sagar was constituted with a dam wall spanning the two hills of Aravalli in the northern outskirts of Amber village, designed to have rooms at lower level for services and a pavilion to serve as a short-stay lodge for the royals. Another check dam wall with a walkway made up the Lower Sagar. The resultant reservoirs along with the Panna Miya/Meena ka Kund – a stepped well in the valley at the village centre – are design interventions from an era of deep understanding of topography and water. During the restoration, we de-silted the reservoirs, repaired the dam walls and emptied the stepped well of all the solid waste that had collected over the years just in time for the monsoon rains that had failed for two previous seasons. We were delighted to find that not only the three restored sites but the entire 175 wells in the valley around Amber had water in them as opposed to the 26 before the conservation effort began. Thus, not only were the built elements restored, by serendipity we had managed to recharge the water table that in turn revived the ancient water management system. It was rewarding, memorable and humbling to experience the ingenuity of the 16th century planners and builders up close.

Jaipur: The 18th Century Green City in Denial

Working on the conservation plans and tenders of nine city gates, cenotaphs and the facades of 44 buildings from the listed Ford Foundation study, facilitated an intimate relationship with this city. Behind the touristy glitter, Jaipur (the Walled City, founded in 1727) was still valid as the ‘greenest’ city at its very basic planning principles of mixed land use, walkability, inbuilt water management, ratio of built and open spaces encouraging community interaction, constructed using locally available materials and a sound economic policy for the city’s planned growth. Social cohesion through secular design has to be experienced at its squares, which have domestic houses, temples and mosques blending seamlessly.

The extraordinary Walled City is decaying while Jaipur is on a fast track to becoming a Metro. Nothing in its growth reflects any sensitivity to understand and emulate such timeless planning principles. The question is why? The answer is partly in the governance system. While working on the historic gates, we realised that while Jaipur Walled City was the responsibility of the Jaipur Municipality (JMC), the outer boundary and the rest of the city was administered by the Jaipur Development Authority. While JMC had the Mayor presiding over it, the JDA was under an IAS officer. Decisions on project proposals were subject to inter-party and intra-personal politics. While the Jaipur Intach team tried hard to create participation of citizens as stake holders at various sites for long-term caretaking and ownership, the same was frowned upon and actively thwarted.

We did manage to incorporate and provide for activities that were being undertaken at project sites. For example, the vegetable market at Chandpol (west gate) was re-organised and provision for short-time parking for the shoppers was incorporated. At Galta Gate (east gate), our research told us of a yearly pilgrimage that impacted the site and so we designed the storm drain covers to also facilitate as platforms for the shops that pop up during the fair and added a public pay toilet placed discretely on site. Unorganised pay-parking at each of the historic gates was re-designed and at New Gate, intervention was done in the wall to create pedestrian gates to ensure safety of the citizens. In Amber, we created two open air theatres: one adjoining the Panna Miya/Meena Kund, in the heart of the village while the other at Mathura Gate which was also accessible from the Jaipur-Delhi highway, with the vision that these could be adopted by the schools in the vicinity for their yearly cultural programmes and by the village residents for their annual ‘Ram Lila’ and other cultural festivals that dot the calendar year of Rajasthanis. We managed to execute these interventions but failed to institutionalise the partnership for co-caretaking.

The Amber projects highlighted their value to the administration and led to the creation of the Amber Development Authority. An inspired Secretary (IAS) of the SDoA took up the restorations of the fort and the fort wall. While RUIDP had placed the fort wall project aside, our report and estimates were adopted by the archaeology department for execution. 

On my visit a few years later, I saw the restored wall and realised the impact of our pioneering work. And, since then, the work of conservation of heritage sites under government jurisdiction in Rajasthan has not stopped. But, alas, connect of communities and heritage built fabric is largely uninfluenced by these invocations. 

Coorg: Built Fabric and Cultural Beliefs

I realised the link between built fabric and cultural beliefs while researching and writing for the book Traditional Architecture of Coorg (Silent Sentinels, published in 2005). Coorg’s fabric stands out because of family mansions called the Ainemane. These courtyard-type houses are large, situated strategically on high ground often abutting the family’s agricultural land much like Goan houses. Most of them are 300 to 400 years old and are well preserved and looked after.

The Kodavas are a small genetic group and have moved to major cities and abroad as well, just like many Goans. To find these houses in such well-kept condition did surprise me. Having witnessed severe neglect to similar edifices in Goa, I was perplexed. I dug into the social history and customs of the Kodavas and interviewed the scholars. The effort revealed that the Kodavas worship their ancestors. The family houses are the embodiment of their ancestors and hence in turn these houses have a place of reverence in the customs. The northwest corner of the courtyard of the main house is adorned with a lamp and this is kept lit 365 days a year as symbolic reverence to their ancestors. Each member of the clan through the generations has a place in the family home, no questions asked.

A kind of social security wouldn’t you agree? And so most were inhabited by some family member or the other or, in recent years, a caretaker is often engaged by the family. All births, marriages and death ceremonies are tied up with a customary visit to the family home accompanied by ritualistic celebrations. Thus, it is a ‘belief’ system that has emerged as the force of continuum of this building type.

Colonial Heritage: Shimla Town-Hall

The rehabilitation of Shimla Town-Hall undertaken over last 4 years, under the aegis of Infrastructure Development Investment Project for Tourism in Himachal Pradesh, displayed capacity building by the Government. However, the challenge came at the implementation stage and that too from the craftsmen. The attitude of ‘job for money’ resulted in shoddy work. To bring a sense of respect for the old building that they were working on, I had to remind them that while the building may be from the colonial era, the craftsmen that had built the building in 1908 were from their region and probably their own ancestors. This sentiment did shape some change in attitude of ownership for their work. However, I did realise that we as a nation are losing our sense of pride in our work in all spheres and mediocrity or less than that is becoming the norm.

The schism of ‘top-down’ is palpable even though community engagement has become part of the ADB funded projects and is also showing results when viewed in relation to capacity building for crafts, home stays, forest regeneration etc. However, when it comes to heritage buildings, dialogue between stakeholders ended with ownership claims but no sharing of sensible and sensitive responsibility.

Further, I would argue that sensible ownership of our built environment appears to be completely missing as is evident from the ongoing superimposition of the 21st century building techniques and building materials. We seem to be compelled to build at the fastest pace with least creative inputs for maximum gain. This is detrimental to the organic fabric that we see in place today in almost all of our Indian cities that took centuries to evolve. It also adds to urban congestion, over-stretching the carrying capacity of the land beyond its limits.

Towards an Integrated Conservation-led Development Strategy

The revitalisation of towns should concern, first and foremost, the residents. Planning in and around a historic town demands prudence, sensitivity and precision without rigidity, since each case presents a specific problem. The Indian city is an ensemble of diverse characteristics, thus not amenable to a single type of planning intervention, however broad or comprehensive its scope.

To conclude, we in India urgently need revision in our development model. We need an ‘Integrated Conservation-led Development Strategy which includes:
•Conservation that is development oriented. The study of built character should dictate the formulation of building bye-laws in respective areas. Conservation and re-use of buildings must be incentivised and new buildings should be spatially appropriate to the existing ones.
•Development that is ecologically appropriate. The characteristic feature of traditional settlements was their ecological equilibrium, often now destroyed by insensitive contemporary interventions.
•Development that reduces dependence on materials, skills and technology external to the area. Distinctiveness of historic towns is mainly due to the creative use of local materials. There is a need for reviving the traditional building methods with locally available materials.
•Coordinated Implementation. Time for working in silos is over. The government needs to revamp its administration structure and creatively harness the potential of all its employees and curtail all duplication and bridge the gaps.

The art of holistic conservation is really the art of developing strategies where the relationship between care-taking and commodification is explicitly balanced. Land, rivers, fields and forests are all valuable resources and not commodities. Citizens in a democracy are not subjects to be ruled but co-participants in shaping the future of the country.