Owning and Disowning Cultural Heritage

In the last chapter of William Dalrymple’s book The Last Mughal, he gives a harrowing account of a massacre parallel to the killing of supporters and family of the Mughals- the systematic erasure of Mughal architecture : havelis or homes, mosques, gardens, caravanserais, and of course the Red Fort, of whose magnificent halls, living quarters and gardens, only twenty percent could be saved by the intervention of John Lawrence, an English Officer, after whom Lahore’s  Lawrence Gardens are named  and to whom the world must be grateful  for saving whatever he could.

History is filled with politically motivated destruction of art: The Egyptians destroyed statues of their predecessors, the Romans practiced  damnatio memoriae, the public destruction of statues and monuments of their predecessor. Religion was of course a major motivator for the destruction of art and heritage: the 8C Christian Emperor, Leo III, ordered images to be removed from churches; Protestant reformers did the same across Europe in the 16C; Colonizers destroyed,  or superimposed upon, the heritage of their colonies; Saudi rulers erased historic sites to prevent them becoming secondary places of worship; the communist regimes of USSR  and China demolished places of worship;  Hitler’s destroyed or removed   “degenerate art”, and in our time, we are witness to  the destruction of heritage by ISIL. 

The largest destruction of built heritage has been at the hands of urban developers where the main motivation is a complex one of profit, the urge to modernize, to house growing populations, and the lack of skill at preservation. Urban cultural tourism is a major income generator that also encourages allied businesses. Pakistani tourism highlights its pristine mountains and archaeological wealth, but historic cities are usually left out of the equation.  Preservation of historical urban areas is consequently not factored into urban planning strategies, and life leaves cities that were once vibrant and full of character.

Ironically, while art and architecture are seen to exist on the periphery, they become the main symbols of identity for civilizations or, equally, objects to vent political rage. We have seen statues of Lenin, Stalin, Saddam Hussain pulled down by angry crowds.  The statue of Napoleon was destroyed and restored three times.

 The Dominican friar, Savonarola, instigated the Bonfire of Vanities in Florence in 1497, where sinful objects were publically burnt including mirrors, fine dresses, art, books, playing cards and musical instruments. The artist Botticelli, impressed with Savonarola,  was reported to have voluntarily burnt several of his paintings depicting classical mythology.

The French Revolution wishing to eradicate any memory of the Old Regime including their art, found a way to preserve it by establishing museums. The Tehran Museum of Modern art and the Hermitage containing some of Europe’s most valuable works of art, also survived revolutions. Museums seem to depoliticize art and contain it in a neutral space, transforming artworks into innocuous emblems of history, and scholarship.

Anna Sido in her study “Making History: How Art Museums in the French Revolution Crafted a National Identity, 1789-1799” notes that after roughly twenty five million were incited to destroy monuments, the new government, justified saving art works and monuments of the Old Regime by presenting them as “one of the most powerful ways of proclaiming the illustriousness of the French Republic.” Cultural goods became a form of diplomacy, speaking of the cultural power of the revolution and taking attention away from the political mayhem.

A young Parisian artist, Alexandre Lenoir, who later became director of Musée des Monuments Français, heroically saved more than 200 monuments from “the axe of the destroyers and the scythe of time” including Michelangelo’s Dying Slave sculpture. He would have preferred to leave objects where he found them, but felt they were no longer safe, a philosophy shared by many in Pakistan who have kept antiquities in their personal collections.

Heritage can also be denied or falsified. In Modi’s India, PN Oak’s revisionist histories claim the Taj Mahal was a Hindu palace,  Qutub Minar  a Hindu astronomical observation tower; the Red Fort was a palace built by a Hindu ruler. In fact all medieval mosques and tombs in India are misused Hindu palaces and temples, including the tombs of Nizamuddin Aulia and  Moinuddin Chishti. When the Agra Court ruled the Taj Mahal was in fact a tomb, the official UP tourist guide book of Agra omitted the Taj, despite it being the biggest tourist revenue earner.

Historians write of “The Long Nineteenth Century” when the western world changed into economy driven capitalist societies. In its wake, there grew a great nostalgia and longing for the past. The idea of “Heritage” came into being in the search for emblems to address the “crisis of representation” in a homogenizing industrial culture.

The turmoil of “The Short twentieth Century”, decolonized, war torn, and digitalized, has created needs for new emblems of representation.  Pakistan too has begun to establish nascent cultural policies and heritage awareness, giving hope to the dedicated individuals who for many years have tirelessly collected and protected what they could. Presented as the contested ownership of nationalism, it is waiting to become national heritage.

Durriya  Kazi

15 April 2018