Preserving heritage beyond forts and palaces

It is commonplace to look at heritage in terms of beautiful buildings, palaces, forts and monuments, artifacts or colourful dances and cultural celebrations.

- BHARAT DOGRA

This tendency gets emphasised as tourism is more likely to be linked to these aspects of heritage. Of course, this is important; all things of beauty should be cherished, particularly those with history attached to them. Nevertheless, overemphasis on beauty and glamour should not lead to the neglect of those aspects of heritage that can be helpful in other important ways for present times, even for meeting urgent needs.

A view may be taken by some that keeping in view the advancement of technology, we have better means of meeting our various needs and hence these aspects of heritage are not so important or relevant now. However, this would be too narrow a view in several contexts of the contributions previous generations made in terms of finding local solutions for problems, keeping in view what works best in the more specific local conditions. It would be a costly mistake to ignore these and move ahead arrogantly with development models that fail to look at specific local needs.