CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VI (1) Contemporary-Eurasia-VI-1-engl | Page 68

SUBRAMANIAN KRISHNAN MANI
conservation programmes at the national level. UNESCO’s
Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection of the World Cultural
and Natural Heritage in its operational guidelines for the
implementation of the World Heritage Convention in 1972 recognised
that: “The cultural and natural heritage are among priceless and
irreplaceable possessions, not only of each nation but of mankind as a
whole. The loss, through deterioration or disappearance of any of
these most prized possessions, constitute an impoverishment of the
heritage of all peoples of the world.”
Despite the initiatives during the period of the 1950s to the 1970s,
it should be noted that preservation/conservation interests have
proliferated in our own time because of the intensification of
following forces:
 Resurgent tribal and local loyalties require the reaffirmation of
symbolic links with the material past
 Pace of technological change
 Radical modernization of the built environment
 Speed of material obsolescence
 Migration to new homes
 Greater longevity which results sometimes in leaving us in
ever less familiar environments
Evolution of preservation of monuments in India
The principles of preservation and monument making, as they are
known in India today-that is, state-driven, bureaucratically controlled,
and centralized-were introduced under British rule. Throughout the
entire period of the rule of the East India Company from 1765 to 1858
little more than sporadic attempts were made by the company to
preserve historical structures. These efforts were largely limited to the
heartland of the former Mughal Empire in Delhi and Agra and, as
recent research suggests, had much to do with the efforts of the
company to legitimize its rule as the natural successor of the Mughal
rulers of India.
The real impulse of a frenetic phase of state-driven conservation
came with the appointment of George Nathaniel Curzon, Marquess
Curzon of Kedleston, or Lord Curzon (1859–1925) to the office of
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