Architectural Heritage in India: Conversations on Conservation, Preservation, and Restoration series by ArchitectureLive! aims to shed light on the complex issues surrounding architectural heritage in India by drawing insights from a diverse array of experts across India. It is also a way to shed light on the multifaceted challenges and emerging solutions in this critical domain. The series concludes with our conversation with Gurmeet Sangha Rai.
Rajesh Advani:
What is your view on the meaning of heritage?
Gurmeet Rai:
Heritage without people or cultures has no meaning, in my view. We cannot look at architectural heritage in isolation because heritage encompasses the inheritance of our people.
For example, when we consider diversity, a tribal community will have quite a distinct perspective on it, whereas people in an urban area will speak about heritage differently. In the rural hinterland, where there is a certain continuity from the past into the present, people will look at it very differently. The past may not be considered relevant today, especially when you apply the capitalist lens. It, then, is a commodity for consumption for economic benefits and therefore passed into the future. However, the past is relevant even today in communities where tradition is alive.
So, I don’t look at cultural heritage in isolation; my practice is in the space of coexistence of culture and nature within the ecosystem.
In the west, with its capitalist and consumerist paradigm, heritage is looked at differently altogether. In eastern cultures, like in India, where you can almost experience multiple centuries coexisting together, our reference is quite different.
We cannot talk about heritage and culture without talking about nature. I was looking at the constitution of Costa Rica at one point; they look at the coexistence of cultural heritage and ecology. Their constitution has incorporated the rights of every species. UNESCO is advised by two advisory bodies; ICOMOS addresses conservation and management of cultural heritage, while IUCN is for natural heritage.
The conversations on the international platforms for more than a decade now have been about connecting practices of culture and nature. Within the paradigm of sustainable development too, with environment, economics, and social aspects as the three pillars, culture has been recognized as the fourth pillar.
Rajesh Advani:
Since you held a leadership position at ICOMOS, could you share some of the key strategies and works that ICOMOS has been involved with, especially concerning cultural heritage and tourism?
Gurmeet Rai:
What’s interesting about ICOMOS is that it reflects the trajectory of the global evolution in the area of cultural heritage practice, theory and philosophy, and responses to geopolitics.
The Hague Convention was the first convention that responded to the state of cultural heritage post-World War II when so much was being devastated across continents. The convention demanded that during any armed conflict, the warring nations should not deliberately destroy the cultures of the so-called enemy countries.
This further led to the establishment of UNESCO, which formulated the World Heritage Convention of 1972, with all the signatory countries making a commitment towards the protection and conservation of their cultural heritage, leading up to the inscription of several sites on a UNESCO list of world heritage sites.
ICOMOS was established in 1965 with the first charter—the Venice Charter, which focused on the conservation of material culture like the fabric of buildings, structures, etc. The creation of ICOMOS led to the creation of an international community of individuals committed to cultural heritage. Through this, the member countries brought their own body of knowledge to the international platform.
The Europeans brought in the Venice Charter. Later, the Japanese came out with the Nara document of authenticity, challenging the European understanding of authenticity. They emphasized the values embedded in the processes of creating cultural heritage. The Australians came up with the Burra Charter, where they recognized the values of Aborigines; the charter speaks about ‘value-based planning’ for cultural heritage. The Washington Charter focused on historic cities, while the Florence Charter looked at the principles that should be followed for the conservation of historic gardens.
So, the trajectory of ICOMOS has expanded to cover diverse heritage typologies, including historic cities and gardens, reflecting contributions from various countries such as America, Europe, Japan, Australia, and others. India hosted the General Assembly of ICOMOS in 2017, where recommendations on ‘heritage and democracy’ were accepted.
Rajesh Advani:
Can you share something about your organization—the focus of the Cultural Resource Conservation Initiative (CRCI) on sustainable strategies for cultural tourism, especially in the Jammu and Kashmir region? You mentioned charters from Japan and the West, but what is happening in India or Asia-Pacific at large?
Gurmeet Rai:
When I set up my organization in 1995–96, we were the first-generation conservation architects. I started working in Punjab, my home state, to understand its heritage. My interest in the region was further reinforced by my mentor, Sir Bernard Feilden, who mentioned that he saw himself as a provincial architect, which stuck with me. I worked with INTACH for three years before realizing that every region or place has a new set of aspects or issues to be addressed. I recognized that I needed to hone my tools for practice. It is best done in a place where you have the language, where you have grown up—where a lot of it comes from your DNA.
I decided to begin my work in my home state [Punjab]. My practice is rooted in the community-based understanding of heritage and working with heritage as a living practice—the everydayness of it. For example, why do people sit a certain way in a courtyard? What materials have been used, and why are they transitioning from one material to another? What are the economic dependencies on cultural expressions (both intangible and tangible) relationships between people, social groups, etc.? The community informs the habitat and their forms. That was the foundation from where my practice grew.
My practice has been focusing on community and heritage, which earned us our first UNESCO award in 2002. I was also conscious of the coexistence of two roles—activism and practice. For me, both roles were two sides of the same coin. If I had to go to the government with an idea for some aspect related to cultural heritage conservation, I would also demonstrate how it could be done through my practice.
Unfortunately, heritage protection is undertaken either at the regional level by state governments through their departments of archaeology or at the national level by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). There is a lack of recognition and protection of heritage at the local level, because of which heritage cities, towns, and villages are in a poor condition. I discovered that the Ministry of Tourism, the Government of India, had programs for developing tourism destinations. I realized that these provided the opportunity for conservation and development of cultural heritage. But, for me, the primary stakeholders are never the tourists but the local community.
Tourism is always a by-product because a tourist is a consumer. If your product is not authentic, you are doing injustice to the consumer as well.
My focus has always been to create an authentic experience and protect, conserve, and respond to the primary stakeholders, thereby creating an authentic product for tourists. That is how we began.
We worked on writing out projects for restoring the houses of freedom fighters such as Kartar Singh Sarabha, Lala Lajpat Rai, and Udham Singh, and also the Anglo-Sikh battle sites, for a tourism circuit funded by the Ministry of Tourism called the ‘Freedom Trail.’ These are iconic real-time sites, so our goal was not to trivialize them or make them entertaining for tourists but rather to focus on the conservation of the materials and interpretation to tell the stories of the heroes.
In 2015, I was introduced to the valley of Kashmir. I experienced the coexistence of nature, culture, and cultural heritage, something that Patrick Geddes, a renowned Scottish town planner, sociologist, and botanist, talks about when describing communities and livelihoods at the regional level and the cities within. He talked about the ‘place, work, folk’ concept, where a place is a geography, work is how human beings engage with the geography to create a livelihood, and that’s what creates the culture of a place. That is the experience I got in Kashmir—the geography of the place—water, mountains, ecology, and people as creators of the most fabulous cultural expressions. So, my understanding and working with ecology started with my engagement with the Kashmir Valley.
We proposed a project called ‘Waters of Kashmir: Heritage, Spaces, and Living Culture.’ We looked at the downtown of Srinagar, the water systems of the Dal Lake, and the Jhelum river system. As we had to pick three places to create the circuit as per the design of the program of the Ministry of Tourism, we included Srinagar, Verinag and Achabal. The entire experience for a tourist visiting these places is not just the presence of Mughal Gardens there but the entire water systems, landscape, architectural expression, food, crafts etc.
This experience expanded my awareness to include ecology and has been the most enriching experience for me, personally and professionally. I apply the same framework now, no matter where I am working.
Rajesh Advani:
You were a part of the competition for the Solina silk factory (Resham Khana) in Kashmir. Could you shed some light on its development?
Gurmeet Rai:
We did participate in the competition; the experience was quite fabulous. The complex is intriguing, but what excited me was the legacy of silk in the valley from ancient times, which was further developed in the late 19th – early 20th centuries as part of industrial production. The valley has the entire value chain from silkworm rearing to reeling, weaving, and making of world-famous products like silk carpets.
The Solina factory is interesting from this perspective, as it highlighted the legacy of silk that gave the local artisans economic opportunities. Even though it was a livelihood of the past for several, it is something that can be developed today through innovation and integration of several cultural heritage aspects in the valley and their relationship with other parts of the country.
I wanted to commemorate the socio-cultural-economic narrative of the valley in this project. I saw Solina Factory as an arts centre and a multi-cultural space for the youth of Kashmir and more specifically Srinagar. It had the potential to respond to today’s young people. Solina is also a brand that can go into the future in terms of creating the most fabulous products from silk and integrating them with the handicrafts of the valley. All these three verticals (past, present, and future) are important and tie up with economic development, but we didn’t get the project. I think it was too radical as an idea for the jury. We had not confined the proposal to the conventional way of conserving heritage buildings.
While Solina was primarily for storing cocoons and the production of yarn, in the 1930s, another factory was set up in Rajbagh for weaving silk textiles. We were awarded to prepare a conservation and revitalization plan for the Rajbagh factory in 2021, which was destroyed during the floods in 2014. This was a World Bank-funded project under the Jhelum Tawi Flood Recovery Programme. We worked on a strategy for revitalizing the silk industry by integrating the two verticals of handicraft and handloom to create a ‘Silks of Rajbagh’ brand with restoration of the built fabric and upgrading the facilities at the factory.
After all, when you think of Kashmir, you think of silk carpets, yet most of the silk used for these carpets comes from China. The silk produced in Kashmir mainly goes unprocessed to other regions. They do not have the infrastructure to create the yarn needed for silk carpets, which is counterintuitive and self-contradictory. A value chain analysis undertaken by us shows gaps that are simple to fix through imagination, commitment, resources, and partnerships between the private sector and the government.
The government incorporated some of our inputs though the entire project is yet to be implemented. I am still hopeful that it will catch the imagination of somebody who would want to revitalize this area. It would impact the quality of life of the farmers involved in cocoon rearing. Reviving these traditions from the past creates a sense of well-being and pride in people. Some of these interventions might even be slow in the beginning, but they add up to making communities more resilient and satisfied. If implemented it will give a boost to several of the silk-related industries in the valley and economic benefit to a large number of people in both rural and urban areas in the valley.
Rajesh Advani:
You have also been on the jury for the Asia Pacific Architectural Heritage Awards for over a decade. What are your observations with respect to the changes in trends related to heritage conservation?
Gurmeet Rai:
I was a jury member from 2005 to around 2019. I was invited because I received two UNESCO awards for my work in Kishankot (2002) and the conservation of a gurdwara in Lakhpat, Gujarat (2004). The awards originally focused on Asia and the Pacific, recognizing good practices in cultural heritage conservation and highlighting technical expertise from a community point of view. It was about partnerships involving the private sector, communities, institutions, corporations, and the government.
The award of excellence goes to projects that have the potential to impact policy; the award of distinction goes to projects with technical, social, community, and environmental aspects. The projects that achieve any one or more aspects of the good practice receive an award of merit and an honourable mention.
During the earlier years, the focus was more on technical aspects, even if it was in the area of impacting policy. Over time, the focus has shifted to more complex topics and scales of heritage, addressing contested histories and challenges. The scale of the projects has also expanded and moved beyond the ancient and medieval buildings to colonial and modern heritage. The types of heritage conservation projects that are seen are urban heritage precincts, streets, and markets, as well, which is an interesting trajectory showing the changing complexities.
Rajesh Advani:
What role does technology play in the preservation and conservation of heritage? Do you believe these technologies are beneficial to the process, purpose, or cause?
Gurmeet Rai:
When you look at technology, it is quite interesting. The definition of technology can vary, depending on what it is related to. It could be related to scale, if you look at large buildings where implementation requires certain types of infrastructure of modern technology. The other aspect is the application of science in understanding the materials, cause of decay and interventions for conservation, for instance, investigating and understanding the cause of decay in a more scientific and precise manner, where you examine the materials at a molecular level.
When I look at conservation practice, I look at three basic skills: structural expertise (you need your structural engineers), civil knowledge (architects), and molecular level (material scientists, art conservators etc).
The training of conservation professionals is being fine-tuned increasingly, and resources are being put into projects that enable interdisciplinary dialogue. For example, the Aga Khan Foundation in the Asia Pacific region received awards of excellence almost every year for several years as they pushed the bar up in the quality of conservation practice with the kind of processes and techniques they deployed in the projects. This further impacts the profession and establishes new benchmarks.
Rajesh Advani:
Have you encountered challenges in preservation or conservation, such as sourcing the right labour, skills, materials, and technology to implement projects?
Gurmeet Rai:
Skills and material considerations are important parts of our conservation planning.
Consider this analogy of how a medical doctor treats a human body. If you break a bone, all they have to do is have surgery to insert a metal rod. So, compatibility with other materials and reversibility are the most important considerations. However, the choice to remove the rod is up to the person.
Similarly, in conservation, we need to understand the materials, the attributes of value, and the problems to develop conservation strategies. The interventions or materials that are compatible with the historic materials are used for conservation. It is important that these materials do not induce new stresses and be mindful that at a future date, we should be able to reverse it, should the intervention be counterproductive. As far as materials are concerned, there is a whole science to it that informs what can be done.
There is a big challenge related to workmanship because the masons and workers—whether skilled, semi-skilled, or unskilled—are impacted by the eco-system created by the nature of patronage that exists in the market. Available skills have been impacted by the financial rate. The output has compromised quality due to this reason. Very few systems exist to have quality-based indicators to determine the rates, and the emphasis is on quantity or outputs.
My experience is that to get suitable quality of work from an artisan who may have not produced superior quality work elsewhere is still possible; what is more difficult is getting the right rate to pay him for the kind of time that goes into producing good quality output. Most often, the pain point is not the available skills of the workers but the government-notified work schedule of rates, which creates a disabling context.
Rajesh Advani:
This leads to a crucial point about working with government bodies and their understanding of heritage. How challenging is it to convey the importance of your work?
Gurmeet Rai:
I have worked on various projects with government bodies for over three decades—with heritage and communities—which reflect my evolving trajectory of understanding in professional practice. But the challenge is translating the learning to inform policy. That is a gap that exists not only in the space of built heritage but in other areas like heritage in urban planning too. Learnings from various projects and programs of the government do not feed into governance and policy. Organizations like the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) have some interesting projects in public placemaking with cultural and natural heritage as the focus. But these learnings do not feed into policy to make a substantial palpable impact.
Another issue is that while the conservation of protected monuments is on the concurrent list, cultural heritage in cities within urban planning and development is a state subject. Even in the case of protected monuments, there is minimal dialogue between the ASI and the state government departments. I worked on preparing the site management plan for the world heritage site of Ellora Caves in Maharashtra. The buffer zone of the monument comes under the jurisdiction of several state government bodies, such as the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation, the panchayats, the forest department, PWD, and others. Therefore, while ASI looks after the monument, the communities in the buffer zone are not recognized as key stakeholders and hence are not on any of the platforms that determine the development in and around the caves.
There is an urgent need for a policy to enable dialogical processes between the community living in the setting of the monuments and other stakeholders for sustainable management of the values of heritage sites while providing benefits for the local community .
There is also a need for a dialogue between the federal government and state governments on platforms where urban development, cultural heritage, and ecological conservation and management respond to the impacts of climate change. This is something that needs to be done between ASI and CPWD, with PWDs, urban and rural local bodies, state departments of archaeology and others. Planning, conservation, and management need to move towards developing interdisciplinary strategies of feeding into the system, which local governments and other stakeholders can adopt.
Rajesh Advani:
For years, there has been a lack of policies or legal frameworks to address heritage-related issues. What is the current status of the legal framework for preservation and conservation in India?
Gurmeet Rai:
In the case of Punjab, I was one of the three consultants appointed by UNESCO to formulate the Cultural Heritage Policy and Action Plan for the state of Punjab. The three verticals were built heritage (which I was leading), documentary heritage (which is the collections in museums and archives), and intangible heritage (including the performing arts, craft practice, and so on). We drafted a policy after extensive field surveys and stakeholder workshops that integrates all three verticals. It was collated by Aruna Bagchi, Sudha Gopalakrishnan, and myself and chaired by Dr. Richard Engelhardt, former regional head of UNESCO Bangkok.
Dr. Engelhardt said that when you work in a particular community on the built heritage, whether your point of entry is the built heritage, movable heritage, or intangible heritage, the framework for intervention needs to address all three aspects. For instance, if you are looking at a space like Chandni Chowk, you would look at the buildings, the documentary heritage—which are collections with community members and institutions in the area—and the intangible—such as the crafts, food, etc.—in your development strategy. This approach resonated with me.
We developed a framework, integrated all three sectors, and identified different stakeholders, whether it was a local body, the state department of archaeology, or the departments of handicraft and handloom. We worked out the roles of each department and the programs that need to be put in place to ensure integrated development with a focus on the future with skills, economic development, and sustainable habitat. We focused on guidelines for new buildings anchored in green building materials and technologies and traditional vernacular architecture learnings.
For a robust management framework for cultural heritage, the policy at the national level needs to create an enabling ecosystem; but the actual work must happen locally and regionally.
Rajesh Advani:
Could you also tell us about your paper on conservation philosophy for Punjab?
Gurmeet Rai:
My paper is anchored in my learnings from the ground, which talks about the communities where heritage is alive in the present; we need to pick up all those principles to inform the conservation philosophy. This approach is based on what I have learnt from conservation projects like that of Guru ki Maseet, Gobindgarh Fort, Krishna temple in village Kishankot, Rambagh Gate in Amritsar, for which we got the Award of Excellence from UNESCO, and also mapping of heritage across the state. So, the entire framework of conservation philosophy for Punjab comes from my experience of the land and the projects that I have undertaken over three decades.
When I talk about experience feeding into a policy and legal framework, the conservation philosophy or policy for Punjab is anchored in those experiences. This is condensed into that paper.
Rajesh Advani:
When preparing the legal framework or policy, how do you perceive colonial influences that have influenced Punjab’s cultural heritage?
Gurmeet Rai:
I believe that when we were colonized, our minds were also colonized. But decolonization cannot be achieved by just accepting it as a British system. Decolonization is possible only by challenging the colonial constructs.
However, recognizing the indigenous knowledge and the vernacular and developing the values of those areas and aspects, will result in the process of decolonization. Something we resist persists. We need to let it be and work on something that we want to develop. The point is that we pick up what is of value to us as inclusive and diverse communities.
Rajesh Advani:
In academia, conservation architecture, in most architecture and urban planning colleges, ends up as an elective unless it is a specialized course. What is your opinion on this matter, and what do you think can be done to address this issue?
Gurmeet Rai:
There is certainly an important role for architects and engineers. However, certain materials have disappeared from the vocabulary of the technical education curriculum. For instance, brick masonry is no longer taught in engineering colleges as their focus is on steel, glass, and reinforcement concrete; this is problematic.
The unalignment between architecture and liberal arts as well as science is a basic problem in the education system. Even in colleges of architecture, historic architecture is not taught as part of a holistic understanding of socio-political and economic context. These subjects need to be seen, taught, and communicated in a better way, as architecture tells us about people and places more than any other form of art.
I believe in thinking globally and acting locally. I think that these concepts are critical for architects to understand.
I bring this to the students on teaching platforms that I engage with. I teach architectural conservation at CEPT University’s postgraduate [for conservation] third-semester studio. I also host summer and winter schools [as a part of the CEPT University curriculum] for the students in my village. I have conducted four such schools where the students spend ten days in the village, mapping and working with the village community on different topics. These eventually come to co-designing and co-producing; it ends with a village mela where students exhibit these works and people from the village are invited.
You can make a difference anywhere in the world, even in your backyard. The skills, values, and understanding come from a particularly strong global perspective. You should be able to apply it in the local context by understanding the same. I find it very gratifying to be able to engage in my village by thinking within the framework of sustainable practice, with the ecosystem of culture, nature, and community. I do hope that students are sensitized to that paradigm.
It is important to have your roots and to be able to have a superstructure anchored on these foundations — that is fundamental. This needs to be instilled in young minds.
Gurmeet Sangha Rai:
Gurmeet Sangha Rai is a conservation architect and a heritage management specialist based in New Delhi. She established CRCI India Pvt Ltd, a leading firm in heritage practice in India in 1996. Some of the noted projects of CRCI have been the preparation of conservation and management plans for the world heritage sites of Red Fort, New Delhi; Ellora Caves, Maharashtra; urban conservation plans for historic settlements of Amritsar and Puri; sustainable strategies for the development of cultural tourism in Jammu and Kashmir; integrated conservation and development of tangible and intangible heritage for governments, private, bi-lateral, and multi-lateral agencies. CRCI has provided expertise in South Asia in the countries of Nepal and Myanmar, and in India in the states of Punjab, Rajasthan, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, and others. Gurmeet was awarded two ‘Awards of Distinction’ and an ‘Award of Excellence’ by UNESCO under the Asia Pacific Architectural Heritage Awards in the years 2002, 2004 and 2023 for demonstrating community-inclusive conservation programs. She has been on the jury of the Asia Pacific Architectural Heritage Awards of UNESCO for over 10 years. She is the former Vice President of ICOMOS India (2014-2020).
Credits:
Transcribing: Simran Gandhi
Editing: Geethu Gangadhar
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