Guest Column BK Rath

Heritage is that which we have inherited from our earlier generations. It covers almost all the aspects of our culture and life. Heritage is broadly classified into man-made heritage and natural heritage. Man-made heritage includes both tangible and intangible heritage. The first group covers built heritage, visual art, performing arts and literature. Intangible heritage consists of our oral traditions on different subjects including astrology, medicine, agricultural practice, weather forecast and so on.

When we talk about heritage preservation, usually we talk about the preservation of our built heritage or monuments. We do not think of our other tangible heritage such as dance, music, folk forms, old mural paintings, palm leaf illustrations or manuscripts, traditional crafts, textiles with such seriousness as we show for our monuments.

Even in our approach for preservation of our monuments we are not focused and do not follow the right course of action. With my long past experience in this field, I have been trying to find out and analyse this factor and would like to share my thoughts with the readers.

As generally believed, preservation of heritage means preservation of our monuments and built heritage. Even the funds from different finance commissions are granted under this head and solely meant for preservation of monuments in Orissa. By monuments, we usually understand old structures and buildings. But the archaeological Acts and rules define a monument as any structure with archaeological, historical and religious importance and which has been in existence for more than 100 years. This age limit is dependent on historical evidence, inscriptions, architectural style and other factors, which only an expert or an archaeologist can determine. But usually people take and consider any old structure as a monument.

In preservation of built heritage, two things are of vital importance. The first one is protection and the second one is conservation. By protection we mean the protection of the structure as well as the area around it. This is done at government level by declaring a monument as protected through appropriate government notification under the provision of Archaeological Acts of the state or the Centre. But protection is accorded to a limited number of monuments by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) or the state archaeology department for various technical and administrative reasons. Thus, there are a large number of monuments unprotected by any agency. In Orissa, the ASI has accorded protection to 78 sites and monuments by declaring those as monuments of national importance.

Similarly, the state archaeology organisation has accorded protection to 228 sites and monuments of state level and local importance. There still remain a large number of standing monuments as unprotected. According to a survey made by Indian National Trust For Art and Cultural Heritage (Intach) Orissa chapter during 1988-93, there are 2,706 unprotected standing monuments in the state. This figure does not include the large number of archaeological and excavation sites without any protection.

The unprotected monuments and archaeological sites are prone to vandalism. Fortunately, these monuments and sites found in rural areas are taken care by local people because of religious considerations. It is found that the people are not aware of the heritage value of these monuments but regard these as important from religious point of view. The picture is quite different in urban areas and developing towns. In these places people have neither religious consideration nor love and respect for heritage value. In fact, there are instances where the people have utilised building materials from old structures and monuments.

This lack of awareness is apparent at all levels of society and the administration. My personal observation and feeling after a long career as an archaeologist is that this lack of awareness is due to lack of knowledge in history and culture of Orissa. It is unfortunate that in Orissa at no level Orissan history and culture is taught as a compulsory subject. If one chooses history honours at graduation level then only he reads the subject as a compulsory paper.

At post-graduation level of history if someone opts for specialisation in Orissan history and culture, he has scope to study the subject in detail. But, unfortunately this is not the practice in all the universities and autonomous colleges when history is taught at postgraduate level. We force our students to read British constitutional history, European history, history of Far East and international relations, but we do not want them to read their own history and culture.

In a survey report it as stated that 50 per cent students drop out at Class I to Class V level. At high school level, another 50 per cent dropouts are noticed.

Thus if we have about 3 lakh plus appearing in school board examinations at present, then the entrants to Class I would have been 12 lakh plus. It is unfortunate that from Class I to Class X, at no level Orissan history and culture is taught as a separate subject or as a compulsory paper. It is mixed with general history with sketchy descriptions and without any focus. Thus in Orissa, if each year 12 lakh students start their education, only 200 plus have scope to study Orissa history and culture in detail at graduation and postgraduate level. To make my point more clear and precise, one may ask oneself if at any level of his educational career, he has read Orissan history and culture in detail. Majority of answers would be no. Our knowledge of our past history and culture is through general reading of newspapers and magazines only.

Lack of knowledge in our regional history and culture has led to lack of awareness and love for our heritage.

Except Orissa, almost all other states have their regional history as one of the subjects at different levels of education. Thus, a vast number of students are kept ignorant about their own culture either unknowingly or purposefully by the wrong policy of the education department. How can one then expect people to be aware of their heritage? Who is or who are responsible for this sad state of affairs?