Getting on the list of UNESCO’s WORLD HERITAGE SITES is an ordeal—about a year and a half’s worth of paperwork, lobbying, and presentations—but those who triumph can expect a healthy boost in tourism and conservation efforts.
Here below is a recently published chart that shows the ranking of countries that are on the top-10 Ranking List of nations that have the most number of World Heritage sites to boast about.
Well… the Chart is an eye-opener at least for me! China leads the pack here and America is right at the bottom of the class! And my own country, India — that claims to be the oldest civilisation in the world with truly hoary and great cultural heritage and traditions dating back to pre-history — finds itself in the middling ranks on the same list!
There are 10 criteria applied by UNESCO to assess and recognise a site in any country as a World Heritage Site. The bar that a country’s site aspiring to make the cut for such international recognition is very high indeed to vault over. The UNESCO website https://whc.unesco.org/en/criteria/ describes all 10 of them tersely but comprehensively:
Selection criteria
(i)
to represent a masterpiece of human creative genius;
(ii)
to exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design;
(iii)
to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared;
(iv)
to be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history;
(v)
to be an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land-use, or sea-use which is representative of a culture (or cultures), or human interaction with the environment especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change;
(vi)
to be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance. (The Committee considers that this criterion should preferably be used in conjunction with other criteria);
(vii)
to contain superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance;
(viii)
to be outstanding examples representing major stages of earth’s history, including the record of life, significant on-going geological processes in the development of landforms, or significant geomorphic or physiographic features;
(ix)
to be outstanding examples representing significant on-going ecological and biological processes in the evolution and development of terrestrial, fresh water, coastal and marine ecosystems and communities of plants and animals;
(x)
to contain the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity, including those containing threatened species of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation.
India being the oldest known cultural civilisation in the world has only 38 accredited World Heritage sites. Why such low ranking? The reason is not too far to go searching for. It is clearly the lack of pride that we Indians exhibit in cherishing the ancient sites of our vast land. While applying the above 10 criteria to assess if a candidate site in a country deserves selection as World Heritage site, the UNESCO gives great priority for the following consideration:
“The protection, management, authenticity and integrity of properties are also important considerations. Since 1992 significant interactions between people and the natural environment have been recognized as cultural landscapes.”
Now that’s really where India faces the painful crunch! As a nation there is no doubt at all that we are greatly and sadly found wanting when it comes to “protection, management, authenticity and integrity of properties…” in India that we know are potentially world heritage sites. No matter how much our Central and State Governments in nearly 75 years now have been allocating national budgetary resources for protecting, managing and preserving the “authenticity and integrity” of India’s heritage sites, it has been a perennially losing battle. And that’s because as a nation, and as a people, we just don’t care that much for our natural and cultural heritage.
The Ministry of Tourism and Culture… or for that matter the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development and the premier heritage-development agency in India, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) , by themselves are no more than well-intentioned, pious symbols of our country’s aspiration to be seen in the world as the legatee of a glorious civilisational past. The work they have managed to do in post-Independence India can at best be described as “middling” and, at the very worst, as being woefully inadequate. And it is their middling work that is reflected indeed in the middling ranking achieved by India as seen in the above UNESCO rank-list.
As a citizen I must however admit truthfully that Ministries and Government Departments alone cannot shoulder the onerous burden of ensuring the “protection, preservation and managing” of the “authenticity” and “integrity” of our country’s historical, cultural and natural heritage. It is only the people themselves who ultimately can do it. A nation’s heritage is the permanent asset of its people… It is not and it cannot ever be anything other than mere perfunctory responsibility if delegated to elected governments to carry it out , and elected governments we know come and go every 5 years in India. The responsibility is far too lofty and too precious to be left to the political will of the people to fulfil it… It must instead become the national will to safeguard heritage and to showcase it to the rest of the world as the pride of the nation.
I would think the best way to express the “national will” of the people of India to “protect, preserve and manage” the “authenticity and integrity” of India’s heritage is to reinvent, reinstitute and reconstitute all agencies, prima donnas and aficionados we have in the country today (such as ASI, Tourism & Culture, Education and HRD Ministry etc.) from being mere departmental arms of the Government to being conferred with either Constitutional status and prestige — such as India’s Judiciary or Election Commission, for example, that we know both enjoy it— or else, with some other sort of supra-governmental sanctity and independence such as what we know the Armed Forces of India in spite of being subjected to ministerial oversight of the Government.
I envision such an apex institution to be called, perhaps, The Heritage Commission of India, an independent institution being a creation of an enactment of Parliament under the Constitution of India. The People of India must at large must know that they can look up to such a Commission as the custodian of their national permanent asset, viz.: their heritage sites and heritage treasury. The people must thereby begin to genuinely feel that they are invested into the Heritage Commission of India in as much as they know they are into the Judiciary represented at the very apex by the Supreme Court of India… the returns on such investment that flow from the former being their priceless Heritage assets remaining protected and further enriched; and returns from the latter being citizens’ fundamental rights in a democracy being protected and strengthened further. If Indians can be provided a constitutional platform through which they can be made to feel as proud and jealously protective of their Heritage as they are of their great Democracy in the country, I am quite sure that many sites will come up in India to be recognised as UNESCO world heritage sites. The other expected economic returns from Tourism and Conservation that would follow, while being real and substantial, no doubt, in comparison however, would be rather incidental and quotidian only.
When the People of India see that their investment in the Heritage of India is Constitutional… and not Governmental… it can be expected to profoundly change their attitude to culture and cultural pride. The job of protecting the “authenticity and integrity” of India’s heritage will then no longer be regarded as simply a governmental job-responsibility but as true people’s movement.
The Prime Minister of India , Sri Narendra Modi, talks of “AATMA-NIRBHAR” (loosely when translated in English is to be understood as “the People of India learning to rely upon their own “national soul” to realise their destiny”). I now ask him: “Sir, the “aatma” or soul of India lies in its ancient cultural Heritage. If that heritage is lost or remains as unrecognised, undistinguished or undervalued by the rest of the world as we see it today when listed on a common Ranking List such as the UNESCO’s above … how can the larger dream of “nirbharatva” ever be realised?
Where there is no “aatma” to speak of, how will it attain fulfilment or … “nirbharatvam”?
Sudarshan Madabushi