By IANS
New Delhi : Calling on civil society groups and citizens to take part in the protection and preservation of India’s heritage and monuments, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Monday said conservation should not be seen as an “elitist preoccupation”.
In the same breath, Prime Minister Singh reminded scientists, archaeologists and anthropologists to look beyond the government to protect historical monuments, pointing out that a change in the mindset was important to care for heritage.
“To assume that all we need to do is more resources to do more for our heritage would be wrong and a simplistic vision,” Manmohan Singh said, speaking at a national conference of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH).
“Resources are undoubtedly required. But what is more important is the mindset – a value system and a culture – that respects the past and wishes to learn from it. Unless we respect our inheritance, unless we are prepared to learn from it, we will not invest in its preservation.”
Manmohan Singh also maintained that conservation should not be an exclusive and snobbish activity.
“Conservation should not be seen as an elitist preoccupation. It must make itself meaningful to society in a manner that engenders community participation on large scale.
“To be effective, conservation efforts need to be coordinated with a comprehensive planning policy through the preparation of ‘local area plans’ and participation of the resident community,” he said.
“We need to ensure that conservation efforts have components for local employment generation, education, awareness programmes, improving access to urban facilities and enhanced maintenance of open spaces through public participation,” said Manmohan Singh.
“Heritage sites such as the Taj, Humayun’s Tomb or the Qutub Minar, if properly managed and integrated into the city planning and development process, have the capacity of improving living conditions of the thousands who inhabit their neighbourhoods.”
In developing countries like India, the prime minister added, a great part of public policy attention was focused on the immediate challenge of survival and development, with little attention paid to issues of culture and preservation.
“One must not get trapped into this binary choice between development and conservation of heritage. The two must go together. We need, therefore, strategies and policies that facilitate such a ‘walking on two legs’,” said Manmohan Singh.
In recent years, he remarked, there was a renewed threat to heritage conservation from fundamentalists, extremists and terrorists.
“Fundamentalism in attitudes and beliefs often targets mankind’s heritage structures and sites, leading to their destruction. The destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha in Afghanistan is only one sad and stark example of such threats to heritage preservation.”